"Discourses" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epictetus)

she will not do it; but so long as you do not show it, what can she
follow except that which appears to herself? Nothing else. Why,
then, are you angry with the unhappy woman that she has been
bewildered about the most important things, and is become a viper
instead of a human creature? And why not, if it is possible, rather
pity, as we pity the blind and the lame, those who are blinded and
maimed in the faculties which are supreme?

Whoever, then, clearly remembers this, that to man the measure of
every act is the appearance- whether the thing appears good or bad: if
good, he is free from blame; if bad, himself suffers the penalty,
for it is impossible that he who is deceived can be one person, and he
who suffers another person- whoever remembers this will not be angry
with any man, will not be vexed at any man, will not revile or blame
any man, nor hate nor quarrel with any man.

"So then all these great and dreadful deeds have this origin, in the
appearance?" Yes, this origin and no other. The Iliad is nothing
else than appearance and the use of appearances. It appeared to
Paris to carry off the wife of Menelaus: it appeared to Helen to
follow him. If then it had appeared to Menelaus to feel that it was
a gain to be deprived of such a wife, what would have happened? Not
only a wi would the Iliad have been lost, but the Odyssey also. "On so
small a matter then did such great things depend?" But what do you
mean by such great things? Wars and civil commotions, and the
destruction of many men and cities. And what great matter is this? "Is
it nothing?" But what great matter is the death of many oxen, and many
sheep, and many nests of swallows or storks being burnt or
destroyed? "Are these things, then, like those?" Very like. Bodies
of men are destroyed, and the bodies of oxen and sheep; the
dwellings of men are burnt, and the nests of storks. What is there
in this great or dreadful? Or show me what is the difference between a
man's house and a stork's nest, as far as each is a dwelling; except
that man builds his little houses of beams and tiles and bricks, and
the stork builds them of sticks and mud. "Are a stork and a man, then,
like things?" What say you? In body they are very much alike.

"Does a man then differ in no respect from a stork?" Don't suppose
that I say so; but there is no difference in these matters. "In
what, then, is the difference?" Seek and you will find that there is a
difference in another matter. See whether it is not in a man the
understanding of what he does, see if it is not in social community,
in fidelity, in modesty, in steadfastness, in intelligence. Where then
is the great good and evil in men? It is where the difference is. If
the difference is preserved and remains fenced round, and neither
modesty is destroyed, nor fidelity, nor intelligence, then the man
also is preserved; but if any of these things is destroyed and stormed
like a city, then the man too perishes; and in this consist the
great things. Paris, you say, sustained great damage, then, when the
Hellenes invaded and when they ravaged Troy, and when his brothers