61.
"For though to such as have it in their own election (being otherwise in good estate), it were madness to make choice of war;
yet when we must of necessity either give way, and so without more ado be subject to our neighbours, or else save ourselves from it by danger, he is more to be condemned that declineth the danger than he that standeth to it.
[2]
For mine own part I am the man I was and of the mind I was;
but you are changed, won to the war when you were entire but repenting it upon the damage and condemning my counsel in the weakness of your own judgment.
The reason of this is because you feel already everyone in particular that which afflicts you, but the evidence of the profit to accrue to the city in general you see not yet.
[3]
And your minds, dejected with the great and sudden alteration, cannot constantly maintain what you have before resolved.
For that which is sudden and unexpected and contrary to what one hath deliberated enslaveth the spirit, which by this disease principally, in the neck of the other incommodities, is now come to pass in you.
[4]
But you that are born in a great city and with education suitable, how great soever the affliction be, ought not to shrink at it and eclipse your reputation (for men do no less condemn those that through cowardice lose the glory they have than hate those that through impudence arrogate the glory they have not) but to set aside the grief of your private losses and lay your hands to the common safety.
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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