Sixteenth installment:
Arrian, a student of Epictetus, wrote eight books, The Discourses of Epictetus, of which four survive. Selections from those eight books were also collected in the Enchiridion, or “Handbook.” The Discourses give us a quite vivid portrait of the man who inspired them, and also give us fascinating glimpses into his singular didactic style. We very quickly see how Epictetus ran his school, the nature of its curricula, and how he mentored his students. We see his earnestness, his zeal, and piety, but we also get a good dose of his sharp and often acerbic sense of humor. It is no wonder that Arrian felt he ‘had to get this down.’
It also can be quite a challenge to understand exactly what is being said in the chapters of the Discourses. The text is composed of lecture notes, we must recall.
So, with that genesis in mind, I’ve set out to read through the four books, a chapter at a time, while also breaking up the text with commentary, (essentially my best guesses as to how we might flesh out what can be very brief or truncated sketches of dialogue and argumentation), as it was no easy business for Arrian to get down what he had experienced in the lecture halls of Nicopolis!
Commentary is in italics! Also, please forgive any formatting issues (spacing between paragraphs) that you see. They stubbornly will not go away no matter what I do!
Book I, Chapter 16
Of Providence
This chapter presents a picture of man’s relationship to animal life around him. It falls out as a consequence of the teleological view adumbrated in the block of chapters we’ve been looking at. We see, according to this view, humanity cast in that co-administrator’s role, and animal life (at least the domesticated species) cast in a service role, functioning as aids to humanity and our work.
As well, it gives us the first in a series of humorous meditations on secondary sexual characteristics in our species, here focused upon their ‘signaling’ function. We’ll see this, and related matters, come up in later chapters.
It seems this chapter records one of those times Epictetus was having a little bit of fun in the lecture hall; one of those times that Arrian probably thought to himself, “I’ve got to get this down for posterity!”
Marvel not that the animals other than man have furnished them, ready prepared by nature, what pertains to their bodily needs (not merely food and drink, but also a bed to lie on, and that they have no need of shoes, or bedding, or clothing) while we are in need of all these things. For in the case of animals, born not for their own sake, but for service, to have created them in need of other things was not beneficial.
Not beneficial? For whom? For us.
Why, consider what it would be for us to have to take thought not for merely ourselves, but also for our sheep and our asses, how they are to be clothed and shod, how they are to find food and drink, but just as soldiers appear before their general, all ready for service, shod, clothed and armed, and it would be shocking if the colonel had to go around and equip his regiment with shoes or uniforms; so also, nature has made animals, which are born for service, ready for use, equipped, and in need of no further attention. Consequently, one small child with a rod can drive a flock of sheep.
I suspect farmer’s and husbandmen would take issue with this easy characterization of how things stand with farm or herd animals they keep. Many do require bedding and shelter, and even those that graze in open fields need often be provided with drink. Not only that, but they are often fragile and need as much medical attention as any human being. So, perhaps this is Epictetus the ‘city boy’ talking.
At any rate, we can still see that, generally speaking, if left to their own devices, most animal species would survive without human interaction. It’s also hard to gainsay the fact that it’s good for us that we find them in our environs, can use them, and that they are more or less adaptable and can become contented with the domesticated role. What is more, things of benefit we derive from those animals we have opportunity to domesticate, or from wild animals that we cannot domesticate, but from whose productions we can take, are often incredible, but go unnoticed because of their ubiquity. Epictetus points out some of these wonders we live with every day:
But as it is, we first forbear to give thanks for these beasts, because we do not have to bestow upon them the same care as we require for ourselves, and then proceed to complain against God on our own account! Yet, by Zeus and the gods, one single gift of nature would suffice to make a man who is reverent and grateful perceive the providence of God. Do not talk to me now of great matters: take the mere fact that milk is produced from grass, and cheese from milk, and that wool grows from skin. Who is it that has created or devised these things? “No one,” somebody says. Oh, the depth of man’s stupidity and shamelessness!
Again, if all of this has been carefully arranged, as seems to be the case, it is utterly remarkable. Even if we are in error about its having been designed, it still remains…utterly remarkable.
What is more, Epictetus, by now an old man, notes this eventuality: Once one takes it in his head to come at features of our world as indicative of design or, as this section labels it, ‘providence,’ one is bound to hit upon some amusing examples. One such; human secondary sexual characteristics:
Come, let us leave the chief works of nature, and consider merely what she does in passing. Can anything be more useless than the hairs on a chin? Well, what then? Has not nature used even these in the most suitable way possible? Has she not by these means distinguished between the male and the female? Does not the nature of each one among us cry aloud forthwith from afar, “I am a man; on this understanding approach me, on this understanding talk with me; ask for nothing further; behold the signs?” Again, in the case of women, just as nature has mingled in their voice a certain softer note, so likewise she has taken the hair from their chins.
Not so, you say; on the contrary the human animal ought to have been left without distinguishing features, and each of us ought to proclaim by word of mouth, “I am a man.”
Nay, but how fair and becoming and dignified the sign is! How much more fair than the cock’s comb, how much more magnificent than the lion’s mane!
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I’m thinking Epictetus is not quite right in his rankings of the ‘fairness and becomingness’ of beards as opposed to cock’s combs or lion manes. In fact, the more I think of it, there are plenty of cases where the males of non-human species win the beauty contest, (at least when one considers the generally scraggly nature of the typical Greek philosopher’s beard.) Consider the peacock! Sorry Epictetus, I can’t go along with you on this one!
In any case, he sees utility in those secondary characteristics, and also claims that we should not make efforts to blur the lines between the sexes. So, this means, that Epictetus would not want men to shave off their beards, and per impossibile for women to become hirsute. (One does not have to wonder too much at what he would say about today’s transgender trends, especially the physiologically risky, and therefore morally problematic, fads of cross gender hormone therapy or surgical alteration proffered for those convinced that they are mismatches for their ‘assigned at birth’ bodies):
Wherefore, we ought to preserve the signs which God has given; we ought not to throw them away; we ought not, so far as in us lies, to confuse the sexes which have been distinguished in this fashion.
A stirring coda ends this chapter; an encomium of marvel, penned and probably witnessed by Arrian, voiced by Epictetus in his dotage, as he reflected upon the multitude of adaptive marvels in the natural and in the human worlds, and gaped at our collective ability to take it all for granted:
Are these the only works of Providence in us? Nay, what language is adequate to praise them all or bring them home to our minds as they deserve? Why, if we had sense, ought we to be doing anything else, publicly and privately, than hymning and praising the Deity, and rehearsing His benefits?
Ought we not, as we dig and plough and eat, to sing the hymn of praise to God? “Great is God, that He hath furnished us these instruments wherewith we shall till the earth. Great is God, that He hath given us hands, and power to swallow, and a belly, and power to grow unconsciously, and to breathe while asleep.”
This is what we ought to sing on every occasion, and above all to sing the greatest and divinest hymn, that God has given us the faculty to comprehend these things and to follow the path of reason.
What then? Since most of you have become blind, ought there not to be someone to fulfil this office for you, and in behalf of all sing the hymn of praise to God? Why, what else can I, a lame old man, do but sing hymns to God? If, indeed, I were a nightingale, I should be singing as a nightingale; if a swan, as a swan. But as it is, I am a rational being, therefore I must be singing hymns of praise to God. This is my task; I do it, and will not desert this post, as long as it may be given me to fill it; and I exhort you to join me in this same song.