The Good Book_ A Secular Bible - A. C. Grayling [45]
5. That one is on trial, that one defends him, that one gives sentence;
6. No one asserts his claim to himself; everyone is wasted for the sake of another.
7. Ask about famous people whose names are known everywhere, and you will see that these are the marks that distinguish them:
8. One cultivates another, and this other cultivates yet another; no one is his own master.
9. And then certain people show the most senseless indignation – they complain of the insolence of their superiors, because they were too busy to see them when they wished an audience!
10. But can anyone have the hardihood to complain of another’s pride when he has no time to attend to himself?
11. Folly, and folly again, all is folly; the ceaseless, restless pursuit of nothing or little, until night engulfs them, and their place knows them no more.
Chapter 7
1. Though all the sages of history were to concentrate upon this one theme, never could they adequately express their wonder at human folly.
2. We do not suffer anyone to seize our estates, and we rush to law or arms if there is the slightest dispute about the boundary of our property,
3. Yet we allow others to trespass upon our lives; indeed, we ourselves lead in those who will eventually possess it.
4. No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each of us distribute his life!
5. In guarding their fortunes people are often close-fisted, yet, when it comes to wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal.
6. I should like to question anyone from the company of older men and women and say: ‘I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard towards the term of your years;
7. ‘Come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Consider how much time you gave to moneylenders, visitors, lovers, patrons, clients;
8. ‘How much time you gave to wrangling with your spouse, how much in hastening about on social duties.
9. ‘Add the diseases caused by your own acts; add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused;
10. ‘You will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count.
11. ‘Look back in memory and consider when you had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you intended,
12. ‘How few when you were at your own disposal, how few when your face wore its natural expression, how few when your mind was unperturbed.
13. ‘Consider what little you have really achieved in so long a life,
14. ‘Consider how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing,
15. ‘How much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire,
16. ‘In the allurements of society; see how little of yourself was left to you;
17. ‘And then you will perceive that you are dying before your season!
18. ‘What is the reason of this? You live as if you were destined to live for ever; no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed.
19. ‘You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply,
20. ‘Though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.
21. ‘You have all the fears of mortals and all the desire as if you were not mortal.
22. ‘You will hear many men saying: “After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.”
23. ‘And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it?
24. ‘Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to business?
25. ‘How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live!
26. ‘What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point which many do not even attain!’
Chapter 8
1. Alas! it is vain to exist: