Discourses - Book II   

things for happiness, and that hitherto you have looked after
everything rather than what you ought, and, to crown all, that you
neither know what God is nor what man is, nor what is good nor what is
bad; and as to what I have said about your ignorance of other matters,
that may perhaps be endured, but if I say that you know nothing
about yourself, how is it possible that you should endure me and
bear the proof and stay here? It is not possible; but you
immediately go off in bad humour. And yet what harm have I done you?
unless the mirror also injures the ugly man because it shows him to
himself such as he is; unless the physician also is supposed to insult
the sick man, when he says to him, "Man, do you think that you ail
nothing? But you have a fever: go without food to-day; drink water."
And no one says, "What an insult!" But if you say to a man, "Your
desires are inflamed, your aversions are low, your intentions are
inconsistent, your pursuits are not comfortable to nature, your
opinions are rash and false," the man immediately goes away and
says, "he has insulted me."
Our way of dealing is like that of a crowded assembly. Beasts are
brought to be sold and oxen; and the greater part of the men come to
buy and sell, and there are some few who come to look at the market
and to inquire how it is carried on, and why, and who fixes the
meeting and for what purpose. So it is here also in this assembly:
some like cattle trouble themselves about nothing except their fodder.
For to all of you who are busy about possessions and lands and
slaves and magisterial offices, these are nothing except fodder. But
there are a few who attend the assembly, men who love to look on and
consider what is the world, who governs it. Has it no governor? And
how is it possible that a city or a family cannot continue to exist,
not even the shortest time without an administrator and guardian,
and that so great and beautiful a system should be administered with
such order and yet without a purpose and by chance? There is then an
administrator. What kind of administrator and how does he govern?
And who are we, who were produced by him, and for what purpose? Have
we some connection with him and some relation toward him, or none?
This is the way in which these few are affected, and then they apply
themselves only to this one thing, to examine the meeting and then
to go away. What then? They are ridiculed by the many, as the
spectators at the fair are by the traders; and if the beasts had any
understanding, they would ridicule those who admired anything else
than fodder.

CHAPTER 15

To or against those who obstinately persist in what they have
determined

When some persons have heard these words, that a man ought to be
constant, and that the will is naturally free and not subject to
compulsion, but that all other things are subject to hindrance, to
slavery, and are in the power of others, they suppose that they