If You Live to a Hundred Years, Perhaps You Will Find Time for Repentance; but If You Do Not Even Reach a Hundred Minutes, Behold, It Befits You to Be Ever Corrected and Repentant
The Wise Man: Behold, I have listened in silence and in peace to the reckoning you have made. Now, then, listen to me also, that I may show you another reckoning, for your reckoning resembles the saying: „You are selling the fish still swimming in the pond.” And once I have shown you my reckoning as well, let other sensible men see it too, and whichever they judge to be better, that one I shall keep, and to that one we shall all have to hold.
Set a Right Reckoning at the Foundation of Your Life
The World: Show me, then, what reckoning you speak of?
Our Days Are Seventy Years; and If We Be in Strength, Eighty; and Beyond These, Incurable Sickness
The Wise Man: Here is my reckoning: when a man reaches the age of eighty, whoever sees him calls him blessed, saying: „Ah, blessed is this man, and good fortune he has had, for he has fulfilled the measure of his life and reached deep old age.”
Every man, then, desires to reach only this age, knowing that if he goes beyond it he is struck by every kind of pain and sickness, as the Psalmist David sang: „Our days are seventy years, and if we be in strength, eighty years, and what is beyond these is toil and sorrow” (Ps. 89:10). Now, then, let us make a better reckoning: you have said that I am eighty years old, and that, having reached this point, I should reckon whether I have truly lived these years I have mentioned, or not. Take heed: within these eighty years I make seven divisions, that is, I distinguish seven ages, namely: infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth, maturity, hoary age, and old age. Within these seven parts of life, then, are contained the eighty years.
I say further that of these eighty years I was alive for only forty, and dead for another forty — a true reckoning, without error, because within twenty-four hours the sun makes one full turning (twelve hours of darkness, that is, night, and twelve hours of light, that is, day); so I say that by day I live, and by night I die, that is, by day I am alive and by night dead, for sleeping in bed I am just like one lying in a coffin, losing my mind and my senses, not seeing with my eyes, not hearing with my ears, not smelling with my nose, not tasting with my taste, especially since all the organs of the body grow numb and stiff, so that, sunk in my bedding, I am like one buried in the grave: he covered with earth, I wrapped in a blanket; he between the four boards of the coffin, I between the four walls of the house. The soul of the dead man is alive, and just as alive remains my own soul; but just as, when I sleep, only my arteries throb and pulse as a sign that I shall awaken, so too for the dead man the living words of Holy Scripture are proven true, that he shall rise again; and in this way we shall both arise: he from the grave, and I from my bed, he from the coffin, and I from the house.
As you see, there is no difference between us, so that I was alive for only forty years and dead for forty. Only forty years, then, remain to me of life. Let us now reckon whether I have lived these forty years in full, or not. Let us then divide these forty years among the seven ages of man, that I may then know what kind of life and what kind of living I had at each of these ages, and that I may make you too, O world, understand this.
First, the age of infancy. In my view, during the seven years of this age one does not lead a full life, for the one who truly lives knows what he does, understands what he sees, comprehends what he hears, discerns good from evil, speaks, walks, and possesses reason. But all these are lacking in the infant, that is, in that age which has no knowledge of any of them. Behold, then, that in infancy I was as though I had not been; in this way, of true life only thirty-three years remain to me.
There follows at once the age of childhood, which rises up to fourteen years. As far as I recall of this age, so full of lack, I was alive then too, but I was not yet man. First of all, because it is given to man to know faith, law and dogma, good and evil, and to procure for himself food and drink.
I have named, first, faith, that is, to believe, to know, to be aware that God exists and that He made all things visible and invisible; second, law and dogma, that is, to know the things from which we must abstain and those which we must keep; third, food and drink, that is, to be able to plow and sow, to work the vineyard and engage in trade, all of these being necessary for man’s provision. But at this age I was lacking in all these things, especially because I did not know that God exists; though in church I professed this, I did not know what I was speaking of or of whom I was making profession, and of what benefit that profession was to me I did not know.
It seems to me, moreover, that not only I, but human nature in general, presents itself in the same way. And should you say that some, even from the age of childhood, possess something of the knowledge of a mature man, I do not deny it, for God, the Father of lights, who sends down perfect graces, is able to accomplish this too — and not only with human nature, but with the nature of animals as well. Thus, once, Balaam’s donkey recognized the angel of God, while Balaam himself did not recognize him (Num. 22:27-33); or the hungry lions understood that Daniel was God’s prophet and did him no harm; and the fire of the furnace in Babylon perceived that the three children were innocent, so that the nature of fire, which consumes not only wood but even stones, could not burn or harm in the least the tender, soft flesh of those little children (Dan. 3:23).
Many other wonders has He wrought and shown, countless in number and immeasurable in greatness, inaccessible to human nature; but because of individual and common nature, and especially because of my own nature, in the age of childhood and under the conditions mentioned above, I understood nothing, I knew not even a small part of them. Therefore, whoever has no knowledge and is ignorant both of God and of himself, and does not understand why he was born, what he is and who he is, is not man but an animal or something else, irrational and senseless, like wood, stone, and the rest. For of all the other things there are in the world — animals, timber, stones, birds, fish — it is not said that they do not exist, but that they exist, yet they are not called men, but each is named after its own image, likeness and kind.
So it was with me too — not that I did not exist, for I did exist, but I had, as it were, only the shape and likeness of a man, without being a man in full, and I resembled (not in shape, but in judgment) an animal more than a man. Therefore, rather than say I lived like an animal, I would rather say that I did not live even a single day; and rather than say I lived with the form of a man and the nature of a beast, I would rather call myself dead, without the breath of life; in this way, behold, my life has been reduced to twenty-seven years.
Within these twenty-seven years are contained the other five ages: adolescence, youth, manhood, hoary age, and old age. The first of these is adolescence, which runs from fourteen to twenty-one years — though by my reckoning, up to seventeen years it still belongs to the nature of childhood, so that until a man reaches the age of seventeen, that is, until, as they say, his moustache begins to appear, he is still called a child (for in Latin this age is called pubertas, from pubes, the name of the hair that first grows on the moustache and beard). Thus the entire age of the adolescent, up to seventeen years, is governed by much the same childlike knowledge, and resembles in every way the age of the child (except when he sets his mind right through instruction), as blessed David also confirms, saying: „Remember not, O Lord, the sins of my youth” (Ps. 24:7 [25:7]), because being young he did not know what he did, but did what he did not know.
By this reckoning, then, I have lost five more years of my life, and thus it has been reduced to twenty-three years. I will now subtract three more years from the three ages that remain to me, reckoning those lost to sicknesses and troubles, in prisons, in captivity, or in the lack of freedom. For the poor man who lies sick cannot be certain he will recover, and likewise, being in prison and in need, he cannot know for certain whether he will escape; this state is called „half life and half death”; and not only this, but any hard and unbearable life will be so reckoned by any man of sound mind, that is, not life but death, not freedom but imprisonment, not ease and peace but torment and toil, and he will liken it to these, because where there is torment, there is no life, but death. This is why eternal torment, too, is called death.
Behold, then, that out of eighty years, my whole life amounts to twenty. But had I been given sixty years to live, only fifteen would remain; of forty, only ten; and of twenty, only five years.
Now, O swiftly passing world, remember that you told me to give you, out of each week, at least one day to do your will and to go rolling about in your delights. But you have seen that, according to your own right and true reckoning, of the eighty years, only twenty have I found to be truly mine. Twenty years means a thousand weeks, and taking one day out of each week makes a thousand days; a thousand days amount to two years and two hundred and seventy days. But in so short and so little time, with what kind of revelry could I possibly delight and disport myself?
Rather than heed you and be left with only this, it is far better not to heed you and be left even without this. And better still is it that we part and withdraw from one another. Therefore let anyone who is discerning and anyone who has a mind reflect and reckon with prudence and with a whole mind, as a wise man, and in great detail, that, taking into account the delights of eighty years and the pleasures of the world, I have found only two years and two hundred and seventy days; but for one who will live forty years, only one year and one hundred and thirty-five days will remain, and so on, as I have said, for one who will have fewer years, even less time will remain.
But whether it be much time or little, the words and teachings one learns from the world are not to be followed, for whether in much or in little time, they still do great harm; and if it be much time, you will sin the more, and if it be little time — be it even a day, or not even that, an hour or a quarter of an hour — with worldly desires the poor man will lose his soul; even for a single hour of pleasure which the body enjoys, the soul, which is not guilty, will be tormented dreadfully, without mercy, cruelly, without any comfort, greatly, beyond compare, forever, without end, punished without end.
Let not the poor man rest even in that hope, saying to himself: „Though I have done evil in my youth, when I am old I shall forsake it and repent.” Do not forsake sin only when it forsakes you, for you will be no better off; and, as the Wise Man says, do not promise, saying: „Come tomorrow and I will give to you,” for you do not know what will become of you by tomorrow (Prov. 3:28). The same thing is ever recalled also by the glorious word of the all-glorious Christ our God, where He says, in the parable of the rich man: „Soul, eat and drink, thou hast much goods laid up,” not knowing that on the next day his soul would be required of him (Lk. 12:19-20).
Let, then, every man who makes use of mind and reason reckon what profit he would have if he gained not only the delights and caresses of the world, but even the whole world, and if he lived not eighty or a hundred years, but even as long as the world itself, yet lost his soul in exchange? Especially since, once he loses it, no way is shown him to find it again (and not in this world), and that once he has sold it to hell in exchange for sins, not even at the dearest price will he be able to redeem it.
Therefore, then, let whoever is called man and makes use of the governance of a whole mind reckon with all care and in all detail, and, reckoning, let him understand what the world is, that is, what his body is, and what he himself is, that is, what his soul is, and what the pretenses of the world are, that is, the desires of the flesh toward which the world urges him, that is, toward which the lust of the flesh draws him, and what it is that the world wants him to do, that is, what the flesh desires, and what befits him, that is, what his soul ought to do. And reckoning these things, let him see that the whole world serves two things: light and darkness, that is, good and evil, and that above these two, four winds blow as hard as they can, contending with one another, namely: the kingdom of heaven and the soul, the kingdom of the world and the body. Heaven and the soul incline toward the side of good, that is, they fight for light and against darkness, that is, they fight against evil; they wish to do good, and to drive evil away. The world, or the kingdom of the world, together with the body, hold to the side of evil and fight against the light, that is, they fight against the good in order to do evil, and they give no heed to good at all.
Therefore, then, every whole man ought to apply much diligence and wage a great struggle for his soul, lest the baser part mount above the nobler, for it does not befit the servant to be greater than his master (Mt. 10:24). For heaven is a nobler inheritance, everlasting and without end, while the world is a baser inheritance, quickly perishing, which returns to nothing. Likewise the body is mortal dust, which returns to nothing, while the soul is a divine breath, immortal and eternal, as the poet said: „That your soul may be whole, what would you refuse to endure?” For this part is of greater worth than the body, especially since, if one reckons rightly, no one will find anything that could truly please the wise mind. And even should he find things that please the body and the bodily eye, the Evangelist John teaches us well: „Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world” (1 Jn. 2:15).
Therefore let the human mind desire heavenly things, let it despise earthly things, and with every kind of effort strive toward the things of heaven, where His throne is, and His true peace. For the world is not a lasting dwelling, and we are but temporary sojourners within it, while heaven is our inheritance, and there we are permanent inhabitants and heirs.
When shall this be? When we renounce the world, and when we come to know that from this world we shall have no profit; when we fulfill in deed those holy, apostolic and ecclesiastical commandments which we have come to know and have heard, as it is said: „Not the hearers of the law, but the doers of the law shall be blessed” (Rom. 2:13). But when shall these be within our reach, and when shall it be easy for us to fulfill them? When we set ourselves to labor at them with all our heart and with perfect love, for love, subjecting all things to itself, overcomes them all with strength.
This point is, perhaps, the most operative reckoning in the whole First Book: not an abstract argument, but a method. The Desert Fathers practiced something very similar — they did not speculate about death, but counted, with the mind’s own pencil, the days remaining, so as to draw the soul out of the numbness of „I will have time.” Cantemir, through the mouth of the Wise Man, does exactly this: he reduces eighty years, through seven successive subtractions, to twenty years truly lived — and, of these, to only a few days, which is all the World was asking for herself.
The boldest move in this reckoning is the identification of sleep with death and of waking with resurrection. This is not merely a figure of speech: St. Paul uses exactly the same image when he writes, „Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light” (Ephesians 5:14), and St. John Chrysostom calls the sleep of every night „the brother of death,” and the waking of every morning a daily icon of the resurrection — a rehearsal given by God to man, so that he might not forget what truly awaits him. When the Wise Man says „by day I am alive and by night dead,” he is not exaggerating poetically, but is applying to his own life the same spiritual pedagogy by which the Church calls us, every morning, to „cast off the works of darkness” (Romans 13:12).
Equally important is the way the Wise Man subtracts infancy and childhood from his reckoning — not because those years had no worth, but because they lacked the condition of the awakened man: the knowledge of good and evil, the soul’s own care for itself, free judgment. It is a distinction Abba Dorotheos of Gaza also makes when he speaks of the difference between merely existing and truly living: biological existence is not yet spiritual life, just as the „image” is not yet the perfected „likeness.” And when the Wise Man subtracts also the years of sickness, of captivity, and of lost freedom, calling them „half life, half death,” he does not despise suffering, but shows, with ascetic clarity, what part of our life is truly „our own,” that is, free time placed at the disposal of the will — the rest being permitted by God, but not possessed by us.
The conclusion is crushing for any bargaining with sin: of eighty years, only twenty are truly lived, and from the World’s request of „one day a week,” the result is less than three years — a mere nothing, for which the soul, „which is not guilty,” could pay with endless torment. It is exactly the Savior’s own question: „What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36); and the warning against postponement — „do not forsake sin only when it forsakes you” — restates, with the same severity, the word of Proverbs 3:28 and the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:19-20), both cited directly in the text as the cornerstone of the whole reckoning.
The ending rises beyond arithmetic, into theology: the whole world, says the Wise Man, is divided into light and darkness, and above this struggle blow four winds — heaven and the soul on one side, the kingdom of the world and the body on the other. This is a formulation almost identical to St. Paul’s teaching on the struggle between the Spirit and the flesh, which „lust against one another” (Galatians 5:17); and the warning that the baser part — the body — should not mount above the nobler — the soul — rests directly on the Savior’s own word: „The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord” (Matthew 10:24). Yet Cantemir does not end in fear, but in love: knowledge of the commandments does not save if it remains mere knowledge („not the hearers… but the doers,” Romans 2:13), and the power to fulfill them comes not from compulsion, but from perfect love which, he says, „subjecting all things to itself, overcomes them all with strength” — a clear echo of Paul’s hymn to love, where it is said that love „never faileth” (1 Corinthians 13:8) and is greater than faith and hope (1 Corinthians 13:13).
