Page:Discourses of Epictetus.djvu/41

Rh cause to men of all their evils, the not being able to adapt the general preconceptions to the several things." It is so in everything. General principles are often very simple and intelligible; but when we come to the application of the principles, there arises difficulty and difference of opinions. "Education is the learning how to adapt the natural praecognitions to the particular things conformably to nature; and then to distinguish that of things some are in our power, but others are not." The Great Law of Life (i. c. 26) is that we must act conformably to nature. "In theory there is nothing which draws us away from following what is taught; but in the matters of life, many are the things which distract us." A man then must not begin with the matters of real life, for it is not easy to begin with the more difficult things. "This then is the beginning of philosophy, a man's perception of the state of his ruling faculty; for when a man knows that it is weak, then he will not employ it on things of the greatest difficulty"; and again (ii. 11), “the beginning of philosophy is a man's consciousness about his own weakness and inability about necessary things": and further, “this is the beginning of philosophy, a perception of the disagreement of men with one another, and an inquiry into the cause of the disagreement, and a condemnation and distrust of that which only 'seems,' and a certain investigation of that which 'seems,' whether it 'seems' rightly, and a discovery of some rule, as we have discovered a balance in the determination of weights, and a carpenter's rule (or square) in the case of straight and crooked things. This is the beginning of philosophy."

Epictetus urges the fact of a man assenting to or not assenting to a thing as a proof that man possesses something which is naturally free. He says (p. 253): "Who is able to compel you to assent to that which appears false? No man. And who can compel you not to assent to that