if thou
wilt."--"I do not mean from my life," he replied, "but from my
sufferings." The sufferings that only attack the mind, I am not so
sensible of as most other men; and this partly out of judgment, for the
world looks upon several things as dreadful or to be avoided at the
expense of life, that are almost indifferent to me: partly, through a
dull and insensible complexion I have in accidents which do not
point-blank hit me; and that insensibility I look upon as one of the best
parts of my natural condition; but essential and corporeal pains I am
very sensible of. And yet, having long since foreseen them, though with
a sight weak and delicate and softened with the long and happy health and
quiet that God has been pleased to give me the greatest part of my time,
I had in my imagination fancied them so insupportable, that, in truth, I
was more afraid than I have since found I had cause: by which I am still
more fortified in this belief, that most of the faculties of the soul, as
we employ them, more trouble the repose of life than they are any way
useful to it.

I am in conflict with the worst, the most sudden, the most painful, the
most mortal, and the most irremediable of all diseases; I have already
had the trial of five or six very long and very painful fits; and yet I
either flatter myself, or there is even in this state what is very well
to be endured by a man who has his soul free from the fear of death, and
of the menaces, conclusions, and consequences which physic is ever
thundering in our ears; but the effect even of pain itself is not so
sharp and intolerable as to put a man of understanding into rage and
despair. I have at least this advantage by my stone, that what I could
not hitherto prevail upon myself to resolve upon, as to reconciling and
acquainting myself with death, it will perfect; for the more it presses
upon and importunes me, I shall be so much the less afraid to die. I had
already gone so far as only to love life for life's sake, but my pain
will dissolve this intelligence; and God grant that in the end, should
the sharpness of it be once greater than I shall be able to bear, it does
not throw me into the other no less vicious extreme to desire and wish to
die!

"Summum nec metuas diem, nec optes:"

["Neither to wish, nor fear to die." (Or:)
"Thou shouldest neither fear nor desire the last day."
--Martial, x. 7.]

they are two passions to