To what end do we so arm ourselves with this harness of science?  Let us look down upon the poor people that we see scattered upon the face of the earth, prone and intent upon their business, that neither know Aristotle nor Cato, example nor precept; from these nature every day extracts effects of constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we so inquisitively study in the schools:  how many do I ordinarily see who slight poverty? how many who desire to die, or who die without alarm or regret?  He who is now digging in my garden, has this morning buried his father or his son.  The very names by which they call diseases sweeten and mollify the sharpness of them:  the phthisic is with them no more than a cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, as they gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very great and grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they never keep their beds but to die: 

          “Simplex illa et aperta virtus in obscuram et solertem
          scientiam versa est.”

     ["That overt and simple virtue is converted into an obscure and
     subtle science.”—­Seneca, Ep., 95.]

I was writing this about the time when a great load of our intestine troubles for several months lay with all its weight upon me; I had the enemy at my door on one side, and the freebooters, worse enemies, on the other,

“Non armis, sed vitiis, certatur;”

["The fight is not with arms, but with vices.”—­Seneca, Ep. 95.]

and underwent all sorts of military injuries at once: 

         “Hostis adest dextra laevaque a parte timendus. 
          Vicinoque malo terret utrumque latus.”

["Right and left a formidable enemy is to be feared, and threatens
me on both sides with impending danger.”—­Ovid, De Ponto, i. 3, 57.]

A monstrous war!  Other wars are bent against strangers, this against itself, destroying itself with its own poison.  It is of so malignant and ruinous a nature, that it ruins itself with the rest; and with its own rage mangles and tears itself to pieces.  We more often see it dissolve of itself than through scarcity of any necessary thing or by force of the enemy.  All discipline evades it; it comes to compose sedition, and is itself full of it; would chastise disobedience, and itself is the example; and, employed for the defence of the laws, rebels against its own.  What a condition are we in!  Our physic makes us sick!

                    “Nostre mal s’empoisonne
                    Du secours qu’on luy donne.”

“Exuperat magis, aegrescitque medendo.”

     ["Our disease is poisoned with its very remedies”—­AEnead, xii. 46.]

               “Omnia fanda, nefanda, malo permista furore,
               Justificam nobis mentem avertere deorum.”

     ["Right and wrong, all shuffled together in this wicked fury, have
     deprived us of the gods’ protection.” 
     —­Catullus, De Nuptiis Pelei et Thetidos, V. 405.]