BOOK I. XXVIII. 4-10
a man assents to a falsehood, rest assured that it was not his wish to assent to it as false; "for every soul is unwillingly deprived of the truth," as Plato says[1]; 5it only seemed to him that the false was true. Well now, in the sphere of actions what have we corresponding to the true and the false here in the sphere of perceptions? Duty and what is contrary to duty, the profitable and the unprofitable, that which is appropriate to me and that which is not appropriate to me, and whatever is similar to these. "Cannot a man, then, think that something is profitable to him, and yet not choose it?" He cannot. How of her who says.
Now, now, I learn what horrors I intend:
But passion overmastereth sober thought?[2]
It is because the very gratification of her passion and the taking of vengeance on her husband she regards as more profitable than the saving of her children. "Yes, but she is deceived." Show her clearly that she is deceived, and she will not do it; but so long as you do not show it, what else has she to follow but that which appears to her to be true? Nothing. Why, then, are you angry with her, because the poor woman has gone astray in the greatest matters, and has been transformed from a human being into a viper? Why do you not, if anything, rather pity her? As we pity the blind and the halt, why do we not pity those who have been made blind and halt in their governing faculties?
10Whoever, then, bears this clearly in mind, that the measure of man's every action is the impression of his senses (now this impression may be formed
- ↑ A rather free paraphrase of Plato, Sophistes, 228 C.
- ↑ Euripides, Medea, 1078-1079; translated by Way.
