Page:Plutarch - Moralia, translator Holland, 1911.djvu/432

410 descendeth hither into these parts beneath, he doth mitigate and seem to disguise by the most gentle and mild name that he could devise, calling it a kind of pilgrimage from the natural place; but to use the right term indeed, and to speak according to the very truth, she doth vague and wander as banished, chased and driven by the divine laws and statutes to and fro, until such time as it settleth to a body, as an oyster or shellfish to one rock or other in an island beaten and dashed upon with many winds and waves of the sea round about (as Plato saith), for that it doth not remember nor call to mind from what height of honour and from how blessed an estate it is translated, not changing, as a man would say, Sardis for Athens, nor Corinth for Lemnos or Scyros, but her resiance in the very heaven and about the moon, with the abode upon earth, and with a terrestrial life; whereas it thinketh it strange and as much discontented here for that it hath made exchange of one place for another not far distant; much like unto a poor plant that by removing doth degenerate and begin to wither away: and yet we see that for certain plants some soil is more commodious and sortable than another, wherein they will like, thrive, and prosper better: whereas contrariwise there is no place that taketh from a man his felicity, no more than it doth his virtue, fortitude or wisdom: for Anaxagoras during the time that he was in prison wrote his quadrature of the circle: and Socrates, even when he drunk poison, discoursed as a philosopher, exhorting his friends and familiars to the study of philosophy, and was by them reputed happy; but contrariwise, Phaëthon and Icarus, who (as the poets do report) would needs mount up into heaven, through their own folly and inconsiderate rashness fell into most grievous and woeful calamities.