contemptible quality; but I know it to be another kind of thing, and
find it both valuable and commodious, even in its latest decay,
wherein I now enjoy it; and nature has delivered it into our hands
in such and so favorable circumstances, that we have only ourselves to
blame if it be troublesome to us, or slide unprofitably away:
"Stulti vita ingrata est, trepida est, tota in futurum fertur."
Nevertheless, I compose myself to lose mine without regret; but withal
as a thing that is perishable by its condition, not that it troubles
or annoys me. Nor does it properly well become any not to be
displeased when they die, excepting such as are pleased to live. There
is good husbandry in enjoying it; I enjoy it double to what others do;
for the measure of its fruition depends upon the more or less of our
application to it. Now especially that I perceive mine to be so
short in time, I will extend it in weight; I will stop the promptitude
of its flight by the promptitude of my grasp; and by the vigor of
using it compensate the speed of its running away; by how much the
possession of living is more short, I must make it so much deeper
and more full.

    Others feel the pleasure of content and prosperity; I feel it too,
as well as they, but not as it slides and passes by; one should study,
taste, and ruminate upon it, to render condign thanks to Him who
grants it to us. They enjoy the other pleasures as they do that of
sleep, without knowing it. To the end that even sleep itself should
not so stupidly escape from me, I have formerly caused myself to be
disturbed in my sleep, so that I might the better and more sensibly
relish and taste it. I ponder with myself of content; I do not skim
over, but sound it; and I bend my reason, now grown perverse and
peevish, to entertain it. Do I find myself in any calm composedness?
is there any pleasure that tickles me? I do not suffer it to dally
with my senses only, I associate my soul to it too; not there to
engage itself, but therein to take delight; not there to lose
itself, but to be present there; and I employ it, on its part, to view
itself in this prosperous state, to weigh and appreciate its
happiness, and to amplify it. It reckons how much it stands indebted
to Almighty God that its conscience and the intestine passions are
in repose; that it has the body in its natural disposition, orderly
and competently enjoying the soft and soothing functions, by which
He of His grace is pleased to compensate the sufferings wherewith
His justice at His good pleasure chastises us. It reflects how great a
benefit it is to be so protected, that, which way soever it turns
its eye, the heavens are calm around it. No desire, no fear or
doubt, troubles the air; no difficulty, past, present, or to come,
that its imagination may not pass over without offense. This
consideration takes great luster from the comparison of different
conditions; and therefore it is that I present to my thought, in a
thousand aspects, those whom fortune or their own error torments and
carries away; and those, who more like to me, so negligently and
incuriously receive their good fortune. Those are men who pass away
their time, indeed; they pass over the present, and that which they
possess, to give themselves up to hope, and for vain shadows and
images which fancy puts into their heads:

             "Morte obita quales fama est volitare figuras,

              Aut quae sopitos deludunt somnia sensus:"

which hasten and prolong their flight, according as they are
pursued. The fruit and end of their pursuit is to pursue; as Alexander
said, that the end of his labor was to labor:

             "Nil actum credens, cum quid superesset agendum;"

    For my part then, I love life, and cultivate it, such as it has
pleased God to bestow it upon us. I do not desire it should be without
the necessity of eating and drinking; and I should think myself
inexcusable to wish it had been twice as long: "Sapiens divitiarum
naturalium quaesitor accerimus:" nor that we should support
ourselves by putting only a little of that drug into our mouths, by
which Epimenides took away his appetite, and kept himself alive; nor
that we should stupidly beget children with our fingers or heels, but,
rather, with reverence be it spoken, that we might voluptuously
beget them with our fingers and heels; nor that the body should be
without desire, and without titillation. These are ungrateful and
wicked complaints. I accept kindly, and with gratitude, what nature
has done for me; am well pleased with it, and proud of it. A man
does wrong to the great omnipotent Giver of all things, to refuse,
annul, or disfigure his gift; all goodness Himself, He has made
everything good: "Omnia quoe secundum naturam sunt, oestimatione digna
sunt."

    Of philosophical opinions, I preferably embrace those that are
most solid, that is to say the most human, and most our own: my
discourse is, suitable to my manners, low and humble; philosophy plays
the child, to my thinking, when it puts itself upon its Ergos, to
preach to us that 'tis a barbarous alliance to marry the divine with
the earthly, the reasonable with the unreasonable, the severe with the
indulgent, the honest with the dishonest; that pleasure is a brutish
quality, unworthy to be tasted by a wise man; that the sole pleasure
he extracts from the enjoyment of a fair young wife, is a pleasure
of his conscience to perform an action according to order, as to put
on his boots for a profitable journey. Oh, that its followers had no
more right, nor nerves, nor juice, in getting their wives'
maidenhoods, than in its lessons.

    That is not what Socrates says, who is its master and ours: he
values, as he ought, bodily pleasure; but he prefers that of the mind,
as having more force, constancy, facility, variety, and dignity. This,
according to him, goes by no means alone- he is not so fantastic-
but only it goes first; temperance, with him, is the moderatrix, not