In fact, if you help a man in anything which has to do with a fault of the body, he takes it very kindly, and sets about mending matters.  If any one helps another to rectify a fault of the heart, he has to deal with a man in the dark, who flies in a rage, and does not care to amend.  How out of tune all this is!  And yet there are men who are bewildered up to this point.  Nor is this a special and extraordinary failing.  This mistaken perception of the great and the small, of colour and of substance, is common to us all—­to you and to me.

Please give me your attention.  The form strikes the eye; but the heart strikes not the eye.  Therefore, that the heart should be distorted and turned awry causes no pain.  This all results from the want of sound judgment; and that is why we cannot afford to be careless.

The master of a certain house calls his servant Chokichi, who sits dozing in the kitchen.  “Here, Chokichi!  The guests are all gone; come and clear away the wine and fish in the back room.”

Chokichi rubs his eyes, and with a sulky answer goes into the back room, and, looking about him, sees all the nice things paraded on the trays and in the bowls.  It’s wonderful how his drowsiness passes away:  no need for any one to hurry him now.  His eyes glare with greed, as he says, “Hullo! here’s a lot of tempting things!  There’s only just one help of that omelette left in the tray.  What a hungry lot of guests!  What’s this?  It looks like fish rissoles;” and with this he picks out one, and crams his mouth full; when, on one side, a mess of young cuttlefish, in a Chinese[97] porcelain bowl, catches his eyes.  There the little beauties sit in a circle, like Buddhist priests in religious meditation!  “Oh, goodness! how nice!” and just as he is dipping his finger and thumb in, he hears his master’s footstep; and knowing that he is doing wrong, he crams his prize into the pocket of his sleeve, and stoops down to take away the wine-kettle and cups; and as he does this, out tumble the cuttlefish from his sleeve.  The master sees it.

[Footnote 97:  Curiosities, such as porcelain or enamel or carved jade from China, are highly esteemed by the Japanese.  A great quantity of the porcelain of Japan is stamped with counterfeit Chinese marks of the Ming dynasty.]

“What’s that?”

Chokichi, pretending not to know what has happened, beats the mats, and keeps on saying, “Come again the day before yesterday; come again the day before yesterday."[98]

[Footnote 98:  An incantation used to invite spiders, which are considered unlucky by the superstitious, to come again at the Greek Kalends.]