A man asked Epictetus how to persuade his brother to stop being angry with him. Epictetus replied: Philosophy doesn't promise to get you any external things. If it did, philosophy would be stepping outside its proper role. A carpenter works with wood. A sculptor works with copper. The art of living works with each person's own life. So what about your brother's life? That belongs to his own art of living. For you, his anger is just another external thing — like a piece of land, your health, or your reputation. Philosophy promises none of these things. Philosophy says: 'In every situation, I will keep the ruling part of the mind in harmony with nature.' Whose ruling part? The person I'm in, philosophy says. So how do I get my brother to stop being angry with me? Bring him to me and I'll tell him what to do. But I have nothing to say to you about his anger.
When a man was consulting him how he should persuade his brother to cease being angry with him, Epictetus replied: Philosophy does not propose to secure for a man any external thing. If it did (or if it were not, as I say), philosophy would be allowing something which is not within its province. For as the carpenter's material is wood, and that of the statuary is copper, so the matter of the art of living is each man's life. When then is my brother's? That again belongs to his own art; but with respect to yours, it is one of the external things, like a piece of land, like health, like reputation. But Philosophy promises none of these. In every circumstance I will maintain, she says, the governing part conformable to nature. Whose governing part? His in whom I am, she says. How then shall my brother cease to be angry with me? Bring him to me and I will tell him. But I have nothing to say to you about his anger.