129. Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

    130. Restlessness.- If a soldier, or labourer, complain of the
hardship of his lot, set him to do nothing.

    131. Weariness.- Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be
completely at rest, without passions, without business, without
diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his
forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his
emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart
weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.

    132. Methinks Caesar was too old to set about amusing himself with
conquering the world. Such sport was good for Augustus or Alexander.
They were still young men and thus difficult to restrain. But Caesar
should have been more mature.

    133. Two faces which resemble each other make us laugh, when
together, by their resemblance, though neither of them by itself makes
us laugh.

    134. How useless is painting, which attracts admiration by the
resemblance of things, the originals of which we do not admire!

    135. The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory. We love to
see animals fighting, not the victor infuriated over the vanquished.
We would only see the victorious end; and, as soon as it comes, we are
satiated. It is the same in play, and the same in the search for
truth. In disputes we like to see the clash of opinions, but not at
all to contemplate truth when found. To observe it with pleasure, we
have to see it emerge out of strife. So in the passions, there is
pleasure in seeing the collision of two contraries; but when one
acquires the mastery, it becomes only brutality. We never seek
things for themselves, but for the search. Likewise in plays, scenes
which do not rouse the emotion of fear are worthless, so are extreme
and hopeless misery, brutal lust, and extreme cruelty.

    136. A mere trifle consoles us, for a mere trifle distresses us.

    137. Without examining every particular pursuit, it is enough to
comprehend them under diversion.

    138. Men naturally slaters and of all callings, save in their
own rooms.

    139. Diversion.- When I have occasionally set myself to consider
the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which
they expose themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many
quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have
discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single
fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who
has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home,
would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A commission
in the army would not be bought so dearly, but that it is found
insufferable not to budge from the town; and men only seek
conversation and entering games, because they cannot remain with
pleasure at home.

    But, on further consideration, when, after finding the cause of
all our ills, I have sought to discover the reason of it, I have found
that there is one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our
feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort
us when we think of it closely.

    Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the
good things which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest
position in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every
pleasure he can feel, if he be without diversion and be left to
consider and reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not
sustain him; he will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers,
of revolutions which may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable
disease; so that, if he be without what is called diversion, he is
unhappy and more unhappy than the least of his subjects who plays
and diverts himself.

    Hence it comes that play and the society of women, war and high
posts, are so sought after. Not that there is in fact any happiness in
them, or that men imagine true bliss to consist in money won at
play, or in the hare which they hunt; we would not take these as a
gift. We do not seek that easy and peaceful lot which permits us to
think of our unhappy condition, nor the dangers of war, nor the labour
of office, but the bustle which averts these thoughts of ours and
amuses us.

    Reasons why we like the chase better than the quarry.

    Hence it comes that men so much love noise and stir; hence it
comes that the prison is so horrible a punishment; hence it comes that
the pleasure of solitude is a thing incomprehensible. And it is, in
fact, the greatest source of happiness in the condition of kings
that men try incessantly to divert them and to procure for them all
kinds of pleasures.

    The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to
divert the king and to prevent his thinking of self. For he is
unhappy, king though he be, if he think of himself.

    This is all that men have been able to discover to make themselves
happy. And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men
unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they