Diversion.—­Men are entrusted from infancy with the care of their honour, their property, their friends, and even with the property and the honour of their friends.  They are overwhelmed with business, with the study of languages, and with physical exercise;[71] and they are made to understand that they cannot be happy unless their health, their honour, their fortune and that of their friends be in good condition, and that a single thing wanting will make them unhappy.  Thus they are given cares and business which make them bustle about from break of day.—­It is, you will exclaim, a strange way to make them happy!  What more could be done to make them miserable?—­Indeed! what could be done?  We should only have to relieve them from all these cares; for then they would see themselves:  they would reflect on what they are, whence they came, whither they go, and thus we cannot employ and divert them too much.  And this is why, after having given them so much business, we advise them, if they have some time for relaxation, to employ it in amusement, in play, and to be always fully occupied.

How hollow and full of ribaldry is the heart of man!

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I spent a long time in the study of the abstract sciences, and was disheartened by the small number of fellow-students in them.  When I commenced the study of man, I saw that these abstract sciences are not suited to man, and that I was wandering farther from my own state in examining them, than others in not knowing them.  I pardoned their little knowledge; but I thought at least to find many companions in the study of man, and that it was the true study which is suited to him.  I have been deceived; still fewer study it than geometry.  It is only from the want of knowing how to study this that we seek the other studies.  But is it not that even here is not the knowledge which man should have, and that for the purpose of happiness it is better for him not to know himself?

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[One thought alone occupies us; we cannot think of two things at the same time.  This is lucky for us according to the world, not according to God.]

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Man is obviously made to think.  It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.  Now, the order of thought is to begin with self, and with its Author and its end.

Now, of what does the world think?  Never of this, but of dancing, playing the lute, singing, making verses, running at the ring, etc., fighting, making oneself king, without thinking what it is to be a king and what to be a man.

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