So reason makes all sorts of life easy, and every change
pleasant. Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus
that there was an infinite number of worlds, and his friends
asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns
this answer: Do not you think it a matter worthy of lamentation, that, when there is such a vast multitude of them,
we have not yet conquered one? But Crates with only his
[p. 141]
scrip and tattered cloak laughed out his life jocosely, as
if he had been always at a festival. The great power
and command of Agamemnon gave him an equal disturbance:—
Look upon Agamemnon, Atreus's son,
What mighty loads of trouble he hath on.
He is distracted with perpetual care;
Jove that inflicts it gives him strength to bear.
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Diogenes, when he was exposed to sale in the market
and was commanded to stand up, not only refused to do it,
but ridiculed the auctioneer, with this piece of raillery:
What! if you were selling a fish, would you bid it rise
up? Socrates was a philosopher in the prison, and discoursed with his friends, though he was fettered. But
Phaeton, when he climbed up into heaven, thought himself
unhappy there, because nobody would give him his father's
chariot and the horses of the sun. As therefore the shoe
is twisted to the shape of the foot and not in the opposite
way, so do the affections of the mind render the life conformable to themselves. For it is not custom, as one
observed, which makes even the best life pleasant to those
who choose it, but it must be prudence in conjunction with
it, which makes it not only the best for its kind, but sweetest in its enjoyment. The fountain therefore of tranquillity being in ourselves, let us cleanse it from all impurity
and make its streams limpid, that all external accidents, by
being made familiar, may be no longer grievous to us, since
we shall know how to use them well.
Let not these things thy least concern engage;
For though thou fret, they will not mind thy rage.
Him only good and happy we may call
Who rightly useth what doth him befall.
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