being through its vain glory a burthensome fellow-traveller, and
through its voracity a chargeable table-companion, and a troublesome
bed-fellow by breaking and spoiling one’s sleep at night with cares,
anxieties, and surmises. For when he does sleep his body is indeed
at rest and quiet, but his mind is through superstition in terrors,
dreams, and frights.
When in my slumbers sorrows fill me,
Then frightful dreams and visions kill me,
saith one; just thus envy, fear, anger, and lust affect us. For by
day-time our vice, by looking abroad and fashioning herself to the
manner of others, grows shamefaced, and finds herself obliged to
mask her own disorders, and does not yield herself up wholly to her
appetites, but oftentimes resists and struggles with them. But in
times of sleep, when it escapes both the opinions of men and the laws,
and is at the remotest distance from awe and respect, it stirs every
desire, and raises up its malignity and lewdness. For it attempts (as
Plato speaks) the embraces of a mother, it purveys unlawful meats, and
refrains from no sort of action, enjoying villany, as far as it is
practicable, in shades and phantoms, that end in no real pleasure or
accomplishment of desire, but have only power to stir up and enrage
disorders and distempers.
3. Where then is the pleasure of vice, if there be nowhere to be found
either freedom from care or exemption from trouble, or satisfaction or
undisturbedness or repose? A sound complexion and good health of body
give indeed both place and birth to the flesh’s pleasures; but there
cannot be engendered a gayety and cheerfulness in the mind, unless
undauntedness, assurance, or an immovable serenity be the foundation.
Nay, if some hope or satisfaction should simper a little, this would
be soon puddled and disturbed by some sudden eruption of care, like a
smooth sea by a rock.
4. Heap up gold, gather together silver, raise up walks, fill your
house with slaves and the town with debtors; if you do not appease
the disorders of your own mind, and stint your unsatiable desire, and
deliver yourself from fears and cares, you do but rack wine for a man
in a fever, and administer honey to a man disturbed with bile, and
prepare meat and good cheer for people that have the flux or gripes,
who can neither retain it nor be strengthened by it, but are over and
above spoiled by it. Do you not see how sick persons loathe, spit out,
and refuse the finest and most costly meats, though they be proffered
and forced upon them; and how again, when their complexion alters, and
good spirits, sweet blood, and a connatural heat are engendered, they
get up and gladly and willingly eat brown bread, cheese, and cresses?
Such a disposition as this is it that reason works in the mind. And
you will have sufficiency, if you will but learn what a notable and
generous mind is. You will live luxuriously in poverty, and be a
prince; and you will be as much in love with a vacant and private life
as with that of a general or king. If you once apply to philosophy, you
will never live without pleasure, but you will learn to be everywhere
pleased, and with every thing. You will be pleased with wealth for
making you beneficial to many, and with poverty for not having much to
care for; with fame for being honored, and with obscurity for being
unenvied.