Kitap 8
23
(whereas the others have reason but have not this): they have inspiration, but they cannot deliberate. For although irrational they attain even what belongs to the prudent and wise—swiftness of divination: only the divination that is based on reason we must not specify, but some of them attain it by experience and others by practice in the use of observation; and these men use the divine.The Ms. reading gives and experience and habit use God. For this quality discerns aright the future as well as the present, and these are the men whose reason is disengaged.Or, with Jackson’s text, But some of them by experience and others by habituation have this capacity of consulting God in examining things, and of discerning aright both the future and the present; and those also have it whose reason is disengaged in the manner described. This is why the melancholic even have dreams that are true; for it seems that when the reason is disengaged principle has more strength— just as the blind remember better, being released from having their faculty of memory engaged with objects of sight.Jackson (with some hints from the Latin version) emends to give just as blind men, who are released from attention to visibles, remember better than others, because the faculty of memory is thus more earnestly addressed to what has been said.
24
It is clear, then, that there are two kinds of good fortune—one divine, owing to which the fortunate man’s success is thought to be due to the aid of God, and this is the man who is successful in accordance with his impulse, while the other is he who succeeds against his impulse. Both persons are irrational. The former kind is more continuous good fortune, the latter is not continuous.
