When
we have meat before us and such eatables we receive the impression,
that this is the dead body of a fish, and this is the dead body of a
bird or of a pig; and again, that this Falernian is only a little
grape juice, and this purple robe some sheep's wool dyed with the
blood of a shell-fish: such then are these impressions, and they
reach the things themselves and penetrate them, and so we see what
kind of things they are. Just in the same way ought we to act all
through life, and where there are things which appear most worthy of
our approbation, we ought to lay them bare and look at their
worthlessness and strip them of all the words by which they are
exalted. For outward show is a wonderful perverter of the reason, and
when thou art most sure that thou art employed about things worth thy
pains, it is then that it cheats thee most. Consider then what Crates
says of Xenocrates himself.
(podcast episode) (original Greek)
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