and red with fury, ranged in battle for the assault; 'tis the
glittering of so much steel, the fire and noise of our cannon and drums,
that have infused this new rigidity and fury into his veins. A frivolous
cause, you will say. How a cause? There needs none to agitate the mind;
a mere whimsy without body and without subject will rule and agitate it.
Let me thing of building castles in Spain, my imagination suggests to me
conveniences and pleasures with which my soul is really tickled and
pleased. How often do we torment our mind with anger or sorrow by such
shadows, and engage ourselves in fantastic passions that impair both soul
and body? What astonished, fleeting, confused grimaces does this raving
put our faces into! what sallies and agitations both of members and
voices does it inspire us with! Does it not seem that this individual
man has false visions amid the crowd of others with whom he has to do,
or that he is possessed with some internal demon that persecutes him?
Inquire of yourself where is the object of this mutation? is there
anything but us in nature which inanity sustains, over which it has
power? Cambyses, from having dreamt that his brother should be one day
king of Persia, put him to death: a beloved brother, and one in whom he
had always confided. Aristodemus, king of the Messenians, killed himself
out of a fancy of ill omen, from I know not what howling of his dogs;
and King Midas did as much upon the account of some foolish dream he had
dreamed. 'Tis to prize life at its just value, to abandon it for a
dream. And yet hear the soul triumph over the miseries and weakness of
the body, and that it is exposed to all attacks and alterations; truly,
it has reason so to speak!

"O prima infelix finger ti terra Prometheo!
Ille parum cauti pectoris egit opus
Corpora disponens, mentem non vidit in arte;
Recta animi primum debuit esse via."

["O wretched clay, first formed by Prometheus. In his attempt,
what little wisdom did he shew! In framing bodies, he did not
apply his art to form the mind, which should have been his first
care."--Propertius, iii. 5, 7.]

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