The Works of Epictetus: Discourses, Enchiridion, and Fragments

It has not seemed to me strange, but very natural, to pass from camp life to the study of Epictetus. Where should a student find contentment in enforced withdrawal from active service, if not in “the still air of delightful studies”? There seemed a special appropriateness, also, in coming to this work from a camp of colored soldiers, whose great exemplar, Toussaint l’Ouverture The leader of the Haitian Revolution., made the works of this his fellow-slave a favorite manual. Moreover, the return of peace seems a fitting time to call anew the public attention to those eternal principles on which alone true prosperity is based, and, in a period of increasing religious toleration, to revive the voice of one who bore witness to the highest spiritual truths, before the present sects were born.

T. W. H.

NEWPORT, R. I., 1865.