Simplicius, Commentary on Epictetus 11.1

Suffer not yourself to be exalted with any excellence not properly your own. 

If your horse should be transported with his beauty, and boast of it, this would be tolerable in him: but when you value yourself, and brag of his beauty, consider, that you are not proud of an excellence in yourself, but in your horse. 

You will say then, what is a man’s own? 

I answer, a right use of his ideas. And when you manage these as you ought, then you may be allowed to please yourself. For this is being exalted with some excellence that is properly yours. 

Comment: 

The foregoing chapters acquainted us, what method must be taken to deliver ourselves from grief and fear and confusion, when any calamitous circumstances from without threaten our peace: this directs us, how to preserve an even and composed mind, when any external advantages would shake our moderation. 

Now these advantages he calls none of ours, in agreement with what he said at the beginning of his book, that the things out of our power are feeble, and servile, and liable to opposition, and not ours, but another’s. And upon the being conscious to ourselves of any such seeming advantages, he forbids us to be exalted. 

By this exaltation, I understand here, not any insolence, or haughtiness, or arrogance of humor, as the word is sometimes used in an ill sense; for sure we are not allowed to be exalted in such a manner as this, upon the account of any advantage whatsoever, though never so real a good, though never so truly our own, but, as I apprehend, this exaltation signifies the being satisfied with ourselves; and imagining, that we are better or happier upon the account of some additional good, which now we have, but had not formerly. 

So that he says, we must not think ourselves ever the better, for that good which belongs not to us; nor imagine, that another’s excellence adds anything to ours. For every good belongs to his own proper subject, in which it subsists, and whose quality it is; and no other can pretend to any right in it. 

The goodness, for instance, of a horse, belongs to the horse himself, and not to us; for if he be bold, and fleet, and manageable, he hath indeed the proper excellencies of a horse; but which way does this make for our commendation? How is this the excellence of a man? Or what augmentation can the virtue or the happiness of his owner receive from it? 

Yes, you will say, the excellence of any possessions redounds to the possessor, and the goodness of the instruments to the benefit of the artificers that use them. According to the common opinion of the world, it is acknowledged they do. 

But pray, is the excellency of an axe, suppose, able to make him a good carpenter, who was not one before? In this case therefore we would distinguish, between the excellencies peculiar to the tool, and those peculiar to the workman, with relation to the trade he professes. 

The proper excellence of an axe is to carry a good edge, and to be made neat and true; this renders it fit for service, and for the work to be cut out by it: for every instrument is commended by its work. 

But this contributes nothing to the perfection of the carpenter; for his excellence, and proper commendation, consists in observing proportions, and rules of art; and he is judged by this, and not by the work done by him, because that may happen to fail, from some defect, either in the stuff he wrought upon, or the tools he wrought with, or twenty other accidental obstructions. . . .