BOOK III. XIX. 3-XX. 3
we blame ourselves, and bear in mind that nothing but judgement is responsible for the disturbance of our peace of mind and our inconstancy, I swear to you by all the gods that we have been making progress. But as it is, we have taken a different course from the start. Even while we were still children, our nurse, if ever we bumped into something, when we were going along with our mouths open, did not scold us, but used to beat the stone. Why, what did the stone do? Ought it to have moved out of the road because of your childish folly? 5And again, if we when children don't find something to eat after our bath, our attendant never checks our appetite, but he cudgels the cook. Man, we didn't make you the cook's attendant, did we? but our child's. Correct him, help him. So, even when we have grown up, we look like children. For it is being a child to be unmusical in things musical, to he unlettered in things literary, to be uneducated in life.
CHAPTER XX
That it is possible to derive advantage from everything external
In the case of our intellectual impressions practically all men have agreed that the good and the evil are in ourselves, and not in externals. Nobody calls the statement that it is day, good, or that it is night, bad, and the greatest of evils, the statement that three is four. But what? They call knowledge good, and error evil; so that even in regard to what is false there arises a good, that is, the knowledge
