Discourses - Book II   

subjected to each preconception. You may make the same charge
against physicians also. For who among us did not use the words
"healthy" and "unhealthy" before Hippocrates lived, or did we utter
these words as empty sounds? For we have also a certain
preconception of health, but we are not able to adapt it. For this
reason one says, "Abstain from food"; another says, "Give food";
another says, "Bleed"; and another says, "Use cupping." What is the
reason? is it any other than that a man cannot properly adapt the
preconception of health to particulars?
So it is in this matter also, in the things which concern life.
Who among us does not speak of good and bad, of useful and not useful;
for who among us has not a preconception of each of these things? Is
it then a distinct and perfect preconception? Show this. How shall I
show this? Adapt the preconception properly to the particular
things. Plato, for instance, subjects definitions to the preconception
of the useful, but you to the preconception of the useless. Is it
possible then that both of you are right? How is it possible? Does not
one man adapt the preconception of good to the matter of wealth, and
another not to wealth, but to the matter of pleasure and to that of
health? For, generally, if all of us who use those words know
sufficiently each of them, and need no diligence in resolving, the
notions of the preconceptions, why do we differ, why do we quarrel,
why do we blame one another?
And why do I now allege this contention with one another and speak
of it? If you yourself properly adapt your preconceptions, why are you
unhappy, why are you hindered? Let us omit at present the second topic
about the pursuits and the study of the duties which relate to them.
Let us omit also the third topic, which relates to the assents: I give
up to you these two topics. Let us insist upon the first, which
presents an almost obvious demonstration that we do not properly adapt
the preconceptions. Do you now desire that which is possible and
that which is possible to you? Why then are you hindered? why are
you unhappy? Do you not now try to avoid the unavoidable? Why then
do you fall in with anything which you would avoid? Why are you
unfortunate? Why, when you desire a thing, does it not happen, and,
when you do not desire it, does it happen? For this is the greatest
proof of unhappiness and misery: "I wish for something, and it does
not happen." And what is more wretched than I?
It was because she could not endure this that Medea came to murder
her children: an act of a noble spirit in this view at least, for
she had a just opinion what it is for a thing not to succeed which a
person wishes. Then she says, "Thus I shall be avenged on him who
has wronged and insulted me; and what shall I gain if he is punished
thus? how then shall it be done? I shall kill my children, but I shall
punish myself also: and what do I care?" This is the aberration of
soul which possesses great energy. For she did not know wherein lies
the doing of that which we wish; that you cannot get this from
without, nor yet by the alteration and new adaptation of things. Do
not desire the man, and nothing which you desire will fall to
happen: do not obstinately desire that he shall live with you: do