mmodated to the hearing, not by its
loudness, but by its propriety."--Quintilian, xi. 3.]

Speaking is half his who speaks, and half his who hears; the latter
ought to prepare himself to receive it, according to its bias; as with
tennis-players, he who receives the ball, shifts and prepares, according
as he sees him move who strikes the stroke, and according to the stroke
itself.

Experience has, moreover, taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by
impatience. Evils have their life and limits, their diseases and their
recovery.

The constitution of maladies is formed by the pattern of the constitution
of animals; they have their fortune and their days limited from their
birth; he who attempts imperiously to cut them short by force in the
middle of their course, lengthens and multiplies them, and incenses
instead of appeasing them. I am of Crantor's opinion, that we are
neither obstinately and deafly to oppose evils, nor succumb to them from
want of courage; but that we are naturally to give way to them, according
to their condition and our own. We ought to grant free passage to
diseases; I find they stay less with me, who let them alone; and I have
lost some, reputed the most tenacious and obstinate, by their own decay,
without help and without art, and contrary to its rules. Let us a little
permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs
than we. But such an one died of it; and so shall you: if not of that
disease, of another. And how many have not escaped dying, who have had
three physicians at their tails? Example is a vague and universal
mirror, and of various reflections. If it be a delicious medicine, take
it: 'tis always so much present good. I will never stick at the name nor
the colour, if it be pleasant and grateful to the palate: pleasure is one
of the chiefest kinds of profit. I have suffered colds, gouty
defluxions, relaxations, palpitations of the heart, megrims, and other
accidents, to grow old and die in time a natural death. I have so lost
them when I was half fit to keep them: they are sooner prevailed upon by
courtesy than huffing. We must patiently suffer the laws of our
condition; we are born to grow old, to grow weak, and to be sick, in
despite of all medicine. 'Tis the first lesson the Mexicans teach their
children; so soon as ever they are born they thus salute them: "Thou art
come into the world, child, to endure: endure, suffer, and say nothing."
'T