For who is unhappy at not being a king, except a deposed king?  Was Paulus AEmilius[156] unhappy at being no longer consul?  On the contrary, everybody thought him happy in having been consul, because the office could only be held for a time.  But men thought Perseus so unhappy in being no longer king, because the condition of kingship implied his being always king, that they thought it strange that he endured life.  Who is unhappy at having only one mouth?  And who is not unhappy at having only one eye?  Probably no man ever ventured to mourn at not having three eyes.  But any one is inconsolable at having none.

410

Perseus, King of Macedon.—­Paulus AEmilius reproached Perseus for not killing himself.

411

Notwithstanding the sight of all our miseries, which press upon us and take us by the throat, we have an instinct which we cannot repress, and which lifts us up.

412

There is internal war in man between reason and the passions.

If he had only reason without passions ...

If he had only passions without reason ...

But having both, he cannot be without strife, being unable to be at peace with the one without being at war with the other.  Thus he is always divided against, and opposed to himself.

413

This internal war of reason against the passions has made a division of those who would have peace into two sects.  The first would renounce their passions, and become gods; the others would renounce reason, and become brute beasts. (Des Barreaux.)[157] But neither can do so, and reason still remains, to condemn the vileness and injustice of the passions, and to trouble the repose of those who abandon themselves to them; and the passions keep always alive in those who would renounce them.

414

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

415

The nature of man may be viewed in two ways:  the one according to its end, and then he is great and incomparable; the other according to the multitude, just as we judge of the nature of the horse and the dog, popularly, by seeing its fleetness, et animum arcendi; and then man is abject and vile.  These are the two ways which make us judge of him differently, and which occasion such disputes among philosophers.

For one denies the assumption of the other.  One says, “He is not born for this end, for all his actions are repugnant to it.”  The other says, “He forsakes his end, when he does these base actions.”

416