Kitap 1
18
Why are we thus enraged? Because we make idols of those things which such people take from us. Make not an idol of your clothes, and you will not be enraged with the thief. Make not an idol of a woman’s beauty, and you will not be enraged with an adulterer. Know, that thief and adulterer cannot reach the things that are properly your own; but those only which belong to others, and are not within your power. If you can give up these things, and look upon them as not essential, with whom will you any longer be enraged? But while you idolize them, be angry with yourself, rather than with others. Consider the case: you have a fine suit of clothes, your neighbor has not. You have a casement; you want to air them. He knows not in what the good of man consists, but imagines it is in a fine suit of clothes, just as you imagine. Shall he not come and take them away? When you show a cake to greedy people, and are devouring it all yourself, would you not have them snatch it from you? Do not tempt them. Do not have a casement. Do not expose your clothes. I, too, the other day, had an iron lamp burning before my household deities. Hearing a noise at the window, I ran. I found my lamp was stolen. I considered that he who took it away did nothing unaccountable. What then? I said, to-morrow you shall find an earthen one, for a man loses only what he has. I have lost my coat. Ay, because you had a coat. I have a pain in my head. You certainly can have none in your horns. Why, then, are you out of humor? For loss and pain can be only of such things as are possessed.
18
But the tyrant will chain—what? A leg. He will take away—what? A head. What is there, then, chat he .can neither chain nor take away? The free will. Hence the advice of the ancients,—Know thyself.
18
What, then, ought we to do?
