[Footnote 1:  Translator’s Note.—­This obscure word appears to be derived from the Greek sugtaereo (N.T. and Polyb.) meaning “to observe strictly.”  It occurs in The Doctor and Student, a series of dialogues between a doctor of divinity and a student on the laws of England, first published in 1518; and is there (Dialog.  I. ch. 13) explained as “a natural power of the soule, set in the highest part thereof, moving and stirring it to good, and abhoring evil.”  This passage is copied into Milton’s Commonplace Book, edit. Horwood, Sec. 79.  The word is also found in the Dictionary of the Spanish Academy (vol. vi. of the year 1739) in the sense of an innate discernment of moral principles, where a quotation is given from Madre Maria de Jesus, abbess of the convent of the Conception at Agreda, a mystical writer of the seventeenth century, frequently consulted by Philip IV.,—­and again in the Bolognese Dictionary of 1824, with a similar meaning, illustrated from the writings of Salvini (1653-1729).  For these references I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. Norman Maccoll.]

To act in accordance with abstract principles is a difficult matter, and a great deal of practice will be required before you can be even occasionally successful; it of tens happens that the principles do not fit in with your particular case.  But every man has certain innate concrete principles—­a part, as it were, of the very blood that flows in his veins, the sum or result, in fact, of all his thoughts, feelings and volitions.  Usually he has no knowledge of them in any abstract form; it is only when he looks back upon the course his life has taken, that he becomes aware of having been always led on by them—­as though they formed an invisible clue which he had followed unawares.

SECTION 49.  That Time works great changes, and that all things are in their nature fleeting—­these are truths that should never be forgotten.  Hence, in whatever case you may be, it is well to picture to yourself the opposite:  in prosperity, to be mindful of misfortune; in friendship, of enmity; in good weather, of days when the sky is overcast; in love, of hatred; in moments of trust, to imagine the betrayal that will make you regret your confidence; and so, too, when you are in evil plight, to have a lively sense of happier times—­what a lasting source of true worldly wisdom were there!  We should then always reflect, and not be so very easily deceived; because, in general, we should anticipate the very changes that the years will bring.

Perhaps in no form of knowledge is personal experience so indispensable as in learning to see that all things are unstable and transitory in this world.  There is nothing that, in its own place and for the time it lasts, is not a product of necessity, and therefore capable of being fully justified; and it is this fact that makes circumstances of every year, every month, even of every day, seem as though they might maintain their right to last to all eternity.  But we know that this can never be the case, and that in a world where all is fleeting, change alone endures.  He is a prudent man who is not only undeceived by apparent stability, but is able to forecast the lines upon which movement will take place.[1]