Miscellanies in Prose and Verse

Consider now, whether a robber, or calumniator, or neighboring potentate, or any rich man, exercising the dominion of a desolate old age, could do any injury to this man, from whom war, and that enemy who professed the illustrious art of subverting cities, could take nothing away? Amidst swords everywhere glittering, and the tumult of soldiers intent on rapine; amidst flames, and blood, and slaughter; amidst the crash of temples falling on their gods*, there was peace to one man. It will not easily be believed that such strength or magnitude of mind can fall to the lot of man. Let us, however, suppose him to address us as follows:

"There is no reason that you should doubt whether man can raise himself above human concerns; whether he can securely behold pain, losses, ulcerations, wounds, and the violent motions of things raging round him; whether he can bear adversity placidly, and prosperity moderately, neither yielding to the former, nor trusting to the latter, but remaining one and the same amidst different circumstances, and conceiving nothing to be his own except himself, and his true self to be his most excellent part."

The ancients were not so foolish as to consider statues as in reality gods; but just as they called good men gods, from their similitude to the divine nature, so they denominated statues gods, from their representing certain incorporeal powers of the divinities.