would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself
would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the
chase, which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.

    The advice given to Pyrrhus, to take the rest which he was about
to seek with so much labour, was full of difficulties.

    To bid a man live quietly is to bid him live happily. It is to
advise him to be in a state perfectly happy, in which he can think
at leisure without finding therein a cause of distress. This is to
misunderstand nature.

    As men who naturally understand their own condition avoid
nothing so much as rest, so there is nothing they leave undone in
seeking turmoil. Not that they have an instinctive knowledge of true
happiness...

    So we are wrong in blaming them. Their error does not lie in
seeking excitement, if they seek it only as a diversion; the evil is
that they seek it as if the possession of the objects of their quest
would make them really happy. In this respect it is right to call
their quest a vain one. Hence in all this both the censurers and the
censured do not understand man's true nature.

    And thus, when we take the exception against them, that what
they seek with such fervour cannot satisfy them, if they replied- as
they should do if they considered the matter thoroughly- that they
sought in it only a violent and impetuous occupation which turned
their thoughts from self, and that they therefore chose an
attractive object to charm and ardently attract them, they would leave
their opponents without a reply. But they do not make this reply,
because they do not know themselves. They do not know that it is the
chase, and not the quarry, which they seek.

    Dancing: We must consider rightly where to place our feet.- A
gentleman sincerely believes that hunting is great and royal sport;
but a beater is not of this opinion.

    They imagine that, if they obtained such a post, they would then
rest with pleasure and are insensible of the insatiable nature of
the if desire. They think they are truly seeking quiet, and they are
only seeking excitement.

    They have a secret instinct which impels them to seek amusement
and occupation abroad, and which arises from the sense of their
constant unhappiness. They have another secret instinct, a remnant
of the greatness of our original nature, which teaches them that
happiness in reality consists only in rest and not in stir. And of
these two contrary instincts they form within themselves a confused
idea, which hides itself from their view in the depths of their
soul, inciting them to aim at rest through excitement, and always to
fancy that the satisfaction which they have not will come to them, if,
by surmounting whatever difficulties confront them, they can thereby
open the door to rest.

    Thus passes away all man's life. Men seek rest in a struggle
against difficulties; and when they have conquered these, rest becomes
insufferable. For we think either of the misfortunes we have or of
those which threaten us. And even if we should see ourselves
sufficiently sheltered on all sides, weariness of its own accord would
not fail to arise from the depths of the heart wherein it has its
natural roots and to fill the mind with its poison.

    Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause
for weariness from the peculiar state of his disposition; and so
frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness,
the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is
sufficient to amuse him.

    But will you say what object has he in all this? The pleasure of
bragging tomorrow among his friends that he has played better than
another. So others sweat in their own rooms to show to the learned
that they have solved a problem in algebra, which no one had
hitherto been able to solve. Many more expose themselves to extreme
perils, in my opinion as foolishly, in order to boast afterwards
that they have captured a town. Lastly, others wear themselves out
in studying all these things, not in order to become wiser, but only
in order to prove that they know them; and these are the most
senseless of the band, since they are so knowingly, whereas one may
suppose of the others that, if they knew it, they would no longer be
foolish.

    This man spends his life without weariness in playing every day
for a small stake. Give him each morning the money he can win each
day, on condition he does not play; you make him miserable. It will
perhaps be said that he seeks the amusement of play and not the
winnings. Make him, then, play for nothing; he will not become excited
over it and will feel bored. It is, then, not the amusement alone that
he seeks; a languid and passionless amusement will weary him. He
must get excited over it and deceive himself by the fancy that he will
be happy to win what he would not have as a gift on condition of not
playing; and he must make for himself an object of passion, and excite
over it his desire, his anger, his fear, to obtain his imagined end,
as children are frightened at the face they have blackened.

    Whence comes it that this man, who lost his only son a few
months ago, or who this morning was in such trouble through being
distressed by lawsuits and quarrels, now no longer thinks of them?
Do not wonder; he is quite taken up in looking out for the boar
which his dogs have been hunting so hotly for the last six hours. He