Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/325

 some of their deeds just mentioned, they also acquire pelf. But observe that if you make paltry pelf your standard for everything, not even the man who loses his nose will in your eyes have suffered an injury.—"Oh yes, he has," someone says, "for his body is mutilated."—Come now, and does the man who has lost his entire sense of smell lose nothing? Is there, then, no such thing as a faculty of the mind, the possession of which means gain to a man, and the loss, injury?—What faculty do you mean? Have we not a natural sense of self-respect?—We have.—Does not the man who destroys this suffer a loss, is he not deprived of something, does he not lose something that belonged to him? Do we not have a natural sense of fidelity, a natural sense of affection, a natural sense of helpfulness, a natural sense of keeping our hands off one another? Shall, therefore, the man who allows himself to suffer loss in such matters, be regarded as having suffered neither injury nor loss?

Well, what then? Am I not to injure the man who has injured me?—First consider what injury is, and call to mind what you have heard the philosophers say. For if the good lies in moral purpose, and the evil likewise in moral purpose, see if what you are saying does not come to something like this, "Well, what then? Since so-and-so has injured himself by doing me some wrong, shall I not injure myself by doing him some wrong?" Why, then, do we not represent the case to ourselves in some such light as that? Instead of that, where there is some loss affecting our body or our property, there we count it injury; but is there no injury where the loss affects our moral purpose? VOL. I.