But will you say what object has he in all this?  The pleasure of bragging to-morrow among his friends that he has played better than another.  So others sweat in their own rooms to show to the learned that they have solved a problem in algebra, which no one had hitherto been able to solve.  Many more expose themselves to extreme perils, in my opinion as foolishly, in order to boast afterwards that they have captured a town.  Lastly, others wear themselves out in studying all these things, not in order to become wiser, but only in order to prove that they know them; and these are the most senseless of the band, since they are so knowingly, whereas one may suppose of the others, that if they knew it, they would no longer be foolish.

This man spends his life without weariness in playing every day for a small stake.  Give him each morning the money he can win each day, on condition he does not play; you make him miserable.  It will perhaps be said that he seeks the amusement of play and not the winnings.  Make him then play for nothing; he will not become excited over it, and will feel bored.  It is then not the amusement alone that he seeks; a languid and passionless amusement will weary him.  He must get excited over it, and deceive himself by the fancy that he will be happy to win what he would not have as a gift on condition of not playing; and he must make for himself an object of passion, and excite over it his desire, his anger, his fear, to obtain his imagined end, as children are frightened at the face they have blackened.

Whence comes it that this man, who lost his only son a few months ago, or who this morning was in such trouble through being distressed by lawsuits and quarrels, now no longer thinks of them?  Do not wonder; he is quite taken up in looking out for the boar which his dogs have been hunting so hotly for the last six hours.  He requires nothing more.  However full of sadness a man may be, he is happy for the time, if you can prevail upon him to enter into some amusement; and however happy a man may be, he will soon be discontented and wretched, if he be not diverted and occupied by some passion or pursuit which prevents weariness from overcoming him.  Without amusement there is no joy; with amusement there is no sadness.  And this also constitutes the happiness of persons in high position, that they have a number of people to amuse them, and have the power to keep themselves in this state.

Consider this.  What is it to be superintendent, chancellor, first president, but to be in a condition wherein from early morning a large number of people come from all quarters to see them, so as not to leave them an hour in the day in which they can think of themselves?  And when they are in disgrace and sent back to their country houses, where they lack neither wealth nor servants to help them on occasion, they do not fail to be wretched and desolate, because no one prevents them from thinking of themselves.