Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/189

 not that to be done which is proper, and that which is noble? "Indeed it ought." And what do you say, Achilles? Do you not agree that what is noble ought to be done? "As for me, I agree most emphatically with that principle." Very well, then, apply your preconceptions to the particular cases. It is just there the conflict starts. The one says, "I ought not to be compelled to give back Chryseis to her father," while the other says, "Indeed you ought." Most certainly one of the two is making a bad application of the preconception "what one ought to do." Again, the one of them says, "Very well, if I ought to give back Chryseis, then I ought to take from some one of you the prize he has won," and the other replies, "Would you, then, take the woman I love?" "Yes, the woman you love," the first answers. "Shall I, then, be the only one—?" "But shall I be the only one to have nothing?" So a conflict arises.

What, then, does it mean to be getting an education? It means to be learning how to apply the natural preconceptions to particular cases, each to the other in conformity with nature, and, further, to make the distinction, that some things are under our control while others are not under our control. Under our control are moral purpose and all the acts of moral purpose; but not under our control are the body, the parts of the body, possessions, parents, brothers, children, country—in a word, all that with which we associate. Where, then, shall we place "the good"? To what class of things are we going to apply it? To the class of things that are under our control?—What, is not health, then, a good thing, and a sound body, and life? Nay, and not even 145