Where a man’s interest lies there also is his piety...
In piety towards the gods, I would have you know, the chief element is this, to have right opinions about them—as existing and as administering the universe well and justly—and to have set yourself to obey them and to submit to everything that happens, and to follow it voluntarily, in the belief that it is being fulfilled by the highest intelligence. For if you act in this way, you will never blame the gods, nor find fault with them for neglecting you.
This mirrors the twofold cognitive conceptualization of Stoic ethics attributed to Chrysippus, who said that it consists of one judgment regarding events and another about appropriate action in response to them.
But this result cannot be secured in any other way than by withdrawing your idea of the good and the evil from the things which are not under our control, and placing it in those which are under our control, and in those alone. Because, if you think any of those former things to be good or evil, then, when you fail to get what you want and fall into what you do not want, it is altogether inevitable that you will blame and hate those who are responsible for these results.
We are bound to feel frustrated eventually when we invest absolute intrinsic value in external outcomes, rather than in our own ruling faculty, because external events are not up to us. We doom ourselves to become resentful and angry toward the universe, unless we view external events lightly.
For this is the nature of every living creature, to flee from and to turn aside from the things that appear harmful, and all that produces them, and to pursue after and to admire the things that are helpful, and all that produces them. Therefore, it is impossible for a man who thinks that he is being hurt to take pleasure in that which he thinks is hurting him, just as it is also impossible for him to take pleasure in the hurt itself. Hence it follows that even a father is reviled by a son when he does not give his child some share in the things that seem to be good; and this it was which made Polyneices and Eteocles enemies of one another, the thought that the royal power was a good thing.
How could we not hate the gods, or hate the universe, as long as we invest absolute value in things that are bound to be denied us eventually?
That is why the farmer reviles the gods, and so also the sailor, and the merchant, and those who have lost their wives and their children. For where a man’s interest lies, there is also his piety. Wherefore, whoever is careful to exercise desire and aversion as he should, is at the same time careful also about piety. But it is always appropriate to make libations, and sacrifices, and to give of the first fruits after the manner of our fathers, and to do all this with purity, and not in a slovenly or careless fashion, nor, indeed, in a niggardly way, nor yet beyond our means.
Epictetus could also have said that we naturally focus our attention where our interests are invested, or threatened. So we live outside of ourselves, insofar as we confuse our good with external events.
