CHAPTER II.

1. The husk is, of course, the body. If it is maintained that Nature has made the ease of this our only proper pursuit, of course the altruistic, or social instincts have to be rejected and denied.

2. The text is here almost certainly corrupt. It runs [Greek: pôs oun hyponoêtikoi esmen, hois mê physikê esti pros ta ekgona philostorgia]. All the MSS. agree in [Greek: hyponoêtikoi], for which Schweighäuser desires to read [Greek: pronoêtikoi], and Wolf, [Greek: eti koinônikoi]. Salmasius declares emphatically for [Greek: pôs oun epinoeis hoti koinônikoi esmen], and this, with a slight alteration suggested to me by an eminent living scholar, is the reading I have adopted: Let us suppose that Epictetus said [Greek: pôs oun hyponoeis hoti k.e.], and that this was written in the short lines common in Greek MSS.:--

[Greek:

PÔSOUNYPO NOEISOTIKOI NÔNIKOI]

The second line, beginning with the same letter as the third, might easily be dropped by a transcriber, and the next transcriber would certainly change the resulting [Greek: hyponônikoi] to [Greek: hyponoêtikoi]. The existing reading might give the sense, "How are we, then, suspicious of those (if any there be) to whom Nature has given no affection for their offspring?"

3. Outward things--such as making provision for one's family, serving the State, etc.,--actions which are not directly concerned with our spiritual good.