step by step conducts us to that miserable state, and by that means makes it familiar to us, so that we are insensible of the stroke when our youth dies in us, though it be really a harder death than the final dissolution of a languishing body, than the death of old age; forasmuch as the fall is not so great from an uneasy being to none at all, as it is from a sprightly and flourishing being to one that is troublesome and painful.  The body, bent and bowed, has less force to support a burden; and it is the same with the soul, and therefore it is, that we are to raise her up firm and erect against the power of this adversary.  For, as it is impossible she should ever be at rest, whilst she stands in fear of it; so, if she once can assure herself, she may boast (which is a thing as it were surpassing human condition) that it is impossible that disquiet, anxiety, or fear, or any other disturbance, should inhabit or have any place in her: 

              “Non vulnus instants Tyranni
               Mentha cadi solida, neque Auster
               Dux inquieti turbidus Adriae,
               Nec fulminantis magna Jovis manus.”

["Not the menacing look of a tyrant shakes her well-settled soul, nor turbulent Auster, the prince of the stormy Adriatic, nor yet the strong hand of thundering Jove, such a temper moves.”  —­Hor., Od., iii. 3, 3.]

She is then become sovereign of all her lusts and passions, mistress of necessity, shame, poverty, and all the other injuries of fortune.  Let us, therefore, as many of us as can, get this advantage; ’tis the true and sovereign liberty here on earth, that fortifies us wherewithal to defy violence and injustice, and to contemn prisons and chains: 

                              “In manicis et
               Compedibus saevo te sub custode tenebo. 
               Ipse Deus, simul atque volam, me solvet.  Opinor,
               Hoc sentit; moriar; mors ultima linea rerum est.”

["I will keep thee in fetters and chains, in custody of a savage keeper.—­A god will when I ask Him, set me free.  This god I think is death.  Death is the term of all things.”  —­Hor., Ep., i. 16, 76.]

Our very religion itself has no surer human foundation than the contempt of death.  Not only the argument of reason invites us to it—­for why should we fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be lamented? —­but, also, seeing we are threatened by so many sorts of death, is it not infinitely worse eternally to fear them all, than once to undergo one of them?  And what matters it, when it shall happen, since it is inevitable?  To him that told Socrates, “The thirty tyrants have sentenced thee to death”; “And nature them,” said he.—­[Socrates was not condemned to death by the thirty tyrants, but by the Athenians.-Diogenes Laertius, ii.35.]—­ What a ridiculous thing it is to trouble ourselves about taking the only step that is to deliver us from all trouble!  As our