History of human life Once upon a time there lived an emperor in China. He was young and inquisitive, considered himself a very learned man, and, perhaps, he was. Throughout his short life, he managed to re-read many books and study many sciences, but everything seemed to him not enough and he wanted to know even more.
For hours, the young emperor wandered through the palace library, looking at the endless rows of books and realizing that in his entire life he would not be able to read them all.
One day he called the court sage and gave him the task of recounting the entire history of mankind in manuscripts. The sage worked for a long time. Years and decades passed, and finally, the servants brought five hundred volumes into the library, which contained the entire history of mankind. And although the emperor was no longer young, the thirst for knowledge did not leave him. But this time too, he realized that he could not spend the remaining years reading these five hundred volumes. Then the emperor asked the historian to shorten the narrative, leaving only the most important.
...Years passed, the sage worked tirelessly, and finally the servants brought the emperor fifty volumes of an already abbreviated history of mankind. By this time, the emperor had already become a completely elderly man, and again he realized that he would not have time to read even these fifty volumes.
And again he asked the sage to reduce the content of the books, leaving only the most important.
And the sage continued his work. After some time, he managed to summarize the entire story into a single book. It was solemnly brought to the emperor, but he could not even open it himself - he was so decrepit.
Already on his deathbed, he asked the historian, without delaying a single minute, to express everything even more briefly. The sage wrote just one phrase on the piece of paper: “Man is born, suffers and dies”...
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru