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whether they would or no, never seriously spent two hours by themselves in so much as thinking what would make them wiser; but sleep and eat and play, which makes the whole circle of their lives, and are not in seven years together (except asleep) one hour by themselves. It is a strange thing, to see the care and solicitude that is used to strengthen and cherish the body; the study and industry and skill to form and shape every member and limb to beauty and comeliness; to teach the hands and feet and eyes the order and gracefulness of motion; to cure any defects of nature or accident, with any hazard and pain, insomuch as we oftentimes see even those of the weaker sex, and less inclined to suffering, willingly endure the breaking of a bone that cannot otherwise be made straight; and all this ado but to make a handsome and beautiful person, which at best is but the picture of a man or woman, without a wise soul: when to the information and improvement of that jewel, which is the essence of man; and which unconsidered, even that which we so labour for and are proud of, our beauty and handsomeness, is by many degrees inferior to that of a thousand beasts and other creatures; to the cultivating and shaping and directing of the mind, we give scarce a thought, not an hour of our life; never suppress a passion, never reform an affection; insomuch as (though

never age had fewer wise men to shew to the world) we may justly wonder we are not all fools and idiots, when we consider how little we have contributed to make ourselves other: and doubtless if nature (whom we are ready to accuse of all our weaknesses and perversenesses) had not out of her store bountifully supplied us, our own art and industry would never have kept up our faculties to that little vile height they are at. Neither in truth do many believe or understand that there needs any other diligence or art to be applied to the health of the mind, than the sober ordering and disposing of the body; and it is well if we can bring ourselves to that reasonable conclusion. Whereas when we prescribe ourselves a wholesome and orderly course of diet, for the strengthening of our natures, and confirming our healths; if we would consider what diet to give our minds, what books to read for the informing and strengthening our understandings, and conclude that it is as impossible for the mind to be improved without those supplies, as for the body to subsist without its natural food: if, when we allow ourselves recreations and exercises, to cherish and refresh our spirits, and to waste and dispel humours, without which a well-tempered constitution cannot be preserved, we would allow some exercises to our minds, by a sober and frank conversation with learned, ho

nest, and prudent men, whose informations, animadversions, and experience might remove and expel the vanities and levities which infect our understandings: if when an indisposition or distemper of bo. dy, an ill habit of health, calls upon us to take a rougher course with ourselves, to vemit up or purge away those choleric and phlegmatic and melancholic humours, which burn and cloy and suffocate the vital parts and passages; to let out that blood which is too rank, too corrupted for our veins, and to expel those fumes and vapours which hurt our stomachs and ascend to our brains: if we would, I say, as diligently examine the distemper of our minds, revolve the rage and fury of our choler, the dulness and laziness of our phlegm, the sullenness and pride of our melancholy; if we would correct this affection, and draw out that passion; expel those fumes and vapours of ambition which disturb and corrupt our reason and judgment, by sober and serious meditation of the excellency and benefit of patience, alacrity, and contentedness; that this affection and this passion is not consistent with sobriety and justice, and that the satisfying them with the utmost licence brings. neither ease nor quiet to the mind, which is not capable of any happiness but in, at least not without, its own innocence; that ambition always carries an insatiableness with it, which is a tormnt

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to the mind, and no less a disease than that is to the stomach in a word, if we would consider, there is scarce a disease, an indisposition, a distemper, by which the body is disturbed, to which, or some influence like it, the mind is not liable likewise; and that the remedies for the latter are much more natural, more in our power, than for the former; if we would use but half the diligence and industry to apply them which we do to the other, we should find ourselves another kind of people, our understandings more vigorous, and our lives more innocent, useful, and beneficial, to God, to ourselves, and to our country; and we should think we had learned nothing, till we had learned so to number our days that we might apply our hearts unto wisdom; that wisdom, of which the fear of the Lord is the beginning, and of which the eternal blessing of God is the end and the reward.

REFLECTIONS UPON THE HAPPINESS WHICH WE MAY ENJOY, IN AND FROM OURSELVES.

Montpellier, 1669.

It was a very just reproach that Seneca charged the world with so many hundred years ago, and yet was not more the disease of that than of

this age, that we wonder and complain of the pride and superciliousness of those who are in place and authority above us; that we cannot get an admittance to them; that they are never at leisure that we may speak to them; when (says he) we are never vacant, never at leisure to speak to ourselves; Audet quispiam de alterius superbia queri, qui sibi ipse nunquam vacat; and after all complaints and murmurs, the greatest and the proudest of them will be sometimes at leisure, may be sometimes spoken with; aliquando respexit, tu non inspicere te unquam, non audire dignatus es; we can never get an audience of ourselves, never vouchsafe to confer together. We are diligent and curious enough to know other men; and it may be charitable enough to assist them, to inform their weakness by our instruction, and to reform their errors by our experience: and all this without giving one moment to look into our own, never make an inspection into ourselves, nor ask one of those questions of ourselves which we are ready to administer to others, and thereby imagine that we have a perfect knowledge of them. We live with other men and to other men; neither with nor to ourselves. We may sometimes be at home left to ourselves, when others are weary of us, and we are weary of being with them; but we do not dwell at home, have no commerce, no con

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