Discourses, On the Power of Speaking

Epictetus — The Slave

So this faculty of will — it exists among all the other faculties that are blind and dumb. These other faculties can't see anything beyond their basic jobs. They just serve the will. But the will alone sees clearly. It sees what each faculty is worth. Will this faculty tell us that something else is the best? Or will it say that it itself is the best? What else does your eye do when it opens except see? But who tells you whether you should look at another man's wife? And how you should look? Your will does. Who tells you whether to believe what someone says? And if you do believe it, who tells you whether to get worked up about it? Isn't it your will?

Epictetus — The Slave Original

Will this faculty then, seeing that it is amidst all the other faculties which are blind and dumb and unable to see anything else except the very acts for which they are appointed in order to minister to this (faculty) and serve it, but this faculty alone sees sharp and sees what is the value of each of the rest; will this faculty declare to us that anything else is the best, or that itself is? And what else does the eye do when it is opened than see? But whether we ought to look on the wife of a certain person, and in what manner, who tells us? The faculty of the will. And whether we ought to believe what is said or not to believe it, and if we do believe, whether we ought to be moved by it or not, who tells us? Is it not the faculty of the will?