Book 1
11
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 colours 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 (I think). 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 muck as this to aid you towards 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 paedagogue,When we are children our parents put us in the hands of a paedagogue to see on all occasions that we take no harm.—Epictetus, Frag. 97. 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 behaviour was not at all an affectionate act.
