Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/125

 another. Again, it is your function to defend yourself firmly, respectfully, without passion. Otherwise, you have destroyed within you the son, the respectful man, the man of honour. What then? Is the judge secure? No; but he too runs just as great a risk. Why, then, are you afraid of what decision he is going to render? What have you to do with another man's evil? Your own evil is to make a bad defence; only guard against that, but just as being condemned or not being condemned is another's function, so it is another's evil. "So-and-so threatens you." Me? No. "He blames you." He himself will attend to how he is performing his own proper function. "He is on the point of condemning you unjustly." Poor devil! 



first difference between a layman and a philosopher: The one says, "Woe is me because of my child, my brother, woe because of my father"; and the other, if he can ever be compelled to say, "Woe is me," adds, after a pause, "because of myself." For nothing outside the sphere of the moral purpose can hamper or injure the moral purpose; it alone can hamper or injure itself. If, then, we too tend in this latter direction so that, whenever we go amiss, 115