putes . . . . I use what is
permitted; I pluck out the hairs of the horse's tail one by one;
while I thus outwit my opponent."--Horace, Ep., ii, I, 38, 45]

and let them boldly call philosophy to their assistance; in whose teeth
it may be cast that, seeing it neither discerns the one nor the other end
of the joint, betwixt the too much and the little, the long and the
short, the light and the heavy, the near and the remote; that seeing it
discovers neither the beginning nor the end, it must needs judge very
uncertainly of the middle:

"Rerum natura nullam nobis dedit cognitionem finium."

["Nature has green to us no knowledge of the end of things."
--Cicero, Acad., ii. 29.]

Are they not still wives and friends to the dead who are not at the end
of this but in the other world? We embrace not only the absent, but
those who have been, and those who are not yet. We do not promise in
marriage to be continually twisted and linked together, like some little
animals that we see, or, like the bewitched folks of Karenty,--[Karantia,
a town in the isle of Rugen. See Saxo-Grammaticus, Hist. of Denmark,
book xiv.]--tied together like dogs; and a wife ought not to be so
greedily enamoured of her husband's foreparts, that she cannot endure to
see him turn his back, if occasion be. But may not this saying of that
excellent painter of woman's humours be here introduced, to show the
reason of their complaints?

"Uxor, si cesses, aut to amare cogitat,
Aut tete amari, aut potare, aut animo obsequi;
Et tibi bene esse soli, cum sibi sit male;"

["Your wife, if you loiter, thinks that you love or are beloved; or
that you are drinking or following your inclination; and that it is
well for you when it is ill for her (all the pleasure is yours and
hers all the care)."
--Terence, Adelph., act i., sc. I, v. 7.]

or may it not be, that of itself opposition and contradiction entertain
and nourish them, and that they sufficiently accommodate themselves,
provided they incommodate you?

In true friendship, wherein I am perfect, I more give myself to my
friend, than I endeavour to attract him to me. I am not only better
pleased in doing him service than if he conferred a benefit upon me,
but, moreover, had rather he should do himself good than me, and he most
obliges me when he does so; and if absence be either more pleasant or
convenient for him, '