Kitap 3
Concerning those who are in dread of want.
26
Are not you ashamed to be more fearful and mean-spirited than fugitive slaves? To what estates, to what servants, do they trust, when they run away and leave their masters? Do they not, after carrying off a little with them for the first days, travel over land and sea, contriving first one, then another, method of getting food? And what fugitive ever died of hunger? But you tremble, and lie awake at night, for fear you should want necessaries. Foolish man! are you so blind? Do not you see the way whither the want of necessaries leads?
26
Why, whither does it lead?
26
Whither a fever or a falling stone may lead,—-to death. Have you not, then, often said this to your companions? Have you not read, have you not written, many things on this point? And how often have you arrogantly boasted that you are undisturbed by fears of death!
26
Ay; but my family, too, will perish with hunger.
26
What then? Does their hunger lead any other way than yours? Is there not the same descent, the same state below? Will you not, then, in every want and necessity, look with confidence there, where even the most rich and powerful, and kings and tyrants themselves, must descend? You indeed may descend hungry, perhaps, and they full of indigestion and drunkenness. For have you often seen a beggar who did not live to old age, nay, to extreme old age? Chilled by day and night, lying on the ground, and eating only what is barely necessary, they yet seem almost to become incapable of dying. But cannot you write? Cannot you keep a school? Cannot you be a watchman at somebody’s door?
26
But it is shameful to come to this necessity.
