220 RATHER BE FETTERED WITH AFFLICTION THAN PLEASURE. as much as our liking does no more proceed from what is above, than from what is below it. Let us leave this other sect, and make a downright profession of fierceness. But when even in that sect, reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these rhodomontades of Metrodorus: "Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi: omnesque aditus tuos interclusi, ut ad me aspirare non posses." "Fortune, thou art mine, I have thee fast, and have made all the avenues so sure thou canst not come at me." When Anaxarchus, by the command of Nicrocreon, the tyrant of Cyprus, was put into a stone-mortar, and laid upon with mauls of iron, ceases not to say, strike, batter, break, 'tis not Anaxarchus, 'tis but his sheath that you pound and bray so. When we hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant in the middle of the flame, this side is roasted enough, fall to, and eat, it is enough, fall to work with the other, when we hear the child in Josephus, torn piece-meal with biting pincers, defying Antiochus, and crying out with a constant and assured voice, tyrant, thou losest thy labour, I am still at ease, where is the pain, where are the torments with which thou didst so threaten me? Is this all thou canst do? My constancy torments thee more, than thy cruelty does me: O pitiful coward, thou faintest, and I grow stronger, make me complain, make me bend, make me yield if thou canst; encourage thy guards, cheer up thy executioners, see, see they faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew, spur them up. Really a man must confess, that there is some alteration and fury, how holy soever, that does at that time possess those souls. When we come to these stoical sallies: I had rather be furious than voluptuous, a saying of Antisthenes; when Sextius tells us, he had rather be fetter'd with affliction, than pleasure: when Epicurus takes upon him to play with his gout, and that refusing health and ease, he defies all torments, and despising the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covets and calls out for sharper, more violent and more worthy of him. Who but must conclude, that they are pusht on by a courage, that has broke loose from its place? Our soul cannot from her own seat reach so high, 'tis necessary she must leave it, raise her self up, and taking the bridle in her teeth, transport her man so far, that he shall after himself be astonisht at what he has done. As in occasion of war, the heat of battle sometimes pushes the generous soldiers to perform things of so infinite danger, as after having recollected themselves, they themselves are the first do wonder at. As also fares with the poets, who are often rapt with admiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find the track, through which they performed so happy a carreer; which also is in them call'd rage, and rapture and as Plato says, 'tis to no purpose for a sober man to knock at the door of poesy: and Aristotle says to the same effect, that no excellent soul is exempt from the mixture of folly; and he has reason to call all transports, how commendable soever, that surpass our own judgment and understanding, folly: for as much as wisdom is a regular government of the soul, which is carryed on with measure and proportion, and which she is to her self responsible for. Plato argues thus, that the faculty of prophecying is so far above us, that we must be out of our selves, when we meddle with it, and our prudence must either be obstructed by sleep ›r sickness, or litted from her place by some celestial rapture. CHAP. XLVII.-THE CUSTOM OF THE ISLE OF CEA. IF to philosophize, be, as 'tis defin'd, to doubt, much more to write at random, and play the fool, as I do, ought to be reputed doubting, for it is for novices and freshmen to inquire and dispute, and for the chairman to moderate and determine. My moderator is the authority of the divine will, that governs us without contradiction, and that is seated above these vain and human contests. Philip being forceably entred into Peloponnesus, and some one saying to Damidas, that the Lacedæmonians were likely very much to suffer, if they did not in time reconcile themselves to his favour: "why, you pitiful fellow," replied he, "what can they suffer, that do not fear to die?" It being also demanded of Agis, which way a man might live free? "Why," said he, "by despising death." These, and a thousand other sayings to the same purpose, do distinctly sound something more than the patient attending the stroke of death, when it shall come; for there are several accidents in life, far worse to suffer than death it self: witness the Lacedæmonian boy, taken by Antigonus, and sold for a slave, who being by his new master commanded to some base employment, "Thou shalt see," says the boy, "whom thou hast bought, it would be a shame for me to serve, being so near the reach of liberty," and having so said, threw himself from the top of the house. Antipater severely threatning the Lacedæmonians, that he might the better encline them to acquiesce in a certain demand of his; "If thou threatnest us with more than death," replyed they, we shall the more willingly dye:" and to Philip having writ them word, that he would frustrate all their enterprizes? "What, wilt thou also hinder us from dying?" This is the meaning of the sentence, that the wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can; and that the most obliging present nature has made us, and which takes from us all colour of complaint of our condition, is, to have delivered into our own custody the keys of life. She has only ordered one door into life, but a hundred thousand ways out. We may be straightend for earth to live upon, but earth sufficient to dye upon can never be wanting, as Boiocatus answer'd the Romans: "why dost thou complain of this world? It detains thee not; thy own cowardize is the case if thou livest in pain: there remains no more to dye but to be willing to do it." 66 Neither is it a recipe for one disease, death is the infallible cure of all, 'tis a most assured port that is never to be feared, and very often to be sought it comes all to one, whether a man gives himself his end, or stays to receive it by some other means? whether he pays before his day, or stays till his day of payment come: from whencesoever it comes, it is still his: in what part soever the thread breaks, there's the end of the clue, the most voluntary death, is the most brave. Life depends upon the pleasure and discretion of others, death upon our own. We ought not to accommodate ourselves to our own humour in any thing so much as in that. Reputation is not concerned in such an enterprize and it's a folly to be diverted by any such apprehension, living in slavery, if the liberty of dying be away. The ordinary method of cures is carried on at the expence of life, they torment us with causticks, incisions, and amputations of limbs, at the same time inter 222 ACCIDENTS CANNOT MAKE TRUE VERTUE TURN BACK. dicting aliments, and exhausting our blood; one step farther and we are cured indeed. Why are not the jugular veins as much at our dispose, as the mephalick, basilick, or cedian vein ? For a desperate disease a desperate cure. Servius the grammarian, being tormented with the gout, could advise of no better remedy, than to apply poison to his legs, to deprive them of their sence, then let them be gouty on God's name, so they were insensible of pain. God gives us leave enough, when he is pleased to reduce us to such a condition, that to live is far worse than to die. 'Tis weakness to truckle under infirmities, but 'tis madness to nourish them. The stoicks say, that it is living according to nature in a wise man to take his leave of life even in the height of prosperity, if he do it opportunely, and in a fool to prolong it, tho' he be miserable, provided he be indigent of those things, which are reputed the necessaries of human life. As I do not offend the law provided against thieves, when I embezel my own money, and cut my own purse, nor that against incendiaries, when I burn my own wood; so am I not under the lash of those made against murtherers, for having deprived my self of my own life. Hegesius said, that as the condition of life did, so the condition of death ought to depend upon our own choice: and Diogenes meeting the philosopher Speusippus, so blown up with an inveterate dropsie, that he was fain to be carryed in a litter, and by him saluted with the complement of, I wish you good health; no health to thee, reply'd the other, who art content to live in such a condition. And in truth, not long after Speusippus, weary of so languishing an estate of life, found a means to die. But this does not pass without admitting a dispute: for many are of opinion, that we cannot quit this garrison of the world, without the express command of him, who has placed us in it: and that it appertains to God, who has placed us here, not for our selves only, but for his glory, and the service of others, to dismiss us when it shall best please him, and not for us to depart without his licence: that we are not born for our selves only, but for our country also, the laws of which require an account from us, upon the score of their own interest, and have an action of manslaughter good against us. Or if these fail to take cognizance of the fact, we are punished in the other world, as deserters of our duty. There is more constancy in suffering the chain we are tied in, than in breaking it, and more pregnant evidence of fortitude in Regulus, than in Cato. 'Tis indiscretion and impatience that pushes us on to these precipices. No accidents can make true vertue turn her back, she seeks and requires evils, pains and grief, as the things by which she is nourish'd and supported. The menaces of tyrants, racks, and tortures serve only to animate and rouse her. 'Tis cowardize not vertue, to lie squat in a furrow, under a tomb to evade the blows of fortune. Vertue never stops, nor goes out of her path for the greatest storm that blows. Si fractus illabatur orbis, Impavidam ferient ruinæ. Should the world's axis crack, and sphear fall down, And for the most part, the flying of other inconveniences brings us to this, that, endeavouring to evade death, we run into the mouth of it. Plato in his laws assigns an ignominious sepulture to him who has deprived his nearest and best friend (namely himself) of life, and his destin'd course of years, being neither compell'd so to do by publick judgment, by any sad and inevitable accident of fortune, nor by any insupportable disgrace, but merely pusht on by cowardize, and the imbecility of a timorous soul. And the opinion, that makes so little of life is ridiculous; for it is our being: 'tis all we have. Things of a nobler, and more elevated being, may indeed accuse this of ours; but it is against nature, for us to contemn, and make little account of our selves; 'tis a disease particular to man, and not discern'd in any other creatures, to hate and despise it self. And it is a vanity of the same stamp, to desire to be something else than what we are. The effects of such a desire do not at all concern us, for as much as it is contradicted, and hindred in it self: and he that desires of a man to be made an angel, wishes nothing for himself; he would be never the better for it; for being no more, who should be sensible of this benefit for him. Security, indolency, impossibility, and the privation of the evils of life, which we pretend to purchase at the price of dying, are of no manner of advantage to us. That man evades war to very little purpose, that can have no fruition of peace? And as impertinently does he avoid labour and toil, who cannot enjoy repose. Amongst those of the first of these two opinions, there has been great debate, what occasions are sufficient to justifie the meditation of self-murther, which they call, evλoyov vğayoyw, a handsome exit. For tho' they say, that men are often to die for trivial causes, seeing those that detain us in life are of no very great weight: yet there is to be some measure. There are fantastick and senseless humours, that have prompted not only particular men, but whole nations to destroy themselves, of which I have elsewhere given some examples; and we further read of the Milesian virgins, that, by a furious compact, they hang'd themselves, one after another, 'till the magistrate took order in it, enacting, that the bodies of such as should be found so hang'd, should be drawn by the same halter stark naked through the city. When Threicion persuaded Cleomenes to dispatch himself by reason of the ill posture of his affairs, and having evaded a death of the most honour in the battel he had lost, to accept of this the second in honour to it, and not to give the conquerors leisure to make him undergo either an ignominious death, or an infamous life: Cleomenes with a courage truly stoick and Lacedæmonian rejected his counsel as unmanly and poor; that, said he, is a remedy that can never be wanting, and which a man is never to make use of, whilst there is an inch of hope remaining: telling him, that it was sometimes constancy, and valour to live, that he would that even his death should be of use to his country, and would make of it an act of honour and vertue. Threicion notwithstanding thought himself in the right, and did his own business; and Cleomenes after did the same; but not till he had first tried the utmost malevolence of fortune. All the inconveniences in the world are not considerable enough that a man should die to evade them, and besides there being so many, so suddain, and unexpected changes in human things, it is hard, rightly to judge when we are at the end of our hope. 224 BRUTUS AND CASSIUS SHOULD NOT HAVE KILLED THEMSELVES. All things (says the old adage) are to be hoped for by a man whilst he lives: ay but replies Seneca, why should this rather be always running in a mans head, that fortune can do all things for the living man, than this, that fortune has no power over him that knows how to dye? Josephus, when engaged in so near and apparent danger, a whole people being violently bent against him, that there was no visible means of escape, nevertheless, being, as himself says in this extremity counsell'd by Simon one of his faithful guards to dispatch himself, it was well for him, that he yet maintained himself in some hope, for fortune diverted the accident beyond all human expectation; so that he saw himself delivered without any manner of inconvenience. Whereas Brutus and Cassius, on the contrary threw away the remains of the Roman liberty, of which they were the sole protectors, by the precipitation and temerity wherewith they kill'd themselves before the due time, and a just occasion. Monsieur d' Anguein, at the battel of Cerrifolles, twice attempted to run himself through, despairing of the fortune of the day, which went indeed very untowardly on that side of the field where he was engag'd, and by that participation was very near depriving himself of the joy and honour of so brave a victory. I have seen an hundred hares escape out of the very teeth of the grey-hounds. "Aliquis carnifici suo superstes fuit.”—Sen. Ep. 13. Some have survived their executioners. Pliny says, there are three sorts of diseases, to escape any of which a man has a good title to destroy himself; the worst of which is the stone in the bladder, when the urine is supprest. Seneca says, those only, which for a long time discompose the functions of the soul: and some there have been, who to avoid a worse, have chosen one to their own liking. Democritus, general of the Ætolians, being brought prisoner to Rome, found means to make his escape by night: but close pursu'd by his keepers, rather than suffer himself to be retaken, he fell upon his own sword and died. Antinous and Theodotus their city of Epirus being reduc'd by the Romans to the last extremity, gave the people counsel generally to kill themselves; but the advice of giving themselves up to the arms of the enemy prevailing, they went to seek the death they desir'd, rushing furiously upon the enemy with an intention to strike home, but not to defend a blow. The isle Gosa forc'd some years ago by the Turks, a Sicilian, who had two beautiful daughters marriageable, kill'd them both with his own hand, and their mother (running in to save them) to boot. Which having done, sallying out of the house with a crows-bow, and a harquebuze, with those two shoots he kill'd two of the first Turks nearest to the door, and drawing his sword charg'd furiously in amongst the rest, where he was suddenly enclos'd, and cut to pieces. By that means delivering his family and himself from slavery and dishonour. The Jewish women after having circumciz'd their children, threw themselves down a precipice to avoid the cruelty of Antigonus. I have have been told of a prisoner of condition in one of our prisons that his friends being informed he would certainly be condemn'd, to avoid the ignominy of such a death, suborn'd a priest to tell him, that the only means of his deliverance was, to recommend himself to such a saint, under such and such vows, and fast eight days together, without taking any manner of nourishment whatever, what |