about after being conquered in all the circuit of the games like
quails who have run away.
"The sight of a beautiful young girl overpowers me. Well, have I not
been overpowered before? An inclination arises in me to find fault
with a person; for have I not found fault with him before?" You
speak to us as if you had come off free from harm, just as if a man
should say to his physician who forbids him to bathe, "Have I not
bathed before?" If, then, the physician can say to him, "Well, and
what, then, happened to you after the bath? Had you not a fever, had
you not a headache?" And when you found fault with a person lately,
did you not do the act of a malignant person, of a trifling babbler;
did you not cherish this habit in you by adding to it the
corresponding acts? And when you were overpowered by the young girl,
did you come off unharmed? Why, then, do you talk of what you did
before? You ought, I think, remembering what you did, as slaves
remember the blows which they have received, to abstain from the
same faults. But the one case is not like the other; for in the case
of slaves the pain causes the remembrance: but in the case of your
faults, what is the pain, what is the punishment; for when have you
been accustomed to fly from evil acts? Sufferings, then, of the trying
character are useful to us, whether we choose or not.

CHAPTER 26

To those who fear want

Are you not ashamed at more cowardly and more mean than fugitive
slaves? How do they when they run away leave their masters? on what
estates do they depend, and what domestics do they rely on? Do they
not, after stealing a little which is enough for the first days,
then afterward move on through land or through sea, contriving one
method after another for maintaining their lives? And what fugitive
slave ever died of hunger? But you are afraid lest necessary things
should fall you, and are sleepless by night. Wretch, are you so blind,
and don't you see the road to which the want of necessaries leads?
"Well, where does it lead?" To the same place to which a fever
leads, or a stone that falls on you, to death. Have you not often said
this yourself to your companions? have you not read much of this kind,
and written much? and how often have you boasted that you were easy as
to death?
"Yes: but my wife and children also suffer hunger." Well then,
does their hunger lead to any other place? Is there not the same
descent to some place for them also? Is not there the same state below
for them? Do you not choose, then, to look to that place full of
boldness against every want and deficiency, to that place to which
both the richest and those who have held the highest offices, and
kings themselves and tyrants must descend? or to which you will
descend hungry, if it should so happen, but they burst by
indigestion and drunkenness. What beggar did you hardly ever see who
was not an old man, and even of extreme old age? But chilled with cold