Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 13.djvu/54

 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished, neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.”

And this is what the Indian wisdom says:

Sakya-Muni, a young, happy prince, from whom have been concealed diseases, old age, and death, drives out for pleasure, when he sees a terrible, toothless, slavering old man. The prince, from whom old age has heretofore been concealed, is surprised, and he asks the charioteer what that is, and why that man has come to such a wretched, loathsome state? And when he learns that that is the common fate of all men, that he, the youthful prince, has inevitably the same in store, he cannot proceed in his pleasure drive, but gives order to be driven home, in order to consider that. Evidently he finds some consolation, for he again drives out cheerful and happy. But this time he meets a sick man. He sees an emaciated, livid, shivering man, with blurred eyes. The prince, from whom diseases have been concealed, stops and asks what that is. And when he learns that that is sickness, to which all men are subject, and that he himself, a healthy and happy prince, may be as sick as that on the morrow, he again has no courage to amuse himself, orders himself driven home, and again looks for consolation, which he evidently finds, for he has himself driven out a third time; but this third time he sees again a new spectacle,—he sees that something is carried by. “What is that?”—A dead man. “What does a dead man mean?” asks the prince. He is told that to become dead means to become what that man is. The prince goes up to the corpse, and takes off the shroud and looks at him.