They asked him, "Why do you not join us in this discussion?" He replied,
"Such ministers of state are like physicians, and a physician will
prescribe a medicine only to a sick man; accordingly, so long as I see
that your opinions are judicious, it were ill-judged in me to obtrude a
word.--While business can proceed without my interference, it does not
behoove me to speak on the subject; but were I to see a blind man
walking into a pit, I would be much to blame if I remained silent."


XXXIX

When he reduced the kingdom of Misr, or Egypt, to obedience,
Harun-al-Rashid said, "In contempt of that impious rebel (Pharaoh), who,
in his pride of the sovereignty of Egypt, boasted a divinity, I will
bestow its government only on the vilest of my slaves." He had a negro
bondsman, called Khosayib, preciously stupid, and him he appointed to
rule over Egypt. They tell us that his judgment and understanding were
such, that when a body of farmers complained to him, saying, "We had
planted some cotton shrubs on the banks of the Nile, and the rains came
unseasonably, and swept them all away;"--he replied, "You ought to sow
wool, that it might not be swept away!" A good and holy man heard this,
and said: "Were our fortune to be increased in proportion to our
knowledge, none could be scantier than the share of the fool; but
fortune will bestow such wealth upon the ignorant as shall astonish a
hundred of the learned. Power and fortune depend not on knowledge, they
are obtained only through the aid of heaven; for it has often happened
in this world that the illiterate are honored, and the wise held in
scorn. The fool in his idleness found a treasure under a ruin; the
chemist, or projector, fell the victim of disappointment and chagrin."