The Good Book (16 page)

18. Like the waters of the deep sea which continue to heave even after the storm is past, they are tossed about, and there is no rest from the tumult.

Chapter 6

  1. Do you think I speak only of the wretches whose evils are admitted? Look at those whose prosperity men flock to behold; they are smothered by their blessings.

  2. To how many are riches a burden! From how many do eloquence and the daily straining to display their powers merely amount to suffering!

  3. And likewise, how many are pale from constant pleasures! To how many does the throng of admirers and supplicants that crowd about them leave no freedom!

  4. In short, run through the list of citizens from lowest to highest – this one desires an advocate,
this one answers the call,

  5. That one is on trial, that one defends him, that one gives sentence;

  6. No one asserts his claim to himself; everyone is wasted for the sake of another.

  7. Ask about famous people whose names are known everywhere, and you will see that these are the marks that distinguish them:

  8. One cultivates another, and this other cultivates yet another; no one is his own master.

  9. And then certain people show the most senseless indignation – they complain of the insolence of their superiors, because they were too busy to see them when they wished an audience!

10. But can anyone have the hardihood to complain of another’s pride when he has no time to attend to himself?

11. Folly, and folly again, all is folly; the ceaseless, restless pursuit of nothing or little, until night engulfs them, and their place knows them no more.

Chapter 7

  1. Though all the sages of history were to concentrate upon this one theme, never could they adequately express their wonder at human folly.

  2. We do not suffer anyone to seize our estates, and we rush to law or arms if there is the slightest dispute about the boundary of our property,

  3. Yet we allow others to trespass upon our lives; indeed, we ourselves lead in those who will eventually possess it.

  4. No one is to be found who is willing to distribute his money, yet among how many does each of us distribute his life!

  5. In guarding their fortunes people are often close-fisted, yet, when it comes to wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal.

  6. I should like to question anyone from the company of older men and women and say: ‘I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard towards the term of your years;

  7. ‘Come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Consider how much time you gave to moneylenders, visitors, lovers, patrons, clients;

  8. ‘How much time you gave to wrangling with your spouse, how much in hastening about on social duties.

  9. ‘Add the diseases caused by your own acts; add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused;

10. ‘You will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count.

11. ‘Look back in memory and consider when you had a fixed plan, how few days have passed as you intended,

12. ‘How few when you were at your own disposal, how few when your face wore its natural expression, how few when your mind was unperturbed.

13. ‘Consider what little you have really achieved in so long a life,

14. ‘Consider how many have robbed you of life when you were not aware of what you were losing,

15. ‘How much was taken up in useless sorrow, in foolish joy, in greedy desire,

16. ‘In the allurements of society; see how little of yourself was left to you;

17. ‘And then you will perceive that you are dying before your season!
 

18. ‘What is the reason of this? You live as if you were destined to live for ever; no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed.

19. ‘You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply,

20. ‘Though all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last.

21. ‘You have all the fears of mortals and all the desire as if you were not mortal.

22. ‘You will hear many men saying: “After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.”

23. ‘And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it?

24. ‘Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to business?

25. ‘How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live!

26. ‘What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point which many do not even attain!’

Chapter 8

  1. Alas! it is vain to exist: all existence is vain.

  2. This vanity finds expression in the whole way in which things exist;

  3. In the infinite nature of time and space, contrasted to the finite nature of individuals;

  4. In the ever-passing present moment; in the dependence and relativity of all things;

  5. In continual becoming without ever being; in constant wishing and never being satisfied;

  6. In the long battle which forms the history of life, where every effort is checked by difficulties.

  7. Time is that in which all things pass away; it is merely the form in which we discover that effort is vain;

  8. It is the agent by which everything in our hands every moment becomes as nothing.

  9. That which has been exists no more; it exists as little as that which has never been.

10. Hence a thing of great importance now past is inferior to something of little importance now present, because the latter alone seems real.

11. A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after millions of years of non-existence:

12. He lives for a while, and then again comes an equally long period when he exists no more.

13. The heart rebels against this, and suffers at the thought.

14. Of every event in life we can say only for one moment that it is; for ever after, that it was.

15. Every evening we are poorer by a day. It makes us mad to see how rapidly our short span of time ebbs away;

16. This might lead us to believe that the greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life,

17. Because that is the only reality, all else being merely the play of thought.

18. Yet such a course might as well be called the greatest folly:

19. For that which in the next moment exists no more, and vanishes utterly, like a dream, can never be worth serious consideration.

20. The whole foundation on which our existence rests is the ever-fleeting present.

21. It lies, then, in the very nature of our existence to take the form of constant motion,

22. And to offer no possibility of our ever attaining the rest for which we are always striving.

23. We are like people running downhill, who cannot keep on their legs unless they run on, and will inevitably fall if they stop;

24. Or, again, like a pole balanced on the tip of one’s finger; or like a planet, which would fall into its sun the moment it ceased to hurry on its way.

25. Unrest is the mark of existence.

26. In a world where all is unstable, and nothing can endure, but is swept onwards at once in the hurrying whirlpool of change,

27. Where a man, if he is to keep erect at all, must always be advancing and moving, like an acrobat on a rope;

28. In such a world, happiness is inconceivable.

Chapter 9

  1. The scenes of our life are like pictures in rough mosaic: looked at closely, they produce no effect.

  2. There is nothing beautiful to be found in them, unless you stand some distance away.

  3. So, to gain anything we have longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is;

  4. And even though we are always living in expectation of better things,

  5. At the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again.

  6. We look upon the present as something to be endured while it lasts.

  7. Hence most people, if they glance back when they come to the end of life, will find that all along they have not been living, but merely waiting to live;

  8. They will be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded and allowed to pass them by unenjoyed, was the life they were expecting.

  9. Of how many people may it not be said that hope made fools of them until they danced into the arms of death!

10. Then again, how insatiable a creature is a human being! Every satisfaction attained sows the seeds of some new desire,

11. So that there is no end to the wishes of each individual will.

12. And why? Because no single thing can ever give satisfaction, but only the whole, which is endless.

13. Life presents itself as a task – the task of surviving, of maintaining life and a precarious equilibrium.

14. Thus life is a burden, and then there comes the second task of fending off despair,

15. Which, like a bird of prey, hovers over us, ready to fall wherever it sees a life secure from need.

16. The first task is to win something; the second, to banish the feeling that it has been won; otherwise it is a burden.

17. Surely, human life is a mistake. Man is a compound of needs and necessities which are hard to satisfy,

18. And even when they are satisfied, all he obtains is a state of painlessness, where nothing remains to him but the danger of boredom.

19. This is proof that existence has no value in itself; for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life?

20. If life – the craving for which is the very essence of our being – had intrinsic value, there would be no such thing as boredom:

21. Existence would satisfy us in itself, and we should want for nothing.

22. But as it is, we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something;

23. And then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us: an illusion which vanishes when we reach it.

24. When we are not occupied by thought or striving, when we cast upon existence itself,

25. Its vain and worthless nature is brought home to us; and this is the essence of nullity.

26. If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole,

27. And the generations of people as they live their little hour of mock-existence and then are swept away in rapid succession;

28. If we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, how ridiculous it seems!

29. It is like a drop of water under a microscope, a single drop teeming with small things; or a speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye.

30. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle with one another in so tiny a space!

31. And whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity is merely comic.

32. It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big. It is an indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the powerful lenses of time and space.

Chapter 10

  1. Unless suffering is the object of life, our existence must entirely fail in its aim.

  2. It is absurd to look upon the pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all.

  3. Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule.

  4. We find pleasure not nearly so pleasant as we expected, and we find pain much more painful.

  5. We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.

  6. So it is that in our good days we are all unconscious of the evil that might presently be in store for us – sickness, poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or reason.

  7. No little part of the torment of existence lies in this, that time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us take breath,

  8. But always coming after us, a taskmaster with a whip.

  9. If at any moment time stays its hand, it is only when we are delivered over to misery.

10. But misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame would burst if the pressure of the atmosphere was removed,

11. So, if people were relieved of all need and adversity, if everything they undertook were successful, they would go mad.