"Discourses" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epictetus)

as to need other things. For consider what it would be for us to
take care not only of ourselves, but also about cattle and asses,
how they should be clothed, and how shod, and how they should eat
and drink. Now as soldiers are ready for their commander, shod,
clothed and armed: but it would be a hard thing, for the chiliarch
to go round and shoe or clothe his thousand men; so also nature has
formed the animals which are made for service, all ready, prepared,
and requiring no further care. So one little boy with only a stick
drives the cattle.

But now we, instead of being thankful that we need not take the same
care of animals as of ourselves, complain of God on our own account;
and yet, in the name of Zeus and the gods, any one thing of those
which exist would be enough to make a man perceive the providence of
God, at least a man who is modest and grateful. And speak not to me
now of the great thins, but only of this, that milk is produced from
grass, and cheese from milk, and wool from skins. Who made these
things or devised them? "No one," you say. Oh, amazing shamelessness
and stupidity!

Well, let us omit the works of nature and contemplate her smaller
acts. Is there anything less useful than the hair on the chin? What
then, has not nature used this hair also in the most suitable manner
possible? Has she not by it distinguished the male and the female?
does not the nature of every man forthwith proclaim from a distance,
"I am a man; as such approach me, as such speak to me; look for
nothing else; see the signs"? Again, in the case of women, as she
has mingled something softer in the voice, so she has also deprived
them of hair (on the chin). You say: "Not so; the human animal ought
to have been left without marks of distinction, and each of us
should have been obliged to proclaim, 'I am a man.' But how is not the
sign beautiful and becoming, and venerable? how much more beautiful
than the cock's comb, how much more becoming than the lion's mane? For
this reason we ought to preserve the signs which God has given, we
ought not to throw them away, nor to confound, as much as we can,
the distinctions of the sexes.

Are these the only works of providence in us? And what words are
sufficient to praise them and set them forth according to their worth?
For if we had understanding, ought we to do anything else both jointly
and severally than to sing hymns and bless the deity, and to tell of
his benefits? Ought we not when we are digging and ploughing and
eating to sing this hymn to God? "Great is God, who has given us
such implements with which we shall cultivate the earth: great is
God who has given us hands, the power of swallowing, a stomach,
imperceptible growth, and the power of breathing while we sleep." This
is what we ought to sing on every occasion, and to sing the greatest
and most divine hymn for giving us the faculty of comprehending
these things and using a proper way. Well then, since most of you have
become blind, ought there not to be some man to fill this office,