Book A
93
Pyrrho used to say that there is no difference between dying and living: and a man said to him, Why then do you not die? Pyrrho replied, Because there is no difference.
94
Admirable is nature, and, as Xenophon says, a lover of animated beings. The body then, which is of all things the most unpleasant and the most foul (dirty), we love and take care of; for if we were obliged for five days only to take care of our neighbour’s body, we should not be able to endure it. Consider then what a thing it would be to rise in the morning and rub the teeth of another, and after doing some of the necessary offices to wash those parts. In truth it is wonderful that we love a thing to which we perform such services every day. I fill this bag, and then I empty it;This bag is the body, or that part of it which holds the food which is taken into the mouth. what is more troublesome? But I must act as the servant of God. For this reason I remain (here), and I endure to wash this miserable body, to feed it and to clothe it. But when I was younger, God imposed on me also another thing, and I submitted to it. Why then do you not submit, when Nature who has given us this body takes it away? I love the body, you may say. Well, as I said just now, Nature gave you also this love of the body: but Nature says, Leave it now, and have no more trouble (with it).
95
When a man dies young, he blames the gods. When he is old and does not die, he blames the gods because he suffers when he ought to have already ceased from suffering. And nevertheless, when death approaches, he wishes to live, and sends to the physician and intreats him to omit no care or trouble. Wonderful, he said, are men, who are neither willing to live nor to die.See Schweig.’s excellent note on this fragment. There is manifestly a defect in the text, which Schweig.’s note supplies.
96
To the longer life and the worse, the shorter life, if it is better, ought by all means to be preferred.
