The Mneme Manual, 2nd Edition
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CONTENTS:
Introduction
3
Mneme: “Recitation of the DOE”
4
One Rule
5
Two Maxims
The First Maxim
The Second Maxim
5
5
7
Three Studies
Judgments
Desires
Actions
10
11
12
13
Hear the Sage
14
Endnotes
16
mneme (nēʹ mē ), n. 1. psych. the retentive basis or basic principle in a mind or organism
accounting for memory. 2. (cap.) Class. Myth. the muse of memory, one of the original three
Muses.1
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INTRODUCTION
Mnemosyne (nē mosʹ ə nēʹ ...), n. the ancient Greek goddess of memory,
a daughter of Uranus and Gaea and the mother by Zeus of the Muses. 2
Years ago, I received an email from an unhappy member of the Stoic community who wanted
his name removed from the Stoic Registry. He was looking for a job and didn't want his
association with us to compromise his employment prospects. He was an unemployed, or
underemployed, philosophy teacher and wanted a better situation. I tried to reason with him
about how a Stoic would approach this problem, but he angrily told me not to preach to him
about Stoicism, he had read all the books, and he didn't need my advice. Then he ended our
correspondence with this comment. This is an exact quote: “But I really do have obligations
and these must take precedence before stoic principles - just as my Christian duties take
precedence before pagan philosophy.”
Frankly, I was floored and left speechless - for about one minute. I almost answered his
ridiculous comment, then thought better of it. Not because I didn't have an answer, but
because it is against my policy to argue with anyone who wants to leave the Stoic community.
We are not a cult. It's his life, and he can do with it what he chooses.
What I really wanted to say to him is that for a Stoic, nothing takes precedence before Stoic
principles. Nothing! He is a clear example of the difference between academic and Stoic
philosophers: The academics are all theory and no practice, which was anathema to the
classical Stoics. For this disgruntled philosophy teacher, Stoicism was an intellectual parlor
game, not a way of life. But he doesn't end there. Here is his final misunderstanding: “... my
Christian duties take precedence before pagan philosophy.” Not only does he fail to
understand
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the whole purpose of being a Stoic, he clearly states that his religious faith is
more important than the reasoning mind of the philosopher. And in case there is any doubt
about his meaning, he refers to Stoicism as a “pagan philosophy” as if that makes it inferior to
his religion.
How unfortunate. How misguided. If you forget everything you ever learn about Stoicism, I
hope you remember one thing: being a Stoic is not an intellectual abstraction; it is not a game;
it is a way of life. A Stoic's principles take precedence before everything. It is everything. It is
how we live life and live it well. We do not take second place to religious faith, myths or
prophets.
The first and most necessary topic in philosophy
is the practical application of principles.....
Epictetus, Enchiridion #51
One way to insure that you are not misled into believing our philosophy is some kind of
distant, abstract, ancient world-view that doesn't have anything to do with the real world we
live in is to begin to live like a Stoic right now. You can do that first by understanding and
holding tightly to essential Stoic doctrine, then adding specific exercises that bring life and
strength to what you know. The following is a summary of that Stoic doctrine condensed into
the briefest possible language. This reference point in Stoic thought is the basis for the
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mneme exercise that follows. If the theory is understood and practiced with an open mind and
sincerity, you will quickly acquire an insight into what it really means to think like and live the
life of a real Stoic.
* *
Mneme: “Recitation of the DOE”
The greatest tribal warrior who ever lived was probably illiterate, a master of the keen memory
and oral tradition that has been with us for all of human evolution. Genghis Khan's 150,000
cavalry warriors didn't move as a single massive column, as was common in his day, the 12th
century, but were broken into many units and spread out over great distances. The difficulty in
managing such an army was in communication. Virtually all of his soldiers were also illiterate,
including most of the officers, which meant that all messages had to be communicated orally.
As we all know, the further you are from the source of any oral communication, the more it
gets distorted. To prevent misunderstanding, all laws, codes of conduct, and battle orders
made by the Great Khan were composed in a commonly known Mongolian poetic style, set to
music, and sung by the men as they rode on horseback. 3
What follows is written in the form of verse for the same reason: it's easier to remember and
less likely to be distorted with repetition. It's meant to be memorized. Mneme, or memory
exercises, were very much a part of a classical Stoic's education. What you will find here is an
extreme synthesis of the Discourses of Epictetus (the DOE), organized and composed into a
common poetic style, blank verse. The endnotes that identify Epictetus's various points of
theory in this verse, even though numerous, are not all that can be found but are some of my
personal favorites. If you have any doubt about the dogma of this mneme, I encourage you to
look up
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the references provided. The DOE is mneme, a memory exercise that can begin each
day, which is something I do every morning, or as often as needed when one wishes or needs
to remember Epictetus's marching orders for life.
“The DOE”
One rule to unite us:
Live in agreement with Nature.4
Two maxims to guide us:
Good is virtue that evil lacks;
all the rest is indifferent.5
Good and evil are in the will;
only the will is in our power.6
Three studies abide us:7
Judgments and the inner discourse,
Desires and the rising passions,
Actions and the noble duties.
Hear the sage inside us:
practice, practice, practice, practice.8
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ONE RULE
One rule to unite us:
Live in agreement with Nature.
Epictetus remarked that it was a rule in life ... to do what was in accordance with
nature. For, if we desire in every matter and on every occasion to conform to nature,
we must on every occasion evidently make it our aim....Philosophers, therefore,
first exercise us in theory, which is the more easy task, and then lead us to the
more difficult [1:26].
The actual heading of this chapter of the Discourses is entitled, “What the Rule of Life Is.”
About this there can be no doubt. From Zeno to the end of the classical period the Stoic
motto, which is said a number of ways – in harmony with nature, in agreement with Nature,
conformably with nature – all mean the same thing: there is one rule that unites all Stoics and
all aspects of Stoic philosophy. This is so important that Epictetus even matter-of-factly states
that anyone who does not live by this rule “...will wander up and down, entirely deaf and blind,
supposing himself to be somebody, while he is nobody.” 9
It's important to remember that living in agreement with Nature does not mean living by tooth
and claw and survival of the biggest, strongest, and fittest among us. That would be a better
description of the other creatures in the forest. No, our unique ability given to us by Nature is
not bigger teeth and muscles, but bigger brains. Using reason is our way, or should be our
way. If there is any doubt in your mind about the one rule of life, read Epictetus.
TWO MAXIMS
Two maxims to guide us:
Good is virtue that evil lacks;
all the rest is indifferent.
Good and evil are in the will;
only the will is in our power.
The First Maxim: Good is virtue that evil lacks; all the rest is indifferent.
The essence of good and evil is a certain kind of moral
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purpose. What are things
outward, then? Materials on which the moral purpose may act, in attaining its own
good or evil. How, then, will it attain good? If it be not dazzled by its own materials;
for right principles concerning these materials keep the moral purpose in a good
state; but perverse and distorted principles in a bad one. This law God hath ordained,
who says, “If you wish for good, receive it from yourself.”10
Epictetus
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The first maxim is a continuum, and the second maxim is a polarity. This one, the continuum,
connects the good on one end and evil on the other with indifferent things in the middle.
“Some things are good, some evil, and some indifferent. Now the good are the virtues ... the
evil are vices ... the indifferent lie between these, as riches, health, life, death, pleasure,
pain.11 In order to understand what it is we are memorizing, the following will analyze this
mneme line by line.
Good is virtue that evil lacks. What does this mean? We have already seen from our general
principals that the good and only good, is virtue. “Only that which is good and can never be
used for undue gain and immoral purposes qualifies unequivocally as good. Only the virtues
are good in every situation and on every occasion, and therefore qualify for the name that
must always be honorable, the Good.”12
So, the good is virtue. The cardinal virtues, as you will recall, are wisdom, justice, courage,
and decorum. Virtue that evil lacks means that evil is simply a lack of virtue. That's what evil
is. That's it. Evil is a lack of virtue. It has nothing to do with committing a frightful sin
whispered into your ear by a Prince of Darkness that is calculated to bring about the wrath of
a vengeful god. That's a children's story. If evil is a lack of virtue, then it is the absence of
wisdom, justice, courage, and decorum.
We can use bad and evil interchangeably. “What we commonly call bad (kakon) is not really
bad. Sickness, poverty, and exile are the indifferents to the wise. Even death, because it is
the inevitable and natural process of change, is neither good nor bad and must be one of the
indifferents. There is no evil in Nature, only in human beings when they act without virtue. Just
as virtue is
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the only good, so it is that the acts of persons who are lacking in virtue are the
only sources of evil in this world.”13
Now we come to the end of the first maxim: all the rest is indifferent. This is one of the most
important concepts in Stoicism, and one we must all learn, remember, and return to time and
again. These are what Epictetus constantly refers to as “externals.” Good and evil come from
inside, internal, not from outside of us, the externals. The externals are matters that belong to
others as well as the inevitable consequences of Nature. “All those things we commonly call
good or bad [see above] are neither good nor bad and are only indifferent. Only virtue is
good, and only the lack of virtue is bad.” 14 So, except for wisdom, justice, courage, and
decorum, or the lack thereof, all the rest are indifferents. What are indifferents? What does
that mean exactly?
For years I placed little value on the indifferents, simply because I didn't really understand
them. The Epictetus quote about the indifferents as materials upon which the moral purpose
may act, finally sunk into my thick skull and rearranged my thinking on the matter altogether.
In looking over what I have written on the subject in the past, I could see I was saying all the
right words, but not really knowing them in my gut. It's so easy to gloss over the indifferents
when you learn that you must be indifferent to everything but your ethical behavior. That's
what I did, and that's not what it means at all.
To isolate virtues without indifferents is to exist in a vacuum, which is impossible and absurd.
Without the indifferents to work on, you have no virtues. In fact, you don't even exist.
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Indifferents give you something to do in life. They are your life. Everything that happens to
you is an external, an indifferent, and what you do with everything is what defines your
character as noble or ignoble, good or evil. To say you're not going to have anything to do
with externals is ridiculous. You really don't have a choice. You're only choice is what you do
with them, and how you act upon the materials you have been given.
In order for good to be always obtainable, or an evil always avoidable, they
must depend exclusively on man's freedom; but the only things which fulfill
these conditions are moral good and evil. They alone depend on us. Here,
'everything else,' which does not depend on us, refers to the necessary linkage
of cause and effect, which is not subject to our freedom. It must be indifferent to us:
that is, we must not introduce any differences into it, but accept it in its entirety, as
willed by fate. This is the domain of nature.15
Epictetus
It's like the potter sitting at his wheel. The indifferents are like the clay. How can the potter be
indifferent to his clay? Without the clay he has nothing to do but watch the wheel spin around.
The potter cares about his clay. The skill of the potter in working with his hands to form a
beautiful and useful vessel from this lump of clay is like the skill of the Stoic in working with
the cardinal virtues in forming a noble character. The Stoic's clay is made up of the
indifferents. Without the clay and without the indifferents, the potter and the Stoic have
nothing upon which to practice their skills. Don't be afraid of your clay, the indifferents; don't
avoid them. Use them, enjoy them, work with them. Practice, practice, practice.
The principle of all Stoicism is, moreover, precisely indifference to
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indifferent things.
This means, in the first place, that the only value is moral good, which depends on
our freedom, and that everything that does not depend on our freedom - poverty,
wealth, sickness, and health - is neither good nor bad, and is therefore indifferent.
Second, it means that we must not make any distinction between indifferent things;
in other words, we must love them equally, since they have been willed by universal
Nature.16
Pierre Hadot
* *
The Second Maxim: Good and evil are in the will; only the will is in our power.
Seek not good from without; seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it.17
Epictetus
To keep the first and second maxims from being entangled with each other, it may be helpful
to remember that the first maxim is a continuum and the second is a polarity. In the
continuum, Epictetus is saying that good and evil are at opposite ends, and the indifferents
are in between. In the second maxim, good and evil are not at opposite ends of a polarity,
they are together at the same end with our will. They are choices of our will. At the other end
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of this polarity are the externals, the indifferents, those things not in our power. So, we now
have a polarity of internals and externals. On one side are the choices of the will, what things
are in our power; and on the other side are those things that are not in our power, everything
else. If this isn't entirely clear, perhaps the following discussion will make it so.
Good and evil are in the will. Stoics believe we choose either good or evil by exercising the
power of our will. In fact, not only do we have this choice, it is our only real choice, and it is
our choice alone. Friends, enemies, tyrants, no one, not even a god can take away the power
of choice to do good or evil that we have in the will. As Epictetus said of tyrants, “You will
fetter my leg, but not even Zeus himself can get the better of my free will.” 18 Such a great
power we have. Think about that. Think about what a great discovery the Stoics made about
the power of the will to choose to do good or evil.
Before we go on, perhaps we should make sure we know what our will is. When in doubt, we
can always consult a dictionary. Here's what mine says:
1.a. The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon
a course of action; volition. b. The act of exercising the will.... 19
When we say that virtue and the lack of virtue are in the will, we are talking about the “mental
faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action.” When we say
that only the will is in our power, we are saying that good and evil only exist in our mental
faculty as a choice, and only this choice between good and evil is in our power – nothing else.
That's where our power ends. Everything else is either in the will of another individual or in
the Will of Nature.
But now, although it is in