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He therefore that hath these impressed upon his mind as the precepts of the Pythian oracle, can easily conform himself to all the affairs of life, and bear them handsomely; considering his nature, so that he is neither lifted up to arrogance upon a prosperous event, nor when [p. 329] an adverse happens, is dejected into complaint through pusillanimity and that fear of death which is so congenial to us; both which proceed from the ignorance of those things which fall out in human life by necessity and fatal decree. The Pythagoreans speak handsomely to this purpose—
Against those evils thou shouldest not repine,
Which are inflicted by the powers divine.
Thus the tragedian Aeschylus:—
He store of wisdom and of virtue hath,
Whom nothing from the Gods provokes to wrath.
Euripides thus:—
He that is passive when the Fates command
Is wise, and all the Gods doth understand.
In another place so:—
He that can bear those things which men befall,
Him wise and modest we may justly call.

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 1.

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