200. Therefore it is the duty of a brave man not
to shut his eyes when anything threatens, but to put it before him and
to search it out as it were in the mirror of his mind, and to meet the
future with foreseeing thought, for fear he might afterwards have to
say: This has come to me because I thought it could not come
about. If misfortunes are not looked for beforehand, they quickly
get a hold over us. In war an unexpected enemy is with difficulty
resisted, and if he finds the others unprepared, he easily overcomes
them; so evils unthought of readily break down the soul.