Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/415

Rh although we be fallen into anything that is in truth naught and grievous unto us, we set a cheerful countenance on the matter, and make the best supply and recompense that we can by those good things that otherwise we have and do remain with us besides, lenifying and polishing the strange and adverse accident which happeneth without by that which is mild and familiar within.

But as touching those occurrents that simply of their own nature be not ill, and wherein whatsoever doth trouble and offend us ariseth altogether and wholly upon a vain conceit and foolish imagination of our own; we ought to do as our manner is with little children that be afraid of masks and disguised visors; for like as we hold the same close and near unto them, handle and turn them in our hands before them every way, and so by that means acquaint them therewith, until they make no reckoning at all of them; even so by approaching near, by touching and perusing the said calamities with our understanding and discourse of reason, we are to consider and discover the false appearance, the vanity and feigned tragedy that they pretend; like to which is that present accident which now is befallen unto you, to wit, the banishment out of that place which, according to the vulgar error of men, you suppose to be your native country. For to say a truth, there is no such distinct native soil that nature hath ordained, no more than either house, land, smith's forge or chirurgeon's shop is by nature, as Ariston was wont to say; but every one of these and such-like, according as any man doth occupy or use them, are his, or to speak more properly, are named and called his: for man, according to the saying of Plato, is not an earthly plant, having the root fixed fast within the ground and unmovable, but celestial and turning upward to heaven, whose body from the head as from a root that doth strengthen the same abideth straight and upright. And hereupon it is that Hercules in a certain tragedy said thus:

And yet Socrates said better than so; who gave it out that he was neither Athenian nor Grecian, but a citizen of the world; as if a man should say for example sake, that he were either a Rhodian or a Corinthian; for he would not include himself