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Do not beasts eat with a better stomach? Have they not more satisfaction in their lusts? And they have not only a quicker relish of their pleasures, but they enjoy them without either scandal or remorse.
If sensuality were happiness, beasts were happier than men; but human felicity is lodged in the soul, not in the flesh. They that deliver themselves up to luxury are still either tormented with too little, or oppressed with too much; and equally miserable, by being either deserted or overwhelmed: they are like men in a dangerous sea; one while cast a-dry upon a rock, and another while swallowed up in a whirlpool; and all this from the mistake of not distinguishing good from evil. The huntsman, that with which labor and hazard takes a wild beast, runs as great a risk afterwards in the keeping of him; for many times he tears out the throat of his master; and it is the same thing with inordinate pleasures: the more in number, and the greater they are, the more general and absolute a slave is the servant of them.
Let the common people pronounce him as happy as they please, he pays his liberty for his delights, and sells himself for what he buys. Let any man take a view of our kitchens, the number of our cooks, and the variety of our meats; will he not wonder to see so much provision made for one belly? We have as many diseases as we have cooks or meats; and the service of the appetite is the study now in vogue.
To say nothing of our trains of lackeys, and our troops of caterers and sewers: Good God! that ever one belly should employ so many people! How nauseous and fulsome are the surfeits that follow these excesses?
Simple meats are out of fashion, and all are collected into one; so that the cook does the office of the stomach; nay, and of the teeth too; for the meat looks as if it were chewed beforehand: here is the luxury of all tastes in one dish, and liker a vomit than a soup. From these compounded dishes arise compounded diseases, which require compounded medicines. It is the same thing with our minds that it is with our tables; simple vices are curable by simple counsels, but a general dissolution of manners is hardly overcome; we are overrun with a public as well as with a private madness.
The physicians of old understood little more than the virtue of some herbs to stop blood, or heal a wound; and their firm and healthful bodies needed little more before they were corrupted by luxury and pleasure; and when it came to that once, their business was not to allay hunger, but to provoke it by a thousand inventions and sauces. That which was aliment to a craving stomach is become a burden to a full one. From hence came paleness, trembling, and worse effects from crudities than famine; a weakness in the joints, the belly stretched, suffusion of choler, the torpor of the nerves, and a palpitation of the heart.
To say nothing of megrims, torments of the eyes and ears, head-ache, gout, scurvy, several sorts of fevers and putrid ulcers, with other diseases that are but the punishment of luxury. So long as our bodies were hardened with labor, or tired with exercise or hunting, our food was plain and simple; many dishes have made many diseases. It is an ill thing for a man not to know the measure of his stomach, nor to consider that men do many things in their drink that they are ashamed of sober; drunkenness being nothing else but a voluntary madness.
It emboldens men to do all sorts of mischiefs; it both irritates wickedness and discovers it; it does not make men vicious, but it shows them to be so. It was in a drunken fit that Alexander killed Clytus. It makes him that is insolent prouder, him that is cruel fiercer, it takes away all shame.
He that is peevish breaks out presently into ill words and blows. The lecher, without any regard to decency or scandal, turns up his whore in the market-place. A man’s tongue trips, his head runs round, he staggers in his pace.
To say nothing of the crudities and diseases that follow upon this distemper, consider the public mischiefs it has done. How many warlike nations and strong cities, that have stood invincible to attacks and sieges, has drunkenness overcome! Is it not a great honor to drink the company dead?
a magnificent virtue to swallow more wine than the rest, and yet at last to be outdone by a hogshead? What shall we say of those men that invert the offices of day and night? as if our eyes were only given us to make use of in the dark?
Is it day? “It is time to go to bed.” Is it night? “It is time to rise.” Is it toward morning?
“Let us go to supper.” When other people lie down they rise, and lie till the next night to digest the debauch of the day before. It is an argument of clownery, to do as other people do. Luxury steals upon us by degrees; first, it shows itself in a more than ordinary care of our bodies, it slips next into the furniture of our houses; and it gets then into the fabric, curiosity, and expense of the house itself.
It appears, lastly, in the fantastical excesses of our tables. We change and shuffle our meats, confound our sauces, serve that in first that used to be last, and value our dishes, not for the taste, but for the rarity. Nay, we are so delicate, that we must be told when we are to eat or drink; when we are hungry or weary; and we cherish some vices as proofs and arguments of our happiness.
The most miserable mortals are they that deliver themselves up to their palates, or to their lusts: the pleasure is short and turns presently nauseous, and the end of it is either shame or repentance. It is a brutal entertainment, and unworthy of a man, to place his felicity in the service of his senses. As to the wrathful, the contentious, the ambitious, though the distemper be great, the offence has yet something in it that is manly; but the basest of prostitutes are those that dedicate themselves wholly to lust; what with their hopes and fears, anxiety of thought, and perpetual disquiets, they are never well, full nor fasting.
What a deal of business is now made about our houses and diet, which was at first both obvious and of little expense? Luxury led the way, and we have employed our wits in the aid of our vices. First we desired superfluities, our next step was to wickedness, and, in conclusion, we delivered up our minds to our bodies, and so became slaves to our appetites, which before were our servants, and are now become our masters.
What was it that brought us to the extravagance of embroideries, perfumes, tire-women, etc. We passed the bounds of Nature, and launched out into superfluities; insomuch, that it is now-a-days only for beggars and clowns to content themselves with what is sufficient; our luxury makes us insolent and mad. We take upon us like princes, and fly out for every trifle, as though there were life and death in the case.
What a madness is it for a man to lay out an estate upon a table or a cabinet, a patrimony upon a pain of pendants, and to inflame the price of curiosities according to the hazard either of breaking or losing of them? To wear garments that will neither defend a woman’s body, nor her modesty: so thin that one could make a conscience of swearing she were naked: for she hardly shows more in the privacies of her amour than in public? How long shall we covet and oppress, enlarge our possessions, and account that too little for one man which was formerly enough for a nation?
And our luxury is as insatiable as our avarice. Where is that lake, that sea, that forest, that spot of land; that is not ransacked to gratify our palate? The very earth is burdened with our buildings; not a river, not a mountain, escapes us.
Oh, that there should be such boundless desires in our little bodies! Would not fewer lodgings serve us? We lie but in one, and where we are not, that is not properly ours.
What with our hooks, snares, nets, dogs, etc., we are at war with all living creatures; and nothing comes amiss but that which is either too cheap, or too common; and all this is to gratify a fantastical palate. Our avarice, our ambition, our lusts, are insatiable; we enlarge our possessions, swell our families, we rifle sea and land for matter of ornament and luxury. A bull contents himself with one meadow, and one forest is enough for a thousand elephants; but the little body of a man devours more than all other living creatures.
We do not eat to satisfy hunger, but ambition; we are dead while we are alive, and our houses are so much our tombs, that a man might write our epitaphs upon our very doors. A voluptuous person, in fine, can neither be a good man, a good patriot, nor a good friend; for he is transported with his appetites, without considering, that the lot of man is the law of Nature. A good man (like a good soldier) will stand his ground, receive wounds, glory in his scars, and in death itself love his master for whom he falls; with that divine precept always in his mind, “Follow good:” whereas he that complains, laments, and groans, must yield nevertheless, and do his duty though in spite of his heart.
Now, what a madness is it for a man to choose rather to be lugged than to follow, and vainly to contend with the calamities of human life? Whatsoever is laid upon us by necessity, we should receive generously; for it is foolish to strive with what we cannot avoid. We are born subjects, and to obey God is perfect liberty.
He that does this shall be free, safe, and quiet: all his actions shall succeed to his wish: and what can any man desire more than to want nothing from without, and to have all things desirable within himself? Pleasures do but weaken our minds, and send us for our support to Fortune, who gives us money only as the wages of slavery. We must stop our eyes and our ears.
Ulysses had but one rock to fear, but human life has many. Every city, nay, every man, is one; and there is no trusting even to our nearest friends. Deliver me from the superstition of taking those things which are light and vain for felicities. . AVARICE AND AMBITION ARE INSATIABLE AND RESTLESS.
The man that would be truly rich must not increase his fortune, but retrench his appetites: for riches are not only superfluous, but mean, and little more to the possessor than to the looker-on. What is the end of ambition and avarice, when at best we are but stewards of what we falsely call our own? All those things that we pursue with so much hazard and expense of blood, as well to keep as to get, for which we break faith and friendship, what are they but the mere deposita of Fortune?
and not ours, but already inclining toward a new master. There is nothing our own but that which we give to ourselves, and of which we have a certain and an inexpugnable possession. Avarice is so insatiable, that it is not in the power of liberality to content it; and our desires are so boundless, that whatever we get is but in the way to getting more without end: and so long as we are solicitous for the increase of wealth, we lose the true use of it; and spend our time in putting out, calling in, and passing our accounts, without any substantial benefit, either to the world or to ourselves.
What is the difference betwixt old men and children? the one cries for nuts and apples, and the other for gold and silver: the one sets up courts of justice, hears and determines, acquits and condemns, in jest; the other in earnest: the one makes houses of clay, the other of marble: so that the works of old men are nothing in the world but the progress and improvement of children’s errors; and they are to be admonished and punished too like children, not in revenge for injuries received, but as a correction of injuries done, and to make them give over. There is some substance yet in gold and silver; but as to judgments and statutes, procuration and continuance-money, these are only the visions and dreams of avarice.
Throw a crust of bread to a dog, he takes it open-mouthed, swallows it whole, and presently gapes for more: just so do we with the gifts of Fortune; down they go without chewing, and we are immediately ready for another chop. But what has avarice now to do with gold and silver, that is so much outdone by curiosities of a far greater value? Let us no longer complain that there was not a heavier load laid upon those precious metals, or that they were not buried deep enough, when we have found out ways by wax and parchments, and by bloody usurious contracts, to undo one another.
It is remarkable, that Providence has given us all things for our advantage near at hand; but iron, gold, and silver, (being both the instrument of blood and slaughter, and the price of it) Nature has hidden in the bowels of the earth. There is no avarice without some punishment, over and above that which it is to itself. How miserable is it in the desire!
how miserable even in the attaining of our ends! For money is a greater torment in the possession than it is in the pursuit. The fear of losing it is a great trouble, the loss of it a greater, and it is made a greater yet by opinion.
Nay, even in the case of no direct loss at all, the covetous man loses what he does not get. It is true, the people call the rich man a happy man, and wish themselves in his condition; but can any condition be worse than that which carries vexation and envy along with it? Neither is any man to boast of his fortune, his herds of cattle, his number of slaves, his lands and palaces; for comparing that which he has to that which he further covets, he is a beggar.
No man can possess all things, but any man may contemn them; and the contempt of riches is the nearest way to the gaining of them. Some magistrates are made for money, and those commonly are bribed with money. We are all turned merchants, and look not into the quality of things, but into the price of them; for reward we are pious, and for reward again we are impious.
We are honest so long as we may thrive upon it; but if the devil himself gives better wages, we change our party. Our parents have trained us up into an admiration of gold and silver, and the love of it is grown up with us to that degree that when we would show our gratitude to Heaven, we make presents of those metals. This it is that makes poverty look like a curse and a reproach; and the poets help it forward; the chariot of the sun must be all of gold; the best of times must be the Golden Age, and thus they turn the greatest misery of mankind into the greatest blessings.
Neither does avarice make us only unhappy in ourselves, but malevolent also to mankind. The soldier wishes for war; the husbandman would have his corn dear; the lawyer prays for dissension; the physician for a sickly year; he that deals in curiosities, for luxury and excess, for he makes up his fortunes out of the corruptions of the age. High winds and public conflagrations make work for the carpenter and bricklayer, and one man lives by the loss of another; some few, perhaps, have the fortune to be detected, but they are all wicked alike.
A great plague makes work for the sexton; and, in one word, whosoever gains by the dead has not much kindness for the living. Demades of Athens condemned a fellow that sold necessaries for funerals, upon proof that he wished to make himself a fortune by his trade, which could not be but by a great mortality; but perhaps he did not so much desire to have many customers, as to sell dear, and buy cheap; besides, that all of that trade might have been condemned as well as he. Whatsoever whets our appetites, flatters and depresses the mind, and, by dilating it, weakens it; first blowing it up, and then filling and deluding it with vanity.
To proceed now from the most prostitute of all vices, sensuality and avarice, to that which passes in the world for the most generous, the thirst of glory and dominion. If they that run mad after wealth and honor, could but look into the hearts of them that have already gained these points, how would it startle them to see those hideous cares and crimes that wait upon ambitious greatness: all those acquisitions that dazzle the eyes of the vulgar are but false pleasures, slippery and uncertain. They are achieved with labor, and the very guard of them is painful.
Ambition puffs us up with vanity and wind: and we are equally troubled either to see any body before us, or nobody behind us; so that we lie under a double envy; for whosoever envies another is also envied himself. What matters it how far Alexander extended his conquests, if he was not yet satisfied with what he had? Every man wants as much as he covets; and it is lost labor to pour into a vessel that will never be full.
He that had subdued so many princes and nations, upon the killing of Clytus (one friend) and the loss of Hyphestion (another) delivered himself up to anger and sadness; and when he was master of the world, he was yet a slave to his passions. Look into Cyrus, Cambyses, and the whole Persian line, and you shall not find so much as one man of them that died satisfied with what he had gotten. Ambition aspires from great things to greater; and propounds matters even impossible, when it has once arrived at things beyond expectation.
It is a kind of dropsy; the more a man drinks, the more he covets. Let any man but observe the tumults and the crowds that attend palaces; what affronts must we endure to be admitted, and how much greater when we are in! The passage to virtue is fair, but the way to greatness is craggy and it stands not only upon a precipice, but upon ice too; and yet it is a hard matter to convince a great man that his station is slippery, or to prevail with him not to depend upon his greatness; but all superfluities are hurtful.
A rank crop lays the corn; too great a burden of fruit breaks the bough; and our minds may be as well overcharged with an immoderate happiness. Nay, though we ourselves would be at rest, our fortune will not suffer it: the way that leads to honor and riches leads to troubles; and we find the source of our sorrows in the very objects of our delights. What joy is there in feasting and luxury; in ambition and a crowd of clients; in the arms of a mistress, or in the vanity of an unprofitable knowledge?
These short and false pleasures deceive us, and, like drunkenness, revenge the jolly madness of one hour with the nauseous and sad repentance of many. Ambition is like a gulf: everything is swallowed up in it and buried, beside the dangerous consequences of it; for that which one has taken from all, may be easily taken away again by all from one. It was not either virtue or reason, but the mad love of a deceitful greatness, that animated Pompey in his wars, either abroad or at home.
What was it but his ambition that hurried him to Spain, Africa, and elsewhere, when he was too great already in everybody’s opinion but his own? And the same motive had Julius Cæsar, who could not, even then, brook a superior himself, when the commonwealth had submitted unto two already. Nor was it any instinct of virtue that pushed on Marius, who at the head of an army was himself led on under the command of ambition: but he came at last to the deserved fate of other wicked men, and to drink himself of the same cup that he had filled to others.
We impose upon our reason, when we suffer ourselves to be transported with titles; for we know that they are nothing but a more glorious sound; and so for ornaments and gildings, though there be a lustre to dazzle our eyes, our understanding tells us that it is only outside, and the matter under it is only coarse and common. I will never envy those that the people call great and happy. A sound mind is not to be shaken with a popular and vain applause; nor is it in the power of their pride to disturb the state of our happiness.
An honest man is known now-a-days by the dust he raises upon the way, and it is become a point of honor to overrun people, and keep all at a distance; though he that is put out of the way may perchance be happier than he that takes it. He that would exercise a power profitable to himself, and grievous to nobody else, let him practice it upon his passion. They that have burnt cities, otherwise invincible, driven armies before them, and bathed themselves in human blood, after they have overcome all open enemies, they have been vanquished by their lust, by their cruelty, and without any resistance.
Alexander was possessed with the madness of laying kingdoms waste. He began with Greece, where he was brought up; and there he quarried himself upon that in it which was the best; he enslaved Lacedemon, and silenced Athens: nor was he content with the destruction of those towns which his father Philip had either conquered or bought; but he made himself the enemy of human nature; and, like the worst of beasts, he worried what he could not eat. Felicity is an unquiet thing; it torments itself, and puzzles the brain.
It makes some people ambitious, others luxurious; it puffs up some, and softens others; only (as it is with wine) some heads bear it better than others; but it dissolves all. Greatness stands upon a precipice: and if prosperity carries a man never so little beyond his poise, it overbears and dashes him to pieces. It is a rare thing for a man in a great fortune to lay down his happiness gently; it being a common fate for a man to sink under the weight of those felicities that raise him.
How many of the nobility did Marius bring down to herdsmen and other mean offices! Nay, in the very moment of our despising servants, we may be made so ourselves. I.
HOPE AND FEAR ARE THE BANE OF HUMAN LIFE. No man can be said to be perfectly happy that runs the risk of disappointment: which is the case of every man that fears or hopes for anything. For hope and fear, how distant soever they may seem to be the one from the other, they are both of them yet coupled in the same chain, as the guard and the prisoner; and the one treads upon the heels of the other.
The reason of this is obvious, for they are passions that look forward, and are ever solicitous for the future; only hope is the more plausible weakness of the two, which in truth, upon the main, are inseparable; for the one cannot be without the other: but where the hope is stronger than the fear, or the fear than the hope, we call it the one or the other; for without fear it were no longer hope, but certainty; as without hope it were no longer fear but despair. We may come to understand whether our disputes are vain or not, if we do but consider that we are either troubled about the present, the future or both. If the present, it is easy to judge, and the future is uncertain.
It is a foolish thing to be miserable beforehand for fear of misery to come; for a man loses the present, which he might enjoy, in expectation of the future: nay, the fear of losing anything is as bad as the loss itself. I will be as prudent as I can, but not timorous or careless; and I will bethink myself, and forecast what inconveniences may happen before they come. It is true, a man may fear, and yet not be fearful; which is no more than to have the affection of fear without the vice of it; but yet a frequent admittance of it runs into a habit.
It is a shameful and an unmanly thing to be doubtful, timorous, and uncertain; to set one step forward, and another backward; and to be irresolute. Can there be any man so fearful, that had not rather fall once than hang always in suspense? Our miseries are endless, if we stand in fear of all possibilities; the best way, in such a case, is to drive out one nail with another, and a little to qualify fear with hope; which may serve to palliate a misfortune; though not to cure it.
There is not anything that we fear, which is so certain to come, as it is certain that many things which we do fear will not come; but we are loth to oppose our credulity when it begins to move us, and so to bring our fear to the test. Well! but “what if the thing we fear should come to pass?” Perhaps it will be the better for us.
Suppose it be death itself, why may it not prove the glory of my life? Did not poison make Socrates famous? and was not Cato’s sword a great part of his honor?
“Do we fear any misfortune to befall us?” We are not presently sure that it will happen. How many deliverances have come unlooked for? and how many mischiefs that we looked for have never come to pass?
It is time enough to lament when it comes, and, in the interim, to promise ourselves the best. What do I know but something or other may delay or divert it? Some have escaped out of the fire; others, when a house has fallen over their head, have received no hurt: one man has been saved when a sword was at his throat; another has been condemned, and outlived his headsman: so that ill-fortune, we see, as well as good, has her levities; peradventure it will be, peradventure not; and until it comes to pass, we are not sure of it: we do many times take words in a worse sense than they were intended, and imagine things to be worse taken than they are.
It is time enough to bear a misfortune when it comes, without anticipating it. He that would deliver himself from all apprehensions of the future, let him first take for granted, that all fears will fall upon him; and then examine and measure the evil that he fears, which he will find to be neither great nor long. Beside, that the ills which he fears he may suffer, he suffers in the very fear of them.
As in the symptoms of an approaching disease, a man shall find himself lazy and listless: a weariness in his limbs, with a yawning and shuddering all over him; so it is in the case of a weak mind, it fancies misfortunes, and makes a man wretched before his time. Why should I torment myself at present with what, perhaps, may fall out fifty years hence? This humor is a kind of voluntary disease, and an industrious contrivance of our own unhappiness, to complain of an affliction that we do not feel.
Some are not only moved with grief itself, but with the mere opinion of it; as children will start at a shadow, or at the sight of a deformed person. If we stand in fear of violence from a powerful enemy, it is some comfort to us, that whosoever makes himself terrible to others is not without fear himself: the least noise makes a lion start; and the fiercest of beasts, whatsoever enrages them, makes them tremble too: a shadow, a voice, an unusual odor, rouses them. The things most to be feared I take to be of three kinds; want, sickness, and those violences that may be imposed upon us by a strong hand.
The last of these has the greatest force, because it comes attended with noise and tumult; whereas the incommodities of poverty and diseases are more natural, and steal upon us in silence, without any external circumstances of horror: but the other marches in pomp, with fire and sword, gibbets, racks, hooks; wild beasts to devour us; stakes to impale us; engines to tear us to pieces; pitched bags to burn us in, and a thousand other exquisite inventions of cruelty. No wonder then, if that be the most dreadful to us that presents itself in so many uncouth shapes; and by the very solemnity is rendered the most formidable. The more instruments of bodily pain the executioner shows us, the more frightful he makes himself: for many a man that would have encountered death in any generous form, with resolution enough, is yet overcome with the manner of it.
As for the calamities of hunger and thirst, inward ulcers, scorching fevers, tormenting fits of the stone, I look upon these miseries to be at least as grievous as any of the rest; only they do not so much affect the fancy, because they lie out of sight. Some people talk high of danger at a distance; but (like cowards) when the executioner comes to do his duty, and show us the fire, the ax, the scaffold, and death at hand, their courage fails them upon the very pinch, when they have most need of it. Sickness, (I hope) captivity, fire, are no new things to us; the fall of houses, funerals, and conflagrations, are every day before our eyes.
The man that I supped with last night is dead before morning; why should I wonder then, seeing so many fall about me, to be hit at last myself? What can be greater madness than to cry out, “Who would have dreamed of this?” And why not, I beseech you? Where is that estate that may not be reduced to beggary?
that dignity which may not be followed with banishment, disgrace, and extreme contempt? that kingdom that may not suddenly fall to ruin; change its master, and be depopulated? that prince that may not pass the hand of a common hangman?
That which is one man’s fortune may be another’s; but the foresight of calamities to come breaks the violence of them. . IT IS ACCORDING TO THE TRUE OR FALSE ESTIMATE OF THINGS THAT WE ARE HAPPY OR MISERABLE. How many things are there that the fancy makes terrible by night, which the day turns into ridiculous!
What is there in labor, or in death, that a man should be afraid of? They are much slighter in act than in contemplation; and we may contemn them, but we will not: so that it is not because they are hard that we dread them, but they are hard because we are first afraid of them. Pains, and other violences of Fortune, are the same thing to us that goblins are to children: we are more scared with them than hurt.
We take up our opinions upon trust, and err for company, still judging that to be best that has most competitors. We make a false calculation of matters, because we advise with opinion, and not with Nature; and this misleads us to a higher esteem for riches, honor, and power, than they are worth: we have been used to admire and recommend them, and a private error is quickly turned into a public. The greatest and the smallest things are equally hard to be comprehended; we account many things great, for want of understanding what effectually is so: and we reckon other things to be small, which we find frequently to be of the highest value.
Vain things only move vain minds. The accidents that we so much boggle at are not terrible in themselves, but they are made so by our infirmities; but we consult rather what we hear than what we feel, without examining, opposing, or discussing the things we fear; so that we either stand still and tremble, or else directly run for it, as those troops did, that, upon the raising of the dust, took a flock of sheep for the enemy. When the body and mind are corrupted, it is no wonder if all things prove intolerable; and not because they are so in truth, but because we are dissolute and foolish: for we are infatuated to such a degree, that, betwixt the common madness of men, and that which falls under the care of the physician, there is but this difference, the one labors of a disease, and the other of a false opinion.
The Stoics hold, that all those torments that commonly draw from us groans and ejaculations, are in themselves trivial and contemptible. But these high-flown expressions apart (how true soever) let us discourse the point at the rate of ordinary men, and not make ourselves miserable before our time; for the things we apprehend to be at hand may possibly never come to pass. Some things trouble us more than they should, other things sooner; and some things again disorder us that ought not to trouble us at all; so that we either enlarge, or create, or anticipate our disquiets.
For the first part, let it rest as a matter in controversy; for that which I account light, another perhaps will judge insupportable! One man laughs under the lash, and another whines for a fillip. How sad a calamity is poverty to one man, which to another appears rather desirable than inconvenient?
For the poor man, who has nothing to lose, has nothing to fear: and he that would enjoy himself to the satisfaction of his soul, must be either poor indeed, or at least look as if he were so. Some people are extremely dejected with sickness and pain; whereas Epicurus blessed his fate with his last breath, in the acutest torments of the stone imaginable. And so for banishment, which to one man is so grievous, and yet to another is no more than a bare change of place: a thing that we do every day for our health, pleasure, nay, and upon the account even of common business.
How terrible is death to one man, which to another appears the greatest providence in nature, even toward all ages and conditions! It is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all. It sets the slave at liberty, carries the banished man home, and places all mortals upon the same level: insomuch, that life itself were a punishment without it.
When I see tyrants, tortures, violences, the prospect of death is a consolation to me, and the only remedy against the injuries of life. Nay, so great are our mistakes in the true estimate of things, that we have hardly done any thing that we have not had reason to wish undone; and we have found the things we feared to be more desirable than those we coveted. Our very prayers have been more pernicious than the curses of our enemies; and we must pray to have our former prayers forgiven.
Where is the wise man that wishes to himself the wishes of his mother, nurse, or his tutor; the worst of enemies, with the intention of the best of friends. We are undone if their prayers be heard; and it is our duty to pray that they may not; for they are no other than well-meaning execrations. They take evil for good, and one wish fights with another: give me rather the contempt of all those things whereof they wish me the greatest plenty.
We are equally hurt by some that pray for us, and by others that curse us: the one imprints in us a false fear, and the other does us mischief by a mistake: so that it is no wonder if mankind be miserable, when we are brought up from the very cradle under the imprecations of our parents. We pray for trifles, without so much as thinking of the greatest blessings; and we are not ashamed many times to ask God for that which we should blush to own to our neighbor. It is with us as with an innocent that my father had in his family; she fell blind on a sudden, and nobody could persuade her she was blind.
“She could not endure the house,” she cried, “it was so dark,” and was still calling to go abroad. That which we laughed at in her we find to be true in ourselves, we are covetous and ambitious; but the world shall never bring us to acknowledge it, and we impute it to the place: nay, we are the worse of the two; for that blind fool called for a guide, and we wander about without one. It is a hard matter to cure those that will not believe they are sick.
We are ashamed to admit a master, and we are too old to learn. Vice still goes before virtue: so that we have two works to do: we must cast off the one, and learn the other. By one evil we make way to another, and only seek things to be avoided, or those of which we are soon weary.
That which seemed too much when we wished for it, proves too little when we have it; and it is not, as some imagine, that felicity is greedy, but it is little and narrow, and cannot satisfy us. That which we take to be very high at a distance, we find to be but low when we come at it. And the business is, we do not understand the true state of things: we are deceived by rumors; when we have gained the thing we aimed at, we find it to be either ill or empty; or perchance less than we expect, or otherwise perhaps great, but not good.
THE BLESSINGS OF TEMPERANCE AND MODERATION. There is not anything that is necessary to us but we have it either cheap or gratis: and this is the provision that our heavenly Father has made for us, whose bounty was never wanting to our needs. It is true the belly craves and calls upon us, but then a small matter contents it: a little bread and water is sufficient, and all the rest is but superfluous.
He that lives according to reason shall never be poor, and he that governs his life by opinion shall never be rich: for nature is limited, but fancy is boundless. As for meat, clothes, and lodging, a little feeds the body, and as little covers it; so that if mankind would only attend human nature, without gaping at superfluities, a cook would be found as needless as a soldier: for we may have necessaries upon very easy terms; whereas we put ourselves to great pains for excesses. When we are cold, we may cover ourselves with skins of beasts; and, against violent heats, we have natural grottoes; or with a few osiers and a little clay we may defend ourselves against all seasons.
Providence has been kinder to us than to leave us to live by our wits, and to stand in need of invention and arts. It is only pride and curiosity that involve us in difficulties: if nothing will serve a man but rich clothes and furniture, statues and plate, a numerous train of servants, and the rarities of all nations, it is not Fortune’s fault, but his own, that he is not satisfied: for his desires are insatiable, and this is not a thirst, but a disease; and if he were master of the whole world, he would be still a beggar. It is the mind that makes us rich and happy, in what condition soever we are; and money signifies no more to it than it does to the gods.
If the religion be sincere, no matter for the ornaments it is only luxury and avarice that make poverty grievous to us; for it is a very small matter that does our business; and when we have provided against cold, hunger, and thirst, all the rest is but vanity and excess: and there is no need of expense upon foreign delicacies, or the artifices of the kitchen. What is he the worse for poverty that despises these things? nay, is he not rather the better for it, because he is not able to go to the price of them?
for he is kept sound whether he will or not: and that which a man cannot do, looks many times as if he would not. When I look back into the moderation of past ages, it makes me ashamed to discourse, as if poverty had need of any consolation; for we are now come to that degree of intemperance, that a fair patrimony is too little for a meal. Homer had but one servant, Plato three, and Zeno (the master of the masculine sect of Stoics) had none at all.
The daughters of Scipio had their portions out of the common treasury, for their father left them not a penny: how happy were the husbands that had the people of Rome for their father-in-law! Shall any man now contemn poverty after these eminent examples, which are sufficient not only to justify but to recommend it? Upon Diogenes’ only servant running away from him, he was told where he was, and persuaded to fetch him back again: “What,” says he, “can Manes live without Diogenes, and not Diogenes without Manes?” and so let him go.
The piety and moderation of Scipio have made his memory more venerable than his arms; and more yet after he left his country than while he defended it: for matters were come to that pass, that either Scipio must be injurious to Rome or Rome to Scipio. Coarse bread and water to a temperate man is as good as a feast; and the very herbs of the field yield a nourishment to man as well as to beasts. It was not by choice meats and perfumes that our forefathers recommended themselves, but in virtuous actions, and the sweat of honest, military, and of manly labors.
While Nature lay in common, and all her benefits were promiscuously enjoyed, what could be happier than the state of mankind, when people lived without avarice or envy? What could be richer than when there was not a poor man to be found in the world? So soon as this impartial bounty of Providence came to be restrained by covetousness, and that particulars appropriated to themselves that which was intended for all, then did poverty creep into the world, when some men, by desiring more than came to their share, lost their title to the rest; a loss never to be repaired; for though we may come yet to get much, we once had all.
The fruits of the earth were in those days divided among the inhabitants of it, without either want or excess. So long as men contented themselves with their lot, there was no violence, no engrossing or hiding of those benefits for particular advantages, which were appointed for the community; but every man had as much care for his neighbor as for himself. No arms or bloodshed, no war, but with wild beasts: but under the protection of a wood or a cave, they spent their days without cares, and their nights without groans; their innocence was their security and their protection.
There were as yet no beds of state, no ornaments, of pearl or embroidery, nor any of those remorses that attend them; but the heavens were their canopy, and the glories of them their spectacle. The motions of the orbs, the courses of the stars, and the wonderful order of Providence, was their contemplation. There was no fear of the house falling, or the rustling of a rat behind the arras; they had no palaces then like cities; but they had open air, and breathing room, crystal fountains, refreshing shades, the meadows dressed up in their native beauty, and such cottages as were according to nature, and wherein they lived contentedly, without fear either of losing or of falling.
These people lived without either solitude or fraud; and yet I must call them rather happy than wise. That men were generally better before they were corrupted than after, I make no doubt; and I am apt to believe that they were both stronger and hardier too but their wits were not yet come to maturity; for Nature does not give virtue; and it is a kind of art to become good. They had not as yet torn up the bowels of the earth for gold, silver, or precious stones; and so far were they from killing any man, as we do, for a spectacle, that they were not as yet come to it, either in fear or anger; nay, they spared the very fishes.
But, after all this, they were innocent because they were ignorant: and there is a great difference betwixt not knowing how to offend and not being willing to do it. They had, in that rude life, certain images and resemblances of virtue, but yet they fell short of virtue itself, which comes only by institution, learning, and study, as it is perfected by practice. It is indeed the end for which we were born, but yet it did not come into the world with us; and in the best of men, before they are instructed, we find rather the matter and the seeds of virtue than the virtue itself.
It is the wonderful benignity of Nature that has laid open to us all things that may do us good, and only hid those things from us that may hurt us; as if she durst not trust us with gold and silver, or with iron, which is the instrument of war and contention, for the other. It is we ourselves that have drawn out of the earth both the causes and the instruments of our dangers: and we are so vain as to set the highest esteem upon those things to which Nature has assigned the lowest place. What can be more coarse and rude in the mine than these precious metals, or more slavish and dirty than the people that dig and work them?
and yet they defile our minds more than our bodies, and make the possessor fouler than the artificer of them. Rich men, in fine, are only the greater slaves; both the one and the other want a great deal. Happy is that man that eats only for hunger, and drinks only for thirst; that stands upon his own legs, and lives by reason, not by example; and provides for use and necessity, not for ostentation and pomp!
Let us curb our appetites, encourage virtue, and rather be beholden to ourselves for riches than to Fortune, who when a man draws himself into a narrow compass, has the least mark at him. Let my bed be plain and clean, and my clothes so too: my meat without much expense, or many waiters, and neither a burden to my purse nor to my body, not to go out the same way it came in. That which is too little for luxury, is abundantly enough for nature.
The end of eating and drinking is satiety; now, what matters it though one eats and drinks more, and another less, so long as the one is not a-hungry, nor the other athirst? Epicurus, who limits pleasure to nature, as the Stoics do virtue, is undoubtedly in the right; and those that cite him to authorize their voluptuousness do exceedingly mistake him, and only seek a good authority for an evil cause: for their pleasures of sloth, gluttony, and lust, have no affinity at all with his precepts or meaning. It is true, that at first sight his philosophy seems effeminate; but he that looks nearer him will find him to be a very brave man only in a womanish dress.
It is a common objection, I know, that these philosophers do not live at the rate they talk; fer they can flatter their superiors, gather estates, and be as much concerned at the loss of fortune, or of friends, as other people: as sensible of reproaches, as luxurious in their eating and drinking, their furniture, their houses; as magnificent in their plate, servants, and officers; as profuse and curious in their gardens, etc. Well! and what of all this, or if it were twenty times more?
It is some degree of virtue for a man to condemn himself; and if he cannot come up to the best, to be yet better than the worst; and if he cannot wholly subdue his appetites, however to check and diminish them. If I do not live as I preach, take notice that I do not speak of myself, but of virtue, nor am I so much offended with other men’s vices as with my own. All this was objected to Plato, Epicurus, Zeno; nor is any virtue so sacred as to escape malevolence.
The Cynic Demetrius was a great instance of severity and mortification; and one that imposed upon himself neither to possess anything, nor so much as to ask it: and yet he had this scorn put upon him, that his profession was poverty, not virtue. Plato is blamed for asking money; Aristotle for receiving it; Democritus for neglecting it; Epicurus for consuming it. How happy were we if we could but come to imitate these men’s vices; for if we knew our own condition, we should find work enough at home.
But we are like people that are making merry at a play or a tavern when their own houses are on fire, and yet they know nothing of it. Nay, Cato himself was said to be a drunkard; but drunkenness itself shall sooner be proved to be no crime than Cato dishonest. They that demolish temples, and overturn altars, show their good-will, though they can do the gods no hurt, and so it fares with those that invade the reputation of great men.
If the professors of virtue be as the world calls them, avaricious, libidinous, ambitious—what are they then that have a detestation for the very name of it: but malicious natures do not want wit to abuse honester men than themselves. It is the practice of the multitude to bark at eminent men as little dogs do at strangers; for they look upon other men’s virtues as the upbraiding of their own wickedness. We should do well to commend those that are good, if not, let us pass them over; but, however, let us spare ourselves: for beside the blaspheming of virtue, our rage is to no purpose.
But to return now to my text. We are ready enough to limit others but loth to put bonds and restraints upon ourselves, though we know that many times a greater evil is cured by a less; and the mind that will not be brought to virtue by precepts, comes to it frequently by necessity. Let us try a little to eat upon a joint stool, to serve ourselves, to live within compass, and accommodate our clothes to the end they were made for.
Occasional experiments of our moderation give us the best proof of our firmness and virtue. A well-governed appetite is a great part of liberty, and it is a blessed lot, that since no man can have all things that he would have, we may all of us forbear desiring what we have not. It is the office of temperance to overrule us in our pleasures; some she rejects, others she qualifies and keeps within bounds.

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