Kitap 3
9.11
For once it was granted that it is the business of the ruler to give orders and of the ruled to obey, he went on to show that on a ship the one who knows, rules, and the owner and all the others on board obey the one who knows: in farming the landowners, in illness the patients, in training those who are in training, in fact everybody concerned with anything that needs care, look after it themselves if they think they know how, but, if not, they obey those who know, and not only when such are present, but they even send for them when absent, that they may obey them and do the right thing. In spinning wool, again, he would point out, the women govern the men because they know how to do it and men do not.
9.12
If anyone objected that a despot may refuse to obey a good counsellor, How can he refuse, he would ask, when a penalty waits on disregard of good counsel? All disregard of good counsel is bound surely to result in error, and his error will not go unpunished.
9.13
If anyone said that a despot can kill a loyal subject, Do you think, he retorted, that he who kills the best of his allies suffers no loss, or that his loss is trifling? Do you think that this conduct brings him safety, or rather swift destruction?
9.14
When someone asked him what seemed to him the best pursuit for a man, he answered: Doing well. Questioned further, whether he thought good luck a pursuit, he said: On the contrary, I think luck and doing are opposite poles. To hit on something right by luck without search I call good luck, to do something well after study and practice I call doing well; and those who pursue this seem to me to do well.
9.15
And the best men and dearest to the gods, he added, are those who do their work well; if it is farming, as good farmers; if medicine, as good doctors; if politics, as good politicians. He who does nothing well is neither useful in any way nor dear to the gods.
