GhazzaUs Alchemy of Happiness. 121 



and servants, and should open his coffers and spend his 

 property for his own pleasures. Suppose farther that he 

 should even be consulting with the prince's enemy who has 

 designs upon the principality, and should enter into a com- 

 pact with him. Just at this point the prince from a con- 

 cealed retreat espies his conduct in his family, and learns 

 how he has wasted his money and his possessions, and in 

 short becomes acquainted with everything he has done. 

 The man also learns that for some time the prince has 

 been aware of his course of conduct, but that the reason of 

 his delaying and postponing punishment was that he might 

 see what other crimes he would commit, that he might pun- 

 ish him accordingly. In these circumstances the reflecting 

 can easily appreciate what would be the confusion and mor- 

 tification of this individual. He would think it a thousand 

 times better to fall from a precipice and be dashed to pieces, 

 or that the earth should open and he sink into the abyss, 

 than that he should continue to live. So also is it with you. 

 How many actions you perform, of which you say, "it is in 

 private and no one sees it," or of which Satan cloaks over 

 the guilt from your mind, by persuading you that it is all 

 right and fair. But at last, when death comes and makes 

 your sin manifest, then the fire of ignominy and shame 

 makes you captive to fierce torments and long continued 

 misery. . . . 



Suppose you should throw a stone over against a wall, 

 and some one should come and inform you that the stone 

 had hit your own house, and had put out the eye of your 

 son. When you rush to your house and find that it is even 

 so, can you conceive of the fire of repentance and anguish 

 you will have to meet ? . . . 



Nor can the overwhelming nature of the remorse or the 

 pain of the punishment be compared with the pain of put- 

 ting out your son's eye, because the former is eternal. 

 The pains and sorrows of the world are but for a few days 



Trans. viii.~\ 16 



