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* Song translated by Ralph Manheim.
* Objectivists who prove the necessity of a given sequence of facts are always in danger of slipping into the position of justifying those facts (Lenin).
* [The text referred to throughout this essay is that of the Brecht-Laughton translation, for which see p. 333 ff.]
* [Brecht added Note 9 at a later date for inclusion in his Notes to the Play.]
* Scene 5 was not played in this production.
(1) Sextus Empiricus, Hypotyposes, 1, 21.
(2) Ibid., 1, 19, cited Montaigne Essays 2, 12.
(3) I Corinthians 8:2. The A.V. quotation is ‘And if any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know.’
(4) Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 6, cited Montaigne Essays 2, 12.
(5) Ecclesiastes 1, of which verse 13 in A.V. reads ‘And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith’ (Essays 2, 17).
(6) Keramos anthropos. Wrongly attributed to Romans 9.
(7) Ecclesiastes 7: ‘… neither make thyself over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?’
(8) Epictetus, cited by Stobaeus. (Essays 1, 14.)
(9) Terence, Heautontimoroumenos Act 1 (Essays 2, 2). This was Karl Marx’s favourite saying.
(10) Ecclesiastes 7. Or more probably 6:12, which reads ‘For who knoweth what is good for man in this life, all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow? For who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?’ (Essays 2, 12).
(11) Essays 2, 37, after Martial, 10.
(12) Plato, Cratylus.
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eISBN-13: 978-1-4081-7742-6
Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 5 Page 47