eful what we
say about the gods, and to be cheerful and not rail against Fortune,
brings a sweet and goodly profit; and he who in such conjunctures as
ours mostly tries to remember his blessings, and turns and diverts his
mind from the dark and disturbing things in life to the bright and
radiant, either altogether extinguishes his grief or makes it small and
dim from a comparison with his comforts. For as perfume gives pleasure
to the nose, and is a remedy against disagreeable smells, so the
remembrance of past happiness in present trouble gives all the relief
they require to those who do not shut out of their memory the blessings
of the past, or always and everywhere rail against Fortune. And this
certainly ought not to be our case, that we should slander all our past
life because, like a book, it has one erasure in it, when all the other
pages have been bright and clean.

Sec. IX. You have often heard that happiness consists in right calculations
resulting in a healthy state of mind, and that the changes which Fortune
brings about need not upset it, and introduce confusion into our life.
But if we too must, like most people, be governed by external events,
and make an inventory of the dealings of Fortune, and constitute other
people the judges of our felicity, do not now regard the tears and
lamentations of those who visit you, which by a faulty custom are
lavished on everybody, but consider rather how happy you are still
esteemed by them for your family, your house, and life. For it would be
monstrous, if others would gladly prefer your destiny to theirs, even
taking into account our present sorrow, that you should rail against and
be impatient at our present lot, and in consequence of our bitter grief
not reflect how much comfort is still left to us. But like those who
quote imperfect verses of Homer[201] and neglect the finest passages of
his writings, to enumerate and complain of the trials of life, while you
pay no attention to its blessings, is to resemble those stingy misers,
who heap up riches and make no use of them when they have them, but
lament and are impatient if they are lost. And if you grieve over her
dying unmarried and childless, you can comfort yourself with the thought
that you have had both those advantages. For they should not be reckoned
as great blessings in the case of those who do not enjoy them, and small
blessings in the case of those who do. And that she has gone to a place
where she is o