mind to the body, being compelled to return it to its first origin,
lest it should run out and so give them the slip. Thus they place the
pleasure of the body (as Epicurus says) upon the complacent joy in the
mind, and yet conclude again with the good hopes that complacent
joy hath in bodily pleasure. Indeed what wonder is it if, when the
foundation shakes, the superstructure totter? Or that there should be no
sure hope nor unshaken joy in a matter that suffers so great concussion
and changes as continually attend a body exposed to so many violences
and strokes from without, and having within it the origins of such evils
as human reason cannot avert? For if it could, no understanding man
would ever fall under stranguries, gripes, consumptions, or dropsies;
with some of which Epicurus himself did conflict and Polyaenus with
others, while others of them were the deaths of Neocles and Agathobulus.
And this we mention not to disparage them, knowing very well that
Pherecydes and Heraclitus, both very excellent persons, labored under
very uncouth and calamitous distempers. We only beg of them, if they
will own their own diseases and not by noisy rants and popular harangues
incur the imputation of false bravery, either not to take the health of
the whole body for the ground of their content, or else not to say that
men under the extremities of dolors and diseases can yet rally and be
pleasant. For a sound and hale constitution of body is indeed a
thing that often happens, but a firm and steadfast assurance of
its continuance can never befall an intelligent mind. But as at sea
(according to Aeschylus)

Night to the ablest pilot trouble brings,
(Aechylus, "Suppliants," 770.)

and so will a calm too, for no man knows what will be,--so likewise
is it impossible for a soul that dwells in a healthful body, and that
places her good in the hopes she hath of that body, to perfect her
voyage here without frights or waves. For man's mind hath not, like the
sea, its tempests and storms only from without it, but it also raises up
from within far more and greater disturbances. And a man may with more
reason look for constant fair weather in the midst of winter than for
perpetual exemption from afflictions in his body. For what else hath
given the poets occasion to term us ephemeral creatures, uncertain and
unfixed, and to liken our lives to leaves that both spring and fall in
the lapse of a summer, but the unhappy, calamitous,