Then I looked for a similitude for this behaviour of human beings and
found the following:

A certain person was fleeing from a danger into a well and suspended
himself by clinging to two branches which grew on its edge, his feet
striking against something which supported them. When he looked round
there were four serpents which were projecting their heads from their
holes. As he looked into the bottom of the well he noticed a dragon with
its jaws open expecting him to fall his prey. And as he turned his head
up to the branches he observed at their roots a black and a white mouse
which were ceaselessly gnawing at both. While he was contemplating the
situation and casting about for a means of escape he descried near him a
hollow with bees that had made some honey. This he tasted and he was so
much absorbed in its deliciousness that he no more thought of the
condition he was in and that he must devise some contrivance of escape.
He became oblivious of the fact that his feet rested against four
serpents and that he did not know which would attack him first, forgot
that the two mice were without cessation nibbling at the boughs by which
he was hanging, and that as soon as they had gnawed them through he
would drop into the jaws of the dragon. And so in his heedlessness he
yielded to the enjoyment of the meed till he perished.

I compared the well with the world which is brimful of all manner of
harm and terrible perils, the four snakes with the four humours which
constitute the physical basis of man, but which, should they be excited,
prove mortal poison; the branches to life, the black and white mice to
night and day which in perpetual alternation consume our lifetime; the
dragon with death inevitable; the honey to the particle of joy which man
derives from his senses of smell, taste, sight, hearing and feeling, but