Discourses
Book 3 — Chapter 19
What Is The Difference Between The Philosopher And The Uneducated Man
Translated by P.E. Matheson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916)
Sonnet 4.6 Summary
Sonnet 4.6 Summary
One sentence does most of the work: the uneducated man says "woe is me for my child, my brother, my father"; the philosopher, when compelled to lament, says "woe is me for myself." The only thing that can harm you is your own judgment. Everything else happens to things that are not you.
The childhood illustration is vivid: when a child stumbles, the nurse hits the stone. When the child is hungry after a bath, the cook gets flogged. We grow up continuing exactly this pattern — externalizing every cause of distress, blaming everything but our own judgments. That is being a child in the domain of life.
Text
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THE first difference between the philosopher and the uneducated man is that the latter says, 'Woe is me for my child, for my brother, woe is me for my father', and the other, if he is compelled to speak, considers the matter and says, Woe is me for myself.' For nothing outside the will can hinder or harm the will; it can only harm itself. If then we accept this, and, when things go amiss, are inclined to blame ourselves, remembering that judgement alone can disturb our peace and constancy, I swear to you by all the gods that we have made progress.
Instead of this we have come the wrong way from the beginning. When we were still children, if we stumbled when we were star-gazing, the nurse, instead of rebuking us, struck the stone. What is wrong with the stone? Was it to move out of the way because of your child's folly? Again, if (when children) we do not find something to eat after our bath our attendant does not check our appetite, but flogs the cook. Man, did we appoint you to attend on the cook? No, on our child: correct him, do him good. So even when we are grown up we appear like children: for it is being a child to be unmusical in musical things, ungrammatical in grammar, uneducated in life.