ourselves we immediately alter, and presently return
again to it; 'tis nothing but shifting and inconsistency:

"Ducimur, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum."

["We are turned about like the top with the thong of others."
--Idem, Sat., ii. 7, 82.]

We do not go, we are driven; like things that float, now leisurely, then
with violence, according to the gentleness or rapidity of the current:

"Nonne videmus,
Quid sibi quisque velit, nescire, et quaerere semper
Commutare locum, quasi onus deponere possit?"

["Do we not see them, uncertain what they want, and always asking
for something new, as if they could get rid of the burthen."
--Lucretius, iii. 1070.]

Every day a new whimsy, and our humours keep motion with the time.

"Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse
Juppiter auctificas lustravit lumine terras."

["Such are the minds of men, that they change as the light with
which father Jupiter himself has illumined the increasing earth."
--Cicero, Frag. Poet, lib. x.]

We fluctuate betwixt various inclinations; we will nothing freely,
nothing absolutely, nothing constantly. In any one who had prescribed
and established determinate laws and rules in his head for his own
conduct, we should perceive an equality of manners, an order and an
infallible relation of one thing or action to another, shine through his
whole life; Empedocles observed this discrepancy in the Agrigentines,
that they gave themselves up to delights, as if every day was their last,
and built as if they had been to live for ever. The judgment would not
be hard to make, as is very evident in the younger Cato; he who therein
has found one step, it will lead him to all the rest; 'tis a harmony of
very according sounds, that cannot jar. But with us 't is quite
contrary; every particular action requires a particular judgment. The
surest way to steer, in my opinion, would be to take our measures from
the nearest allied circumstances, without engaging in a longer
inquisition, or without concluding any other consequence. I was told,
during the civil disorders of our poor kingdom, that a maid, hard by the
place where I then was, had thrown herself out of a window to avoid being
forced by a common soldier who was quartered in the house; she was not
killed by the fall, and therefore, repeating her attempt would have cut
her own throat