Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/229

 When Patroclus died? Far from it; but when Achilles himself was enraged, when he was crying about a paltry damsel, when he forgot that he was there, not to get sweethearts, but to make war. These are the falls that come to mankind, this is the siege of their city, this is the razing of it—when their correct judgements are torn down, when these are destroyed.—Then when women are driven off into captivity, and children are enslaved, and when the men themselves are slaughtered, are not all these things evils?—Where do you get the justification for adding this opinion? Let me know also.—No, on the contrary, do you let me know where you get the justification for saying that they are not evils?—Let us turn to our standards, produce your preconceptions.

For this is why I cannot be sufficiently astonished at what men do. In a case where we wish to judge of weights, we do not judge at haphazard; where we wish to judge what is straight and what is crooked, we do not judge at haphazard; in short, where it makes any difference to us to know the truth in the case, no one of us will do anything at haphazard. Yet where there is involved the first and only cause of acting aright or erring, of prosperity or adversity, of failure or success, there alone are we haphazard and headlong. There I have nothing like a balance, there nothing like a standard, but some sense-impression comes and immediately I go and act upon it. What, am I any better than Agamemnon or Achilles—are they because of following the impressions of their senses to do and suffer such evils, while I am to be satisfied with the impression of my senses? And VOL. I.