t other sect, that sets up an express profession of
scornful superiority--[The Stoics.]--: but when even in that sect,
reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these rhodomontades of
Metrodorus:

"Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi: omnesque aditus tuos
interclusi ut ad me aspirare non posses;"

["Fortune, I have got the better of thee, and have made all the
avenues so sure thou canst not come at me."
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 9.]

when Anaxarchus, by command of Nicocreon the tyrant of Cyprus, was put
into a stone mortar, and laid upon with mauls of iron, ceases not to say,
"Strike, batter, break; 'tis not Anaxarchus, 'tis but his sheath that you
pound and bray so"; when we hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant from
the middle of the flame, "This side is roasted enough, fall to and eat,
it is enough done; fall to work with the other;" when we hear the child
in Josephus' torn piece-meal with pincers, defying Antiochus, and crying
out with a constant and assured voice: "Tyrant, thou losest thy labour,
I am still at ease; where is the pain, where are the torments with which
thou didst so threaten me? Is this all thou canst do? My constancy
torments thee more than thy cruelty does me. O pitiful coward, thou
faintest, and I grow stronger; make me complain, make me bend, make me
yield if thou canst; encourage thy guards, cheer up thy executioners;
see, see they faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew, spur
them up"; truly, a man must confess that there is some phrenzy, some
fury, how holy soever, that at that time possesses those souls. When we
come to these Stoical sallies: "I had rather be mad than voluptuous," a
saying of Antisthenes. When Sextius tells us, "he had rather be fettered
with affliction than pleasure": when Epicurus takes upon him to play with
his gout, and, refusing health and ease, defies all torments, and
despising the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covets
and calls out for others sharper, more violent, and more worthy of him;

"Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votis
Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem:"

["And instead of timid beasts, wishes the foaming boar or tawny lion
would come from the mountain."--AEneid, iv. 158.]

who but must conclude that these are wild sallies pushed on by a courage
that has broken loose from its place? Our soul cannot from her own seat
reach so h