, who
being asked why he took so much pains in an art that could come to the
knowledge of but few persons? 'A few are enough for me,' replied he;
'I have enough with one; I have enough with never an one.'--[Seneca, Ep.,
7.]--He said true; you and a companion are theatre enough to one
another, or you to yourself. Let the people be to you one, and be you
one to the whole people. 'Tis an unworthy ambition to think to derive
glory from a man's sloth and privacy: you are to do like the beasts of
chase, who efface the track at the entrance into their den. You are no
more to concern yourself how the world talks of you, but how you are to
talk to yourself. Retire yourself into yourself, but first prepare
yourself there to receive yourself: it were a folly to trust yourself in
your own hands, if you cannot govern yourself. A man may miscarry alone
as well as in company. Till you have rendered yourself one before whom
you dare not trip, and till you have a bashfulness and respect for
yourself,

"Obversentur species honestae animo;"

["Let honest things be ever present to the mind"
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 22.]

present continually to your imagination Cato, Phocion, and Aristides, in
whose presence the fools themselves will hide their faults, and make them
controllers of all your intentions; should these deviate from virtue,
your respect to those will set you right; they will keep you in this way
to be contented with yourself; to borrow nothing of any other but
yourself; to stay and fix your soul in certain and limited thoughts,
wherein she may please herself, and having understood the true and real
goods, which men the more enjoy the more they understand, to rest
satisfied, without desire of prolongation of life or name." This is the
precept of the true and natural philosophy, not of a boasting and prating
philosophy, such as that of the two former.

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