do you rather show me how it is not according to nature and is not
rightly done.

  Well, said Epictetus, if we were inquiring about white and black,
what criterion should we employ for distinguishing between them?
"The sight," he said. And if about hot and cold, and hard and soft,
what criterion? "The touch." Well then, since we are inquiring about
things which are according to nature, and those which are done rightly
or not rightly, what kind of criterion do you think that we should
employ? "I do not know," he said. And yet not to know the criterion of
colors and smells, and also of tastes, is perhaps no great harm; but
if a man do not know the criterion of good and bad, and of things
according to nature and contrary to nature, does this seem to you a
small harm? "The greatest harm." Come tell me, do all things which
seem to some persons to be good and becoming rightly appear such;
and at present as to Jews and Syrians and Egyptians and Romans, is
it possible that the opinions of all of them in respect to food are
right? "How is it possible?" he said. Well, I suppose it is absolutely
necessary that, if the opinions of the Egyptians are right, the
opinions of the rest must be wrong: if the opinions of the Jews are
right, those of the rest cannot be right. "Certainly." But where there
is ignorance, there also there is want of learning and training in
things which are necessary. He assented to this. You then, said
Epictetus, since you know this, for the future will employ yourself
seriously about nothing else, and will apply your mind to nothing else
than to learn the criterion of things which are according to nature,
and by using it also to determine each several thing. But in the
present matter I have so much as this to aid you toward what you wish.
Does affection to those of your family appear to you to be according
to nature and to be good? "Certainly." Well, is such affection natural
and good, and is a thing consistent with reason not good? "By no
means." Is then that which is consistent with reason in
contradiction with affection? "I think not." You are right, for if
it is otherwise, it is necessary that one of the contradictions
being according to nature, the other must be contrary to nature. Is it
not so? "It is," he said. Whatever, then, we shall discover to be at
the same time affectionate and also consistent with reason, this we
confidently declare to be right and good. "Agreed." Well then to leave
your sick child and to go away is not reasonable, and I suppose that
you will not say that it is; but it remains for us to inquire if it is
consistent with affection. "Yes, let us consider." Did you, then,
since you had an affectionate disposition to your child, do right when
you ran off and left her; and has the mother no affection for the
child? "Certainly, she has." Ought, then, the mother also to have left
her, or ought she not? "She ought not." And the nurse, does she love
her? "She does." Ought, then, she also to have left her? "By no
means." And the pedagogue, does he not love her? "He does love her."
Ought, then, he also to have deserted her? and so should the child
have been left alone and without help on account of the great
affection of you, the parents, and of those about her, or should she
have died in the hands of those who neither loved her nor cared for
her? "Certainly not." Now this is unfair and unreasonable, not to
allow those who have equal affection with yourself to do what you
think to be proper for yourself to do because you have affection. It
is absurd. Come then, if you were sick, would you wish your
relations to be so affectionate, and all the rest, children and
wife, as to leave you alone and deserted? "By no means." And would you
wish to be so loved by your own that through their excessive affection
you would always be left alone in sickness? or for this reason would
you rather pray, if it were possible, to be loved by your enemies
and deserted by them? But if this is so, it results that your behavior
was not at all an affectionate act.

  Well then, was it nothing which moved you and induced you to
desert your child? and how is that possible? But it might be something
of the kind which moved a man at Rome to wrap up his head while a
horse was running which he favoured; and when contrary to
expectation the horse won, he required sponges to recover from his
fainting fit. What then is the thing which moved? The exact discussion
of this does not belong to the present occasion perhaps; but it is
enough to be convinced of this, if what the philosophers say is
true, that we must not look for it anywhere without, but in all
cases it is one and the same thing which is the cause of our doing
or not doing something, of saying or not saying something, of being
elated or depressed, of avoiding anything or pursuing: the very
thing which is now the cause to me and to you, to you of coming to
me and sitting and hearing, and to me of saying what I do say. And
what is this? Is it any other than our will to do so? "No other."
But if we had willed otherwise, what else should we have been doing
than that which we willed to do? This, then, was the cause of
Achilles' lamentation, not the death of Patroclus; for another man
does not behave thus on the death of his companion; but it was because
he chose to do so. And to you this was the very cause of your then
running away, that you chose to do so; and on the other side, if you
should stay with her, the reason will be the same. And now you are
going to Rome because you choose; and if you should change your
mind, you will not go thither. And in a word, neither death nor
exile nor pain nor anything of the kind is the cause of our doing
anything or not doing; but our own opinions and our wills.

  Do I convince you of this or not? "You do convince me." Such,
then, as the causes are in each case, such also are the effects. When,
then, we are doing anything not rightly, from this day we shall impute
it to nothing else than to the will from which we have done it: and it
is that which we shall endeavour to take away and to extirpate more
than the tumours and abscesses out of the body. And in like manner
we shall give the same account of the cause of the things which we
do right; and we shall no longer allege as causes of any evil to us,
either slave or neighbour, or wife or children, being persuaded
that, if we do not think things to he what we do think them to be,