pport so pure, so continual, and so universal a pleasure. Indeed,
he is running away whilst he is there, and naturally makes haste to
escape, as from a place where he cannot stand firm, and where he is
afraid of sinking.

When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue
I have has in it some tincture of vice; and I am afraid that Plato, in
his purest virtue (I, who am as sincere and loyal a lover of virtue of
that stamp as any other whatever), if he had listened and laid his ear
close to himself and he did so no doubt--would have heard some jarring
note of human mixture, but faint and only perceptible to himself. Man is
wholly and throughout but patch and motley. Even the laws of justice
themselves cannot subsist without mixture of injustice; insomuch that
Plato says, they undertake to cut off the hydra's head, who pretend to
clear the law of all inconveniences:

"Omne magnum exemplum habet aliquid ex iniquo,
quod contra singulos utilitate publics rependitur,"

["Every great example has in it some mixture of injustice, which
recompenses the wrong done to particular men by the public utility."
--Annals, xiv. 44.]

says Tacitus.

It is likewise true, that for the use of life and the service of public
commerce, there may be some excesses in the purity and perspicacity of
our minds; that penetrating light has in it too much of subtlety and
curiosity: we must a little stupefy and blunt them to render them more
obedient to example and practice, and a little veil and obscure them, the
better to proportion them to this dark and earthly life. And therefore
common and less speculative souls are found to be more proper for and
more successful in the management of affairs, and the elevated and
exquisite opinions of philosophy unfit for business. This sharp vivacity
of soul, and the supple and restless volubility attending it, disturb our
negotiations. We are to manage human enterprises more superficially and
roughly, and leave a great part to fortune; it is not necessary to
examine affairs with so much subtlety and so deep: a man loses himself in
the consideration of many contrary lustres, and so many various forms:

"Volutantibus res inter se pugnantes, obtorpuerunt.... animi."

["Whilst they considered of things so indifferent in themselves,
they were astonished, and knew not what to do."--Livy, xxxii. 20.]

'Tis what the ancients say of Simon