the young men of his city, were things that in any way derogated
from the honor of his glorious victories and the perfect purity of
manners that was in him. And among so many admirable actions of
Scipio, the grandfather, a person worthy to be reputed of a heavenly
extraction, there is nothing that gives him a greater grace than to
see him carelessly and childishly trifling at gathering and
selecting shells, and playing at quoits upon the seashore with
Laelius; and, if it was foul weather, amusing and pleasing himself
in representing by writing in comedies the meanest and most popular
actions of men; or having his head full of that wonderful enterprise
of Hannibal and Africa, visiting the schools in Sicily, and
attending philosophical lectures, improving himself, to the blind envy
of his enemies at Rome. Nor is there anything more remarkable in
Socrates than that, old as he was, he found time to make himself
taught dancing and playing upon instruments, and thought it time
well spent; but this same man was seen in an ecstasy, standing upon
his feet a whole day and a night together, in the presence of all
the Grecian army, surprised and ravished with some profound thought.
He was the first who, among so many valiant men of the army, ran to
the relief of Alcibiades, oppressed with the enemy; shielded him
with his own body, and disengaged him from the crowd, by absolute
force of arms. It was he who, in the Delian battle, raised and saved
Xenophon when fallen from his horse; and who, among all the people
of Athens, enraged as he was at so unworthy a spectacle, first
presented himself to rescue Theramenes, whom the thirty tyrants were
hauling to execution by their satellites, and desisted not from his
bold enterprise but at the remonstrance of Theramenes himself,
though he was only followed by two more in all. He was seen, when
courted by a beauty with whom he was in love, to maintain at need a
severe abstinence. He was seen ever to go to the wars, and walk upon
ice, with bare feet; to wear the same robe winter and summer; to
surpass all his companions in patience of bearing hardships, and to
eat no more at a feast than at his own private dinner. He was seen,
for seven and twenty years together, to endure hunger, poverty, the
indocility of his children, and the claws of his wife, with the same
countenance; and, in the end, calumny, tyranny, imprisonment, fetters,
and poison. But was this man obliged to drink full bumpers by any rule
of civility? he was also the man of the whole army, with whom the
advantage in drinking remained. And he never refused to play at
cob-nut, nor to ride the hobby-horse with children, and it became
him well; for all actions, says philosophy, equally become and equally
honor a wise man. We have enough wherewithal to do it, and we ought
never to be weary of presenting the image of this great man in all the
patterns and forms of perfections. There are very few examples of
life, full and pure; and we wrong our teaching every day, to propose
to ourselves those that are weak and imperfect, scarce good for any
one service, and rather pull us back; corrupters rather than
correctors of manners. The people deceive themselves; a man goes
much more easily indeed by the ends, where the extremity serves for
a bound, a stop, and guide, than by the middle way, large and open;
and according to art, more than according to nature: but withal much
less nobly and commendably.

    Grandeur of soul consists not so much in mounting and in
pressing forward, as in knowing how to govern and circumscribe itself;
it takes everything for great, that is enough, and demonstrates itself
better in moderate than in eminent things. There is nothing so fine
and legitimate as well and duly to play the man; nor science so
arduous as well and naturally to know how to live this life; and of
all the infirmities we have, 'tis the most savage to despise our
being.

    Whoever has a mind to send his soul abroad, when the body is ill
at ease, to preserve it from the contagion, let him, by all means,
do it if he can: but, otherwise, let him on the contrary favor and
assist it, and not refuse to participate of its natural pleasures with
a conjugal complacency, bringing to it, if it be the wiser,
moderation, lest by indiscretion they should get confounded with
pleasure. Intemperance is the pest of pleasure; and temperance is
not its scourge, but rather its seasoning. Eudoxus, who therein
established the sovereign good, and his companions, who set so high
a value upon it, tasted it in its most charming sweetness, by the
means of temperance, which in them was singular and exemplary.

    I enjoin my soul to look upon pain and pleasure with an eye
equally regular, "Eodem enim vitio est effusio animi in laetitia,
quo in dolore contractio," and equally firm; but the one gayly and the
other severely, and, so far as it is able, to be as careful to
extinguish the one, as to extend the other. The judging rightly of
good brings along with it the judging soundly of evil; pain has
something of the inevitable in its tender beginnings, and pleasure
something of the evitable in its excessive end. Plato couples them
together, and wills that it should be equally the office of
fortitude to fight against pain, and against the immoderate and
charming blandishments of pleasure; they are two fountains, from which
whoever draws, when and as much as he needs, whether city, man, or
beast, is very fortunate. The first is to be taken medicinally and
upon necessity, and more scantily; the other for thirst, but not to
drunkenness. Pain, pleasure, love, and hatred are the first things
that a child is sensible of; if, when reason comes, they apply it to
themselves, that is virtue.

    I have a special nomenclature of my own; I "pass away time,"
when it is ill and uneasy, but when 'tis good I do not pass it away;
"I taste it over again and stick to it;" one must run over the ill,
and settle upon the good. This ordinary phrase of pastime, and passing
away the time, represents the usage of those wise sort of people who
think they cannot do better with their lives than to let them run
out and slide away, pass them over, and balk them, and, as much as
they can, ignore them, and shun them as a thing of troublesome and