fore us so many fantastic images of things that the common saying is here most true: On account of the body we can never become wise! For wars, popular seditions, and shedding of blood by the sword are owing to no other original than this care of the body and gratifying its unlawful appetites; we fight only to get riches, and these we acquire only to please the body; so that those who are thus employed have not leisure to be seekers of Wisdom. 8. And when we have retrieved an if we break off all unnecessary commerce with it and keep ourselves pure from its contagion, till the Deity shall give us a final release. Then being freed from all its follies we shall converse with intelligences as pure as ourselves, with unaided vision beholding Perfect Purity, which is Perfect Truth; for it is not possible that those who are impure can apprehend Purity or Truth. SELECTION XXIV. EVERY one should meditate seri interval of time to seek after Wis-ously with himself, and have the dom, the body officiously interrupts us, is so troublesome and importune that we can by no means discern its nature; therefore it is evident that, if we will clearly know any thing, we must divest ourselves of the body and behold things as they are in themselves with the mind itself, that at last we may attain what we so much desire and what we do profess ourselves the most partial admirers of, which is Wisdom. 9. We cannot really seek and enjoy Wisdom till after death, as reason teacheth us; for if so be that we can understand nothing clearly as long as we are clogged with flesh, one of these things must needs be: Either that we shall never arrive at Wisdom at all, or only when the soul will exist by itself, separate from the body. And whilst we are in this life we shall make the nearest advances toward it, if we have no more to do with the body than what decency and necessity require; concurrence of other men's opinions with his own, that it is not the longest life which is the best, but that which is the most virtuous. Such exclamations as this: The young man ought not to be taken off so abruptly in the vigor of his years! are frivolous, and proceed from a great weakness of mind; for who is it that can say what a thing ought to be? Poets celebrate those who have died young and propose them for examples of the most excellent of men, and as of Divine extraction. 2. Things have been, are, and will be done which somebody or other will say ought not to be done; but we do not come into this life to prescribe to it; we must obey the dictates of Him who governs the world and submit to the establishments of His Providence. 3. When people mourn over those who die, do they do it upon their own account or upon that of the de ceased? If upon their own, because they have lost that pleasure they thought they should have enjoyed in them or are deprived of that profit they expected then self-love and personal interest prescribe the measures of their sorrow; so that upon the result they do not love the departed one so much as themselves and their own interest. But if they lament upon the account of the deceased that is a grief easily to be shaken off, if they only consider that by their very death they will be out of the sphere of any evil that can reach them, and believe the wise and ancient saying: We should always augment what is good, and extenuate what seems evil. 4. It is objected here: The calamity was sudden, and I did not expect it! But thou oughtest to have considered the uncertainty of human affairs so that this event might not have come suddenly upon thee and taken thee unawares. As one of our poets has finely said: This wholesome precept from the wise I learn, To think of misery without concern; Foresight of evils doth employ my mind, That me without defence they may not find; And though in ambuscade the mischief lies, Kill me it may, but shall not me surprise. 5. Men condole with those who lose friends by untimely death because they were frustrated of their hopes; in the meanwhile they are ignorant that a sudden death doth not at all differ from any other, considering the condition of human nature. For when a journey is enjoined into a remote country, and there is a necessity for every one to undertake it and none hath liberty to refuse, though some go before and others follow, yet all must arrive at the same stage at last; so when we all lie under an obligation of discharging the debt we owe to Nature, called Death, it is not material whether we pay sooner or later. 6. Who knows but that the Deity, with a fatherly providence and out of tenderness to mankind, foreseeing greater sorrows, hath taken some purposely out of this life by an untimely death? So we should think that nothing has befallen them which they should have sought to shun; "for nought that cometh by necessity is hard." 7. It becomes men well instructed to consider that those who have paid their debt to mortality have only gone before us a little time; that the longest life is but as a point in respect of Eternity, and that many who have indulged their sorrow to excess have themselves followed in a small while those that they have lamented, having reaped no profit out of their complaints but macerated themselves with voluntary afflictions. 8. Since, then, the time of our pilgrimage in this life is but short we ought not to consume ourselves with sordid grief; so rendering ourselves unhappy by afflicting our minds and tormenting our bodies. But we should endeavor after a more manly and rational sort of life, and not associate ourselves with those who will be companions in grief and by flattering our tears will only excite them the more; but rather with those who will diminish our grief by wise and generous consolation. 9. If the sayings of the wisest men are true, as there is probability to think, that honor and dignity are conferred upon the righteous after they are departed this life; and if, as it is said, particular regions are appointed for them to dwell in, we ought to cherish fair hopes that our righteous friends departed are numbered amongst those blest inhabitants. 10. There the sun shines with an unsullied light, When all the world below is thick with night. Immortal as is He from whence it came. JO-VIS: Heaven Parent, Father-Mother, Our Father, Our Mother. SELECTION I. AMID all the conflict of opinions there sounds through all the world one consenting law and idea, that there is One Ruler and Father of all. Do not blame the variety of representations; only let men understand there is but One Divine Nature, let them love One and keep Him in their thoughts. 2. The entire universe is overruled by One Being and by His reason and energy all things are gov erned and directed; He has been especially beneficent to mankind whom He has endowed with intelligence superior to other creatures. Nothing exists better than Reason, and Reason is the common property of Deity and of man; there exists therefore a primeval communion between the Divine Nature and the human. 3. Rain, O All Giver, rain down on the ploughed fields and on the plains! truly, we ought not to ought not to pray at all in this noble and simple fashion. Either the Supreme One has has power or He has no power; if He has no power, why do we pray? If He has power, why not pray never to be anxious about events rather than that any particular event may take place? 4. How can the Almighty and Merciful Friend, who is always with us, take delight in religious ceremonies! Let us purge our mind and lead virtuous and honest lives; for this alone is pleasing to Him. His pleasure is not in magnificent temples but in the piety and devotion of consecrated hearts. Let us be sure not to admit any evil intentions into our hearts, that we may lift up pure hands to Heaven and ask nothing by which another may suffer harm. 5. He who knows himself must be conscious that he is inspired by a divine principle; he will look upon his rational part as a resemblance to the Deity and he will be careful that his sentiments and behavior should be worthy of this inestimable gift. There exists not any man, in any nation, who may not improve in Virtue if he adopts his own true nature as his guide; his own true nature in its genuine purity, not when it has been corrupted by evil customs. 6. Man is born for Justice; law and equity are not things established merely by opinion, they are insti tuted by Nature. We have no criterion to distinguish between a good law and a bad law, except our own Reason. One in full possession of his senses cannot suppose that Justice changes with opinions, and has no foundation in Nature. 7. In nothing is the uniformity of human nature more conspicuous than in its respect for Virtue; there is no nation in which kindness, benignity, and gratitude are not recommended; in which cruelty, arrogance, and unthankfulness are not reprobated and detested. This uniformity of opinions invincibly demonstrates that mankind were intended to form one fraternal association; in order to accomplish this the faculty of Reason must be improved, till it instructs us in all the arts of living well. 8. Every man has within himself the Judge of all the good or ill that he does; this it is that inspires him with great thoughts and gives him wholesome counsels. Keep this Divine Portion of thyself pure; look within, within is the fountain of good; there is the life, there is the man. The good man is a priest and a minister to that Divinity which dwells within him. SELECTION II. MEN may be parted from each other by travel, sickness, or death, but there is no possibility of separating from ourselves; what avails it that our consciences are hidden from men, when our souls are al ways open to the All-knowing One! Keep thyself simple, good, pure, kind, and affectionate; make thyself all simplicity. It is more beautiful to overcome injury by kindness than to oppose to it the obstinacy of hatred. 2. If we practice goodness not for the sake of its own intrinsic excellence but for the sake of gaining some advantage by it, we may be cunning but we are not good. He deserves disappointment who gives with the hope of return; the object of conferring a benefit should be the good of the receiver, without regard to favor or reward. 3. The true primeval law is eternal, immutable, and universal; it calls us to duty by its commandments and turns us away from wrong-doing by its prohibitions; we can take nothing from it, change nothing, abrogate nothing; it does not vary according to time. or place; it is not different now from what it was formerly; it is not one thing today and another tomorrow; neither the senate nor the people have a right to free us from it. crime is none the less criminal because there is no human law against it; the same eternal and unchangeable law embraces all times and all nations, because it proceeds from the Ruler and Father of all. A 4. Nature has inclined us to love mankind, and this love is the foundation of law; Justice employs itself in the good of others. Let us not listen to those who think we |