Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/417

Rh more than a very prick which hath no dimension at all? But we, like unto pismires driven out of our hole, or in manner of bees dispossessed of our hive, are cast down and discomforted by and by, and take ourselves to be foreigners and strangers, for that we know not how to esteem and make all things our own, familiar and proper unto us, as they be. And yet we laugh at the folly of him who said: That the moon at Athens was better than at Corinth; being in the meanwhile after a sort in the same error of judgment, as if when we are gone a journey from the place of our habitation, we should mistake the earth, the sea, the air and the sky, as if they were others and far different from those which we are accustomed unto: for nature hath permitted us to go and walk through the world loose and at liberty: but we for our parts imprison ourselves, and we may thank ourselves that we are pent up in straight rooms, that we be housed and kept within walls; thus of our own accord we leap into close and narrow places; and notwithstanding that we do thus by ourselves, yet we mock the Persian kings, for that (if it be true which is reported of them) they drink all of the water only of the river Choaspes, by which means they make all the continent besides waterless, for any good they have by it: whereas, even we also, when we travel and remove into other countries, have a longing desire after the river Cephisus or Eurotas; yea, and a mind unto the mountain Tagïetus or the hill Parnassus; whereby upon a most vain and foolish opinion, all the world besides is not only void of water, but also like a desert, without city, and altogether inhabitable unto us.

Contrariwise, certain Egytians by occasion of some wrath and excessive oppressing of their king, minding to remove into Ethiopia, whenas their kinsfolk and friends requested them to turn back again, and not to forsake their wives and children, after a shameless manner shewing unto them their genital members, answered them: That they would neither want wives nor children, so long as they carried those about them. But surely a man may avouch more honestly, and with greater modesty and gravity, that he who in what place soever feeleth no want or miss of those things which be necessary for this life, cannot complain and say: That he is there out of his own country, without city, without his own house and habitation, or a stranger at all; so as he only have as he ought, his eye and understanding bent hereunto, for to stay and govern him in manner of a sure anchor, that he may be able to make benefit and use of any haven or harbour whatsoever he arriveth unto.