Kitap 2
14
I know it very well. For you now come to me, as if you wanted nothing. And how can it enter into your imagination that there should be anything in which you are deficient? You are rich; and perhaps have a wife and children, and a great number of domestics. Caesar takes notice of you; you have many friends at Rome; you render to all their dues; you know how to requite a favor, and revenge an injury. In what are you deficient? Suppose, then, I should prove to you that you are deficient in what is most necessary and important to happiness; and that hitherto you have taken care of everything, rather than your duty; and to complete all, that you understand not what God or man, or good or evil, means? That you are ignorant of all the rest, perhaps, you may bear to be told; but if I prove to you that you are ignorant even of yourself, how will you bear with me, and how will you have patience to stay and be convinced? Not at all. You will immediately be offended, and go away. And yet what injury have I done you; unless a looking-glass injures a person not handsome, when it shows him to himself such as he is; or unless a physician can be thought to affront his patient, when he says to him: Do you think, sir, that you are not ill? You have a fever. Eat no meat to-day, and drink water? Nobody cries out here, What an intolerable affront! But if you say to any one: You exhibit feverishness in your desires, and low habits in what you shun; your aims are contradictory, your pursuits not conformable to nature, your opinions rash and mistaken, he presently goes away, and complains that he is affronted.
