Discourses by Epictetus (good books to read for beginners txt) 📕

of reproach and a misfortune. What does the pathic lose? He loses the (character of) man. What does he lose who makes the pathic what he is? Many other things; and he also loses the man no less than the other. What does he lose who commits adultery? He loses the (character of the) modest, the temperate, the decent, the citizen, the neighbour. What does he lose who is angry? Something else. What does the coward lose? Something else. No man is bad without suffering some loss and damage. If then you look for the damage in the loss of money only, all these men receive no harm or damage; it may be they have even profit and gain, when they acquire a bit of money by any of these deeds. But consider that if you refer everything to a small coin, not even he who loses his nose is in your opinion damaged. “Yes,” you say, “for he is mutilated in his body.” Well; but does he who has lost his smell only lose nothing? Is there then no energy of the soul which is an advantage to him who possesses it, and a damage to him who has lost it? “Tell me what sort (of energy) you mean.” Have we not a natural modesty? “We have.” Does he who loses this sustain no damage? is he deprived of nothing, does he part with nothing of the things which belong to him? Have we not naturally fidelity? natural affection, a natural disposition to help others, a natural disposition to forbearance? The man then who allows himself to be damaged in these matters, can he be free from harm and uninjured?287 “What then? shall I not hurt him, who has hurt me?”288 In the first place consider what hurt (βλάβη) is, and remember what you have heard from the philosophers. For if the good consists in the will (purpose, intention, προαιρέσει), and the evil also in the will,289 see if what you say is not this: “What then, since that man has hurt himself by doing an unjust act to me, shall I not hurt myself by doing some unjust act to him?” Why do we not imagine to ourselves (mentally think of) something of this kind? But where there is any detriment to the body or to our possession, there is harm there; and where the same thing happens to the faculty of the will, there is (you suppose) no harm; for he who has been deceived or he who has done an unjust act neither suffers in the head nor in the eye nor in the hip, nor does he lose his estate; and we wish for nothing else than (security to) these things. But whether we shall have the will modest and faithful or shameless and faithless, we care not the least, except only in the school so far as a few words are concerned. Therefore our proficiency is limited to these few words; but beyond them it does not exist even in the slightest degree.290 XI What the Beginning of Philosophy Is

The beginning of philosophy, to him at least who enters on it in the right way and by the door, is a consciousness of his own weakness and inability about necessary things. For we come into the world with no natural notion of a right-angled triangle, or of a diesis (a quarter tone), or of a half tone; but we learn each of these things by a certain transmission according to art; and for this reason those who do not know them, do not think that they know them. But as to good and evil, and beautiful and ugly, and becoming and unbecoming, and happiness and misfortune, and proper and improper, and what we ought to do and what we ought not to do, who ever came into the world without having an innate idea of them? Wherefore we all use these names, and we endeavor to fit the preconceptions291 to the several cases (things) thus: he has done well, he has not done well; he has done as he ought, not as he ought; he has been unfortunate, he has been fortunate; he is unjust, he is just: who does not use these names? who among us defers the use of them till he has learned them, as he defers the use of the words about lines (geometrical figures) or sounds? And the cause of this is that we come into the world already taught as it were by nature some things on this matter (τόπον), and proceeding from these we have added to them self-conceit (οἴησιν).292 “For why,” a man says, “do I not know the beautiful and the ugly? Have I not the notion of it?” You have. “Do I not adapt it to particulars?” You do. “Do I not then adapt it properly?” In that lies the whole question; and conceit is added here. For beginning from these things which are admitted, men proceed to that which is matter of dispute by means of unsuitable adaptation; for if they possessed this power of adaptation in addition to those things, what would hinder them from being perfect? But now since you think that you properly adapt the preconceptions to the particulars, tell me whence you derive this (assume that you do so). “Because I think so.” But it does not seem so to another, and he thinks that he also makes a proper adaptation; or does he not think so? “He does think so.” Is it possible then that both of you can properly apply the preconceptions to things about which you have contrary opinions? “It is not possible.” Can you then show us anything better towards adapting the preconceptions beyond your thinking that you do? Does the madman do any other things than