 Our ability to improve our own dispositions also provides the implicit answer to any question that might be asked about human autonomy in a Zeus-governed universe. Since for Epictetus action is determined by character (what seems right to an individual; 1.2) and not by spontaneous impulses, some readers might be inclined to object that this autonomy is only of a limited kind, for a person’s character must itself have been assigned to him by Zeus, through the circumstances of his birth and education. Epictetus would reply that autonomy is guaranteed not by the absence of antecedent causes but by the very nature of the reasoning faculty. Specific skills like horsemanship make judgments about their own subject matter; the reasoning faculty judges other things and also its own prior judgments. When it performs this function well, the inherited character will improve over time; otherwise it will deteriorate.