Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/392

370 for thus they think: That the sparing of a small matter can add no great thing unto their stock, to heap it up; but contrariwise, hope when a man sees that he wanteth but a little of the mark which he shooteth at, causeth that the nearer he Cometh thereto, his covetousness is the more; even so it is in those matters that pertain to virtue: he who giveth not place much, nor proceedeth to these speeches: Well, and what shall we have after this? Be it so now: It will be better again for it another time: and such-like: but always taketh heed to himself in everything; and whensoever vice insinuating itself into the least sin and fault that is, seemeth to pretend and suggest some colourable excuses for to crave pardon, is much discontented and displeased; he (I say) giveth hereby good evidence and proof that he hath a house within clean and neat, and that he would not endure the least impurity and ordure in the world to defile the same: For (as Æschylus saith) an opinion conceived once, that nothing that we have is great and to be esteemed and reckoned of, causeth us to be careless and negligent in small matters. They that make a palisado, a rampier or rough mud wall, care not much to put into their work any wood that cometh next hand, neither is it greatly material to take thereto any rubbish or stone that they can meet with, or first cometh into their eye, yea, and if it were a pillar fallen from a monument or sepulchre; semblably do wicked and lewd folk, who gather, thrumble, and heap up together all sorts of gain, all actions that be in their way, it makes no matter what; but such as profit in virtue, who are already planted, and whose golden foundation of a good life is laid (as it were) for some sacred temple or royal palace, will not take hand over head any stuff to build thereupon, neither will they work by aim, but everything, shall be couched, laid, and ranged by line and level, that is to say, by the square and rule of reason: which is the cause (as we think) that Polycletus, the famous imager, was wont to say: That the hardest piece of all the work remained then to do, when the clay and the nail met together; signifying thus much: that the chief point of cunning and perfection was in the upshoot and end of all.