Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/269

 that you know this only—how you may never either fail to get what you desire or fall into what you avoid. Let others practise lawsuits, others problems, others syllogisms; do you practise how to die, how to be enchained, how to be racked, how to be exiled. Do all these things with confidence, with trust in Him who has called you to face them and deemed you worthy of this position, in which having once been placed you shall exhibit what can be achieved by a rational governing principle when arrayed against the forces that lie outside the province of the moral purpose. And thus the paradox of which we were speaking will no longer appear either impossible or paradoxical, namely, that at the same time we ought to be both cautious and confident, confident in regard to those things that lie outside the province of the moral purpose, and cautious in regard to those things that lie within the province of the moral purpose. 



, you who are going to court, what you wish to maintain and wherein you wish to succeed; for if you wish to maintain freedom of moral purpose in its natural condition, all security is yours, every facility yours, you have no trouble. For if you are willing to keep guard over those things which are under your direct authority and by nature free, and if you are satisfied with them, what else do you care about? For who is master of them, who can take them away from you? If you wish to be self-respecting and honourable, who is it that will not allow you? 225