What is the cause of assenting to anything? The fact that it appears to be true. It is not possible then to assent to that which appears not to be true. Why? Because this is the nature of the understanding, to incline to the true, to be dissatisfied with the false, and in matters uncertain to withhold assent. What is the proof of this? “Imagine, if you can, that it is now night.” It is not possible. “Take away your persuasion that it is day.” It is not possible. “Persuade yourself or take away your persuasion that the stars are even in number.” It is impossible. When, then, any man assents to that which is false, be assured that he did not intend to assent to it as false, for every soul is unwillingly deprived of the truth, as Plato says; but the falsity seemed to him to be true. Well, in acts what have we of the like kind as we have here truth or falsehood? We have the fit and the not fit, the profitable and the unprofitable, that which is suitable to a person and that which is not, and whatever is like these. Can, then, a man think that a thing is useful to him and not choose it? He cannot. How says Medea?
“’Tis true I know what evil I shall do,
But passion overpowers the better council.’”
She thought that to indulge her passion and take vengeance on her husband was more profitable than to spare her children. “It was so; but she was deceived.” Show her plainly that she is deceived, and she will not do it; but so long as you do not show it, what can she follow except that which appears to herself? Nothing else. Why, then, are you angry with the unhappy woman that she has been bewildered about the most important things, and is become a viper instead of a human creature? And why not, if it is possible, rather pity, as we pity the blind and the lame, those who are blinded and maimed in the faculties which are supreme?
Whoever, then, clearly remembers this, that to man the measure of every act is the appearance — whether the thing appears good or bad: if good, he is free from blame; if bad, himself suffers the penalty, for it is impossible that he who is deceived can be one person, and he who suffers another person — whoever remembers this will not be angry with any man, will not be vexed at any man, will not revile or blame any man, nor hate nor quarrel with any man.
“So then all these great and dreadful deeds have this origin, in the appearance?” Yes, this origin and no other. The Iliad is nothing else than appearance and the use of appearances. It appeared to Paris to carry off the wife of Menelaus: it appeared to Helen to follow him. If then it had appeared to Menelaus to feel that it was a gain to be deprived of such a wife, what would have happened? Not only a wi would the Iliad have been lost, but the Odyssey also. “On so small a matter then did such great things depend?” But what do you mean by such great things? Wars and civil commotions, and the destruction of many men and cities. And what great matter is this? “Is it nothing?” But what great matter is the death of many oxen, and many sheep, and many nests of swallows or storks being burnt or destroyed? “Are these things, then, like those?” Very like. Bodies of men are destroyed, and the bodies of oxen and sheep; the dwellings of men are burnt, and the nests of storks. What is there in this great or dreadful? Or show me what is t............