1. It is apparent that clothes make a man warm, not by warming him
themselves or by imparting heat to him (for every garment is of itself
cold, which is the reason that we see those that are very hot and in
a fever often shifting and changing one thing for another), but what
heat a man exhales out of himself, that the garment lying close to his
body keeps together and contracts, and when it hath driven it inward,
it will not suffer it again to dissipate. This being the very case of
external affairs too, it is this that cheats vulgar heads, by making
them think that, if they might but enclose themselves in great houses
and heap together abundance of slaves and riches, they might then live
to their own minds. But an agreeable and gay life is not to be found
without us; on the contrary, it is man that out of his own temper, as
out of a spring, adds pleasure and gayety to the things about him:
The house looks merrier when the fire burns.
And wealth is the more agreeable, and fame and power the more
resplendent, when they have the joy of the mind to accompany them;
since we see how that through a mild and tame disposition men can bear
poverty, banishment, and old age easily and sweetly.
2. For as odors perfume threadbare coats and poor rags, while Prince
Anchises’s ulcer sent forth a loathsome purulence,
When the foul tent dript on his purple robe,
even so every state and condition of life, if accompanied with virtue,
is undisturbed and delightful. But when vice is intermixed, it renders
even the things that appear splendid, sumptuous, and magnificent most
distasteful, nauseous, and unacceptable to the possessors.
This man’s thought happy in the market-place,
But when he ope’s his doors, hell is his case;
The woman governs all, commands and brawls.
Though one may without any great difficulty get rid of a wicked
cross-grained wife, if he be but a man and not a slave. But a man
cannot write a bill of divorce to his vice, and thereby free himself
from further trouble, and procure his own repose by living apart; but
it still cohabits with him, and dwells in his very bowels, and cleaves
to him both by night and by day;