Socrates says that boys are to cause themselves to be instructed, men to exercise themselves in well-doing, and old men to retire from all civil and military employments, living at their own discretion, without the obligation to any office.  There are some complexions more proper for these precepts of retirement than others.  Such as are of a soft and dull apprehension, and of a tender will and affection, not readily to be subdued or employed, whereof I am one, both by natural condition and by reflection, will sooner incline to this advice than active and busy souls, which embrace:  all, engage in all, are hot upon everything, which offer, present, and give themselves up to every occasion.  We are to use these accidental and extraneous commodities, so far as they are pleasant to us, but by no means to lay our principal foundation there; ’tis no true one; neither nature nor reason allows it so to be.  Why therefore should we, contrary to their laws, enslave our own contentment to the power of another?  To anticipate also the accidents of fortune, to deprive ourselves of the conveniences we have in our own power, as several have done upon the account of devotion, and some philosophers by reasoning; to be one’s own servant, to lie hard, to put out our own eyes, to throw our wealth into the river, to go in search of grief; these, by the misery of this life, aiming at bliss in another; those by laying themselves low to avoid the danger of falling:  all such are acts of an excessive virtue.  The stoutest and most resolute natures render even their seclusion glorious and exemplary: 

                    “Tuta et parvula laudo,
          Quum res deficiunt, satis inter vilia fortis
          Verum, ubi quid melius contingit et unctius, idem
          Hos sapere et solos aio bene vivere, quorum
          Conspicitur nitidis fundata pecunia villis.”

["When means are deficient, I laud a safe and humble condition, content with little:  but when things grow better and more easy, I all the same say that you alone are wise and live well, whose invested money is visible in beautiful villas.”  —­Horace, Ep., i. 15, 42.]

A great deal less would serve my turn well enough.  ’Tis enough for me, under fortune’s favour, to prepare myself for her disgrace, and, being at my ease, to represent to myself, as far as my imagination can stretch, the ill to come; as we do at jousts and tiltings, where we counterfeit war in the greatest calm of peace.  I do not think Arcesilaus the philosopher the less temperate and virtuous for knowing that he made use of gold and silver vessels, when the condition of his fortune allowed him so to do; I have indeed a better opinion of him than if he had denied himself what he used with liberality and moderation.  I see the utmost limits of natural necessity:  and considering a poor man begging at my door, ofttimes more jocund and more healthy than I myself am, I put myself into his place, and attempt to dress my mind