No, it is not what he threatens you with which compels you, but your decision that it is better to do what you are bidden than to die. Once more then it is your own judgement which compels you—that is, will puts pressure on will.
For if God had so created that portion of His own being which He has taken from Himself and given to us, that it could suffer hindrance or compulsion from another, He would cease to be God and to care for us as He must needs do.
“This,” says the priest, “is what I find in the sacrifice, this is God's sign to you: if you will, you are free; if you will, you will blame no one, you will accuse no one; everything shall be in accordance with your own mind and the mind of God.”
At the most practical level, I have found that the biggest obstacle people face in accepting Stoicism is its insistence that we are granted an authority over our own minds and wills. Yes, there may be an aversion to the claim that virtue is the only complete human good, and the corresponding indifference regarding pleasure, wealth, and fame, but the greatest confusion seems to arise regarding a complete responsibility for our judgments.
“A lot of times I don’t really have a choice in what I need to do. My thoughts follow their own path, and my decisions are made for me by the situations.”
It seems odd how those who are so confident of their ability to go out and master the world are often so sheepish about mastering themselves.
I am sympathetic, because I do know how powerful the pressure of circumstances can feel, and I regularly doubt my capacity to overcome what is happening around me. And yet the very way I express my worries already reveals where the true problem lies: the external conditions will be as they are, though what I make of them by my estimation is another matter, and the only thing that needs to be overcome is my hesitation to do so. When I say that I can’t do it, what I actually mean is that I won’t do it.
Impressions will indeed present themselves jarringly, and feelings will arise unbidden, and instincts will cry out in protest, but they need not determine my deliberate convictions, unless I freely surrender. To borrow from the Peripatetics, I am confusing material and efficient causes, the occasions about which I act and the agent who is doing the acting.
While my tastes are admittedly eccentric, Patrick McGoohan’s brilliant performance as Number Six in The Prisoner always helps me to recall this strength of the human spirit. I can be indomitable, as long as I focus on what is properly mine to govern.
I will not make any deals with you. I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own.
Nature is constantly directing me to my need for self-sufficiency, even as I get entangled in bargaining with Fortune. God made me in his image and likeness, even as I foolishly pursue everything except the dignity of my conscience.
Like the priest who can be a means to receiving grace, while he is not himself the source of that grace, the philosopher can be a means to discovering the truth about myself, while he is not himself the author of that truth.
Epictetus, who can sometimes appear to go off on tangents, is certainly still addressing the original topic here, by comparing the role of such an interpreter with the processes of logic.
Understand that the medium always exists for the sake of a higher purpose, and then a training in dialectic will not feel so clinical and tiresome—the exercise of reasoning is a noble tool for building happiness.
—Reflection written in 1/2001
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2LcCn1SyVY
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