stupid and thankless forgetfulness of most people comes
upon them and takes possession of them, and obliterates from their mind
every past action, whether success, or pleasant leisure, or society, or
enjoyment, and breaks the unity of life which arises from the past being
blended with the present; for detaching to-day from both yesterday and
to-morrow, it soon makes every event as if it had never happened from
lack of memory. For as those in the schools, who deny the growth of our
bodies by reason of the continual flux of substance, make each of us in
theory different from himself and another man, so those who do not keep
or recall to their memory former things, but let them drift, actually
empty themselves daily, and hang upon the morrow, as if what happened a
year ago, or even yesterday and the day before yesterday, had nothing to
do with them, and had hardly occurred at all.

Sec. XV. This is one great hindrance to contentedness of mind, and another
still greater is whenever, like flies that slide down smooth places in
mirrors, but stick fast in rough places or where there are cracks, men
let pleasant and agreeable things glide from their memory, and pin
themselves down to the remembrance of unpleasant things; or rather, as
at Olynthus they say beetles, when they get into a certain place called
Destruction-to-beetles, cannot get out, but fly round and round till
they die, so men will glide into the remembrance of their woes, and will
not give themselves a respite from sorrow. But, as we use our brightest
colours in a picture, so in the mind we ought to look at the cheerful
and bright side of things, and hide and keep down the gloomy, for we
cannot altogether obliterate or get rid of it. For, as the strings of
the bow and lyre are alternately tightened and relaxed, so is it with
the order of the world; in human affairs there is nothing pure and
without alloy. But as in music there are high and low notes, and in
grammar vowels and mutes, but neither the musician nor grammarian
decline to use either kinds, but know how to blend and employ them both
for their purpose, so in human affairs which are balanced one against
another,--for, as Euripides says,

"There is no good without ill in the world,
But everything is mixed in due proportion,"--

we ought not to be disheartened or despondent; but as musicians drown
their worst music with the best, so should we take good and bad
together, and make our chequered life one