So here's what happens when we get the biggest things wrong. We turn natural confidence into recklessness, desperation, and shamelessness. And we turn natural caution into cowardice and weakness — both full of fear and confusion. If you apply your caution to things you actually control — your choices and actions — then you can avoid what you want to avoid. But if you try to be cautious about things outside your control, trying to avoid what other people control, you'll be afraid. You'll be unstable. You'll be disturbed. Death and pain aren't scary. The fear of death and pain is what's scary. That's why we praise the poet who said:
Therefore, as we may expect it to happen with those who err in the greatest matters, we convert natural confidence (that is, according to nature) 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 will immediately by willing to be cautious have also the power of avoiding what he chooses; but if he transfer it to the things which are not in his power and will, and attempt to avoid the things which are in the power of others, he will of necessity fear, he will be unstable, he will be disturbed; for death or pain is not formidable, but the fear of pain or death. For this reason we commend the poet, who said: