Volume 1 - Discourses - Books I - II - College of Stoic Philosophers

BOOK I. XL 23-28as well to have gone away and left her, so that thechild would thus have been left alone and helplessbecause of the great affection of you her parents andof those in charge of her, 01% perhaps,, have died inthe arms of those who neither loved her nor cared forher ? Far from it ! And yetis it not unfair andunfeeling^ when a man thinks certain conduct fittingfor himself because of his affection, that he shouldnot allow the same to others who have as much affectionas he has? That were absurd. Come, if it hadbeen you who were sick, would you have wanted allyour relatives, your children and your wife included,to show their affection in such a way that you wouldbe left all alone and deserted by them? By nomeans. And would you pray to be so loved by yourown that, because of their excessive affection, youwould always be left alone in sickness ? Or would you,so far as this is concerned, have prayed to be lovedby your enemies rather, if that were possible, so as tobe left alone by them ? And if this is what youwould have prayed for, the only conclusion left us isthat your conduct was, in the end, not an act ofaffection at all.What, then ;was the motive nothingat all whichactuated you and induced you to leave your child?And how can that be ? But it was a motive likethat which impelled a certain man in Rome to coverhis head when the horse which he backed wasrunning, and then, when it won unexpectedly, theyhad to apply sponges to him to revive him from hisfaint ! What motive, then, is this ? The scientificexplanation, perhaps, is not in place now ;but it isenough for us to be convinced that, if what thephilosophers say is sound, we ought not to look