Discourses - Book II   

DISCOURSES

BOOK TWO

CHAPTER 1

That confidence is not inconsistent with caution

The opinion of the philosophers, perhaps, seems to some to be a
paradox; but still let us examine as well as we can, if it is true
that it is possible to do everything both with caution and with
confidence. For caution seems to be in a manner contrary to
confidence, and contraries are in no way consistent. That which
seems to many to be a paradox in the matter under consideration in
my opinion is of this kind: if we asserted that we ought to employ
caution and in the same things, men might justly accuse us of bringing
together things which cannot be united. But now where is the
difficulty in what is said? for if these things are true, which have
been often said and often proved, that the nature of good is in the
use of appearances, and the nature of evil likewise, and that things
independent of our will do not admit either the nature of evil nor
of good, what paradox do the philosophers assert if they say that
where things are not dependent on the will, there you should employ
confidence, but where they are dependent on the will, there you should
employ caution? For if the bad consists in a bad exercise of the will,
caution ought only to be used where things are dependent on the
will. But if things independent of the will and not in our power are
nothing to us, with respect to these we must employ confidence; and
thus we shall both be cautious and confident, and indeed confident
because of our caution. For by employing caution toward things which
are really bad, it will result that we shall have confidence with
respect to things which are not so.
We are then in the condition of deer; when they flee from the
huntsmen's feathers in fright, whither do they turn and in what do
they seek refuge as safe? They turn to the nets, and thus they
perish by confounding things which are objects of fear with things
that they ought not to fear. Thus we also act: in what cases do we
fear? In things which are independent of the will. In what cases, on
the contrary, do we behave with confidence, as if there were no
danger? In things dependent on the will. To be deceived then, or to
act rashly, or shamelessly or with base desire to seek something, does
not concern us at all, if we only hit the mark in things which are
independent of our will. But where there is death, or exile or pain or
infamy, there we attempt or examine to run away, there we are struck
with terror. Therefore, as we may expect it to happen with those who
err in the greatest matters, we convert natural confidence into
audacity, desperation, rashness, shamelessness; and we convert natural
caution and modesty into cowardice and meanness, which are full of
fear and confusion. For if a man should transfer caution to those
things in which the will may be exercised and the acts of the will, he