Discourses, Of Progress or Improvement

Epictetus — The Slave

So where do you find real progress? Here's where: when someone stops chasing external things and turns inward to work on their own will. They train it and improve it through hard work. They make it natural, strong, free, unrestricted, unblocked, trustworthy, and humble. And they learn this key truth: anyone who wants or avoids things outside their control can never be trustworthy or free. They'll be forced to change with those things and get tossed around like a ship in a storm. They'll have to bow down to others who can give or take away what they want. Finally, when this person wakes up each morning, they follow these rules. They wash themselves with integrity. They eat with moderation. In every situation that comes up, they apply their core principles — just like a runner focuses on running and a voice coach focuses on voice training. This is the person who truly makes progress. This is the person whose journey hasn't been wasted.

Epictetus — The Slave Original

Where then is progress? If any of you, withdrawing himself from externals, turns to his own will ([Greek: proairesis]) to exercise it and to improve it by labor, so as to make it conformable to nature, elevated, free, unrestrained, unimpeded, faithful, modest; and if he has learned that he who desires or avoids the things which are not in his power can neither be faithful nor free, but of necessity he must change with them and be tossed about with them as in a tempest, and of necessity must subject himself to others who have the power to procure or prevent what lie desires or would avoid; finally, when he rises in the morning, if he observes and keeps these rules, bathes as a man of fidelity, eats as a modest man; in like manner, if in every matter that occurs he works out his chief principles ([Greek: ta proaegoumena]) as the runner does with reference to running, and the trainer of the voice with reference to the voice—this is the man who truly makes progress, and this is the man who has not travelled in vain.

Epictetus — The Slave

Then show me your progress in these things. If I were talking to an athlete, I'd say, "Show me your shoulders." He might say, "Here are my dumbbells." You and your dumbbells — whatever. I'd reply, "I want to see what the dumbbells have done for you." So when you tell me, "Look at this treatise on impulses and see how well I've studied it," I say: "Fool, I don't care about that. I care about how you handle your desires and fears, your goals and plans. Do you handle them according to nature or not? If you do, prove it to me, and I'll say you're making progress. If not, get lost. Don't just explain books — write your own books if you want. What good will it do you? Don't you know the whole book only costs five cents? Is the person explaining it worth more than five cents? Never look for the real thing in one place and expect to find progress toward it somewhere else."

Epictetus — The Slave Original

Do you then show me your improvement in these things? If I were talking to an athlete, I should say, Show me your shoulders; and then he might say, Here are my Halteres. You and your Halteres look to that. I should reply, I wish to see the effect of the Halteres. So, when you say: Take the treatise on the active powers ([Greek: hormea]), and see how I have studied it, I reply: Slave, I am not inquiring about this, but how you exercise pursuit and avoidance, desire and aversion, how you design and purpose and prepare yourself, whether conformably to nature or not. If conformably, give me evidence of it, and I will say that you are making progress; but if not conformably, be gone, and not only expound your books, but write such books yourself; and what will you gain by it? Do you not know that the whole book costs only five denarii? Does then the expounder seem to be worth more than five denarii? Never then look for the matter itself in one place, and progress towards it in another.

Discourses, Of Progress or Improvement — In Plain English