Selections from Epictetus Author:Epictetus Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: omit any effort, from a despair of arriving at the highest. CHAPTER III. (3.) OF OUR DESCENT FROM GOD. IF a person could be persuaded of this principle ... more »as he ought, that we are all originally descended from God, and that he is the father of men and gods; I conceive he would never think of himself meanly or ignobly. Suppose Caesar were to adopt you, there would be no bearing your haughty looks; and will you not feel ennobled on knowing yourself to be the son of God? Yet, in fact, we are not ennobled. But having two things united in our composition, a body in common with the brutes, and reason in common with the gods, many incline to this unhappy and mortal kindred, and only some few to that which is happy and divine. And as of necessity every one must treat each particular thing according to the notions he forms about it, so those few who suppose that they are made for chapter{Section 4faith and honor and a wise use of things will never think meanly or ignobly concerning themselves. But with the multitude the case is contrary ; " For what am I ? A poor contemptible man, with this miserable flesh of mine?" Miserable indeed. But you have likewise something better than this poor flesh. Why, then, overlooking that, do you pine away in attention to this ? CHAPTER IV. (4.) WHAT IS PROGRESS ? WHERE doth your work lie? In learning what to seek and what to shun, that you may neither be disappointed of the one, nor incur the other; in practising how to pursue and how to avoid, that you may not be liable to fail; in practising intellectual assent and doubt, that you may not be liable to be deceived. These are the first and most necessary things. But if you merely seek, in trembling and lamentation, to keep away al'possible ills, what real progress have you made ? Ne...« less