As when a ship lies in port, and you go out for fresh water, you happen to meet with shellfish, or salads upon the coast; this is an accidental advantage, and beside your main purpose, but still you thoughts must be fixed upon the ship, and it should be your great care to attend the master’s call: that so, when he gives you the signal, you may quit all readily, and not be bound, and carried away by violence, as sheep must be served.
So here in the affairs of the world, if it be your fortune, instead of fish or salad, to light upon a beloved wife or child, which give an agreeable relish to life, none of these matters must be suffered to detain you.
But when the master gives you the signal, all must be left, and the best of your way made to the ship. But if you are in years, be sure you never stir far from the ship, for fear you be out of the way, when the master calls.
Comment:
He has by a short but ingenious discourse, endeavored to draw us off from the pursuit of those external advantages, upon which we are used to set so great a value, by showing us, that all these things are neither in our disposal, nor any such happiness as can be properly called ours.
But now, lest this argument of his should be so far mistaken, or wrested beyond its true purpose, as to be thought to debar us of marriage, and other innocent enjoyments and satisfactions, and absolutely to forbid us the having any thing at all to do with the world and its advantages, he acquaints us in the next place, what things those are, which he allows the enjoyment of, and with what limitations we ought to enjoy them:
That we should leave ourselves and them at the disposal of God, and resign all this to His Providence, without reserve; and then, in such an humble dependence as this is, to use them moderately, and to value them as they deserve: that our concern is due in the greatest measure, to the necessities of life, and such as human nature cannot subsist without.
Which Epictetus here has expressed, by a ship’s watering: meaning by this, food, and raiment, and dwelling, and such other things, as they, who look no farther than just needful supplies, satisfy themselves withal. These things, therefore, are allowed to be a part of our care, provided it be but in the second place, and with subordination to a higher good.
As for such things, as are not absolutely necessary, but only the conveniences of life, as a wife, children, estate, and the like, these he calls accidental advantages, and beside our main purpose; and therefore they are allowed the third place in our esteem.
When a bountiful Providence bestows these upon us, we are to receive and use them seasonably; but be sure to keep our mind ever fixed upon our chief and most desirable good.
But as for pleasures, and riches, and honors, and preferments, and such other impertinencies, he will not so much as admit these into the number of his accidental advantages, but supposes them inconsistent with a strictly rational and virtuous conversation.
For these are what, he told us before, must be wholly laid aside: but the enjoyments of marriage, and such other conveniences of human nature, he advised to have suspended for a time only, while men were young and inexperienced in the study of virtue, that so their first beginnings might meet with no interruption, but take good root, and fasten upon the mind.
And for this reason, when men have made some progress, and are arrived to such a degree of perfection, as may qualify them to use these with safety, then he allows them to enjoy them, provided still it be in the quality of an additional advantage, and not a principal design. . . .
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