Kitap 1
19
When a person is possessed of some personal advantage, either real or imaginary, he will necessarily be puffed up with it, unless he has been well instructed. A tyrant openly says, am supreme over all. And what can you bestow on me? Can you exempt my desires from disappointment? How should you? For do you never incur what you shun? Are your own aims infallible? Whence came you by that privilege? Pray, on shipboard, do you trust to yourself, or to the pilot In a chariot, to whom but the driver? And to whom in all other arts? Just the same. In what, then, does your power consist?
19
All men pay regard to me.
19
So do I to my desk. I wash it and wipe it, and drive a nail for my oil-flask.
19
What, then; are these things to be valued beyond me?
19
No; but they are of some use to me, and therefore I pay regard to them. Why, do I not pay regard to an ass? Do I not wash his feet? Do I not clean him? Do not you know that every one pays such regard even to himself; and that he does it to you, just as he does to an ass? For who pays regard to you as a man? Show that. Who would wish to be like you? Who would desire to imitate you, as he would Socrates?
19
But I can take off your head.
19
You say rightly. I had forgot that one is to pay regard to you as to a fever, or the cholera; and that there should be an altar erected to you, as there is to the goddess Fever at Rome.
