of the size of the earth, even in its whole extent, and
especially in the portion which men inhabit? And when we consider that
almost imperceptible point which we ourselves occupy unknown to the
majority of nations, can we still hope that our name and reputation can
be widely circulated? And then our estates and edifices, our cattle,
and the enormous treasures of our gold and silver, can they be esteemed
or denominated as desirable goods by him who observes their perishable
profit, and their contemptible use, and their uncertain domination,
often falling into the possession of the very worst men? How happy,
then, ought we to esteem that man who alone has it in his power, not by
the law of the Romans, but by the privilege of philosophers, to enjoy
all things as his own; not by any civil bond, but by the common right
of nature, which denies that anything can really be possessed by any
one but him who understands its true nature and use; who reckons our
dictatorships and consulships rather in the rank of necessary offices
than desirable employments, and thinks they must be endured rather as
acquittances of our debt to our country than sought for the sake of
emolument or glory--the man, in short, who can apply to himself the
sentence which Cato tells us my ancestor Africanus loved to repeat,
"that he was never so busy as when he did nothing, and never less
solitary than when alone."

For who can believe that Dionysius, when after every possible effort he
ravished from his fellow-citizens their liberty, had performed a nobler
work than Archimedes, when, without appearing to be doing anything, he
manufactured the globe which we have just been describing? Who does not
see that those men are in reality more solitary who, in the midst of a
crowd, find no one with whom they can converse congenially than those
who, without witnesses, hold communion with themselves, and enter into
the secret counsels of the sagest philosophers, while they delight
themselves in their writings and discoveries? And who would think any
one richer than the man who is in want of nothing which nature
requires; or more powerful than he who has attained all that she has
need of; or happier than he who is free from all mental perturbation;
or more secure in future than he who carries all his property in
himself, which is thus secured from shipwreck? And what power, what
magistracy, what royalty, can be preferred to a wisdom which, looking
down on all terres