t themselves; for they will not fail to abandon a house that is about
to fall and to turn aside from a precipice they see in their path; and they
will burrow in the earth to dig up a treasure half uncovered, without
waiting for fate to finish dislodging it. But when the good or the evil is
remote and uncertain and the remedy painful or little to our taste, the
lazy reason seems to us to be valid. For example, when it is a question of
preserving one's health and even one's life by good diet, people to whom
one gives advice thereupon very often answer that our days are numbered and
that it avails nothing to try to struggle against that which God destines
for us. But these same persons run to even the most absurd remedies when
the evil they had neglected draws near. One reasons in somewhat the same
way when the question for consideration is somewhat thorny, as for instance
when one asks oneself, _quod vitae sectabor iter_? what profession one must
choose; when it is a question of a marriage being arranged, of a war being
undertaken, of a battle being fought; for in these cases many will be
inclined to evade the difficulty of consideration and abandon themselves to
fate or to inclination, as if reason should not be employed except in easy
cases. One will then all too often reason in the Turkish fashion (although
this way is wrongly termed trusting in providence, a thing that in reality
occurs only when one has done one's duty) and one will employ the lazy
reason, derived from the idea of inevitable fate, to relieve oneself of the
need to reason properly. One will thus overlook the fact that if this [56]
argument contrary to the practice of reason were valid, it would always
hold good, whether the consideration were easy or not. This laziness is to
some extent the source of the superstitious practices of fortune-tellers,
which meet with just such credulity as men show towards the philosopher's
stone, because they would fain have short cuts to the attainment of
happiness without trouble.

I do not speak here of those who throw themselves upon fortune because they
have been happy before, as if there were something permanent therein. Their
argument from the past to the future has just as slight a foundation as the
principles of astrology and of other kinds of divination. They overlook the
fact that there is usually an ebb and flow in fortune, _una marea_, as
Italians playing basset are wont to call it. With regard to this they ma