Page:The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius (1896).pdf/270



1. Author:Aristotle, as well as Hippocrates, has complained of the shortness of human life, and accuses nature of granting a long term of years to stags, ravens, and other animals, while she hems in by narrow boundaries the lives of men born to great responsibility. Seneca, however, opposes this view, and wisely says: “The life that we receive is not short, unless we make it so. We suffer from no lack of years, but carouse away those that are granted us. Life is long, if we do but know how to use it.” And again: “Our lives are sufficiently long, and, if we order them well, allow us to bring the greatest undertakings to completion” (De Brevitate Vita, cc. i. and ii.)

2. If this be correct, and indeed it is very true, it is grossly culpable on our parts if our lives do not prove sufficiently long to bring great undertakings to completion, since the reason is that we waste our lives, partly by taking no care of them, so that they do not reach the natural limit, and partly by frittering them away on worthless objects.

3. A trustworthy authority (Hippolytus Guarino) asserts, and gives good reasons for his assertion, that a man of the most delicate constitution, if he come into the world without any deformity, possesses enough vitality to carry him on to his sixtieth year; while a very strong man should attain to his hundredth year. If any die before this