“Paucis opus est literis ad mentem bonam:” 

          ["Little learning is needed to form a sound mind.” 
          —­Seneca, Ep., 106.]

’tis a feverish excess of the mind; a tempestuous and unquiet instrument.  Do but recollect yourself, and you will find in yourself natural arguments against death, true, and the fittest to serve you in time of necessity:  ’tis they that make a peasant, and whole nations, die with as much firmness as a philosopher.  Should I have died less cheerfully before I had read Cicero’s Tusculan Quastiones?  I believe not; and when I find myself at the best, I perceive that my tongue is enriched indeed, but my courage little or nothing elevated by them; that is just as nature framed it at first, and defends itself against the conflict only after a natural and ordinary way.  Books have not so much served me for instruction as exercise.  What if knowledge, trying to arm us with new defences against natural inconveniences, has more imprinted in our fancies their weight and greatness, than her reasons and subtleties to secure us from them?  They are subtleties, indeed, with which she often alarms us to little purpose.  Do but observe how many slight and frivolous, and, if nearly examined, incorporeal arguments, the closest and wisest authors scatter about one good one:  they are but verbal quirks and fallacies to amuse and gull us:  but forasmuch as it may be with some profit, I will sift them no further; many of that sort are here and there dispersed up and down this book, either borrowed or by imitation.  Therefore one ought to take a little heed not to call that force which is only a pretty knack of writing, and that solid which is only sharp, or that good which is only fine: 

“Quae magis gustata quam potata, delectant,”

          ["Which more delight in the tasting than in being drunk.” 
          —­Cicero, Tusc.  Quaes., v. 5.]

everything that pleases does not nourish: 

“Ubi non ingenii, sed animi negotium agitur.”

     ["Where the question is not about the wit, but about the soul.” 
     —­Seneca, Ep., 75.]

To see the trouble that Seneca gives himself to fortify himself against death; to see him so sweat and pant to harden and encourage himself, and bustle so long upon this perch, would have lessened his reputation with me, had he not very bravely held himself at the last.  His so ardent and frequent agitations discover that he was in himself impetuous and passionate,

          “Magnus animus remissius loquitur, et securius . . .
          non est alius ingenio, alius ammo color;”

     ["A great courage speaks more calmly and more securely.  There is
     not one complexion for the wit and another for the mind.” 
     —­Seneca, Ep. 114, 115]