pleasure, and the attraction of it shall not conquer you: and set on the other side the consideration how much better it is to be conscious that you have gained this victory."
Hence the rule that a man must be careful and cautious in everything which is in the power of the will; but on the contrary, with respect to externals which are not in a man's power, he must be bold. "Confidence (courage) then ought to be employed against death, and caution against the fear of death: but now we do the contrary, and employ against death the attempt to escape; and to our opinion about it we employ carelessness, rashness and indifference" (ii. c. 1). For the purification of the soul and enabling it to employ its powers a man must root out of himself two things, arrogance (pride, οἴησις) and distrust. "Arrogance is the opinion that you want nothing (are deficient in nothing); but distrust is the opinion that you cannot be happy when so many circumstances surround you."[1]
The notion of Good and Bad should be firmly fixed in man's mind. There is in the opinion of Epictetus no difference among men on this matter. He says (ii. c. 11) on the beginning of Philosophy: As to good and evil, and what we ought to do and what we ought not to do, and the like, "whoever came into the world without having an idea (ἔμφυτος ἔννοια) of them?" These general notions he names προλήψεις, preconceptions, or praecognitions (ii. c. 2); and we need discipline "in order to learn how to adapt the preconception of the rational and the irrational to the several things conformably to nature." Why then do men differ in their opinions about particular things? The differences arise in the adaptation of the praecognitions to the particular cases. He says (iv. C. 1): “This is the
- ↑ Ritter, p. 227, has a wrong reading in his quotation of this passage, and he has misunderstood it.
