2. This phrase of the “open door” occurs frequently in Epictetus, usually when, as here, he is telling the average non-philosophic man that it is unmanly to complain of a life which he can at any time relinquish. The philosopher has no need of such exhortation, for he does not complain, and as for death, is content to wait God’s time. But the Stoics taught that the arrival of this time might be indicated by some disaster or affliction which rendered a natural and wholesome life impossible. Self-destruction was in such cases permissible, and is recorded to have been adopted by several leaders of the Stoics, generally when old age had begun to render them a burden to their friends. 3. _Nay, thou shalt exist_, etc.—This is the sense given by Zeller’s punctuation. Schweighäuser’s text would be rendered, “Thou shalt not exist, but something else will,” etc. Upton changes the text (on his own authority) by transposing an οὐκ. “Thou shalt exist, but as something else, whereof the universe has now no need.” 4. This does not appear to have been the law in Epictetus’s time, for he himself was educated while a slave. But it was a common provision in antique states. 5. The ceremony in manumitting a slave. CHAPTER VI. 1. Chap. VI. i. is a passage from the lost Fifth Book of the Discourses, preserved for us in a rather obscure Latin translation by Aulus Gellius. During a storm at sea, a certain Stoic on board was observed by him to look pale and anxious, though not indeed showing the signs of panic exhibited by the other passengers. Questioned afterwards by Gellius on this apparent feebleness in his professed faith, the Stoic produced the Fifth Book of Epictetus, and read this passage. 2. The third Earl of Shaftesbury, an enthusiastic student of Epictetus, had this dish of water and ray of light engraved, and placed, with the inscription, πάντα ὑπόληψις—All is Opinion—as an emblem at the front of his _Characteristics_. The passage, though interesting, is obscure. At one time the “appearances,” φαντασίαι, are compared to the ray of light; at another, the doctrines (literally “arts,” _i. e._, arts of life taught by philosophy) and virtues. Probably the explanation is to be found in the view of the Stoics that at birth the human soul is a _tabula rasa_, or blank sheet; all our knowledge coming from without; that is, from the “appearances” which surround us. Moral and philosophic convictions are thus, like all other mental states, the result of external impressions. CHAPTER VII. 1. The school of Plato was continued at Athens under the title of the Academy. In its later days it produced little except logical puzzles.