Book 4
6
But what trifling is this! How have I right principles when I am not contented to be what I am; but am in agony as to how I shall appear? But others will get more, and be preferred to me. Well, what is more reasonable than that they who take pains for anything should get most in that particular direction in which they take pains? They have taken pains for power; you, for right principles. They, for riches; you, for a proper use of the phenomena of existence. See whether they have the advantage of you in that for which you have taken pains, and which they neglect; if they judge better concerning the natural bounds and limits of things; if their desires are less often disappointed than yours, their aversions less often incurred; if they aim better in their intentions, in their purposes, in their pursuits; if they preserve a becoming behavior as men, as sons, as parents, and so on with the other relations of life. But if they are in power, and you not, why will you not speak the truth to yourself; that you do nothing for the sake of power, but that they do everything? It were very reasonable that he who carefully seeks anything should be less successful than he who neglects it! No; but since I take care to have right principles, it is more reasonable that I should excel. Yes, in respect to what you take pains about, your principles. But give up to others the things in which they have taken more pains than you. Else it is just as if, because you have right principles, you should expect to aim an arrow better than an archer, or to forge better than a smith. In that case cease to take pains about principles, and apply yourself to those things which you wish to possess, and then begin crying, if you do not succeed; for you deserve to cry. But now you claim that you are engaged and absorbed in other things; and they say well that no man can be of two trades. One man, as soon as he rises and goes out, seeks to whom he may pay his compliments, whom he may flatter, to whom he may send a present, how he may please the favorite; how, by doing mischief to one, he may oblige another. Whenever he prays, he prays for things like these; whenever he sacrifices, he sacrifices for things like these. To these he transfers the Pythagorean precept,—
