The Good Book (117 page)

11. And so it is that when I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; and yes, when I walk alone in an orchard in the summer light,

12. If my thoughts have been elsewhere, they come back, and dwell on the good of that moment;

13. They come back to the orchard and the light, to the sweetness of the solitude, and to me.

14. To discover and inhabit such experiences is not only the most fundamental but the most illustrious of our occupations; without them we have not lived.

15. Truly, our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.

Chapter 4

  1. The good is two freedoms: freedom from certain hindrances and pains, freedom to choose and to act.

  2. The first is freedom from ignor­ance, fear, loneliness, folly, and the inability to master one’s emotions;

  3. The second is freedom to develop the best capacities and talents we have, and to use them for the best.

  4. The good is what lies within reach of our talents for good, which means that there are as many goods as there are such talents.

  5. There is not one single kind of good that suits and fits everyone; there are as many good lives as there are people to live them.

  6. It is false that there is only one right way to live and one right way to be,

  7. And that to find it we must obey those who claim to have the secret of a ‘one right way’ and a ‘one true good’.

  8. If there are guides to the good, one must eventually leave them behind and seek the good of one’s choice, and which suits one’s own talents.

  9. This is the ultimate responsibility: to choose, and to cultivate the talents for one’s choice.

10. But though there are many goods and many good kinds of life, the latter will share two notable characteristics:

11. The first is that those seeking them will honour affection, beauty, creativity, peace, patience, fortitude, courage;

12. Will honour self-mastery, wisdom, loyalty, justice, sympathy and kindness;

13. Will honour knowledge, truth, probity and honour itself.

14. And the greatest of what they honour will be affection: of a friend for a friend, a parent for a child, between lovers, between comrades;

15. For affection calls out to the other virtues and teaches them, and is the motive for the continuance of our kind.

16. The second is that lives in which these virtues are honoured will be regarded by those living them, and those touched by them, as good.

17. To seek the good life is an endeavour for a whole life.

18. One can improve, learn, encourage oneself, profit from failure; and still be seeking it on the last day.

Chapter 5

  1. Truly, life is short: it must be used well.

  2. The flight of time is unstoppably swift, as those see more clearly who are looking backwards.  

  3. For when we concentrate on the present we do not notice time slipping by, so quick and invisible is its passage.

  4. Do you ask the reason for this?   All past time is in the same place; it all presents the same aspect to us, it lies together; everything slips into the same abyss. 

  5. The time we spend in living is merely a point; indeed, even less than a point;

  6. But this point of time, infinitesimal as it is, nature has mocked by making it seem outwardly of longer duration.

  7. She has taken one portion of it and made it infancy, another portion childhood, another portion youth,

  8. Another the gradual incline from youth to old age, and old age itself is still another.  

  9. How many steps for how short a climb! It was only a moment ago that I saw a friend depart on a journey;

10. And yet this ‘moment ago’ makes up a large share of my existence, which is so brief.

11. We should reflect, therefore, that it will soon come to an end altogether.  

12. In other years time did not seem to go so swiftly; now, it seems fast beyond belief, perhaps, because I feel that the finish-line is moving closer to me,

13. Or it may be that I have begun to notice this at last, and to count my gains and losses.

14. For this reason it amazes me that some people give the major portion of their time to superfluous things,

15. Time which, no matter how carefully it is guarded, cannot suffice even for necessary things.  

16. If the number of my days were doubled, I would still not have time to read all the poets.

17. When a soldier is undisturbed and travelling at his ease, he can hunt for trifles along his way;

18. But when the enemy is closing in, and a command is given to quicken the pace,

19. Necessity makes him throw away everything that he picked up in moments of peace and leisure.  

Chapter 6

  1. Behold, then, the gathering clans, the fast-shut gates, and weapons whetted ready for the war!

  2. I need a stout heart to hear, without flinching, the din of time’s battle that sounds round me.  

  3. And all would rightly think me mad if, when greybeards and women were heaping up rocks for the fortifications,

  4. When the armour-clad youths inside the gates were awaiting, or even demanding, the order for a sally,

  5. When the spears of the foe were quivering in our gates and the very ground was rocking with mines and subterranean passages,  

  6. I say, they would rightly think me mad if I were to sit idle, wasting time on petty and superfluous things.

  7. And yet I may well seem in your eyes no less mad, if I spend my energies on trivialities; for even now I am in a state of siege.  

  8. And yet, in the former case it would be merely a peril from the outside that threatened me,

  9. And a wall that divided me from the foe; as it is now, death-dealing perils are in my very presence.  

10. I have no time for such nonsense; a mighty undertaking is on my hands: the summation of my life, and its value.  

11. This is when men say: ‘What am I to do? Death is on my trail, and life is fleeting away;

12. ‘Teach me something with which to face these inevitabilities.  

13. ‘Bring it to pass that I shall cease trying to escape from death, so that life may cease to escape from me.  

14. ‘Give me courage to meet hardships; make me calm in the face of the unavoidable. Relax the tight limits of the time which is allotted me.  

15. ‘Show me that the good in life does not depend on life’s length, but on the use we make of it;

16. ‘Also, that it is possible, or rather usual, for a man who has lived long to have lived too little.  

17. ‘Say to me that I am mistaken if I think that only on an ocean voyage is there a very slight space between life and death.  

18. ‘No, the distance between is just as narrow everywhere. It is not everywhere that death shows itself so near at hand; yet everywhere it is as near at hand.      

19. ‘Rid me of these shadowy terrors; then you will more easily deliver to me the instruction for which I have prepared myself.  

20. ‘At our birth nature made us teachable, and gave us reason, not perfect, but capable of being perfected.  

21. ‘Discuss for me justice, duty, thrift and virtue. If you will only refuse to lead me along by-paths, I shall more easily reach the goal at which I aim.   For the language of truth is simple.’

Chapter 7

  1. If we indulge in nothing but a life of indolence and luxury, the life of the degenerate who thinks that labour is the worst of evils and freedom from toil the height of happiness,

  2. Then it will happen that the day will come, and speedily, when we shall be unworthy of ourselves,

  3. And with the loss of honour will come the loss of all we hold dear.

  4. To have been valiant once is not enough; no man can keep his valour unless he watches over it to the end.

  5. As the arts decay through neglect, as the body, once healthy and alert, grows weak through sloth and indolence,

  6. Even so the powers of the mind, temperance, self-control and courage, if we grow slack in training, fall back once more to uselessness.

  7. We must watch ourselves; we must not surrender to the temptations of laxity that go far beyond rest or pleasure.

  8. It is a great work to make a life that is good for ourselves and our fellows, but a far greater to keep it good.

  9. To make a good life takes dedication, but to keep it so is impossible without self-restraint, self-command and thoughtfulness.

10. We must not forget this; we must learn the lesson that our enjoyment of good things is in proportion to the pains we undergo for them.

11. Toil is the seasoning of delight; without desire and longing, no dish, however costly, could be sweet.

12. Therefore let us strain every nerve to win and to keep nobility of mind.

13. For what excuse could we offer for becoming unworthy of ourselves, if our very success at attaining the good made us so?

14. Are idleness, thoughtlessness, cowardice, then, the adjuncts of happiness? No: let us watch over ourselves, and maintain the good we have attained;

15. Let us encourage ourselves in the pursuit and keeping of all that is beautiful and brave.

16. And furthermore let us educate our children according to these precepts, if children are born to us,

17. For we cannot but become better ourselves if we strive to set the best example we can to our children,

18. And our children could hardly grow up to be unworthy, even if they wished,

19. When they see nothing base before them, and hear nothing shameful,

20. But live in the practice of all that is beautiful and good.

Chapter 8

  1. Shall we ask, by what commandments should we live?

  2. Or might we better ask, each of ourselves:

  3. What kind of person should I be?

  4. The first question assumes that there is one right answer.

  5. The second assumes that there are many right answers.

  6. If we ask how to answer the second question, we are answered in yet other questions:

  7. What should you do when you see another suffering, or in need, afraid, or hungry?

  8. What causes are worthy, what world do you dream of where your child plays safely in the street?

  9. There are many such questions, some already their own answer, some unanswerable.

10. But when all the answers to all the questions are summed together, no one hears less than this:

11. Love well, seek the good in all things, harm no others, think for yourself, take responsibility, respect nature, do your utmost, be informed, be kind, be courageous: at least, sincerely try.

12. Add to these ten injunctions, this: O friends, let us always be true to ourselves and to the best in things, so that we can always be true to one another.

Chapter 9

  1. Seek always for the good that abides. There can be none except as the mind finds it within itself;

  2. Wisdom alone affords everlasting and peace-giving joy, for then, even if some obstacle arises,

  3. It is only like an intervening cloud, which floats beneath the sun but never prevails against it.

  4. When will you attain this joy? It will begin when you think for yourself,

  5. When you truly take responsibility for your own life,

  6. When you join the fellowship of all who have stood up as free individ­uals and said,

  7. ‘We are of the company of those who seek the true and the right, and live accordingly;

  8. ‘In our human world, in the short time we each have,

  9. ‘We see our duty to make and find something good for ourselves and our companions in the human predicament.’

10. Let us help one another, therefore; let us build the city together,

11. Where the best future might inhabit, and the true promise of humanity be realised at last.

The Good Book
is made from over a thousand texts by several hundred authors and from collections and anonymous traditions, among the most drawn upon being:

Abulfazi, Aeschylus, Anacreontia, Antisthenes, Aristotle, Aurelius, Bacon, Baudelaire, Bayle, Bentham, Beyle, Boyle, Buonarotti, Carvaka, Cato, Catullus, Chaucer, Chesterfield, Cicero, Clemens, Condillac, Condorcet, Confucius, Constant, Cowley, Cowper, Cuihao, d’Alembert, Darwin, Demosthenes, d’Holbach, Diderot, Dryden, Dufu, Emerson, Epictetus, Epicurus, Euripides, folklore, folktales, Gellius, Godwin, Goethe, Grayling, Greek anthology, Hafiz, Harrington, Hazlitt, Herodotus, Herrick, Hobbes, Homer, Horace, Hume, Huxley, Jefferson, Jonson, Juvenal, Kant, Kautilya, Laozi, Libai, Liuyuxi, Locke, Lovelace, Lucretius, Lysias, Machiavelli, Marmontel, Martial, Menander, Mencius, Mill, Milton, Montaigne, Montesquieu, Mozi, Naevius, Nerval, Newton, Nietzsche, Ovid, Paine, Pater, Petrarch, Plato, Pliny, Plutarch, Polybius, Propertius, Rimbaud, Rousseau, Rumi, Sainte-Beuve, Sallust, Sappho, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Seneca, Shaftesbury, Shangguanyi, Shijing, Sophocles, Spinoza, Suetonius, Sully-Prudhomme, Sunzi, Swift, Tacitus, Terence, Thomson, Thucydides, Tibullus, traditional, Turgot, Valery, Vergil, Verlaine, Voltaire, Walpole, Wangbo, Wangwei, Xenophon, Zhuxi.