; or is by lawful
authority put and settled in, therein do I think (all appearance of
danger notwithstanding) that he should continue, as one who feareth
neither death, nor anything else, so much as he feareth to commit
anything that is vicious and shameful, &c. But, O noble sir, consider
I pray, whether true generosity and true happiness, do not consist in
somewhat else rather, than in the preservation either of our, or other
men's lives. For it is not the part of a man that is a man indeed, to
desire to live long or to make much of his life whilst he liveth: but
rather (he that is such) will in these things wholly refer himself unto
the Gods, and believing that which every woman can tell him, that no man
can escape death; the only thing that he takes thought and care for is
this, that what time he liveth, he may live as well and as virtuously
as he can possibly, &c. To look about, and with the eyes to follow the
course of the stars and planets as though thou wouldst run with them;
and to mind perpetually the several changes of the elements one into
another. For such fancies and imaginations, help much to purge away
the dross and filth of this our earthly life,' &c. That also is a fine
passage of Plato's, where he speaketh of worldly things in these words:
'Thou must also as from some higher place look down, as it were, upon
the things of this world, as flocks, armies, husbandmen's labours,
marriages, divorces, generations, deaths: the tumults of courts and
places of judicatures; desert places; the several nations of barbarians,
public festivals, mournings, fairs, markets.' How all things upon earth
are pell-mell; and how miraculously things contrary one to another,
concur to the beauty and perfection of this universe.

XXVII. To look back upon things of former ages, as upon the manifold
changes and conversions of several monarchies and commonwealths. We
may also foresee things future, for they shall all be of the same kind;
neither is it possible that they should leave the tune, or break the
concert that is now begun, as it were, by these things that are now done
and brought to pass in the world. It comes all to one therefore, whether
a man be a spectator of the things of this life but forty years, or
whether he see them ten thousand years together: for what shall he
see more? 'And as for those parts that came from the earth, they shall
return unto the earth again; and those that came from heaven, they
also shall retu