XCII
Prostitutes
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Behold the women that desire a man for the sake of his gold and not for the sake of love: their cajoleries will lead only to misery.
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Behold the women who speak honeyed words, but whose thoughts are ever fixed on their own profit: consider their ways and keep them at a distance.
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The prostitute pretendeth love when she embraceth her lover: but in her heart she feeleth even as one who hath touched a stranger dead body in a dark room.
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Behold the men whose hearts are inclined to deeds of purity: they defile themselves not with the touch of harlots.
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Behold the men who add deep study to a clear understanding: they defile themselves not with the touch of women whose charms are free to all.
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Behold the men that have a regard for their own good: they touch not the hand of wantons who put up their lewd charms for sale.
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Behold the men who are light-minded: they will seek the women who embrace with the body while their heart is somewhere else.
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Behold the men who have not a discriminating understanding: the embraces of wily women are to them even as the fascination of the siren of the solitudes.34
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The soft arms of the well-decked harlot are the filthy ditch wherein contemptible fools drown themselves.
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Women of two hearts, drink, and the dice-table, these are the delights of men when fortune forsaketh them.
XCIII
Abstaining from Drink
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Behold the men who are addicted to drink: they will never be feared by their enemies, and even the glory they have acquired they will lose.
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Let none drink: but if they desire, let those men drink who care not for the esteem of worthy men.
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The sight of the man who is intoxicated is an abomination even unto his own mother: what must it be then to the worthy?
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Behold the man who is addicted to the low vice of drunkenness: the fair one called Shame turneth her back upon him.
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It is the veriest idiocy to spend one’s substance and obtain in return only insensibility.
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Behold the men who drink the poison called toddy day after day: they are as men that are asleep, neither do they differ from dead men.
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Behold the men who drink in secret and pass their days in torpid insensibility: their neighbours will soon find them out, and hold them in utter contempt.
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Let not the drunkard pretend, saying, I know not even what it is to be drunk: for thereby he would merely add falsehood to his other vice.
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Behold the man who reproveth one who is intoxicated: he is like a man who searcheth torch in hand one who is immersed under water.
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The man who seeth while he is sober the drunken state of another man, cannot he picture to himself his own state when he is drunk?
XCIV
Gambling
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Take not to gambling even if thou win: for thy wins are even as the baited hook that the fish swalloweth.
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Behold the gamblers who lose a hundred where they gain but one: is there forsooth a way even for them to thrive in the world?
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If a man bet constantly over dice, his substance will only go into stranger hands.
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Nothing bringeth on wretchedness so surely as gambling: for it killeth a man’s good name and driveth his heart to every ignoble deed.
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Many there have been who were proud of their skill in the throwing of dice and were mad after the gambling-house: but there hath not been a single man of them that did not come to grief.
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Behold the men that are blinded by the Genius of Wretchedness who cometh in the form of a passion for gambling: they will starve and suffer every misery.
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If thou throw away thy time at the gambling-house, thy inheritance will be consumed and thy fair name will be wiped out.
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Gambling will consume thy substance and corrupt thy honesty: it will harden thy heart and bring on thee misery.
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Glory, learning, wealth, and even food and clothing will depart from the man who betaketh himself to gambling.
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The passion for gambling increaseth with the losses incurred in the bettings: even so doth the craving of the soul for life grow with the griefs that it suffereth therein.
XCV
Medicine
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Every one of the three humours described by sages, beginning with the windy one,35 would cause disease whenever they go to either extreme.
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The body requireth no medicine if new food is eaten only after the old food is fully digested.
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Eat with moderation and after the food that thou hast taken is digested: that is the way to prolong thy days.
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Wait till thy food is digested and thy appetite is keen: then eat moderately the food that agreeth with thee.
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If thou eat abstemiously the food that doth not disagree with thee thou wilt have no troubles in the body.
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Even as Health seeketh the man who eateth only when his stomach is empty, even so doth Disease seek the man who eateth to excess.
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Behold the man who glutteth himself foolishly beyond the measure of his internal heat: his diseases will exceed all measure.
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Consider the disease and its origin and the means of curing it: and then set about the cure with every precaution.
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Let the physician take the measure of the patient and the disease and the season that is: and then let him undertake the cure.
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The patient, the physician, the medicine, and the apothecary, on these four doth all cure depend: and four again are the attributes of each of them.36
Section III
Miscellaneous
XCVI
Respectability of Birth
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Rectitude and a sense of shame come by nature only to men who are born of a good family.
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Men of family fall not from three things, namely, correct conduct, truth, and a sense of
