Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/257

 

the following contention of the philosophers appears paradoxical to some, but nevertheless let us to the best of our ability consider whether it is true that "we ought to do everything both cautiously and confidently at the same time." For caution seems to be in a way contrary to confidence, and contraries are by no means consistent. But that which appears to many to be paradoxical in the matter under discussion seems to me to involve something of this sort: If we demanded that a man should employ both caution and confidence in regard to the same things, then we would be justly charged with uniting qualities that are not to be united. But, as a matter of fact, what is there strange about the saying? For if the statements which have often been made and often proved are sound, namely that "the nature of the good as well as of the evil lies in a use of the impressions of the senses, but the things which lie outside the province of the moral purpose admit neither the nature of the evil, nor the nature of the good"; what is there paradoxical about the contention of the philosophers, if they say, "Where the things that lie outside the province of the moral purpose are involved, there show confidence, but where the things that lie within the province of the moral purpose are involved, there show caution"? For if the evil lies in an evil exercise of the moral 213