Pallas, or Mercury afford them their light by which to see, instead of Venus, Ceres, and Bacchus.  These boastful humours may counterfeit some content, for what will not fancy do?  But as to wisdom, there is no touch of it.  Will they not seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives?  I hate that we should be enjoined to have our minds in the clouds, when our bodies are at table; I would not have the mind nailed there, nor wallow there; I would have it take place there and sit, but not lie down.  Aristippus maintained nothing but the body, as if we had no soul; Zeno comprehended only the soul, as if we had no body:  both of them faultily.  Pythagoras, they say, followed a philosophy that was all contemplation, Socrates one that was all conduct and action; Plato found a mean betwixt the two; but they only say this for the sake of talking.  The true temperament is found in Socrates; and, Plato is much more Socratic than Pythagoric, and it becomes him better.  When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep.  Nay, when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts are some part of the time taken up with external occurrences, I some part of the time call them back again to my walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of that solitude, and to myself.

Nature has mother-like observed this, that the actions she has enjoined us for our necessity should be also pleasurable to us; and she invites us to them, not only by reason, but also by appetite, and ’tis injustice to infringe her laws.  When I see alike Caesar and Alexander, in the midst of his greatest business, so fully enjoy human and corporal pleasures, I do not say that he relaxed his mind:  I say that he strengthened it, by vigour of courage subjecting those violent employments and laborious thoughts to the ordinary usage of life:  wise, had he believed the last was his ordinary, the first his extraordinary, vocation.  We are great fools.  “He has passed his life in idleness,” say we:  “I have done nothing to-day.”  What? have you not lived? that is not only the fundamental, but the most illustrious, of your occupations.  “Had I been put to the management of great affairs, I should have made it seen what I could do.”  “Have you known how to meditate and manage your life? you have performed the greatest work of all.”  In order to shew and develop herself, nature needs only fortune; she equally manifests herself in all stages, and behind a curtain as well as without one.  Have you known how to regulate your conduct, you have done a great deal more than he who has composed books.  Have you known how to take repose, you have done more than he who has taken empires and cities.

The glorious masterpiece of man is to live to purpose; all other things:  to reign, to lay up treasure, to build, are but little appendices and props.  I take pleasure in seeing a general of an army, at the foot of a breach he is presently to assault, give himself up entire and free at dinner, to talk and be merry with his friends.  And Brutus, when heaven and earth were conspired against him and the Roman liberty, stealing some hour of the night from his rounds to read and scan Polybius in all security.  ’Tis for little souls, buried under the weight of affairs, not from them to know how clearly to disengage themselves, not to know how to lay them aside and take them up again: