SECTION 5.  Another important element in the wise conduct of life is to preserve a proper proportion between our thought for the present and our thought for the future; in order not to spoil the one by paying over-great attention to the other.  Many live too long in the present—­frivolous people, I mean; others, too much in the future, ever anxious and full of care.  It is seldom that a man holds the right balance between the two extremes.  Those who strive and hope and live only in the future, always looking ahead and impatiently anticipating what is coming, as something which will make them happy when they get it, are, in spite of their very clever airs, exactly like those donkeys one sees in Italy, whose pace may be hurried by fixing a stick on their heads with a wisp of hay at the end of it; this is always just in front of them, and they keep on trying to get it.  Such people are in a constant state of illusion as to their whole existence; they go on living ad interim, until at last they die.

Instead, therefore, of always thinking about our plans and anxiously looking to the future, or of giving ourselves up to regret for the past, we should never forget that the present is the only reality, the only certainty; that the future almost always turns out contrary to our expectations; that the past, too, was very different from what we suppose it to have been.  But the past and the future are, on the whole, of less consequence than we think.  Distance, which makes objects look small to the outward eye, makes them look big to the eye of thought.  The present alone is true and actual; it is the only time which possesses full reality, and our existence lies in it exclusively.  Therefore we should always be glad of it, and give it the welcome it deserves, and enjoy every hour that is bearable by its freedom from pain and annoyance with a full consciousness of its value.  We shall hardly be able to do this if we make a wry face over the failure of our hopes in the past or over our anxiety for the future.  It is the height of folly to refuse the present hour of happiness, or wantonly to spoil it by vexation at by-gones or uneasiness about what is to come.  There is a time, of course, for forethought, nay, even for repentance; but when it is over let us think of what is past as of something to which we have said farewell, of necessity subduing our hearts—­

  [Greek:  alla ta men protuchthai easomen achnumenoi per
  tumhon eni staethessi philon damasntes hanankae],[1]

and of the future as of that which lies beyond our power, in the lap of the gods—­

[Greek:  all aetoi men tauta theon en gounasi keitai.][2]

[Footnote 1:  Iliad, xix, 65.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid, xvii, 514]

But in regard to the present let us remember Seneca’s advice, and live each day as if it were our whole life,—­singulas dies singulas vitas puta:  let us make it as agreeable as possible, it is the only real time we have.