We are not therefore to lament those who die in
the bloom of their years, as if they were spoiled of things
which we call enjoyments in a longer life; for it is uncertain, as we have often said, whether they are deprived of
good or evil, for the evil in the world far exceeds the good.
The good we obtain hardly and with anxious endeavor, but
the evil easily befalls us; for they say evils are linked together, and by a mutual dependence of causes follow one
another, but the good lie scattered and disjoined, and with
great difficulty are brought within the compass of our life.
Therefore we seem to have forgot our condition; for not
only is it true, as Euripides hath it, that
The things we do possess are not our own;
1
but in general no man can claim a strict propriety in any
thing he hath:—
When Gods do riches lend, it is but just
That when they please we should resign our trust.
We ought not therefore to take it amiss if they demand
those things which they lent us only for a small time; for
even your common brokers, unless they are unjust, will not
be displeased if they are called upon to refund their pawns,
and if one of them is not altogether so ready to deliver
them, thou mayst say to him without any injury, Hast thou
forgot that thou receivedst them upon the condition to restore them? The same parity of reason holds amongst all
men. The Gods have put life into our hands by a fatal
[p. 328]
necessity, and there is no prefixed time when what is so
deposited will be required of us, as the brokers know not
when their pawns will be demanded. If therefore any one
is angry when he is dying himself, or resents the death of
his children, is it not very plain, that he hath forgot that
he himself is a man and that he hath begotten children as
frail as himself? For a man that is in his wits cannot be
ignorant that he is a mortal creature, and born to this very
end that he must die. If Niobe, as it is in the fable, had
had this sentence always at hand, that she must at length
die, and could not
In the ever-flowering bloom of youth remain,
Nor loaded with children, like a fruitful tree,
Behold the sun's sweet light,—
she would never have sunk to such a degree of desperation
as to desire to throw off her life to ease the burthen of her
sorrow, and call upon the Gods to hurry her into the utmost destruction. There are two sentences inscribed upon
the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of
man's life, KNOW THYSELF, and NOTHING TOO MUCH; and upon
these all other precepts depend. And they themselves
accord and harmonize with each other, and each seems to
illustrate the energy of the other; for in
Know thyself is
included
Nothing too much; and so again in the latter is
comprised
Know thyself. And Ion hath spoken of it
thus:—
This sentence, Know thyself, is but a word;
But only Jove himself could do the thing.
And thus Pindar:—
This sentence briet, Do nothing to excess,
Wise men have always praised exceedingly.
