mon consent of all philosophers.
"Dishonesty" (saith Cardan) "is nothing else but folly and madness." [433]
_Probus quis nobiscum vivit_? Show me an honest man, _Nemo malus qui non
stultus_, 'tis Fabius' aphorism to the same end. If none honest, none wise,
then all fools. And well may they be so accounted: for who will account him
otherwise, _Qui iter adornat in occidentem, quum properaret in orientem_?
that goes backward all his life, westward, when he is bound to the east? or
hold him a wise man (saith [434]Musculus) "that prefers momentary pleasures
to eternity, that spends his master's goods in his absence, forthwith to be
condemned for it?" _Nequicquam sapit qui sibi non sapit_, who will say that
a sick man is wise, that eats and drinks to overthrow the temperature of
his body? Can you account him wise or discreet that would willingly have
his health, and yet will do nothing that should procure or continue it?
[435]Theodoret, out of Plotinus the Platonist, "holds it a ridiculous thing
for a man to live after his own laws, to do that which is offensive to God,
and yet to hope that he should save him: and when he voluntarily neglects
his own safety, and contemns the means, to think to be delivered by
another:" who will say these men are wise?

A third argument may be derived from the precedent, [436]all men are
carried away with passion, discontent, lust, pleasures, &c., they generally
hate those virtues they should love, and love such vices they should hate.
Therefore more than melancholy, quite mad, brute beasts, and void of
reason, so Chrysostom contends; "or rather dead and buried alive," as [437]
Philo Judeus concludes it for a certainty, "of all such that are carried
away with passions, or labour of any disease of the mind. Where is fear and
sorrow," there [438]Lactantius stiffly maintains, "wisdom cannot dwell,"

------"qui cupiet, metuet quoque porro,
Qui metuens vivit, liber mihi non erit unquam."[439]

Seneca and the rest of the stoics are of opinion, that where is any the
least perturbation, wisdom may not be found. "What more ridiculous," as
[440]Lactantius urges, than to hear how Xerxes whipped the Hellespont,
threatened the Mountain Athos, and the like. To speak _ad rem_, who is free
from passion? [441]_Mortalis nemo est quem non attingat dolor, morbusve_,
as [442]Tully determines out of an old poem, no mortal men can avoid sorrow
and sickness, and sorrow is an inseparable companion from