here in that
light which Christianity might have furnished to him) that the blessings
denied to us are denied not because the gods _would_ not, but because
they _could_ not grant them to us. And then he supposes that Jupiter
addresses him:--

"O Epictetus, had it been possible, I would have made both your little
body and your little property free and unentangled; but now, do not be
mistaken, it is not yours at all, but only clay finely kneaded. Since,
however, I could not do this, I gave you a portion of ourselves, namely,
this power of pursuing and avoiding, of desiring and of declining, and
generally the power of _dealing with appearances_: and if you cultivate
this power, and regard it as that which constitutes your real
possession, you will never be hindered or impeded, nor will you groan or
find fault with, or flatter any one. Do these advantages then appear to
you to be trifling? Heaven forbid! Be content therefore with these, and
thank the gods."

And again in one of his _Fragments_ (viii. ix.):--

"Freedom and slavery are but names, respectively, of virtue and of vice:
and both of them depend upon the will. But neither of them have anything
to do with those things in which the will has no share. For no one is a
slave whose will is free."

"Fortune is an evil bond of the body, vice of the soul; for he is a
slave whose body is free but whose soul is bound, and, on the contrary,
he is free whose body is bound but whose soul is free."

Who does not catch in these passages the very tone of St, Paul when he
says, "He that is called in the Lord, being a servant, is the Lord's
freeman: likewise also he that is called, being free, is
Christ's servant?"

Nor is his independence less clearly express when he speaks of his
deformity. Being but the deformity of a body which he despised, he spoke
of himself as "an ethereal existence staggering under the burden of a
corpse." In his admirable chapter on Contentment, he very forcibly lays
down that topic of consolation which is derived from the sense that "the
universe is not made for our individual satisfaction." "_Must my leg be
lame_?" he supposes some querulous objector to inquire. "Slave!" he
replies, "do you then because of one miserable little leg find fault
with the universe? Will you not concede that accident to the existence
of general laws? Will you not dismiss the thought of it? Will you not
cheerfully assent to it for the sake of him who gave it. And will you