Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/129

 as well to have gone away and left her, so that the child would thus have been left alone and helpless because of the great affection of you her parents and of those in charge of her, or, perhaps, have died in the arms of those who neither loved her nor cared for her?—Far from it!—And yet is it not unfair and unfeeling, when a man thinks certain conduct fitting for himself because of his affection, that he should not allow the same to others who have as much affection as he has?—That were absurd.—Come, if it had been you who were sick, would you have wanted all your relatives, your children and your wife included, to show their affection in such a way that you would be left all alone and deserted by them?—By no means.—And would you pray to be so loved by your own that, because of their excessive affection, you would always be left alone in sickness? Or would you, so far as this is concerned, have prayed to be loved by your enemies rather, if that were possible, so as to be left alone by them? And if this is what you would have prayed for, the only conclusion left us is that your conduct was, in the end, not an act of affection at all.

What, then; was the motive nothing at all which actuated you and induced you to leave your child? And how can that be? But it was a motive like that which impelled a certain man in Rome to cover his head when the horse which he backed was running,—and then, when it won unexpectedly, they had to apply sponges to him to revive him from his faint! What motive, then, is this? The scientific explanation, perhaps, is not in place now; but it is enough for us to be convinced that, if what the philosophers say is sound, we ought not to look 85