When we are invited to a banquet, we take what is set before us; and
were one to call upon his host to set fish upon the table or sweet
things, he would be deemed absurd. Yet in a word, we ask the Gods for
what they do not give; and that, although they have given us so many
things!




XXXVI

Asked how a man might convince himself that every single act of his was
under the eye of God, Epictetus answered:--

"Do you not hold that things on earth and things in heaven are
continuous and in unison with each other?"

"I do," was the reply.

"Else how should the trees so regularly, as though by God's command,
at His bidding flower; at His bidding send forth shoots, bear fruit and
ripen it; at His bidding let it fall and shed their leaves, and folded
up upon themselves lie in quietness and rest? How else, as the Moon
waxes and wanes, as the Sun approaches and recedes, can it be that such
vicissitude and alternation is seen in earthly things?

"If then all things that grow, nay, our own bodies, are thus bound up
with the whole, is not this still truer of our souls? And if our souls
are bound up and in contact with God, as being very parts and fragments