Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/205

Rh exercise; so if the same mind would by custom learn and exercise itself in apprehending the imagination of a malady, of pain, travel, and of banishment, and enforce itself by reason to withstand and strive against each of these accidents, it will be found and seen by experience, that such things which through an erroneous opinion were thought painful, grievous, hard and terrible, are for the most part but vain indeed, deceitful and contemptible: like as reason will shew the same if a man would consider them each one in particular. Howbeit, the most part mightily fear and have in horror that verse of Menander:

No man alive can safely say, This case shall never me assay,

as not knowing how material it is to the exempting and freeing of a man from all grief and sorrow, to meditate beforehand, and to be able to look open-eyed full against fortune, and not to make those apprehensions and imaginations in himself soft and effeminate, as if he were fostered and nourished in the shadow, under many foolish hopes which ever yield to the contrary, and be not able to resist so much as any one.

But to come again unto Menander, we have to answer unto him in this manner: True it is indeed, there is no man living able to say: This or this shall never happen unto me; howbeit, thus much may a man that is alive say and affirm: So long as I live I will not do this, to wit, I will not lie; I will never be a cozener, nor circumvent any man; I will not defraud any one of his own; neither will I forelay and surprise any man by a wile. This lieth in our power to promise and perform, and this is no small matter, but a great means to procure tranquillity and contentment of mind. Whereas contrariwise, the remorse of conscience whenas a man is privy to himself, and must needs confess and say: These and these wicked parts I have committed, festereth in the soul like an ulcer and sore in the flesh, and leaveth behind it repentance in the soul, which fretteth, galleth, spaweth, and setteth it a-bleeding fresh continually. For, whereas all other sorrows, griefs, and anguishes, reason doth take away; repentance only it doth breed and engender, which together with shame biteth and punisheth itself; for like as they who quiver and shake in the fevers called epioli; or contrariwise, burn by occasion of other agues, are more afflicted and more at ease than those who suffer the same accidents by exterior causes, to wit, winter's cold or summer's heat; even so ill mischances and casual calamities bring with them lighter