we see or hear. In the first case, let us not be too credulous;
some people frame stories that may deceive us; others only tell us
what they hear, and are deceived themselves; some make it their sport
to do ill offices; others do them only to receive thanks; there are
some that would part the dearest friends in the world; others love to
do mischief, and stand off aloof to see what comes of it. If it be a
small matter, I would have witnesses; but if it be a greater, I would
have it upon oath, and allow time to the accused, and counsel, too,
and hear it over and over again.

[Illustration: EUCLID.]

THE EQUALITY OF MAN.

(_By Seneca._)

It is not well done to be still murmuring against nature and fortune,
as if it were their unkindness that makes you inconsiderable, when it
is only by your own weakness that you make yourself so; for it is
virtue, not pedigree, that renders a man either valuable or happy.
Philosophy does not either reject or choose any man for his quality.
Socrates was no _patrician_, Cleanthes but an _under-gardener_;
neither did Plato dignify philosophy by his birth, but by his
goodness. All these worthy men are our _progenitors_, if we will but
do ourselves the honor to become their _disciples_. The original of
all mankind was the same, and it is only a clear conscience that makes
any man noble, for that derives even from heaven itself. It is the
saying of a great man, that if we could trace our descents we should
find all slaves to come from princes and all princes from slaves. But
fortune has turned all things topsy-turvy, in a long story of
revolutions. It is most certain that our beginning had nothing before
it, and our ancestors were some of them splendid, others sordid, as it
happened. We have lost the memorials of our extraction; and, in truth,
it matters not whence we come, but whither we go. Nor is it any more
to our honor the glory of our predecessors, than it is to their shame
the wickedness of their posterity. We are all of us composed of the
same elements; why should we, then, value ourselves upon our nobility
of blood, as if we were not all of us equal, if we could but recover
our evidence? But when we can carry it no farther, the _herald_
provides us some _hero_ to supply the place of an illustrious
original, and there is the rise of arms and families. For a man to
spend his life in pursuit of a title, that serves only when he dies,
to furnish out an _epitaph_, is below a wise