Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/471

 eager to play with an ass, or to join its braying? For however small it may be, it is still nothing but a little ass.

Why, then, have you nothing to say to me?—There is only one thing I can say to you—that the man who does not know who he is, and what he is born for, and what sort of a world this is that he exists in, and whom he shares it with; and does not know what the good things are and what are the evil, what the noble and what the base; and is unable to follow either reason or demonstration, or what is true and what is false, and cannot distinguish one from the other; and will manifest neither desire, nor aversion, nor choice, nor purpose in accordance with nature; will not assent, will not dissent, will not withhold judgement—such a man, to sum it all up, will go about deaf and blind, thinking that he is somebody, when he really is nobody. What I do you think that this is something new? Has it not been true from the time when the human race began to be, that every mistake and every misfortune has been due to this kind of ignorance? Why did Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel? Was it not because they did not know what things are expedient and what are inexpedient? Does not one of them say that it is expedient to give Chryseīs back to her father, while the other says that it is not expedient? Does not one of them say that he ought to get some other man's meed of honour, while the other says that he ought not? Is it not true that this made them forget who they were and what they had come for? Ho, there, man, what have you come for? To get sweethearts or to fight? "To fight" With whom? The Trojans or the Greeks? "The Trojans." Well, then, are you turning your back on 427