What then is the punishment of those who do not accept?  It is to be what they are.  Is any person dissatisfied with being alone?  Let him be alone.  Is a man dissatisfied with his parents?  Let him be a bad son, and lament.  Is he dissatisfied with his children?  Let him be a bad father.  Cast him into prison.  What prison?  Where he is already, for he is there against his will; and where a man is against his will, there he is in prison.  So Socrates was not in prison, for he was there willingly.  Must my leg then be lamed?  Wretch, do you then on account of one poor leg find fault with the world?  Will you not willingly surrender it for the whole?  Will you not withdraw from it?  Will you not gladly part with it to him who gave it?  And will you be vexed and discontented with the things established by Zeus, which he, with the Moirae (fates) who were present and spinning the thread of your generation, defined and put in order?  Know you not how small a part you are compared with the whole.  I mean with respect to the body, for as to intelligence you are not inferior to the gods nor less; for the magnitude of intelligence is not measured by length nor yet by height, but by thoughts.

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How everything may be done acceptably to the gods.—­When some one asked, How may a man eat acceptably to the gods, he answered:  If he can eat justly and contentedly, and with equanimity, and temperately, and orderly, will it not be also acceptable to the gods?  But when you have asked for warm water and the slave has not heard, or if he did hear has brought only tepid water, or he is not even found to be in the house, then not to be vexed or to burst with passion, is not this acceptable to the gods?  How then shall a man endure such persons as this slave?  Slave yourself, will you not bear with your own brother, who has Zeus for his progenitor, and is like a son from the same seeds and of the same descent from above?  But if you have been put in any such higher place, will you immediately make yourself a tyrant?  Will you not remember who you are, and whom you rule?  That they are kinsmen, that they are brethren by nature, that they are the offspring of Zeus?  But I have purchased them, and they have not purchased me.  Do you see in what direction you are looking, that it is towards the earth, towards the pit, that it is towards these wretched laws of dead men? but towards the laws of the gods you are not looking.

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What philosophy promises.—­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,