ty under the condemnation of pleasure,

Nullus in urbe cadat, cujus sit poena voluptas.

Philosophy itself offers no guarantee against the common infirmities of
listlessness. Many a stoic has resisted the attacks of external evils
with an exemplary fortitude; and has yet failed in his encounters with
time. Strange indeed that time should be an encumbrance to a sage!
Strange indeed, that, when life is so short, and philosophy boundless,
and time a gift of the most precious nature, dealt out to us in
successive moments, a possession which is most coveted, and can the
least be hoarded, which comes, but never returns, which departs as soon
as given, and is lost even in the receiving,--strange indeed that such a
gift, so precious, so transient, so fleeting, should ever press severely
upon a philosopher!

And yet wisdom is no security against ennui. The man who made Europe
ring with his eloquence, and largely contributed to the spirit of
republican enthusiasm, wasted away for months in a state of the most
foolish languor, under the idea that he was dying of a polypus at his
heart.[4] Nay, this philosopher, who presumed to believe himself skilled
in the ways of man, and an adept in the character of women, who dared to
expound religion and proposed to reform Christianity, who committed and
confessed the meanest actions,--and yet, as if in the presence of the
Supreme Arbiter of life and before the tribunal of Eternal Justice,
arrogated to himself an equality with the purest in the innumerable
crowd of immortal souls,--he, the proud one, would so far yield to
ennui, as to put the final and eternal welfare of his soul at issue on
the throw of a stone. La Harpe, no correct writer, nor sound critic,
affirms, that Rousseau undertook to decide the question of a
Superintending Providence by throwing stones at a tree. That would have
been not merely an imbecile but a blasphemous act. As the case stood,
Jean Jacques must be acquitted of any charge worse than that of
excessive and even ridiculous weakness. "_Je m'en vais_," he says to
himself, "_je m'en vais jeter cette pierre contre l'arbre qui est
vis-a-vis de moi: si je le touche, signe de salut; si je le marque,
signe de damnation._"

But Jean Jacques passes for an inspired madman. What shall we say to the
temperate Spinoza, whose life was not variegated by the brightness of
domestic scenes, and who, being cut off from active life and from social
love, necessarily encountered