"Letter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epictetus)

even than the other virtues, for ad a life of pleasure which
is not also a life of prudence, honor, and justice; nor lead a
life of prudence, honor, and justice, which is not also a life
of pleasure. For the virtues have grown into one with a
pleasant life, and a pleasant life is inseparable from them.

Who, then, is superior in your judgment to such a person? He
holds a holy belief concerning the gods, and is altogether
free from the fear of death. He has diligently considered the
end fixed by nature, and understands how easily the limit of
good things can be reached and attained, and how either the
duration or the intensity of evils is but slight. Destiny
which some introduce as sovereign over all things, he laughs
to scorn, affirming rather that some things happen of
necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency.
For he sees that necessity destroys responsibility and that
chance or fortune is inconstant; whereas our own actions are
free, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally
attach. It were better, indeed, to accept the legends of the
gods than to bow beneath destiny which the natural
philosophers have imposed. The one holds out some faint hope
that we may escape if we honor the gods, while the necessity
of the naturalists is deaf to all entreaties. Nor does he hold
chance to be a god, as the world in general does, for in the
acts of a god there is no disorder; nor to be a cause, though
an uncertain one, for he believes that no good or evil is
dispensed by chance to people so as to make life happy, though
it supplies the starting-point of great good and great evil.
He believes that the misfortune of the wise is better than the
prosperity of the fool. It is better, in short, that what is
well judged in action should not owe its successful issue to
the aid of chance.

Exercise yourself in these and kindred precepts day and night,
both by yourself and with him who is like to you; then never,
either in waking or in dream, will you be disturbed, but will
live as a god among people. For people lose all appearance of
mortality by living in the midst of immortal blessings.

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