man in detail
and distinctly, bit by bit, would oftener be able to speak the truth. It
is a hard matter, from all antiquity, to pick out a dozen men who have
formed their lives to one certain and constant course, which is the
principal design of wisdom; for to comprise it all in one word, says one
of the ancients, and to contract all the rules of human life into one,
"it is to will, and not to will, always one and the same thing: I will
not vouchsafe," says he, "to add, provided the will be just, for if it be
not just, it is impossible it should be always one." I have indeed
formerly learned that vice is nothing but irregularity, and want of
measure, and therefore 'tis impossible to fix constancy to it. 'Tis a
saying of. Demosthenes, "that the beginning oh all virtue is
consultation and deliberation; the end and perfection, constancy." If we
would resolve on any certain course by reason, we should pitch upon the
best, but nobody has thought on't:

"Quod petit, spernit; repetit, quod nuper omisit;
AEstuat, et vitae disconvenit ordine toto."

["That which he sought he despises; what he lately lost, he seeks
again. He fluctuates, and is inconsistent in the whole order of
life."--Horace, Ep., i. I, 98.]

Our ordinary practice is to follow the inclinations of our appetite, be
it to the left or right, upwards or downwards, according as we are wafted
by the breath of occasion. We never meditate what we would have till the
instant we have a mind to have it; and change like that little creature
which receives its colour from what it is laid upon. What we but just
now proposed to ourselves we immediately alter, and presently return
again to it; 'tis nothing but shifting and inconsistency:

"Ducimur, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum."

["We are turned about like the top with the thong of others."
--Idem, Sat., ii. 7, 82.]

We do not go, we are driven; like things that float, now leisurely, then
with violence, according to the gentleness or rapidity of the current:

"Nonne videmus,
Quid sibi quisque velit, nescire, et quaerere semper
Commutare locum, quasi onus deponere possit?"

["Do we not see them, uncertain what they want, and always asking
for something new, as if they could get rid of the burthen."
--Lucretius, iii. 1070.]

Every day a new whimsy, and our humours keep motion with the time.