EPICTETUS ON SIN
When we reached the lecture-room, a little late, we found it unusually crowded. My place was taken, and I could not see Arrian in his customary seat. Epictetus was in one of his discursive moods. He began with the assertion—by this time familiar to me, but somewhat distasteful now, fresh as I was from the atmosphere of the Jewish writings—that Gods and men alike seek nothing but “their own profit.” As in most of his epigrams, he meant just the opposite of what he seemed to assert. He hated high-flown language as much as he loved high thought and action. Even when he mentioned “the beautiful”—on which most Greeks go off into rhapsodies—he almost always subordinated it to the “logos” or told us that we must look for it in ourselves. So here again. Man, he declared, must giv
