Epictetus, Discourses 1.6.2

Who is it then that has adapted this to that, and that to this? Who is it that has fitted the sword to the scabbard and the scabbard to the sword? Is there no one? Surely the very structure of such finished products leads us commonly to infer that they must be the work of some craftsman, and are not constructed at random. 

 

Are we to say then that each of these products points to the craftsman, but that things visible and vision and light do not? 

 

Do not male and female and the desire of union and the power to use the organs adapted for it—do not these point to the craftsman? 

 

But if these things are so, then the fact that the intellect is so framed that we are not merely the passive subjects of sensations, but select and subtract from them and add to them, and by this means construct particular objects, nay more, that we pass from them to others which are not in mere juxtaposition—I say are not these facts sufficient to rouse men's attention and to deter them from leaving out the craftsman? 

 

I am quick to deny the possibility of any certainty when I do not wish to be held accountable, and I will cast aside the grand design of Nature when I prefer to make myself the center of all things. 

 

I can learn to get beyond such weaknesses if I look with a bare honesty and judge with an open humility. I should find myself within the order of the whole, not in trying to excuse myself from it. 

 

The sword and the scabbard will fit because someone made them to go together, the one to be held within the other. 

 

The male and the female are complementary because they strengthen one another, and out of their union produce new life. 

 

Light reflects from objects, and the eye is carefully attuned to its reception. 

 

I can discover countless similar connections and interdependencies, everywhere that I turn, whatever the level of agency that produces the design. 

 

Perhaps it is all random, a series of coincidences? Maybe the patterns are the result of wishful thinking? There is, however, far more at work here than my own habitual associations, since the principle of causality is a necessity, not an option. 

 

To say that something is the result of chance shows only my current ignorance of the causes, and not the absence of causes. It is a contradiction to suggest that something comes from nothing, much like saying that it simultaneously is and is not. I shouldn’t let myself be fooled by “scientists” who deny the consistency of reason, because that clearly can’t be science. 

 

There can be no arguing with what deliberately defies understanding. How often have I now heard the currently fashionable claim that humans are not rational animals, and quite incapable of understanding, even as that claim is itself presented as a rational statement of understanding? 

 

Epictetus here points to the one of the most wondrous examples in the order in Nature, so deeply relevant to us because we are inexorably bound to it by our own particular nature. 

 

To “know” is not just to passively receive an image or an impression, as if pictures were being projected onto a screen. No, the mind is itself an active principle, abstracting and engaging with the inherent identity of things, constantly composing and dividing, demonstrating from what is proximate to what is ultimate, working backwards from effects to causes. 

 

The human mind, the essence of a certain kind of creature, practices a subtle craftsmanship with the fundamental building blocks of reality. There is no accident in this, and there is no power of mind in an imperfect creature if it does not proceed from the perfect mind of a Creator. What is relative depends upon what is Absolute. 

 

It may not be popular this week, though it must still be true. 

Written in 10/2000