Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/327

 For the man who has been deceived or who has done some wrong has no pain in his head, or his eye, or his hip, neither does he lose his land. But these are the things we care for and nothing else; yet the question whether we are going to have a moral purpose characterized by self-respect and good faith, or by shamelessness and bad faith, does not so much as begin to disturb us, except only in so far as we make it a topic of trivial discussion in the classroom. Therefore, so far as our trivial discussions go, we do make some progress, but, apart from them, not even the very least. 



beginning of philosophy with those who take it up as they should, and enter in, as it were, by the gate, is a consciousness of a man's own weakness and impotence with reference to the things of real consequence in life. For we come into being without any innate concept of a right-angled triangle, or of a half-tone musical interval, but by a certain systematic method of instruction we are taught the meaning of each of these things, and for that reason those who do not know them also do not fancy that they do. But, on the other hand, who has come into being without an innate concept of what is good and evil, honourable and base, appropriate and inappropriate, and happiness, and of what is proper and falls to our lot, and what we ought to do and what we ought not to do? Wherefore, we all use these terms and endeavour to adapt our preconceptions 283