Reason therefore requires that men of understanding should be neither
indifferent in such calamities nor extravagantly affected ; for the one
course is unfeeling and brutal, the other lax and effeminate. Sensible is he
who keeps within appropriate bounds and is able to bear judiciously both the
agreeable and the grievous in his lot, and who has made up his mind
beforehand to conform uncomplainingly and obediently to the dispensation of
things ; just as in a democracy there is an allotment of offices, and he who
draws the lot holds office, while he who fails to do so must bear his
fortune without taking offence. For those who cannot do this would be unable
sensibly and soberly to abide good fortune either.
Among the felicitous utterances the following piece of advice is to the
point:
Let no success be so unusual That it excite
in you too great a pride, Nor abject be in turn, if ill betide ; But
ever be the same ; preserve unchanged Your nature, like to gold when
tried by fire.1
It is the mark of
educated and disciplined men to
[p. 115] keep the same habit of
mind toward seeming prosperity, and nobly to maintain a becoming attitude
toward adversity. For it is the task of rational prudence, either to be on
guard against evil as it approaches, or, if it have already happened, to
rectify it or to minimize it or to provide oneself with a virile and noble
patience to endure it. For wisdom deals also with the good, in a fourfold
way— either acquiring a store of goods, or conserving them, or
adding to them, or using them judiciously. These are the laws of wisdom and
of the other virtues, and they must be followed for better fortune or for
worse. For
No man exists who's blest in
everything,2
and
truly
What thou must do cannot be made “must
not.”
3
