“Do yourself no injury, and remain honest to yourself, loving yourself most sincerely! Do no injury to yourself, but for others have only appearances, and remember how little wisdom there is in the world, and how many fools. Satisfy them with empty words: honour yourself with your heart, but others with your lips, for you will have to pay no toll for fondling them. Let others think that you place yourself much lower than them, and that you have little regard for yourself; but do not forget that your shirt is nearer to your body than your caftan!
“I will allow you to play cards, provided you know how to handle them. A game without cunning has no interest, and playing you must not sacrifice yourself to others. Whatever game you play, my son, remember not to be always honest!—Have contempt for peasants, seeing them below your feet, but let your lips proclaim the puissant as gods, and speak no surly word to them. But love none of them, no matter what their worth, though their deeds be trumpeted through the subsolar world! Give bribes, and yourself accept them! When there are no witnesses, steal and cheat as much as you please, but be wary with your misdoings in presence of witnesses! Change the good that there is in people into evil, and never say a good word of another! For what are you to gain from praising them? Indeed, their virtues put you only in a bad light. Go not out of the way to serve another, where there is no gain for you.
“Hate the learned, and despise the ignorant, and ever keep your thoughts fresh for your own advantage! Above all, beware of getting into the satire of impudent scribblers! Disturb and break the ties of families, friendship and marriage, for ’tis more convenient to fish in muddy waters. Know no love, family nor friends, for ever holding yourself alone in mind! Deceive your friends, and let them suffer through you sorrow and misfortune, if you are the winner thereby! Garner your fruits wherever you can! There are some who foolishly call it dishonest to bring woes to your friends, but they do not see that duty teaches me only to love myself, and that it is not at all dishonourable when necessity demands that others perish: it is contrary to nature not to love yourself best. Let misfortune befall my country, let it go to the nethermost regions; let everything that is not mine be ruined,—provided I have peace.
“Forget not my rules! I have left you my fortune and my wisdom. Live, my son, live as your father has lived!”
He had barely uttered these words, when he was struck by lightning, and he departed from his child and home; and the soul that had for so long been disseminating poison flew out of the body and took its flight to hell.
TO THE CORRUPTERS OF LANGUAGE
In a strange land there lived a dog in a thick forest. He deemed his citizens to be uncultured, so passed his days in the country of the wolves and bears. The dog no longer barked, but growled like a bear, and sang the songs of wolves. When he returned to the dogs, he out of reason adorned his native tongue. He mixed the growl of bears and howl of wolves into his bark, and began to speak unintelligibly to dogs. The dogs said: “We need not your new-fangled music—you only spoil our language with it”; and they began to bite him, until they killed him.
I have read the tombstone of that dog: “Never disdain your native speech, and introduce into it nothing foreign, but adorn yourself with your own beauty.”
THE HELPFUL GNAT
Six fine horses were pulling an immense carriage. The carriage would have been a heavy one without any people in it; but this enormous carriage was filled with people, and was in size a haystack. It slowly moved along, travelling not over boards, but carrying the master and his wife through heavy sand, in which it finally stuck fast. The horses’ strength gave out; the lackeys on the footboard, to save the horses and wheels, stepped down; but yet the rick did not move. The driver called to the horses: “Get up, get up!” and struck them with the whip, as if it was their guilt. He struck them hard and yelled and yelled, until he grew hoarse, while the horses were covered with foam, and steam rose from them.