Nine Books on the Nature of Things

How often, I ask, does a person in such a plight speak to himself like this: “What have I done? Into what ruin have I thrown myself by so shamefully wasting the property I gathered and acquired? Who will restore it? If I recover what was lost, I shall adopt a very different way of life. I shall learn wisdom through my own loss and make amends for wrongdoing with sounder judgement.” Yet you should know that nobody gains wisdom through his own loss. To learn through one’s own loss is foolish and animal. The wise learn from another’s example, not their own. Whoever has squandered his property once will squander it again; whoever has been ruined once will be ruined again; whoever has thrown the dice once throws them again; whoever has stolen once and escaped the gallows attempts theft a second time. He thinks: “My attempt succeeded once and twice; why should it not succeed a third and fourth time? If God once restored what was lost, he will restore it a second and third time. If I was not abandoned in my first misery, neither shall I be abandoned in the second or third.” All this is done by the animal person, the servant and slave of the stars, driven and pushed about by them like a reed in the waves. This is also why he must spend his life in misery and die in disgrace. Who, then, would endure that foul servitude and not disentangle himself from so squalid a prison? Anyone can tear himself out and become free by his own wisdom, aided by his star. Consider it this way. A fowler relying on his own prudence and overcoming another star with the aid of his own need not pursue birds: they follow him, flying to unfamiliar places even against their nature. So fish swim of their own accord to the fisherman who attends to the wisdom God has given him, even allowing themselves to be caught by hand. A hunter employing his wisdom compels beasts by his star so that he need not pursue them; they pursue him, even without nature’s bidding or impulse. So too with other living creatures.