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ese writings can never reach posterity, nor serve better authors near us; for who would receive as documents the perversions of venality and party? Alexander we know was intemperate, and Philip both intemperate and perfidious: we require not a volume of dissertation on the thread of history, to demonstrate that one or other left a tailor's bill unpaid, and the immorality of doing so; nor a supplement to ascertain on the best authorities which of the two it was. History should explain to us how nations rose and fell, what nurtured them in their growth, what sustained them in their maturity; not which orator ran swiftest through the crowd from the right hand to the left, which assassin was too strong for manacles, or which felon too opulent for crucifixion. _Leontion._ It is better, I own it, that such writers should amuse our idleness than excite our spleen. _Ternissa._ What is spleen? _Epicurus._ Do not ask her; she cannot tell you. The spleen, Ternissa, is to the heart what Arimanes is to Oromazes. _Ternissa._ I am little the wiser yet. Does he ever use such hard words with you? _Leontion._ He means the evil Genius and the good Genius, in the theogony of the Persians: and would perhaps tell you, as he hath told me, that the heart in itself is free from evil, but very capable of receiving and too tenacious of holding it. _Epicurus._ In our moral system, the spleen hangs about the heart and renders it sad and sorrowful, unless we continually keep it in exercise by kind offices, or in its proper place by serious investigation and solitary questionings. Otherwise, it is apt to adhere and to accumulate, until it deadens the principles of sound action, and obscures the sight. _Ternissa._ It must make us very ugly when we grow old. _Leontion._ In youth it makes us uglier, as not appertaining to it: a little more or less ugliness in decrepitude is hardly worth considering, there being quite enough of it from other quarters: I would stop it here, however. _Ternissa._ Oh, what a thing is age! _Leontion._ Death without death's quiet. _Ternissa._ Leontion said that even bad writers may amuse our idle hours: alas! even good ones do not much amuse mine, unless they record an action of love or generosity. As for the graver, why cannot they come among us and teach us, just as you do? _Epicurus._ Would you wish it? _Ternissa._ No, no! I do not want them: only I was imagining how pleasant it is to converse
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