The Complete Works of Epictetus

by Epictetus

And if it had seemed otherwise to us, what else should we have done, than what we thought right? This, and not the death of Patroclus, was the real source of the lamentation of Achilles, — for every man is not thus affected by the death of a friend, — that it seemed right to him. This too was the cause of your running away from your child, that it then seemed right; and if hereafter you should stay with her, it will be because that seems right. You are now returning to Rome, because it seems right to you; but if you should alter your opinion, you will not return. In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind, is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action: but our inward opinions and principles. Do I convince you of this, or not? “You do.” Well then: such as the cause is, such will be the effect. From this day forward, then, whenever we do anything wrong, we will impute it to the wrong principle from which we act; and we will endeavor to remove and extirpate that, with greater care than we would remove wens and tumors from the body. In like manner, we will ascribe what we do right, to the same cause; and we will accuse neither servant, nor neighbor, nor wife, nor children, as the cause of any evil to us; persuaded that if we had not accepted such principles, we should not carry them to such consequences. The control of these principles lies in us, and not in any outward things. Of these principles we ourselves, and not externals, are the ...