rate
Cares, without Fear or Hope of Futurity. Health to him is more than
Pleasure to another Man, and Sickness less affecting to him than
Indisposition is to others.

I must confess, if one does not regard Life after this Manner, none
but Idiots can pass it away with any tolerable Patience. Take a fine
Lady who is of a delicate Frame, and you may observe from the Hour she
rises a certain Weariness of all that passes about her. I know more
than one who is much too nice to be quite alive. They are sick of such
strange frightful People that they meet; one is so awkward and another
so disagreeable, that it looks like a Penance to breathe the same Air
with them. You see this is so very true, that a great Part of Ceremony
and Good-breeding among the Ladies turns upon their Uneasiness; and
I'll undertake, if the How-d'ye Servants of our Women were to make a
weekly Bill of Sickness, as the Parish Clerks do of Mortality, you
would not find in an Account of Seven Days, one in thirty that was not
downright Sick or indisposed, or but a very little better than she
was, and so forth.

It is certain, that to enjoy Life and Health as a constant Feast, we
should not think Pleasure necessary; but, if possible, to arrive at an
Equality of Mind. It is as mean to be overjoy'd upon Occasions of good
Fortune, as to be dejected in Circumstances of Distress. Laughter in
one Condition, is as unmanly as weeping in the other. We should not
form our Minds to expect Transport on every Occasion, but know how to
make Enjoyment to be out of Pain. Ambition, Envy, vagrant Desire, or
impertinent Mirth will take up our Minds, without we can possess our
selves in that Sobriety of Heart which is above all Pleasures, and can
be felt much better than described: But the ready Way, I believe, to
the right Enjoyment of Life, is by a Prospect towards another to have
but a very mean Opinion of it. A great Author of our Time has set this
in an excellent Light, when with a philosophick Pity of human Life he
spoke of it in his Theory of the Earth in the following Manner.

_For what is this Life but a Circulation of little mean Actions? We
lie down and rise again, dress and undress, feed and wax hungry, work
or play, and are weary, and then we lie down again, and the Circle
returns. We spend the Day in Trifles, and when the Night comes we
throw our selves into the Bed of Folly, amongst Dreams and broken
Thoughts and wild Imaginations. Our Reason lies asleep by us, a