He said, moreover, that folly is contrary to knowledge, and yet he did not allow ignorance to be a folly; but that not to know oneself, or to imagine one knows what he does not know, is a weakness next to folly.  And he observed that among the vulgar a man is not accused of folly for being mistaken in things that are unknown to most of the world, but for mistaking in things which no man mistakes that knows anything at all; as if any man should think himself so tall as to be obliged to stoop when he came in at the gates of the city; or if he thought himself so strong as to undertake to carry away whole houses on his back, or to do any other thing visibly impossible, the people would say that he had lost his wits, which they do not say of those who commit only some slight extravagances; and as they give the name of love to a violent affection only, so they give the name of folly only to an extraordinary disorder of the mind.

Reflecting on the nature of envy, he said that it is a certain grief of mind, which proceeds, not from the misfortune of friends or good fortune of enemies, but (which is very surprising) only from the prosperity of friends.  “For,” said he, “those may be truly said to be envious who cannot endure to see their friends happy.”  But, some wondering whether it were possible for a man to be grieved at the good fortune of his friend, he justified the truth of what he had advanced, by telling them plainly that there are some men so variously affected towards their friends, that, while they are in calamity and distress, they will compassionate and succour them, but when they are well and in prosperity will fret at and envy them.  “But this,” he said, “is a fault from which wise and good men are free, and never to be found but in weak and wicked minds.”

As to idleness, he said that he had observed that most men were always in action, for they who play at dice, or who serve to make others laugh, are doing something, but in effect they are idle, because they might employ themselves more usefully.  To which he added, that no man finds leisure to quit a good employment for an ill one, and that if he did he would deserve the greater blame, in that he wanted not something to do before.

He said likewise that the sceptre makes not the king, and that princes and governors are not they whom chance or the choice of the people has raised to those dignities, nor those who have established themselves in them by fraud or force, but they who know how to command; for if it were allowed that it is the duty of a prince to command, as it is the duty of a subject to obey, he showed in consequence of it that in a ship, where there are several persons, the honour of commanding it is given to him who is most capable of it, and that all obey him, without excepting even the owner of the vessel; that likewise in husbandry, he to whom the land belongs obeys his own servants, if they understand agriculture better than himself; that thus the sick