inconstancy added to iniquity; we relinquish the thing we sought, and then we take it up again; and so divide our lives between our lust and our repentances. From one appetite we pass to another, not so much upon choice as for change; and there is a check of conscience that casts a damp upon all our unlawful pleasures, which makes us lose the day in expectation of the night, and the night itself for fear of the approaching light.
Some people are _never_ at quiet, others are _always_ so, and they are both to blame: for that which looks like vivacity and industry in the one is only a restlessness and agitation; and that which passes in the other for moderation and reserve is but a drowsy and unactive sloth.
Let motion and rest both take their turns, according to the order of Nature, which makes both the day and the night. Some are perpetually shifting from one thing to another; others, again, make their whole life but a kind of uneasy sleep: some lie tossing and turning until very weariness brings them to rest; others, again, I cannot so properly call inconstant as lazy. There are many proprieties and diversities of vice; but it is one never-failing effect of it to live displeased. We do all of us labor under inordinate desires; we are either timorous, and dare not venture, or venturing we do not succeed; or else we cast ourselves upon uncertain hopes, where we are perpetually solicitous, and in suspense. In this distraction we are apt to propose to ourselves things dishonest and hard; and when we have taken great pains to no purpose, we come then to repent of our undertakings: we are afraid to go on, and we can neither master our appetites nor obey them: we live and die restless and irresolute; and, which is worst of all, when we grow weary of the public, and betake ourselves to solitude for relief, our minds are sick and wallowing, and the very house and walls are troublesome to us; we grow impatient and ashamed of ourselves, and suppress our inward vexation until it breaks our heart for want of vent. This is it that makes us sour and morose, envious of others, and dissatisfied with ourselves; until at last, betwixt our troubles for other people’s successes and the despair of our own, we fall foul upon Fortune and the times, and get into a corner perhaps, where we sit brooding over our own disquiets. In these dispositions there is a kind of pruriginous fancy, that makes some people take delight in labor and uneasiness, like the clawing of an itch until the blood starts.
This is it that puts us upon rambling voyages; one while by land; but still disgusted with the present: the town pleases us to-day, the country to-morrow: the splendors of the court at one time, the horrors of a wilderness at another, but all this while we carry our plague about us; for it is not the place we are weary of, but ourselves. Nay, our weakness extends to everything; for we are impatient equally of toil and of pleasure. This trotting of the ring, and only treading the same steps over and over again, has made many a man lay violent hands upon himself. It must be the change of the mind, not of the climate, that will remove the heaviness of the heart; our vices go along with us, and we carry in ourselves the causes of our disquiets.
There is a great weight lies upon us, and the bare shocking of it makes it the more uneasy; changing of countries, in this case, is not travelling, but wandering. We must keep on our course, if we would gain our journey’s end. “He that cannot live happily anywhere, will live happily nowhere.” What is a man the better for travelling? as if his cares could not find him out wherever he goes? Is there any retiring from the fear of death, or of torments? or from those difficulties which beset a man wherever he is? It is only philosophy that makes the mind invincible, and places us out of the reach of fortune, so that all her arrows fall short of us. This it is that reclaims the rage of our lusts, and sweetens the anxiety of our fears. Frequent changing of places or councils, shows an instability of mind; and we must fix the body before we can fix the soul. We can hardly stir abroad, or look about us, without encountering something or other that revives our appetites. As he that would cast off an unhappy love avoids whatsoever may put him in mind of the person, so he that would wholly deliver himself from his beloved lusts must shun all objects that may put them in his head again, and remind him of them. We travel, as children run up and down after strange sights, for novelty, not profit; we return neither the better nor the sounder; nay, and the very agitation hurts us. We learn to call towns and places by their names, and to tell stories of mountains and of rivers; but had not our time been better spent in the study of wisdom and of virtue? in the learning of what is already discovered, and in the quest of things not yet found out?
If a man break his leg, or strain his ankle, he sends presently for a surgeon to set all right again, and does not take horse upon it, or put himself on ship-board; no more does the change of place work upon our disordered minds than upon our bodies. It is not the place, I hope, that makes either an orator or a physician. Will any man ask upon the road, Pray, which is the way to prudence, to justice, to temperance, to fortitude? No matter whither any man goes that carries his affections along with him. He that would make his travels delightful must make himself a temperate companion.
A great traveller was complaining that he was never the better for his travels; “That is very true,” said Socrates, “because you travelled with yourself.” Now, had not he better have made himself another man than to transport himself to another place? It is no matter what manners we find anywhere; so long as we carry our own. But we have all of us a natural curiosity of seeing fine sights, and of making new discoveries, turning over antiquities, learning the customs of nations, etc. We are never quiet; to-day we seek an office, to-morrow we are sick of it. We divide our lives betwixt a dislike of the present and a desire of the future: but he that lives as he should, orders himself so, as neither to fear nor to wish for to-morrow; if it comes, it is welcome; but if not, there is nothing lost; for that which is come, is but the same over again with what is past. As levity is a pernicious enemy to quiet, so pertinacity is a great one too. The one changes nothing, the other sticks to nothing; and which of the two is the worse, may be a question. It is many times seen, that we beg earnestly for those things, which, if they were offered us, we would refuse; and it is but just to punish this easiness of asking with an equal facility of granting. There are some things we would be thought to desire, which we are so far from desiring that we dread them. “I shall tire you,” says one, in the middle of a tedious story. “Nay, pray be pleased to go on,” we cry, though we wish his tongue out at half-way: nay, we do not deal candidly even with God himself. We should say to ourselves in these cases, “This I have drawn upon myself. I could never be quiet until I had gotten this woman, this place, this estate, this honor, and now see what is come of it.”
One sovereign remedy against all misfortunes is constancy of mind: the changing of parties and countenances looks as if a man were driven with the wind. Nothing can be above him that is above fortune. It is not violence, reproach, contempt, or whatever else from without, that can make a wise man quit his ground: but he is proof against calamities, both great and small: only our error is, that what we cannot do ourselves, we think nobody else can; so that we judge of the wise by the measures of the weak. Place me among princes or among beggars, the one shall not make me proud, nor the other ashamed. I can take as sound a sleep in a barn as in a palace, and a bundle of hay makes me as good a lodging as a bed of down. Should every day succeed to my wish, it should not transport me; nor would I think myself miserable if I should not have one quiet hour in my life. I will not transport myself with either pain or pleasure; but yet for all that, I could wish that I had an easier game to play, and that I were put rather to moderate my joys than my sorrows. If I were an imperial prince, I had rather take than be taken; and yet I would bear the same mind under the chariot of my conqueror that I had in my own. It is no great matter to trample upon those things that are most coveted or feared by the common people.
There are those that will laugh upon the wheel, and cast themselves upon a certain death, only upon a transport of love, perhaps anger, avarice, or revenge; how much more then upon an instinct of virtue, which is invincible and steady! If a short obstinacy of mind can do this, how much more shall a composed and deliberate virtue, whose force is equal and perpetual.
To secure ourselves in this world, first, we must aim at nothing that men count worth the wrangling for. Secondly, we must not value the possession of any thing which even a common thief would think worth the stealing. A man’s body is no booty. Let the way be never so dangerous for robberies, the poor and the naked pass quietly. A plain-dealing sincerity of manners makes a man’s life happy, even in despite of scorn and contempt, which is every clear man’s fate. But we had better yet be contemned for simplicity than lie perpetually upon the torture of a counterfeit; provided that care be taken not to confound simplicity with negligence; and it is, moreover, an uneasy life that of a disguise; for a man to seem to be what he is not, to keep a perpetual guard upon himself, and to live in fear of a discovery. He takes every man that looks upon him for a spy, over and above the trouble of being put to play another man’s part. It is a good remedy in some cases for a man to apply himself to civil affairs and public business; and yet, in this state of life too, what betwixt ambition and calumny, it is hardly safe to be honest. There are, indeed, some cases wherein a wise man will give way; but let him not yield over easily neither; if he marches off, let him have a care of his honor, and make his retreat with his sword in his hand, and his face to the enemy. Of all others, a studious life is the least tiresome: it makes us easy to ourselves and to others, and gains us both friends and reputation.
CHAPTER X.
HE THAT SETS UP HIS REST UPON CONTINGENCIES SHALL NEVER BE QUIET.
Never pronounce any man happy that depends upon fortune for his happiness; for nothing can be more preposterous than to place the good of a reasonable creature in unreasonable things. If I have lost any thing, it was adventitious; and the less money, the less trouble; the less favor, the less envy; nay, even in those cases that put us out of their wits, it is not the loss itself, but the opinion of the loss, that troubles us. It is a common mistake to account those things necessary that are superfluous, and to depend upon fortune for the felicity of life, which arises only from virtue. There is no trusting to her smiles; the sea swells and rages in a moment, and the ships are swallowed at night, in the very place where they sported themselves in the morning. And fortune has the same power over princes that it has over empires, over nations that it has over cities, and the same power over cities that it has over private men. Where is that estate that may not be followed upon the heel with famine and beggary? that dignity which the next moment may not be laid in the dust? that kingdom that is secure from desolation and ruin? The period of all things is at hand, as well that which casts out the fortunate as the other that delivers the unhappy; and that which may fall out at any time may fall out this very day. What _shall_ come to pass I know not, but what _may_ come to pass I know: so that I will despair of nothing, but expect everything; and whatsoever Providence remits is clear gain. Every moment, if it spares me, deceives me; and yet in some sort it does not deceive me; for though I know that any thing may happen, yet I know likewise that everything will not. I will hope the best, and provide for the worst. Methinks we should not find so much fault with Fortune for her inconstancy when we ourselves suffer a change every moment that we live; only other changes make more noise, and this steals upon us like the shadow upon a dial, every jot as certainly, but more insensibly.
The burning of Lyons may serve to show us that we are never safe, and to arm us against all surprises. The terror of it must needs be great, for the calamity is almost without example. If it had been fired by an enemy, the flame would have left some further mischief to have been done by the soldiers; but to be wholly consumed, we have not heard of many earthquakes so pernicious: so many rarities to be destroyed in one night; and in the depth of peace to suffer an outrage beyond the extremity of war; who would believe it? but twelve hours betwixt so fair a city and none at all! It was laid in ashes in less time than it would require to tell the story.
To stand unshaken in such a calamity is hardly to be expected, and our wonder can but be equal to our grief. Let this accident teach us to provide against all possibilities that fall within the power of fortune. All external things are under her dominion: one while she calls our hands to her assistance; another while she contents herself with her own force, and destroys us with mischiefs of which we cannot find the author. No time, place, or condition, is excepted; she makes our very pleasures painful to us; she makes war upon us in the depth of peace, and turns the means of our security into an occasion of fear; she turns a friend into an enemy, and makes a foe of a companion; we suffer the effects of war without any adversary; and rather than fail, our felicity shall be the cause of our destruction. Lest we should either forget or neglect her power, every day produces something extraordinary. She persecutes the most temperate with sickness, the strongest constitutions with the phthisis; she brings the innocent to punishment, and the most retired she assaults with tumults. Those glories that have grown up with many ages, with infinite labor and expense, and under the favor of many auspicious providences, one day scatters and brings to nothing. He that pronounced a day, nay, an hour, sufficient for the destruction of the greatest empire, might have fallen to a moment.
It were some comfort yet to the frailty of mankind and of human affairs, if things might but decay as slowly as they rise; but they grow by degrees, and they fall to ruin in an instant. There is no felicity in anything either private or public; men, nations, and cities, have all their fates and periods; our very entertainments are not without terror, and our calamity rises there where we least expect it. Those kingdoms that stood the shock both of foreign wars and civil, come to destruction without the sight of an enemy. Nay, we are to dread our peace and felicity more than violence, because we are here taken unprovided; unless in a state of peace we do the duty of men in war, and say to ourselves, _Whatsoever may be, will be_. I am to-day safe and happy in the love of my country; I am to-morrow banished: to-day in pleasure, peace, health; to-morrow broken upon a wheel, led in triumph, and in the agony of sickness. Let us therefore prepare for a shipwreck in the port, and for a tempest in a calm. One violence drives me from my country, another ravishes that from me; and that very place where a man can hardly pass this day for a crowd may be to-morrow a desert.
Wherefore let us set before our eyes the whole condition of human nature, and consider as well what _may_ happen as what commonly _does_.
The way to make future calamities easy to us in the sufferance, is to make them familiar to us in the contemplation. How many cities in Asia, Achaia, Assyria, Macedonia, have been swallowed up by earthquakes?
nay, whole countries are lost, and large provinces laid under water; but time brings all things to an end; for all the works of mortals are mortal; all possessions and their possessors are uncertain and perishable; and what wonder is it to lose anything at any time, when we must one day lose all?
That which we call our own is but lent us; and what we have received _gratis_ we must return without complaint. That which Fortune gives us this hour she may take away the next; and he that trusts to her favors, shall either find himself deceived, or if he be not, he will at least be troubled, because he may be so. There is no defence in walls, fortifications, and engines, against the power of fortune; we must provide ourselves within, and when we are safe there, we are invincible; we may be battered, but not taken. She throws her gifts among us, and we sweat and scuffle for them, never considering how few are the better for that which is expected by all. Some are transported with what they get; others tormented for what they miss; and many times there is a leg or an arm broken in a contest for a counter. She gives us honors, riches, favors, only to take them away again, either by violence or treachery: so that they frequently turn to the damage of the receiver. She throws out baits for us, and sets traps as we do for birds and beasts; her bounties are snares and lime-twigs to us; we think that we take, but we are taken. If they had any thing in them that was substantial, they would some time or other fill and quiet us; but they serve only to provoke our appetite without anything more than pomp and show to allay it. But the best of it is, if a man cannot mend his fortune, he may yet mend his manners, and put himself so far out of her reach, that whether she gives or takes, it shall be all one to us; for we are neither the greater for the one, nor the less for the other.
We call this a dark room, or that a light one; when it is in itself neither the one nor the other, but only as the day and the night render it. And so it is in riches, strength of body, beauty, honor, command: and likewise in pain, sickness, banishment, death: which are in themselves middle and indifferent things, and only good or bad as they are influenced by virtue. To weep, lament, and groan, is to renounce our duty; and it is the same weakness on the other side to exult and rejoice. I would rather make my fortune than expect it; being neither depressed with her injuries, nor dazzled with her favors. When Zeno was told, that all his goods were drowned; “Why then,” says he, “Fortune has a mind to make me a philosopher.” It is a great matter for a man to advance his mind above her threats or flatteries; for he that has once gotten the better of her is safe forever.
It is some comfort yet to the unfortunate, that great men lie under the lash for company; and that death spares the palace no more than the cottage, and that whoever is above me has a power also above him. Do we not daily see funerals without trouble, princes deposed, countries depopulated, towns sacked; without so much as thinking how soon it may be our own case? whereas, if we would but prepare and arm ourselves against the iniquities of fortune, we should never be surprised.
When we see any man banished, beggared, tortured, we are to account, that though the mischief fell upon another, it was levelled at us. What wonder is it if, of so many thousands of dangers that are constantly hovering about us, one comes to hit us at last? That which befalls any man, may befall every man; and then it breaks the force of a present calamity to provide against the future. Whatsoever our lot is, we must bear it: as suppose it be contumely, cruelty, fire, sword, pains, diseases, or a prey to wild beasts; there is no struggling, nor any remedy but moderation. It is to no purpose to bewail any part of our life, when life itself is miserable throughout; and the whole flux of it only a course of transition from one misfortune to another.
A man may as well wonder that he should be cold in winter, sick at sea, or have his bones clatter together in a wagon, as at the encounter of ill accidents and crosses in the passage of human life; and it is in vain to run away from fortune, as if there were any hiding-place wherein she could not find us; or to expect any quiet from her; for she makes life a perpetual state of war, without so much as any respite or truce. This we may conclude upon, that her empire is but imaginary, and that whosoever serves her, makes himself a voluntary slave; for “the things that are often contemned by the inconsiderate, and always by the wise, are in themselves neither good nor evil:” as pleasure and pains; prosperity and adversity; which can only operate upon our outward condition, without any proper and necessary effect upon the mind.
CHAPTER XI.
A SENSUAL LIFE IS A MISERABLE LIFE.
The sensuality that we here treat of falls naturally under the head of luxury; which extends to all the excesses of gluttony, lust, effeminacy of manners; and, in short, to whatsoever concerns the overgreat care of the carcass.
To begin now with the pleasures of the palate, (which deal with us like Egyptian thieves, that strangle those they embrace), what shall we say of the luxury of Nomentanus and Apicius, that entertained their very souls in the kitchen: they have the choicest music for their ears; the most diverting spectacles for their eyes; the choicest variety of meats and drinks for their palates. What is all this, I say, but a _merry madness_? It is true, they have their delights, but not without heavy and anxious thoughts, even in their very enjoyments, beside that, they are followed with repentance, and their frolics are little more than the laughter of so many people out of their wits. Their felicities are full of disquiet, and neither sincere nor well grounded: but they have need of one pleasure to support another; and of new prayers to forgive the errors of their former. Their life must needs be wretched that get with great pains what they keep with greater.
One diversion overtakes another; hope excites hope; ambition begets ambition; so that they only change the matter of their miseries, without seeking any end of them; and shall never be without either prosperous or unhappy causes of disquiet. What if a body might have all the pleasures in the world for the asking? who would so much unman himself, as by accepting of them, to desert his soul, and become a perpetual slave to his senses? Those false and miserable palates, that judge of meats by the price and difficulty, not by the healthfulness of taste, they vomit that they may eat, and they eat that they may fetch it up again. They cross the seas for rarities, and when they have swallowed them, they will not so much as give them time to digest.
Wheresoever Nature has placed men, she has provided them aliment: but we rather choose to irritate hunger by expense than to allay it at an easier rate.
What is it that we plow the seas for; or arm ourselves against men and beasts? To what end do we toil, and labor, and pile bags upon bags? We may enlarge our fortunes, but we cannot our bodies; so that it does but spill and run over, whatsoever we take more than we can hold. Our forefathers (by the force of whose virtues we are now supported in our vices) lived every jot as well as we, when they provided and dressed their own meat with their own hands; lodged upon the ground, and were not as yet come to the vanity of gold and gems; when they swore by their earthen gods, and kept their oath, though they died for it.
Did not our consuls live more happily when they cooked their own meat with those victorious hands that had conquered so many enemies and won so many laurels? Did they not live more happily, I say, than our Apicius (that corrupter of youth, and plague of the age he lived in) who, after he had spent a prodigious fortune upon his belly, poisoned himself for fear of starving, when he had yet 250,000 crowns in his coffers? which may serve to show us, that it is the mind, and not the sum, that makes any man rich; when Apicius with all his treasure counted himself in a state of beggary, and took poison to avoid that condition, which another would have prayed for. But why do we call it poison, which was the wholesomest draught of his life? His daily gluttony was poison rather, both to himself and others. His ostentation of it was intolerable; and so was the infinite pains he took to mislead others by his example, who went even fast enough of themselves without driving.
It is a shame for a man to place his felicity in those entertainments and appetites that are stronger in brutes. 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.
CHAPTER XII.
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,