Our applications should suited be
Unto the nature of the malady;
Of sorrow we should wipe the tender eyes,
But the immoderate weeper should chastise.
For of all the passions which move and afflict the mind of man, sorrow
in its nature is the most grievous; in some they say it hath produced
madness, others have contracted incurable diseases, and some out of the
vehemence of it have laid violent hands upon themselves.
3. Therefore to be sad, even to an indisposition, for the death of a
son proceeds from a principle of nature, and it is out of our power to
prevent it. I dislike those who boast so much of hard and inflexible
temper which they call apathy, it being a disposition which never
happens and never could be of use to us; for it would extinguish that
sociable love we ought to have for one another, and which it is so
necessary above all things to preserve. But to mourn excessively and
to accumulate grief I do affirm to be altogether unnatural, and to
result from a depraved opinion we have of things; therefore we ought
to shun it as destructive in itself, and unworthy of a virtuous man;
but to be moderately affected by grief we cannot condemn. It were to be
wished, saith Crantor the Academic, that we could not be sick at all;
but when a distemper seizeth us, it is requisite we should have sense
and feeling in case any of our members be plucked or cut off. For that
talked-of apathy can never happen to a man without great detriment; for
as now the body, so soon the very mind would be wild and savage.
4. Therefore in such accidents, it is but reasonable that they who are
in their right senses should avoid both extremes, of being without
any passion at all and of having too much; for as the one argues a
mind that is obstinate and fierce, so the other doth one that is
soft and effeminate. He therefore hath cast up his accounts the
best, who, confining himself within due bounds, hath such ascendant
over his temper, as to bear prosperous and adverse fortune with the
same equality, whichsoever it is that happens to him in this life.
He puts on those resolutions as if he were in a popular government
where magistracy is decided by lot; if it luckily falls to his share,
he obeys his fortune, but if it passeth him, he doth not repine at
it. So we must submit to the dispensation of human affairs, without
being uneasy and querulous. Those who cannot do this want prudence
and steadiness of mind to bear more happy circumstances; for amongst
other things which are prettily said, this is one remarkable precept of
Euripides:—
If Fortune prove extravagantly kind,
Above its temper do not raise thy mind;
If she disclaims thee like a jilting dame,
Be not dejected, but be still the same,
Like gold unchanged amidst the hottest flame.
For it is the part of a wise and well-educated man, not to be
transported beyond himself with any prosperous events, and so, when the
scene of fortune changeth, to observe still the comeliness and decency
of his morals. For it is the business of a man that lives by rule,
either to prevent an evil that threatens him, or, when it is come, to
qualify its malignity and make it as little as he can, or put on a
masculine brave spirit and so resolve to endure it. For there are four
ways that prudence concerns herself about any thing that is good; she
is either industrious to acquire or careful to preserve, she either
augments or useth it well. These are the measures of prudence, and
consequently those of all other virtues, by which we ought to square
ourselves in either fortune.