Living with Nature 3

. . . " 'Well, then to leave your sick child and to go away is not reasonable, and I suppose that you will not say that it is; but it remains for us to inquire if it is consistent with affection.'

" 'Yes, let us consider.'

" ' Did you, then, since you had an affectionate disposition to your child, do right when you ran off and left her; and has the mother no affection for the child?'

" 'Certainly, she has.'

" 'Ought, then, the mother also to have left her, or ought she not?'

 " 'She ought not.'

" 'And the nurse, does she love her?'

 " 'She does.'

" 'Ought, then, she also to have left her?'

" 'By no means.'

" 'And the teacher, does he not love her?'

 " 'He does love her.'

" 'Ought, then, he also to have deserted her? and so should the child have been left alone and without help on account of the great affection of you, the parents, and of those about her, or should she have died in the hands of those who neither loved her nor cared for her?'

" 'Certainly not.'

" 'Now this is unfair and unreasonable, not to allow those who have equal affection with yourself to do what you think to be proper for yourself to do because you have affection. It is absurd. Come then, if you were sick, would you wish your relations to be so affectionate, and all the rest, children and wife, as to leave you alone and deserted?'

 " 'By no means.'

" 'And would you wish to be so loved by your own that through their excessive affection you would always be left alone in sickness? or for this reason would you rather pray, if it were possible, to be loved by your enemies and deserted by them? But if this is so, it results that your behavior was not at all an affectionate act.' " . . .

--Epictetus, Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 11 (tr Long)

The old song tells us that we always hurt the one's we love, though I hardly think that is true, rightly understood. We hurt others when we act out of a disordered self-love, and not for their good, but for our own satisfaction and convenience alone.

The Magistrate understands all too well that he expects others who love his daughter, her mother, her nurse, or her teacher, to stand with his her when she is in need, even as he himself has abandoned her.

He likewise would hardly wish to have his friends desert him, or to have his friends turn out to really be his enemies. He surely begins to see that running away was not in response to his affection, but in response to his own pain.

It had everything to do with him, and nothing at all to do with her. It was selfishness, not affection. 

We must simply look at the long lists of people we have disposed of in our lives to see that the Magistrate is within us. If I am to measure the value and dignity of other persons by the pleasure and utility that they give me, then I will surely act in precisely the same way that he does.

If I am faced with an obstacle to my virtue or a problem in my path, it might seem the easiest thing is to simply close my eyes and ignore it.

I can make all the excuses I like, and I may even manage to give the appearance to others and to myself that I have been natural, reasonable, and affectionate.  I have been none of these things, because it is natural, reasonable, and affectionate to give love, to look to the benefit of others, and not merely for myself.

I can hardly, of course, even pursue my own true benefit of living well when I am in conflict with the nature of others, and therefore of Nature as a whole.

Written in 11/2002