of a Reasonable Creature. To consult the Preservation
of Life, as the only End of it, To make our Health
our Business, To engage in no Action that is not part
of a Regimen, or course of Physick, are Purposes so
abject, so mean, so unworthy human Nature, that a
generous Soul would rather die than submit to them.
Besides that a continual Anxiety for Life vitiates
all the Relishes of it, and casts a Gloom over the
whole Face of Nature; as it is impossible we should
take Delight in any thing that we are every Moment
afraid of losing.
I do not mean, by what I have here said, that I think
any one to blame for taking due Care of their Health.
On the contrary, as Cheerfulness of Mind, and Capacity
for Business, are in a great measure the Effects of
a well-tempered Constitution, a Man cannot be at too
much Pains to cultivate and preserve it. But
this Care, which we are prompted to, not only by common
Sense, but by Duty and Instinct, should never engage
us in groundless Fears, melancholly Apprehensions
and imaginary Distempers, which are natural to every
Man who is more anxious to live than how to live.
In short, the Preservation of Life should be only a
secondary Concern, and the Direction of it our Principal.
If we have this Frame of Mind, we shall take the best
Means to preserve Life, without being over-sollicitous
about the Event; and shall arrive at that Point of
Felicity which Martial has mentioned as the
Perfection of Happiness, of neither fearing nor wishing
for Death.
In answer to the Gentleman, who tempers his Health
by Ounces and by Scruples, and instead of complying
with those natural Sollicitations of Hunger and Thirst,
Drowsiness or Love of Exercise, governs himself by
the Prescriptions of his Chair, I shall tell him a
short Fable.
Jupiter, says the Mythologist, to reward the
Piety of a certain Country-man, promised to give him
whatever he would ask. The Country-man desired
that he might have the Management of the Weather in
his own Estate: He obtained his Request, and
immediately distributed Rain, Snow, and Sunshine,
among his several Fields, as he thought the Nature
of the Soil required. At the end of the Year,
when he expected to see a more than ordinary Crop,
his Harvest fell infinitely short of that of his Neighbours:
Upon which (says the fable) he desired Jupiter
to take the Weather again into his own Hands, or that
otherwise he should utterly ruin himself.
C.
[Footnote 1: Dr. Thomas Sydenham died in 1689,
aged 65. He was the friend of Boyle and Locke,
and has sometimes been called the English Hippocrates;
though brethren of an older school endeavoured, but
in vain, to banish him as a heretic out of the College
of Physicians. His ‘Methodus Curandi Febres’
was first published in 1666.]
