OF MANAGING THE WILL

Few things, in comparison of what commonly affect other men, move, or, to say better, possess me:  for ’tis but reason they should concern a man, provided they do not possess him.  I am very solicitous, both by study and argument, to enlarge this privilege of insensibility, which is in me naturally raised to a pretty degree, so that consequently I espouse and am very much moved with very few things.  I have a clear sight enough, but I fix it upon very few objects; I have a sense delicate and tender enough; but an apprehension and application hard and negligent.  I am very unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myself wholly on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb and restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears into it, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and over which fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which I so much value, ’tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately to covet and heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable.  A man ought to moderate himself betwixt the hatred of pain and the love of pleasure:  and Plato sets down a middle path of life betwixt the two.  But against such affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere, against those, I say, I oppose myself with my utmost power.  ’Tis my opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself.  Were my will easy to lend itself out and to be swayed, I should not stick there; I am too tender both by nature and use: 

“Fugax rerum, securaque in otia natus.”

["Avoiding affairs and born to secure ease.” 
—­Ovid, De Trist., iii. 2, 9.]

Hot and obstinate disputes, wherein my adversary would at last have the better, the issue that would render my heat and obstinacy disgraceful would peradventure vex me to the last degree.  Should I set myself to it at the rate that others do, my soul would never have the force to bear the emotion and alarms of those who grasp at so much; it would immediately be disordered by this inward agitation.  If, sometimes, I have been put upon the management of other men’s affairs, I have promised to take them in hand, but not into my lungs and liver; to take them upon me, not to incorporate them; to take pains, yes:  to be impassioned about it, by no means; I have a care of them, but I will not sit upon them.  I have enough to do to order and govern the domestic throng of those that I have in my own veins and bowels, without introducing a crowd of other men’s affairs; and am sufficiently concerned about my own proper and natural business, without meddling with the concerns of others.  Such as know how much they owe to themselves, and how many offices they are bound to of their own, find that nature has cut them out work enough of their own to keep them from being idle.  “Thou hast business enough at home:  look to that.”