discourse, now and then making excuse for thy pain, and
representing thy suffering less than it is. Dost thou call to mind the
men of past times, who so greedily sought diseases to keep their virtue
in breath and exercise? Put the case that nature sets thee on and impels
thee to this glorious school, into which thou wouldst never have entered
of thy own free will. If thou tellest me that it is a dangerous and
mortal disease, what others are not so? for 'tis a physical cheat to
expect any that they say do not go direct to death: what matters if they
go thither by accident, or if they easily slide and slip into the path
that leads us to it? But thou dost not die because thou art sick; thou
diest because thou art living: death kills thee without the help of
sickness: and sickness has deferred death in some, who have lived longer
by reason that they thought themselves always dying; to which may be
added, that as in wounds, so in diseases, some are medicinal and
wholesome. The stone is often no less long-lived than you; we see men
with whom it has continued from their infancy even to their extreme old
age; and if they had not broken company, it would have been with them
longer still; you more often kill it than it kills you. And though it
should present to you the image of approaching death, were it not a good
office to a man of such an age, to put him in mind of his end? And,
which is worse, thou hast no longer anything that should make thee desire
to be cured. Whether or no, common necessity will soon call thee away.
Do but consider how skilfully and gently she puts thee out of concern
with life, and weans thee from the world; not forcing thee with a
tyrannical subjection, like so many other infirmities which thou seest
old men afflicted withal, that hold them in continual torment, and keep
them in perpetual and unintermitted weakness and pains, but by warnings
and instructions at intervals, intermixing long pauses of repose, as it
were to give thee opportunity to meditate and ruminate upon thy lesson,
at thy own ease and leisure. To give thee means to judge aright, and to
assume the resolution of a man of courage, it presents to thee the state
of thy entire condition, both in good and evil; and one while a very
cheerful and another an insupportable life, in one and the same day. If
thou embracest not death, at least thou shakest hands with it once a
month; whence thou hast more cause to hope that it will one day