Hence it is that Epicurus adviseth those who aspire to glory not to
stagnate in their ambition, but be in perpetual motion, and so obey
the dictates of their genius in managing the commonwealth; because they
would be more tormented and would suffer greater damages by idleness,
if they were disappointed of that they were in the eager pursuit of.
But the philosopher is absurd in this, that he doth not excite men who
have abilities to qualify themselves for charges in the government,
but only those who are of a restless and unquiet disposition. For the
tranquillity and perturbation of the mind are not to be measured by the
fewness or multitude of our actions, but by their beauty or turpitude;
since the omission of what is good is no less troublesome than the
commission of evil.
3. As for those who think there is one positive state of life, which
is always serene,—some fancying it to be of the husbandmen, others of
those which are unmarried, and some of kings,—Menander clearly shows
them their error in these verses:—
I thought those men, my Phania, always best,
Who take no money up at interest;
Who disengaged from business spend the day,
And in complaints don’t sigh the night away,
Who, troubled, lamentable groans don’t fetch,
Thus breathing out, Ah! miserable wretch!
Those whom despairing thoughts don’t waking keep,
But without startings sweetly take their sleep.
He goes on and observes to us, that the same lot of misfortune falls to
the rich as well as the poor:—
These neighbors slender confines do divide,—
Sorrow and human life are still allied.
It the luxurious liver doth infest,
And robs the man of honor of his rest;
In stricter ties doth with the poor engage,
With him grows old to a decrepit age.
But as timorous and raw sailors in a boat, when they grow sick with the
working of the waves, think they shall overcome their pukings if they
go on board of a ship, but there being equally out of order, go into a
galley, but are therefore never the better, because they carry their
nauseousness and fear along with them; so the several changes of life
do only shift and not wholly extirpate the causes of our trouble. And
these are only our want of experience, the weakness of our judgment,
and a certain impotence of mind which hinders us from making a right
use of what we enjoy. The rich man is subject to this uneasiness of
humor as well as the poor; the bachelor as well as the man in wedlock.
This makes the pleader withdraw from the bar, and then his retirement
is altogether as irksome. And this infuseth a desire into others to be
presented at court; and when they come there, they presently grow weary
of the life.
Poor men when sick do peevishly complain,
The sense of want doth aggravate their pain.[75]
For then the wife grows officious in her attendance, the physician
himself is a disease, and the bed is not made easy enough to his mind;
even his friend importunes him with his visits:—
He doth molest him when he first doth come,
And when he goes away he’s troublesome,
as Ion expresseth it. But when the heat of the disease is over and the
former temperature of the body is restored, then health returns, and
brings with it all those pleasant images which sickness chased away; so
that he that yesterday refused eggs and delicate cakes and the finest
manchets will now snap eagerly at a piece of household bread, with an
olive and a few water-cresses.
4. So reason makes all sorts of life easy, and every change pleasant.
Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite
number of worlds, and his friends asking him if any accident had
befallen him, he returns this answer: Do not you think it a matter
worthy of lamentation, that, when there is such a vast multitude of
them, we have not yet conquered one? But Crates with only his scrip
and tattered cloak laughed out his life jocosely, as if he had been
always at a festival. The great power and command of Agamemnon gave him
an equal disturbance:—
Look upon Agamemnon, Atreus’s son,
What mighty loads of trouble he hath on.
He is distracted with perpetual care;
Jove that inflicts it gives him strength to bear.[76]
Diogenes, when he was exposed to sale in the market and was commanded
to stand up, not only refused to do it, but ridiculed the auctioneer,
with this piece of raillery: What! if you were selling a fish, would
you bid it rise up? Socrates was a philosopher in the prison, and
discoursed with his friends, though he was fettered. But Phaeton, when
he climbed up into heaven, thought himself unhappy there, because
nobody would give him his father’s chariot and the horses of the sun.
As therefore the shoe is twisted to the shape of the foot and not in
the opposite way, so do the affections of the mind render the life
conformable to themselves. For it is not custom, as one observed, which
makes even the best life pleasant to those who choose it, but it must
be prudence in conjunction with it, which makes it not only the best
for its kind, but sweetest in its enjoyment. The fountain therefore of
tranquillity being in ourselves, let us cleanse it from all impurity
and make its streams limpid, that all external accidents, by being made
familiar, may be no longer grievous to us, since we shall know how to
use them well.
Let not these things thy least concern engage;
For though thou fret, they will not mind thy rage.
Him only good and happy we may call
Who rightly useth what doth him befall.[77]
5. For Plato compared our life to a game at dice, where we ought to
throw for what is most commodious for us, but when we have thrown, to
make the best of our casts. We cannot make what chances we please turn
up, if we play fair; this lies out of our power. That which is within
our power, and is our duty if we are wise, is to accept patiently what
Fortune shall allot us, and so to adjust things in their proper places,
that what is our own may be disposed of to the best advantage, and what
hath happened against our will may offend us as little as possible.
But as to men who live without measures and with no prudence, like
those whose constitution is so sickly and infirm that they are equally
impatient both of heats and colds, prosperity exalts them above their
temper, and adversity dejects them beneath it; indeed each fortune
disturbs them, or rather they raise up storms to themselves in either,
and they are especially querulous under good circumstances. Theodorus,
who was called the Atheist, was used to say, that he reached out his
instructions with the right hand, and his auditors received them with
their left hands. So men of no education, when Fortune would even be
complaisant to them, are yet so awkward in their observance, that they
take her addresses on the wrong side. On the contrary, men that are
wise, as the bees draw honey from the thyme, which is a most unsavory
and dry herb, extract something that is convenient and useful even from
the most bitter afflictions.
6. This therefore let us learn and have inculcated upon us; like the
man who threw a stone at a bitch, but hit his step-mother, on which
he exclaimed, Not so bad. So we may often turn the direction of what
Fortune obtrudes upon us contrary to our desires. Diogenes was driven
into banishment, but it was “not so bad” for him; for of an exile he
became a philosopher. Zeno of Citium, when he heard that the only ship
he had left was sunk by an unmerciful tempest, with all the rich cargo
that was in her, brake out into this exclamation: Fortune, I applaud
thy contrivance, who by this means hast reduced me to a threadbare
cloak and the piazza of the Stoics. What hinders then but that
these examples should be the patterns of our imitation? Thou stoodst
candidate for a place in the government, and wast baulked in thy hopes;
consider that thou wilt live at ease in thy own country, following thy
own affairs. Thou wast ambitious to be the confidant of some great
person, and sufferedst a repulse; thou wilt gain thus much by it, that
thou wilt be free from danger and disembarrassed from business. Again,
hast thou managed any affairs full of intricacy and trouble? Hot water
doth not so much cherish the soft members of the body, as Pindar[78]
expresseth it, as glory and honor joined with power sweeten all our
toils and make labor easy. Hast thou met with any unfortunate success?
Hath calumny bit, or envy hissed at thee? There is yet a prosperous
gale, which sits fair to convey thee to the port of the Muses and
land thee at the Academy. This Plato did, after he made shipwreck of
the friendship of Diogenes. And indeed it highly conduceth to the
tranquillity of the mind, to look back upon illustrious men and see
with what temper they have borne their calamities. For instance, doth
it trouble thee that thou wantest children? Consider that kings of the
Romans have died without them,—had kingdoms to leave, but no heirs.
Doth poverty and low condition afflict thee? It is put to thy option,
wouldst thou not rather of all the Boeotians be Epaminondas, and of
all the Romans Fabricius? But thy bed is violated, and thy wife is an
adulteress. Didst thou never read this inscription at Delphi?—
Here am I set by Agis’ royal hand,
Who both the earth and ocean did command.
And yet did the report never arrive thee that Alcibiades debauched this
king’s wife, Timaea?—and that she herself whispered archly to her
maids, that the child was not the genuine offspring of her husband,
but a young Alcibiades? Yet this did not obstruct the glory of the
man; for, notwithstanding his being a cuckold, he was the greatest and
most famous among the Greeks. Nor did the dissolute manners of his
daughter hinder Stilpo from enlivening his humor and being the jolliest
philosopher of his time; for when Metrocles upbraided him with it, he
asked him whether he was the offender or his mad girl. He answered,
that it was her sin but his misfortune. To which Stilpo replied: But
are not sins lapses? No doubt of it, saith Metrocles. And is not that
properly called lapse, when we fall off from the attainment of those
things we were in the pursuit of? He could not deny it. He pursued
him further with this question: And are not these unlucky traverses
misfortunes to them who are thus disappointed? Thus by a pleasant and
philosophical reasoning he turned the discourse, and showed the Cynic
that his calumny was idle and he barked in vain.
7. But there are some whom not only the evil dispositions of their
friends and domestics, but those of their enemies, give disturbance to.
For a proneness to speak evil of another, anger, envy, ill-nature, a
jealous and perverse temper, are the pests of those who are infected
with them. And these serve only to trouble and exasperate fools, like
the brawls of scolding neighbors, the peevishness of our acquaintance,
and the iniquity or want of qualifications in those who administer
the government. But thou seemest to me to be especially concerned
with affairs of this nature; for, like the physicians mentioned by
Sophocles,—
Who bitter choler cleanse and scour
With drugs as bitter and as sour,—
thou dost let other men’s enormities sour thy blood; which is highly
irrational. For, even in matters of private management, thou dost
not always employ men of wit and address, which are the most proper
for such an execution, but sometimes those of rough and crooked
dispositions; and to animadvert upon them for every peccadillo thou
must not think belongs to thee, nor is it easy in the performance.
But if thou makest that use of them, as chirurgeons do of forceps to
pull out teeth or ligatures to bind wounds, and so appear cheerful
whatever falls out, the satisfaction of thy mind will delight thee
more than the concern at other men’s pravity and malicious humor will
disturb thee. Otherwise, as dogs bark at all persons indifferently,
so, if thou persecutest everybody that offends thee, thou wilt bring
the matter to this pass by thy imprudence, that all things will flow
down into this imbecility of thy mind, as a place void and capable of
receiving them, and at last thou wilt be filled with nothing but other
men’s miscarriages. For if some of the philosophers inveigh against
compassion which others’ calamities affect us with, as a soft affection
(saying, that we ought to give real assistance to those in distress,
and not to be dejected or sympathize with them), and if—which is a
thing of higher moment—they discard all sadness and uneasiness when
the sense of a vice or a disease is upon us, saying that we ought
to cure the indisposition without being grieved; is it not highly
consonant to reason, that we should not storm or fret, if those we
have to do with are not so wise and honest as they should be? Let us
consider the thing truly, my Paccius, lest, whilst we find fault with
others, we prove partial in our own respect through inadvertency,
and lest our censuring their failings may proceed not so much from a
hatred of their vices as from love of ourselves. We should not have
our passions moved at every provocation, nor let our desires grow
exorbitant beyond what is just; for these little aversions of our
temper engender suspicions, and infuse moroseness into us, which makes
us surly to those who precluded the way to our ambition, or who made us
fall into those disastrous events we would willingly have shunned. But
he that hath a smoothness in his nature and a talent of moderation can
transact and converse with mankind easily and with mildness.
8. Let us recapitulate therefore what we have said. When we are in
a fever, every thing that we taste is not only unsavory but bitter;
but when we see others relish it without any disgust, we do not then
lay the blame either upon the meat or drink, but conclude that only
ourselves and the disease are in fault. In like manner we shall cease
to bear things impatiently, if we see others enjoy them with alacrity
and humor. And this likewise is a great promoter of the tranquillity
of the mind, if, amongst those ill successes which carry a dismal
appearance, we look upon other events which have a more beautiful
aspect, and so blend them together that we may overcome the bad by the
mixture of the good. But although, when our eyes are dazzled with too
intense a splendor, we refresh our sight by viewing something that
is green and florid, yet we fix the optics of our minds upon doleful
objects, and compel them to dwell upon the recital of our miseries,
plucking them perforce, as it were, from the consideration of what is
better. And here we may insert that which was said to a pragmatical
fellow, handsomely enough:—
Why so quick sighted others’ faults to find,
But to thy own so partially art blind?
’Tis malice that exasperates thy mind.
But why, my friend, art thou so acute to discern even thy own
misfortunes, and so industrious to renew them and set them in thy
sight, that they may be the more conspicuous, while thou never turnest
thy consideration to those good things which are present with thee and
thou dost enjoy? But as cupping-glasses draw the impurest blood out
of the body, so thou dost extract the quintessence of infelicity to
afflict thyself. In this thou art no better than the Chian merchant,
who, while he sold abundance of his best and most generous wine to
others, called for some that was pricked and vapid to taste at supper;
and one of his servants asking another what he left his master doing,
he made this answer, that he was calling for bad when the good was
by him. For most men leave the pleasant and delectable things behind
them, and run with haste to embrace those which are not only difficult
but intolerable. Aristippus was not of this number, for he knew, even
to the niceness of a grain, to put prosperous against adverse fortune
into the scale, that the one might outweigh the other. Therefore when
he lost a noble farm, he asked one of his dissembled friends, who
pretended to be sorry, not only with regret but impatience, for his
mishap: Thou hast but one piece of land, but have I not three farms yet
remaining? He assenting to the truth of it: Why then, saith he, should
I not rather lament your misfortune, since it is the raving only of a
mad man to be concerned at what is lost, and not rather rejoice in what
is left? Thus, as children, if you rob them of one of their play-games,
will throw away the rest, and cry and scream; so, if Fortune infest us
only in one part, we grow fearful and abandon ourselves wholly to her
attacks.
9. But somebody will object to me, What is it that we have? Rather,
What is it that we have not? One is honorable, the other is master
of a family; this man hath a good wife, the other a faithful friend.
Antipater of Tarsus, when he was upon his death-bed and reckoning up
all the good events which had befallen him, would not omit a prosperous
voyage which he had when he sailed from Cilicia to Athens. Even the
trite and common blessings are not to be despised, but ought to take up
a room in our deliberations. We should rejoice that we live, and are
in health, and see the sun; that there are no wars nor seditions in
our country; that the earth yields to cultivation, and that the sea is
open to our traffic; that we can talk, be silent, do business, and be
at leisure, when we please. They will afford us greater tranquillity
of mind present, if we form some just ideas of them when they are
absent; if we often call to our remembrance how solicitous the sick man
is after health, how acceptable peace is to put out a war, and what a
courtesy it will do us to gain credit and acquire friends in a city of
note, where we are strangers and unknown; and contrariwise, how great a
grief it is to forego these things when we once have them. For surely
a thing does not become great and precious when we have lost it, while
it is of no account so long as we possess it; for the value of a thing
cannot be increased by its loss. But we ought not to take pains to
acquire things as being of great value, and to be in fear and trembling
lest we may lose them, as if they were precious, and then all the time
they are safe in our possession, to neglect them as if they were of no
importance. But we are so to use them that we may reap satisfaction
and gain a solid pleasure from them, that so we may be the better
enabled to endure their loss with evenness of temper. But most men, as
Arcesilaus observed, think they must be critics upon other men’s poems,
survey their pictures with a curious eye, and examine their statues
with all the delicacy of sculpture, but in the meanwhile transiently
pass over their own lives, though there be some things in them which
will not only detain but please their consideration. But they will
not restrain the prospect to themselves, but are perpetually looking
abroad, and so become servile admirers of other men’s fortune and
reputation; as adulterers are always gloating upon other men’s wives
and contemning their own.
10. Besides, this is a thing highly conducing to the tranquillity of
the mind, for a man chiefly to consider himself and his own affairs.
But if this always cannot take place, he should not make comparisons
with men of a superior condition to himself; though this is the
epidemical frenzy of the vulgar. As for instance, slaves who lie in
fetters applaud their good fortune whose shackles are off; those who
are loosed from their bonds would be free men by manumission; these
again aspire to be citizens; the citizen would be rich; the wealthy
man would be a governor of a province; the haughty governor would be
a king, and the king a God, hardly resting content unless he can hurl
thunderbolts and dart lightning. So all are eager for what is above
them, and are never content with what they have.
The wealth of golden Gyges has no delight for me.