nevertheless, as before, and ride after my hounds with a juvenile and
insolent ardour; and hold that I have very good satisfaction for an
accident of that importance, when it costs me no more but a dull
heaviness and uneasiness in that part; 'tis some great stone that wastes
and consumes the substance of my kidneys and my life, which I by little
and little evacuate, not without some natural pleasure, as an excrement
henceforward superfluous and troublesome. Now if I feel anything
stirring, do not fancy that I trouble myself to consult my pulse or my
urine, thereby to put myself upon some annoying prevention; I shall soon
enough feel the pain, without making it more and longer by the disease of
fear. He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears. To
which may be added that the doubts and ignorance of those who take upon
them to expound the designs of nature and her internal progressions, and
the many false prognostics of their art, ought to give us to understand
that her ways are inscrutable and utterly unknown; there is great
uncertainty, variety, and obscurity in what she either promises or
threatens. Old age excepted, which is an indubitable sign of the
approach of death, in all other accidents I see few signs of the future,
whereon we may ground our divination. I only judge of myself by actual
sensation, not by reasoning: to what end, since I am resolved to bring
nothing to it but expectation and patience? Will you know how much I get
by this? observe those who do otherwise, and who rely upon so many
diverse persuasions and counsels; how often the imagination presses upon
them without any bodily pain. I have many times amused myself, being
well and in safety, and quite free from these dangerous attacks in
communicating them to the physicians as then beginning to discover
themselves in me; I underwent the decree of their dreadful conclusions,
being all the while quite at my ease, and so much the more obliged to the
favour of God and better satisfied of the vanity of this art.

There is nothing that ought so much to be recommended to youth as
activity and vigilance our life is nothing but movement. I bestir myself
with great difficulty, and am slow in everything, whether in rising,
going to bed, or eating: seven of the clock in the morning is early for
me, and where I rule, I never dine before eleven, nor sup till after six.
I formerly attributed the cause of the fevers and other diseases I fell
in