ature and use:

"Fugax rerum, securaque in otia natus."

["Avoiding affairs and born to secure ease."
--Ovid, De Trist., iii. 2, 9.]

Hot and obstinate disputes, wherein my adversary would at last have the
better, the issue that would render my heat and obstinacy disgraceful
would peradventure vex me to the last degree. Should I set myself to it
at the rate that others do, my soul would never have the force to bear
the emotion and alarms of those who grasp at so much; it would
immediately be disordered by this inward agitation. If, sometimes, I
have been put upon the management of other men's affairs, I have promised
to take them in hand, but not into my lungs and liver; to take them upon
me, not to incorporate them; to take pains, yes: to be impassioned about
it, by no means; I have a care of them, but I will not sit upon them.
I have enough to do to order and govern the domestic throng of those that
I have in my own veins and bowels, without introducing a crowd of other
men's affairs; and am sufficiently concerned about my own proper and
natural business, without meddling with the concerns of others. Such as
know how much they owe to themselves, and how many offices they are bound
to of their own, find that nature has cut them out work enough of their
own to keep them from being idle. "Thou hast business enough at home:
look to that."

Men let themselves out to hire; their faculties are not for themselves,
but for those to whom they have enslaved themselves; 'tis their tenants
occupy them, not themselves. This common humour pleases not me. We must
be thrifty of the liberty of our souls, and never let it out but upon
just occasions, which are very few, if we judge aright. Do but observe
such as have accustomed themselves to be at every one's call: they do it
indifferently upon all, as well little as great, occasions; in that which
nothing concerns them; as much as in what imports them most. They thrust
themselves in indifferently wherever there is work to do and obligation,
and are without life when not in tumultuous bustle:

"In negotiis sunt, negotii cause,"

["They are in business for business' sake."--Seneca, Ep., 22.]

It is not so much that they will go, as it is that they cannot stand
still: like a rolling stone that cannot stop till it can go no further.
Occupation, with a certain sort of men, is a mark of understanding and
dignity: their s