Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/403

 much as notice that you are doing wrong, but you will even begin to offer arguments in justification of your conduct; and then you will confirm the truth of the saying of Hesiod:





"Master argument" appears to have been propounded on the strength of some such principles as the following. Since there is a general contradiction with one another between these three propositions, to wit: (1) Everything true as an event in the past is necessary, and (2) An impossible does not follow a possible, and (3) What is not true now and never will be, is nevertheless possible. Diodorus, realizing this contradiction, used the plausibility of the first two propositions to establish the principle, Nothing is possible which is neither true now nor ever will be. But one man will maintain, among the possible combinations of two at a time, the following, namely, (3) Something is possible, which is not true now and never will be, and (2) An impossible does not follow a possible; yet he will not grant the third proposition (1), Everything true as an event in the past is necessary, which is what 359