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Of Managing the Will
by
[“For if what is for man enough, could be enough, it were
enough; but since it is not so, how can I believe that any
wealth can give my mind content.”
–Lucilius aped Nonium Marcellinum, V. sec. 98.]
Socrates, seeing a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furniture carried in pomp through his city: “How many things,” said he, “I do not desire!”–[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., V. 32.]–Metrodorus lived on twelve ounces a day, Epicurus upon less; Metrocles slept in winter abroad amongst sheep, in summer in the cloisters of churches:
“Sufficit ad id natura, quod poscit.”
[“Nature suffices for what he requires.”–Seneca, Ep., 90.]
Cleanthes lived by the labour of his own hands, and boasted that Cleanthes, if he would, could yet maintain another Cleanthes.
If that which nature exactly and originally requires of us for the conservation of our being be too little (as in truth what it is, and how good cheap life may be maintained, cannot be better expressed than by this consideration, that it is so little that by its littleness it escapes the gripe and shock of fortune), let us allow ourselves a little more; let us call every one of our habits and conditions nature; let us rate and treat ourselves by this measure; let us stretch our appurtenances and accounts so far; for so far, I fancy, we have some excuse. Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful. What is wanting to my custom, I reckon is wanting to me; and I should be almost as well content that they took away my life as cut me short in the way wherein I have so long lived. I am no longer in condition for any great change, nor to put myself into a new and unwonted course, not even to augmentation. ‘Tis past the time for me to become other than what I am; and as I should complain of any great good hap that should now befall me, that it came not in time to be enjoyed:
“Quo mihi fortunas, si non conceditur uti?”
[“What is the good fortune to me, if it is not
granted to me to use it.”–Horace, Ep., i. 5, 12.]
so should I complain of any inward acquisition. It were almost better never, than so late, to become an honest man, and well fit to live, when one has no longer to live. I, who am about to make my exit out of the world, would easily resign to any newcomer, who should desire it, all the prudence I am now acquiring in the world’s commerce; after meat, mustard. I have no need of goods of which I can make no use; of what use is knowledge to him who has lost his head? ‘Tis an injury and unkindness in fortune to tender us presents that will only inspire us with a just despite that we had them not in their due season. Guide me no more; I can no longer go. Of so many parts as make up a sufficiency, patience is the most sufficient. Give the capacity of an excellent treble to the chorister who has rotten lungs, and eloquence to a hermit exiled into the deserts of Arabia. There needs no art to help a fall; the end finds itself of itself at the conclusion of every affair. My world is at an end, my form expired; I am totally of the past, and am bound to authorise it, and to conform my outgoing to it. I will here declare, by way of example, that the Pope’s late ten days’ diminution
[Gregory XIII., in 1582, reformed the Calendar, and, in
consequence, in France they all at once passed from the
9th to the 20th December.]