home than their shells, enjoy no other
blessing but staying at home in ease.

Sec. IV. As then he in the comedy that was exhorting an unfortunate friend
to take courage and bear up against fortune, when he asked him "how,"
answered "as a philosopher," so may we also play the philosopher's part
and bear up against fortune manfully. How do we do when it rains, or
when the North Wind doth blow? We go to the fire, or the baths, or the
house, or put on another coat: we don't sit down in the rain and cry. So
too can you more than most revive and cheer yourself for the chill of
adversity, not standing in need of outward aid, but sensibly using your
actual advantages. The surgeon's cupping-glasses extract the worst
humours from the body to relieve and preserve the rest of it, whereas
the melancholy and querulous by ever dwelling on their worst
circumstances, and thinking only of them, and being engrossed by their
troubles, make even useful things useless to them, at the very time when
the need is most urgent. For as to those two jars, my friend, that
Homer[915] says are stored in Heaven, one full of good fortunes, one of
bad, it is not Zeus that presides as the dispenser of them, giving to
some a gentle and even portion, and to others unmixed streams of evils,
but ourselves. For the sensible make their life pleasanter and more
endurable by mitigating their sorrows with the consideration of their
blessings, while most people, like sieves, let the worst things stick to
them while the best pass through.

Sec. V. And so, if we fall into any real trouble or evil, we ought to get
cheerfulness and ease of mind from the consideration of the actual
blessings that are still left to us, mitigating outward trouble by
private happiness. And as to those things which are not really evil in
their nature, but only so from imagination and empty fancy, we must act
as we do with children who are afraid of masks: by bringing them near,
and putting them in their hands, and turning them about, we accustom
them never to heed them at all: and so we by bringing reason to bear on
it may discover the rottenness and emptiness and exaggeration of our
fancy. As a case in point let us take your present exile from what you
deem your country. For in nature no country, or house, or field, or
smithy, as Aristo said, or surgery, is peculiarly ours, but all such
things exist or rather take their name in connection with the person who
dwells in them or possesses t