Miscellanies in Prose and Verse

and others, he will desire nothing groveling, weep for nothing, but, leaning on reason, he will walk through human casualties with a divinely elevated mind. He is not only, indeed, incapable of being injured by man, but also by fortune, who, as often as she engages with virtue, never departs on equal terms. If we receive with an equal and placid mind that greatest of all events, beyond which angry laws, and the most cruel masters, have nothing to threaten, and in which fortune terminates her empire, and if we are convinced that death is not an evil, and therefore no injury, we shall much more easily endure other things, such as losses, pain, ignominy, change of place, and in short whatever is considered as calamitous, all which, though they should surround, yet will not overwhelm the wise man, much less will a single attack of any one of these plunge him in sorrow. And if he bears the injuries of fortune moderately, how much more will he bear those of powerful men, whom he knows to be the hands of fortune.

He will therefore endure every thing, in the same manner as he endures the rigour of winter, the inclemency of the heavens, immoderate heats, diseases, and other casualties of a similar kind. Nor will he judge so favourably of any one, as to conceive that he does any thing from the dictates of intellect, which belongs to the wise man alone.