Silanus the Christian. Edwin Abbott Abbott

a judicial condemnation might bring disgrace on a man’s good name. “The authorities, you say, have condemned you as guilty of impiety and profanity. What harm is there in that for you? This creature, with authority to condemn you—does he himself know even the meaning of piety or impiety? If a man in authority calls day night or bass treble, do men that know take notice of him? Unless the judge knows what the truth is, his ‘authority to judge’ is no authority. No man has authority over our convictions, our inmost thoughts, our will. Hence when Zeno the philosopher went into the presence of Antigonus the king, it was the king that was anxious, not the philosopher. The king wished to gain the philosopher’s good opinion, but the philosopher cared for nothing that the king could give. When, therefore, you go to the palace of a great ruler, remember that you are in effect going to the shop of a shoemaker or a grocer—on a great scale of course, but still a grocer. He cannot sell you anything real or lasting, though he may sell his groceries at a great price.”

      At the bottom of all this doctrine about true and false authority, there was, as I afterwards understood, a belief that God had bestowed on all men, if they would but accept and use it, authority over their own wills, so that we might conform our wills to His, as children do with a Father, and might find pleasure, and indeed our only pleasure, in doing this—accepting all bodily pain and evil as not evil but good because it comes from His will, which must be also our will and must be honoured and obeyed. “When,” said he, “the ruler says to anyone, ‘I will fetter your leg,’ the man that is in the habit of honouring his leg cries, ‘Don’t, for pity’s sake!’ But the man that honours his will says, ‘If it appears advisable to you, fetter it’.”

      “Tyrant. Won’t you bend?

      “Cynic. I will not bend.

      “Tyrant. I will show you that I am lord.

      “Cynic. You! impossible! I have been freed by Zeus. Do you really imagine that He would allow His own son to be made a slave? But of my corpse you are lord. Take it.”

      In this particular lecture Epictetus also gave us a glimpse of a wider and more divine authority imparted by God to a few special natures, akin to Himself, whereby, as God is supreme King over men His children, so a chosen few may become subordinate kings over men their brethren. Like Plato, he seemed to look forward to a time when rulers would become philosophers, or else philosophers kings. Nero and Sardanapalus, Agamemnon and Alexander, all came under his lash—all kings and rulers of the old régime. Not that he denied Agamemnon a superiority to Nero, or the right to call himself “shepherd of the people” if he pleased. “Sheep, indeed,” he exclaimed, “to submit to be ruled over by you!” and “Shepherd, indeed, for you weep like the shepherds, when a wolf has snatched away a sheep!”

      From these old-fashioned rulers he passed to a new and nobler ideal of kingship: “Those kings and tyrants received from their armed guards the power of rebuking and punishing wrongdoing, though they might be rascals themselves. But on the Cynic”—that was the term he used—“this power is bestowed by the conscience.” Then he explained to us what he meant by “conscience”—the consciousness of a life of wise, watchful, and unwearied toil for man, with the co-operation of God. “And how,” he asked, “could such a man fail to be bold and speak the truth with boldness, speaking, as he does, to his own brethren, to his own children and kinsfolk? So inspired, he is no meddler or busybody. Supervising and inspecting the affairs of mankind, he is not busying himself with other men’s matters, but with his own. Else, call a general, too, a busybody, when he is busy inspecting his own soldiers!”

      This was, to me, quite a new view of the character of a Cynic. But Epictetus insisted on it with reiteration. The Cynic, he said, was Warrior and Physician in one. As a warrior, he was like Hercules, wandering over the world with his club and destroying noxious beasts and monsters. As a physician, he was like Socrates or Diogenes, going about and doing good to those afflicted with sickness of mind, diagnosing each disease, prescribing diet, cautery, or other remedy. In both these capacities the Cynic received from God authority over men, and men recognised it in him, because they perceived him to be their benefactor and deliverer.

      There are, said Epictetus, in each man two characters—the character of the Beast and the character of the Man. By Beast he meant wild or savage beast, as distinct from tame beast, which he preferred to call “sheep.” “Sheep” meant the cowardly, passive-greedy passions within us. “The Beast” meant the savage, aggressive-greedy nature, not only stirring us up to external war against our neighbours, but also waging war to the death against our inward better nature, against the “Man.” The mark or stamp of the Beast he connected with Nero. “Cast it away,” he said. The opposite mark or stamp he connected with the recently deceased Emperor, Trajan. If we acted like a beast, he warned us that we should become like a beast, and then, according to his customary phrase, “You will have lost the Man.” And was this, asked he, nothing to lose? Over and over again he repeated it: “You have thrown away the Man.” It was in this light—as a type of the Man—that he regarded Hercules, the first of the Cynics, the Son of God, going on the errands of the Father to destroy the Beast in its various shapes, typifying an armed Missionary, but armed for spiritual not for fleshly warfare, destroying the Beast that would fain dominate the world. But it was for Diogenes that he reserved his chief admiration, placing him (I think) even above Socrates, or at all events praising him more warmly—partly, perhaps, out of fellow-feeling, because Diogenes, too, like himself, had known what it was to be a slave. Never shall I forget the passage in this lecture in which he described Alexander surprising the great Cynic asleep, and waking him up with a line of Homer:—

      “To sleep all night suits not a Councillor,”

      —to which Diogenes replied at once in the following line, claiming for himself the heavy burden (entrusted to him by Zeus) of caring like a king for all the nations of the earth:—

      “Who holds, in trust, the world’s vast orb of cares.”

      Diogenes, according to our Teacher, was much more than an Æsculapius of souls; he was a sovereign with “the sceptre and the kingdom of the Cynic.” Some have represented Epictetus as claiming this authority for himself. But in the lecture that I heard, it was not so. Though what he said might have been mistaken as a claim for himself, it was really a claim for “the Cynic,” as follows. First he put the question, “How is it possible for one destitute, naked, homeless, hearthless, squalid, with not one slave to attend him, or a country to call his own, to lead a life of equable happiness?” To which he replied, “Behold, God hath sent unto you the man to demonstrate in act this possibility. ‘Look on me, and see that I am without country, home, possessions, slaves; no bed but the ground, no wife, no children—no palace to make a king or governor out of me—only the earth, and the sky, and one threadbare cloak! And yet what do I want? Am I not fearless? Am I not free? When saw ye me failing to find any good thing that I desired, or falling into any evil that I would fain have avoided? What fault found I ever with God or man? When did I ever accuse anyone? Did anyone ever see me with a gloomy face? How do I confront the great persons before whom you, worldlings, bow abashed and dismayed? Do not I treat them as cringing slaves? Who, that sees me, does not feel that he sees in me his natural Lord and Master?’ ”

      I confess that up to this point I had myself supposed that he was speaking of himself, standing erect as ruler of the world. But in the next instant he had dropped, as it were, from the pillar upon which he had been setting up the King, and now, like a man at the pedestal pointing up to the statue on the top, he exclaimed, “Behold, these are the genuine Cynic’s utterances: this is his stamp and image: this is his aim!”

      He passed on to answer the question, What if the Cynic missed his aim, or, at least, missed it so far as exerting the royal authority over others? What if death cut his purpose short? In that case, he said, the will, the purpose, the one essential good, had at all events remained in its purity; and how could man die better than in such actions? “If, while I am thus employed, death should overtake me, it will suffice me if I can lift up my hands to God and say, ‘The helps that I received from thee, to the intent that I might understand and follow thy ordering of the universe, these I have not neglected. I have not disgraced thee, so far