The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [14]
6. For how much is lettuce sold? Fifty pence, for instance. If another pays fifty pence and takes the lettuce, and you, not paying it, go without a lettuce, do not imagine that he has gained any advantage over you.
7. For as he has the lettuce, so you have the fifty pence which you did not spend. Likewise in the present case, you have not been invited to such a person’s entertainment, because you have not paid him the price for which a supper is sold.
8. It is sold for praise; it is sold for attendance. Give him then the value, if it is for your advantage.
9. But if you would, at the same time, not pay the one and yet receive the other, you are insatiable, and a blockhead.
10. Have you nothing, then, instead of the supper? Yes, indeed, you have: your honour, and self-sufficiency.
11. The right attitude may be learned from small things. For example, when our neighbour’s boy breaks a cup, or the like, we say, ‘These things will happen.’
12. Be assured, then, that when your own cup likewise is broken, you ought to be affected just as when another’s cup is broken.
13. Apply this in like manner to greater things, seeing illness and death, and grief for others, as what will happen because it must.
14. The question to be asked at the end of each day is, ‘How long will you delay to be wise?’
Chapter 16
1. As a mark is not set up for the sake of missing the aim, so neither does the nature of evil exist in the world.
2. If a person gave your body to any stranger he met on his way, you would be angry.
3. Why then do you feel no shame in handing over your mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who tries to persuade you for his own advantage?
4. In every affair consider what precedes and follows, and then undertake it.
5. Otherwise you will begin with enthusiasm; but not having thought of the consequences, when some of them appear you will shamefully desist.
6. ‘I would conquer at the Games.’ But consider what precedes and follows, and then, if it is for your advantage, engage in the affair:
7. You must conform to rules, submit to a diet, refrain from dainties; exercise your body, whether you choose it or not, at a stated hour, in heat and cold; you must drink no cold water, nor sometimes even wine.
8. In a word, you must give yourself up to your master, as to a physician. Then, in the combat, you may be thrown into a ditch, dislocate your arm, turn your ankle, swallow dust, be whipped, and, after all, not gain the victory.
9. When you have evaluated all this, if your inclination still holds, then do it, and with a will, with all your might; and for the sake of the good that comes of it, even if you do not win.
10. Otherwise you will behave like children who play at wrestling, or at gladiators, sometimes blow a trumpet, and sometimes act a tragedy when they have seen and admired it.
11. Thus you too will be at one time a wrestler, at another a gladiator, now a philosopher, then an orator; but unless you do it with your whole will, you will be nothing at all.
12. Like an ape, you will mimic all you see, and one thing after another is sure to please you, but will fall out of favour as soon as it becomes familiar.
13. For unless you enter upon things with forethought and resolution to do your best, but instead rashly and with a cold inclination only, you will be a mimic and a playing child merely in all you do.
14. Consider first, then, what the matter is, and to what your own nature is suited.
15. If you would be a wrestler, consider your shoulders, your back, your thighs; for different persons are made for different things.
16. Do you think that you can act the fool, and be a philosopher? You must watch, you must labour, you must get the better of certain appetites,
17. You must set at their true value the honours and blandishments of the world.
18. When you have considered all these things round, approach, if you please; if, by parting with them, you have a mind to purchase freedom and strength of mind.
19. If not, do not come here; do not, like children, be for a while a philosopher, then a publican,