But yet look first what work they make, while they
course this same thing—whether it be pleasure, exemption from pain, or good health—up and down, first from
the body to the mind, and then back again from the mind
to the body, being compelled to return it to its first origin,
lest it should run out and so give them the slip. Thus
they pitch the pleasure of the body (as Epicurus says)
upon the complacent joy in the mind, and yet conclude
again with the good hopes that complacent joy hath in
bodily pleasure. Indeed what wonder is it if, when the
foundation shakes, the superstructure totter? Or that there
should be no sure hope nor unshaken joy in a matter that
suffers so great concussion and changes as continually attend a body exposed to so many violences and strokes from
without, and having within it the origins of such evils as
human reason cannot avert? For if it could, no understanding man would ever fall under stranguries, gripes,
consumptions, or dropsies; with some of which Epicurus
[p. 165]
himself did conflict and Polyaenus with others, while
others of them were the deaths of Neocles and Agathobulus. And this we mention not to disparage them, knowing
very well that Pherecydes and Heraclitus, both very excellent persons, labored under very uncouth and calamitous
distempers. We only beg of them, if they will own their
own diseases and not by noisy rants and popular harangues
incur the imputation of false bravery, either not to take the
health of the whole body for the ground of their content,
or else not to say that men under the extremities of dolors
and diseases can yet rally and be pleasant. For a sound
and hale constitution of body is indeed a thing that often
happens, but a firm and steadfast assurance of its continuance can never befall any intelligent mind. But as at sea
(according to Aeschylus)
Night to the ablest pilot trouble brings,1
and so will a calm too, for no man knows what will be,—
so likewise is it impossible for a soul that dwells in a healthful body, and that places her good in the hopes she hath of
that body, to perfect her voyage here without flights or
waves. For man's mind hath not, like the sea, its tempests
and storms only from without it, but it also raises up from
within far more and greater disturbances. And a man may
with more reason look for constant fair weather in the midst
of winter than for perpetual exemption from afflictions in
his body. For what else hath given the poets occasion to
term us creatures of a day, uncertain and unfixed, and
to liken our lives to leaves that both spring and fall in the
compass of a summer, but the unhappy, calamitous, and
sickly condition of the body, whose very utmost good we
are warned to dread and prevent For an exquisite habit,
Hippocrates saith, is slippery and hazardous. And
He that but now looked jolly, plump, and stout,
Like a star shot by Jove, is now gone out;
[p. 166]
as it is in Euripides. And it is a vulgar persuasion, that
very handsome persons, when looked upon, oft suffer damage by envy and an evil eye; for (it is said) a body at its
utmost vigor will through delicacy very soon admit of
changes.
