rd, and is ever murmuring in my ears: "This rule
concerns those who are to begin to be." If health itself, sweet as it
is, returns to me by fits, 'tis rather to give me cause of regret than
possession of it; I have no place left to keep it in. Time leaves me;
without which nothing can be possessed. Oh, what little account should I
make of those great elective dignities that I see in such esteem in the
world, that are never conferred but upon men who are taking leave of it;
wherein they do not so much regard how well the man will discharge his
trust, as how short his administration will be: from the very entry they
look at the exit. In short, I am about finishing this man, and not
rebuilding another. By long use, this form is in me turned into
substance, and fortune into nature.

I say, therefore, that every one of us feeble creatures is excusable in
thinking that to be his own which is comprised under this measure; but
withal, beyond these limits, 'tis nothing but confusion; 'tis the largest
extent we can grant to our own claims. The more we amplify our need and
our possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows of
Fortune and adversities. The career of our desires ought to be
circumscribed and restrained to a short limit of the nearest and most
contiguous commodities; and their course ought, moreover, to be performed
not in a right line, that ends elsewhere, but in a circle, of which the
two points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves. Actions
that are carried on without this reflection--a near and essential
reflection, I mean--such as those of ambitious and avaricious men, and so
many more as run point-blank, and to whose career always carries them
before themselves, such actions, I say; are erroneous and sickly.

Most of our business is farce:

"Mundus universus exercet histrioniam."
--[Petronius Arbiter, iii. 8.]

We must play our part properly, but withal as a part of a borrowed
personage; we must not make real essence of a mask and outward
appearance; nor of a strange person, our own; we cannot distinguish the
skin from the shirt: 'tis enough to meal the face, without mealing the
breast. I see some who transform and transubstantiate themselves into as
many new shapes and new beings as they undertake new employments; and who
strut and fume even to the heart and liver, and carry their state along
with them even to the close-stool: I cannot mak