The Book of Epictetus 1 · The daily drill. Written down by Arrian, from his lecture room
The fence is already set in Covenant 5, and this book does not set it again. What this book says is where the fence runs: not around events, but around your judgement of them. He wrote nothing himself; what is here his student Arrian took down in the lecture room. (cf. Acts of the Apostles 5.48)
1.1I was born a slave. My leg is lame. Neither did I choose.
1.2What I am about to teach, I learned inside those two facts.
1.3Men are disturbed not by things, but by their judgements about things.
1.4Death is not dreadful. Had it been dreadful, Socrates would have found it so.
1.5He did not. So the dread is not in death. It is in the judgement about death.
1.6So when you are obstructed, disturbed or grieved, do not blame another. Look first at your own judgement.
1.7A man abuses you and does not reach you. What wounds you is the judgement that his words are wounding.
1.8You must first see that the judgement is yours, added by you. Only then can you move it.
1.9This does not say he did not abuse you. He did.
1.10It says: he has finished what he can do, and the rest is being done by you.
1.11Someone asks: does this not let bad men off?
1.12It does not. Sue where you should sue. This rule is not about him. It is about whether you sleep tonight.
1.13The uninstructed blame others. Those beginning to be instructed blame themselves.
1.14The instructed blame no one. They turn and look at the judgement.