deed; how vile and contemptible in themselves?
O man! what ado doest thou keep? Do what thy nature doth now require.
Resolve upon it, if thou mayest: and take no thought, whether anybody
shall know it or no. Yea, but sayest thou, I must not expect a Plato's
commonwealth. If they profit though never so little, I must be content;
and think much even of that little progress. Doth then any of them
forsake their former false opinions that I should think they profit? For
without a change of opinions, alas! what is all that ostentation, but
mere wretchedness of slavish minds, that groan privately, and yet would
make a show of obedience to reason, and truth? Go too now and tell me
of Alexander and Philippus, and Demetrius Phalereus. Whether they
understood what the common nature requireth, and could rule themselves
or no, they know best themselves. But if they kept a life, and
swaggered; I (God be thanked) am not bound to imitate them. The effect
of true philosophy is, unaffected simplicity and modesty. Persuade me
not to ostentation and vainglory.

XXIX. From some high place as it were to look down, and to behold
here flocks, and there sacrifices, without number; and all kind of
navigation; some in a rough and stormy sea, and some in a calm: the
general differences, or different estates of things, some, that are now
first upon being; the several and mutual relations of those things that
are together; and some other things that are at their last. Their lives
also, who were long ago, and theirs who shall be hereafter, and the
present estate and life of those many nations of barbarians that are
now in the world, thou must likewise consider in thy mind. And how many
there be, who never so much as heard of thy name, how many that will
soon forget it; how many who but even now did commend thee, within a
very little while perchance will speak ill of thee. So that neither
fame, nor honour, nor anything else that this world doth afford, is
worth the while. The sum then of all; whatsoever doth happen unto thee,
whereof God is the cause, to accept it contentedly: whatsoever thou
doest, whereof thou thyself art the cause, to do it justly: which will
be, if both in thy resolution and in thy action thou have no further
end, than to do good unto others, as being that, which by thy natural
constitution, as a man, thou art bound unto.

XXX. Many of those things that trouble and straiten thee, it is in thy
power to cut off, as wholly dependin