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.

When the man who was consulting him said, I seek to know this, How, even
if my brother is not reconciled to me, shall I maintain myself in a
state conformable to nature? Nothing great, said Epictetus, is produced
suddenly, since not even the grape or the fig is. If you say to me now
that you want a fig, I will answer to you that it requires time: let it
flower first, then put forth fruit, and then ripen. Is then the fruit of
a fig-tree not perfected suddenly and in one hour, and would you possess
the fruit of a man's mind in so short a time and so easily? Do not
expect it, even if I tell you.

* * * * *

THAT WE OUGHT NOT TO BE ANGRY WITH THE ERRORS (FAULTS) OF OTHERS.--Ought
not then this robber and this adulterer to be destroyed? By no means say
so, but speak rather in this way: This man who has been mistaken and
deceived about the most important things, and blinded, not in the
faculty of vision which distinguishes white and black, but in the
faculty which distinguishes good and bad, should we not destroy him? If
you speak thus you will see how inhuman this is which you say, and that
it is just as if you would say, Ought we not to destroy this blind and
deaf man? But if the greatest harm is the privation of the greatest
things, and the greatest thing in every man is the will or choice such
as it ought to be, and a man is deprived of this will, why are you also
angry with him? Man, you ought not to be affected contrary to nature by
the bad things of another. Pity him rather; drop this readiness to be