Pars sanitatis velle sanari fuit. SENECA.
To yield to remedies is half the cure.
PYTHAGORAS is reported to have required
from those whom he instructed in philosophy a
probationary silence of five years. Whether this
prohibition of speech extended to all the parts of
this time, as seems generally to be supposed, or
was to be observed only in the school or in the
presence of their master, as is more probable, it was
sufficient to discover the pupil's disposition; to try
whether he was willing to pay the price of learning,
or whether he was one of those whose ardour was
rather violent than lasting, and who expected to
grow wise on other terms than those of patience
and obedience.
Many of the blessings universally desired, are
very frequently wanted, because most men, when
they should labour, content themselves to complain,
and rather linger in a state in which they
cannot be at rest, than improve their condition by
vigour and resolution.
Providence has fixed the limits of human
enjoyment by immoveable boundaries, and has set
different gratifications at such a distance from each other,
that no art or power can bring them together. This
great law it is the business of every rational being
to understand, that life may not pass away in an
attempt to make contradictions consistent, to combine
opposite qualities, and to unite things which
the nature of their being must always keep asunder.
Of two objects tempting at a distance on
contrary sides, it is impossible to approach one but by
receding from the other; by long deliberation and
dilatory projects, they may be both lost, but can
never be both gained. It is, therefore, necessary to
compare them, and, when we have determined the
preference, to withdraw our eyes and our thoughts
at once from that which reason directs us to reject.
This is more necessary, if that which we are forsaking
has the power of delighting the senses, or firing
the fancy. He that once turns aside to the
allurements of unlawful pleasure, can have no security
that he shall ever regain the paths of virtue.
The philosophick goddess of Boethius, having
related the story of Orpheus, who, when he had
recovered his wife from the dominions of death, lost
her again by looking back upon her in the confines
of light, concludes with a very elegant and forcible
application. "Whoever you are that endeavour to
elevate your minds to the illuminations of Heaven,
consider yourselves as represented in this fable; for
he that is once so far overcome as to turn back his
eyes towards the infernal caverns, loses at the first
sight all that influence which attracted him on high:"
Vos haec fabula respicit,
Quicunque in superum diem
Mentem ducere quaeritis.
Nam qui Tartareum in specus
Victus lumina flexerit,
Quidquid praecipuum trahit,
Perdit, dum videt inferos.
It may be observed, in general, that the future is
purchased by the present. It is not possible to secure
instant or permanent happiness but by the forbearance
of some immediate gratification. This is
so evidently true with regard to the whole of our
existence, that all the precepts of theology have no
other tendency than to enforce a life of faith; a life
regulated not by our senses but our belief; a life in
which pleasures are to be refused for fear of
invisible punishments, and calamities sometimes to be
sought, and always endured, in hope of rewards
that shall be obtained in another state.
Even if we take into our view only that particle
of our duration which is terminated by the grave,
it will be found that we cannot enjoy one part of
life beyond the common limitations of pleasure,
but by anticipating some of the satisfaction which
should exhilarate the following years. The heat of
youth may spread happiness into wild luxuriance,
but the radical vigour requisite to make it perennial
is exhausted, and all that can be hoped afterwards
is languor and sterility.
The reigning errour of mankind is, that we are
not content with the conditions on which the goods
of life are granted. No man is insensible of the
value of knowledge, the advantages of health, or
the convenience of plenty, but every day shews us
those on whom the conviction is without effect.
Knowledge is praised and desired by multitudes
whom her charms could never rouse from the couch
of sloth; whom the faintest invitation of pleasure
draws away from their studies; to whom any other
method of wearing out the day is more eligible than
the use of books, and who are more easily engaged
by any conversation, than such as may rectify their
notions or enlarge their comprehension.
Every man that has felt pain, knows how little
all other comforts can gladden him to whom health
is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes
hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour? All
assemblies of jollity, all places of public entertainment,
exhibit examples of strength wasting in riot, and
beauty withering in irregularity; nor is it easy to
enter a house in which part of the family is not
groaning in repentance of past intemperance, and
part admitting disease by negligence, or soliciting
it by luxury.
There is no pleasure which men of every age and
sect have more generally agreed to mention with
contempt, than the gratifications of the palate; an
entertainment so far removed from intellectual
happiness, that scarcely the most shameless of the
sensual herd have dared to defend it: yet even to
this, the lowest of our delights, to this, though
neither quick nor lasting, is health with all its
activity and sprightliness daily sacrificed; and for this
are half the miseries endured which urge impatience
to call on death.
The whole world is put in motion by the wish
for the riches and the dread of poverty. Who, then,
would not imagine that such conduct as will inevitably
destroy what all are thus labouring to acquire,
must generally be avoided? That he who spends
more than he receives, must in time become
indigent, cannot be doubted; but, how evident soever
this consequence may appear, the spendthrift moves
in the whirl of pleasure with too much rapidity to
keep it before his eyes, and, in the intoxication of
gaiety, grows every day poorer without any such
sense of approaching ruin as is sufficient to wake
him into caution.
Many complaints are made of the misery of life;
and indeed it must be confessed that we are subject
to calamities by which the good and bad, the
diligent and slothful, the vigilant and heedless, are
equally afflicted. But surely, though some
indulgence may be allowed to groans extorted by
inevitable misery, no man has a right to repine at evils
which, against warning, against experience, he
deliberately and leisurely brings upon his own
head; or to consider himself as debarred from
happiness by such obstacles as resolution may break
or dexterity may put aside.
Great numbers who quarrel with their condition,
have wanted not the power but the will to obtain a
better state. They have never contemplated the
difference between good and evil sufficiently to
quicken aversion, or invigorate desire; they have
indulged a drowsy thoughtlessness or giddy levity;
have committed the balance of choice to the
management of caprice; and when they have long
accustomed themselves to receive all that chance
offered them, without examination, lament at last
that they find themselves deceived.