The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

esse possimus: “That use and exercise are necessary to make us good reasoners about what is our duty.” (De Officiis.) ↩

What it is in nature. כפי מה שהואבוא: “According to what the thing is,” to use Maimonides’s words. And thus that in Arrian is true, Νόμος βιωτικός ἐστιν ούτος, το ἀκόλουθον τῇ φύσει πράττειν: “The rule of life is, to do whatever is agreeable to nature.” (Discourses of Epictetus.) Omni in re quid sit veri, videre et tueri decet: “We ought to find out and to maintain what is true, about everything.” (Cicero, De Officiis.) This is indeed the way of truth. ↩

Because there is scarce anything which one or other will not say. Quid enim dici potest de illo, qui nigram dixit esse nivem, etc.: “What can we say of a man that affirms black to be white, etc.” (Lactantius, Divine Institutes.) ↩

Conveniet cùm in dando munificum esse, tum in exigendo non acerbum:⁠ ⁠… à litibus verò quantùm liceat, et nescio an paulo plus etiam quàm liceat, abhorrentem.⁠ ⁠… Habenda autem est ratio rei familiaris, quam quidem dilabi finere flagitiosum est: “It is but reasonable that we should be liberal in giving, and not severe in our demands:⁠ ⁠… we should be averse to any contention, as far as is lawful, nay I don’t know if we should not go a little farther.⁠ ⁠… But we must have regard to our own private circumstances, for it is a wicked thing in us to hurt them.” (Cicero, De Officiis.) ↩

Τὸν φιλέοντ᾿ ἐπὶ δαῖτα καλεῖν, τον δ᾿ έχθρὸν ἐᾶσαι: “Invite your friend to supper, but let your enemy alone.” (Hesiod, Works and Days.) ↩

Τὸ πένεσθαι οὐκ ὀμολογεῖν τινὶ αἰσχρόν, ἀλλὰ μὴ διαφεύγειν ἔργῳ αἴσχιον: “For a poor man not to own himself to be poor is a base thing; but for him not to endeavor to be otherwise is a baser thing still.” (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.) ↩

For ἔργον δ᾿ οὐδὲν ὄνειδος: “no endeavor is any reproach.” (Hesiod, Works and Days.) ↩

Suum cuique incommodum ferendum est potius, quam de alterius commodis detrahendum: “Every man ought to bear the evils he is under, rather than deprive others of their advantages.” (Cicero, De Officiis.) According to Plato, a man should choose to die, πρὸ τοῦ ἀδικεῖν, “rather than do an unjust thing.” ↩

Οὕτω καὶ ἰατρὸς νοσοῦντα ἐξαπατᾷ,⁠ ⁠… καὶ δεινὸν οὐδέν: “Thus a physician deceives a sick person,⁠ ⁠… and there is nothing shocking in it.” (Maximus Tyrius, Dissertations.) ↩

To that question, Si quis ad te confugiat, qui mendacio tuo possit à morte liberari, non es mentiturus? “If a man should come to you who should be saved from death by your telling a lie, would you tell one?” St. Augustine answers in the negative, and concludes, Restat ut nunquam boni mentiantur.⁠ ⁠… Quanto fortiùs, quanto excellentiùs dices, nec prodam, nec mentiar: “It remains then that good men should never tell a lie.⁠ ⁠… How much more courageous, how much better is it to say: I will neither betray him nor tell a lie.” (De Mendacio.) ↩

In such pressing cases, under imminent danger, the world is wont to make great allowances. Οὐκ αἰσχρὸν ἡγῇ δῆτα τὰ ψευδῆ λέγειν;⁠ ⁠… Οὐκ, ἐι τὸ σωθῆναί γε τὸ ψεῦδος φέρει: “Is it not then a base thing to say what is false?⁠ ⁠… No, not if the falsity will save anyone.” (Sophocles, Philoctetes.) Even they, who say, השח שיחה בטלה עובר במעשה: “that he who speaks falsehood transgresses indeed,” and, עשה לדבר אמת אפילו במילי דעלמא: “that it is a positive precept to speak the truth in common discourse;” and, חמשקר כאלו עובד ע״ז: “that a liar is like an idolater;” say also, אבל לשים שלום מותר: “that it is better to preserve peace.” (Eliezer Azkari, Sefer Haredim and various places.) And Aben Ezra says of Abraham, דחה אבימלך בדברים כפי צורך השעה: “that he urged Abimelech with such words as the necessity of that time required.” (Commentary on the Torah on Genesis 20:12.) In short, some have permitted, in desperate cases, mendacio tanquam veneno uti, “to make use of a lie as you do of poison.” (Sextus the Pythogorean, Sentences of Sextus.) ↩

אסור⁠ ⁠… לשבר כליו בחמתו וכו׳: “It is forbidden⁠ ⁠… to break your own vessels in your anger.” (Judah ben Samuel, Sefer Hasidim.) ↩

Who does not detest that thought of Caligula, de Homeri carminibus abolendis, etc.? about destroying Homer’s verses, etc. (Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars.) ↩

The Stoics must certainly therefore be much too scrupulous, when they affirm (if they were in earnest), that οὐδὲ τὸν δάκτυλον ὡς ἔτυχε σαλεύειν τῷ σοφῷ ὁ λόγος ἐπιτρέπει: “reason commands a wise man, not so much as to move his fingers, as it were by chance.” (Clemens Alexandrinus, Paedagogus.) Especially since this is, at least ordinarily, a thing perfectly indifferent by proposition IX. ↩

Tu si hic sis, aliter sentias: “You would be of another opinion, if you were in my circumstances.” (Terence, The Andrian.) ↩

Felicitas cui præcipua fuerit homini, non est humani judicii: cùm prosperitatem ipsam alius alio modo, et suopte ingenio quisque terminet: “No man can judge what the happiness of another man consists in; because some make their happiness to consist in one thing, and some in another, according to their several dispositions.”