ey are not so many in number, but their causes be as
divers, and not one of a thousand free from them, or that can vindicate
himself, whom that _Ate dea_,

[1744] "Per hominum capita molliter ambulans,
Plantas pedum teneras habens:"

"Over men's heads walking aloft,
With tender feet treading so soft,"

Homer's Goddess Ate hath not involved into this discontented [1745]rank, or
plagued with some misery or other. Hyginus, _fab. 220_, to this purpose
hath a pleasant tale. Dame Cura by chance went over a brook, and taking up
some of the dirty slime, made an image of it; Jupiter eftsoons coming by,
put life to it, but Cura and Jupiter could not agree what name to give him,
or who should own him; the matter was referred to Saturn as judge; he gave
this arbitrement: his name shall be _Homo ab humo, Cura eum possideat
quamdiu vivat_, Care shall have him whilst he lives, Jupiter his soul, and
Tellus his body when he dies. But to leave tales. A general cause, a
continuate cause, an inseparable accident, to all men, is discontent, care,
misery; were there no other particular affliction (which who is free from?)
to molest a man in this life, the very cogitation of that common misery
were enough to macerate, and make him weary of his life; to think that he
can never be secure, but still in danger, sorrow, grief, and persecution.
For to begin at the hour of his birth, as [1746]Pliny doth elegantly
describe it, "he is born naked, and falls [1747]a whining at the very
first: he is swaddled, and bound up like a prisoner, cannot help himself,
and so he continues to his life's end." _Cujusque ferae pabulum_, saith
[1748]Seneca, impatient of heat and cold, impatient of labour, impatient of
idleness, exposed to fortune's contumelies. To a naked mariner Lucretius
compares him, cast on shore by shipwreck, cold and comfortless in an
unknown land: [1749]no estate, age, sex, can secure himself from this
common misery. "A man that is born of a woman is of short continuance, and
full of trouble," Job xiv. 1, 22. "And while his flesh is upon him he shall
be sorrowful, and while his soul is in him it shall mourn. All his days are
sorrow and his travels griefs: his heart also taketh not rest in the
night." Eccles. ii. 23, and ii. 11. "All that is in it is sorrow and
vexation of spirit. [1750]Ingress, progress, regress, egress, much alike:
blindness seizeth on us in the beginning, labour in the middle, grief in
the end, error