supports us, and more touches the understanding.
That ravishes the judgment, this wins it. I have likewise seen other
writings, yet more reverenced than these, that in the representation of
the conflict they maintain against the temptations of the flesh, paint
them, so sharp, so powerful and invincible, that we ourselves, who are of
the common herd, are as much to wonder at the strangeness and unknown
force of their temptation, as at the resisting it.

To what end do we so arm ourselves with this harness of science? Let us
look down upon the poor people that we see scattered upon the face of the
earth, prone and intent upon their business, that neither know Aristotle
nor Cato, example nor precept; from these nature every day extracts
effects of constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we so
inquisitively study in the schools: how many do I ordinarily see who
slight poverty? how many who desire to die, or who die without alarm or
regret? He who is now digging in my garden, has this morning buried his
father or his son. The very names by which they call diseases sweeten
and mollify the sharpness of them: the phthisic is with them no more than
a cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, as
they gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very great
and grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they never
keep their beds but to die:

"Simplex illa et aperta virtus in obscuram et solertem
scientiam versa est."

["That overt and simple virtue is converted into an obscure and
subtle science."--Seneca, Ep., 95.]

I was writing this about the time when a great load of our intestine
troubles for several months lay with all its weight upon me; I had the
enemy at my door on one side, and the freebooters, worse enemies, on the
other,

"Non armis, sed vitiis, certatur;"

["The fight is not with arms, but with vices."--Seneca, Ep. 95.]

and underwent all sorts of military injuries at once:

"Hostis adest dextra laevaque a parte timendus.
Vicinoque malo terret utrumque latus."

["Right and left a formidable enemy is to be feared, and threatens
me on both sides with impending danger."--Ovid, De Ponto, i. 3, 57.]

A monstrous war! Other wars are bent against strangers, this against
itself, destroying itself with its own poison. It is of so malignant and
ruinous a nature, that