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EPICTETUS.

hunger, because you have not the pot which you are accustomed to? Do you not send and buy a new pot? He says:

No greater ill than this could fall on me. (Iliad xix. 321.)

Why is this your ill? Do you then instead of removing it blame your mother (Thetis) for not foretelling it to you that you might continue grieving from that time? What do you think? do you not suppose that Homer wrote this that we may learn that those of noblest birth, the strongest and the richest, the most handsome, when they have not the opinions which they ought to have, are not prevented from being most wretched and unfortunate?

CHAPTER XI.

about purity (cleanliness).

Some persons raise a question whether the social feeling[1] is contained in the nature of man; and yet I think that these same persons would have no doubt that love of purity is certainly contained in it, and that if man is distinguished from other animals by any thing, he is distinguished by this. When then we see any other animal cleaning itself, we are accustomed to speak of the act with surprise, and to add that the animal is acting like a man: and on the other hand, if a man blames an animal for being dirty, straightway as if we were making an excuse for it, we say that of course the animal is not a human creature. So we suppose that there is something superior in man, and that we first receive it from the Gods. For since the Gods by their nature are pure and free from corruption, so far as men approach them by reason, so far do they cling to purity and to a love (habit)

  1. The word is τὸ κοινωνικόν. Compare i. 23, 1, ii. 10, 14, ii. 20, 6.