Kitap 3
24
And so are some incantations; but because they are useful, I do not mind it; only let them be useful. But do you call anything ominous except what implies some ill? Cowardice is ominous; baseness is ominous; lamentation, grief, shamelessness. These are words of bad omen; and yet we ought not to shrink from using them, as a guard against the things they mean. But do you tell me that a word is ominous which is significant of anything natural? Say, too, that it is ominous for ears of corn to be reaped; for this signifies the destruction of the corn, but not of the world. Say, too, that the fall of the leaf is ominous; and that confectionery should be produced from figs, and raisins from grapes. For all these are changes from a former state into another,—not a destruction, but a certain appointed economy and administration. Such is absence, a slight change; such is death, a greater change,—not from what now is nothing, but to what now is not.
24
What, then; shall I be no more?
