Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/140

120 For, as it is impossible for her to be at ease while she stands in fear of death, on the other hand, if she be reassured, she can boast (which is something surpassing, as it were, the human state) that it is impossible that anxiety, anguish, fear, nay, even the least annoyance, should lodge with her:

(b) Non vultus instantis tyranni
 * Mente quatit solida; neque Auster
 * Dux inquieti turbidus Adriæ,
 * Nec fulminantis magna Iovis manus.

(a) She has made herself mistress of her passions and lusts, mistress of destitution, shame, poverty, and all other buffets of Fortune. Let those of us who can, gain this superiority: here is the real and sovereign liberty, which gives us the power to snap our fingers at force and injustice, and to laugh at prison-bars and fetters: —

Compedibus sævo te sub custode tenebo. Ipse Deus, simul atque volam, me solvet. Opinor, Hoc sentit: Moriar; mors ultima linea rerum est.
 * in manicis et

Our religion has had no more solid human basis than contempt of life. Not only do reasonable considerations lead us to this: for why should we dread the loss of a thing which, when lost, can not be regretted? And since we are threatened by so many ways of dying, is there not more harm in dreading them all than in enduring one of them? (c) What does it matter when it happens, since it is inevitable? To him who said to Socrates, “The thirty tyrants have sentenced you to