Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/187

Rh Even so, good sir, how is it that you regard and advise so wistly your own misery and calamity, making it always apparent and fresh in remembrance, but upon your present prosperity you set not mind? And like as ventoses, cupping glasses or boxes draw the most corrupt humours to them out of the flesh; even so you gather against yourself the worst things you have, being no better than the merchant of Chios, who when he sold to others a great quantity of the best wine, sought up and down tasting every vessel until he met with that for his own dinner, which began to sour and was little better than stark naught. This man had a servant who ran away, and being demanded what his master had done unto him, for which he should shew him a pair of heels. Because (quoth he) when he had plenty of that which was good, he would needs seek for naught.

And most men verily are of the same nature, who passing by good and desirable things, which be (as a man would say) the pleasant and potable liquors that they have, betake themselves to those that be harsh, bad and unsavoury. But Aristippus was of another humour; for like a wise man and one that knew his own good, he was always disposed to make the best of every occurrence, raising and lifting up himself to that end of the balance which mounted aloft, and not to that which went downward. It fortuned one day that he lost a fair manor or lordship of his own, and when one of his friends above the rest made most semblance to lament with him, and to be angry with fortune in his behalf; Hear you (quoth he), know you not that yourself have but one little farm in the whole world, and that I have yet three houses more left, with good lands lying to them? Yes, marry do I (quoth the other): Why then (quoth Aristippus again), wherefore do not we rather pity your case, and condole with you? For it is mere madness to grieve and sorrow for those things that are lost and gone, and not to rejoice for that which is saved. And like as little children, if a man chance to take from them but one of their gauds, among many other toys that they play withal, throw away the rest for very curst-heart, and then fall a-puling, weeping and crying out aright; semblably, as much folly and childishness it were, if when fortune thwarteth us in one thing, we be so far out of the way and disquieted therewith, that with our plaints and moans we make all her other favours unprofitable unto us. But will some one say. What is it that we have? Nay, What is it that we have not? might he rather say: One man is in honour, another hath a fair