Neither do I allow of the conjecture of the Parians, sent to regulate the Milesians sufficient for such a consequence as they from thence derived coming to visit the island, they took notice of such grounds as were best husbanded, and such country-houses as were best governed; and having taken the names of the owners, when they had assembled the citizens, they appointed these farmers for new governors and magistrates; concluding that they, who had been so provident in their own private concerns, would be so of the public too.  We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others: 

“Magnam rem puta, unum hominem agere.”

     ["Esteem it a great thing always to act as one and the same
     man.”—­Seneca, Ep., 150.]

Since ambition can teach man valour, temperance, and liberality, and even justice too; seeing that avarice can inspire the courage of a shop-boy, bred and nursed up in obscurity and ease, with the assurance to expose himself so far from the fireside to the mercy of the waves and angry Neptune in a frail boat; that she further teaches discretion and prudence; and that even Venus can inflate boys under the discipline of the rod with boldness and resolution, and infuse masculine courage into the heart of tender virgins in their mothers’ arms: 

         “Hac duce, custodes furtim transgressa jacentes,
          Ad juvenem tenebris sola puella venit:” 

["She leading, the maiden, furtively passing by the recumbent
guards, goes alone in the darkness to the youth.” 
—­Tibullus, ii. 2, 75.]

’tis not all the understanding has to do, simply to judge us by our outward actions; it must penetrate the very soul, and there discover by what springs the motion is guided.  But that being a high and hazardous undertaking, I could wish that fewer would attempt it.

CHAPTER II

OF DRUNKENNESS

The world is nothing but variety and disemblance, vices are all alike, as they are vices, and peradventure the Stoics understand them so; but although they are equally vices, yet they are not all equal vices; and he who has transgressed the ordinary bounds a hundred paces: 

“Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum,”

["Beyond or within which the right cannot exist.” 
—­Horace, Sat., i, 1, 107.]

should not be in a worse condition than he that has advanced but ten, is not to be believed; or that sacrilege is not worse than stealing a cabbage: 

         “Nec vincet ratio hoc, tantumdem ut peccet, idemque,
          Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti,
          Et qui nocturnus divum sacra legerit.”