Kitap 2
22
How so? I am not this wise person, yet I love my child.
22
I protest it surprises me that you should, in the first place, confess yourself unwise. For in what are you deficient? Have not you the use of your senses? Do you not distinguish the semblances of things? Do you not provide such food and clothing and habitation as are suitable to you? Why then do you confess that you want wisdom? In truth, because you are often struck and disconcerted by semblances, and their speciousness gets the better of you; and hence you sometimes suppose the very same things to be good, then evil, and lastly, neither; and, in a word, you grieve, you fear, you envy, you are disconcerted, you change. Is it from this that you confess yourself unwise? And are you not changeable too in love? Riches, pleasure, in short, the very same things, you sometimes esteem good, and at other times evil. And do you not esteem the same persons too alternately as good and bad, at one time treating them with kindness, at another with enmity; at one time commending, and at another censuring them?
22
Yes. This too is the case with me.
22
Well, then; can he who is deceived in another be his friend, think you?
22
No, surely.
22
Or does he who loves him with a changeable affection bear him genuine good-will?
22
Nor he, neither. Or he who now vilifies, then admires him?
22
Nor he.
