ind with its poison.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for
weariness from the peculiar state of his disposition; and so frivolous
is he, that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least
thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient to
amuse him.

But will you say what object has he in all this? The pleasure of
bragging to-morrow among his friends that he has played better than
another. So others sweat in their own rooms to show to the learned that
they have solved a problem in algebra, which no one had hitherto been
able to solve. Many more expose themselves to extreme perils, in my
opinion as foolishly, in order to boast afterwards that they have
captured a town. Lastly, others wear themselves out in studying all
these things, not in order to become wiser, but only in order to prove
that they know them; and these are the most senseless of the band, since
they are so knowingly, whereas one may suppose of the others, that if
they knew it, they would no longer be foolish.

This man spends his life without weariness in playing every day for a
small stake. Give him each morning the money he can win each day, on
condition he does not play; you make him miserable. It will perhaps be
said that he seeks the amusement of play and not the winnings. Make him
then play for nothing; he will not become excited over it, and will feel
bored. It is then not the amusement alone that he seeks; a languid and
passionless amusement will weary him. He must get excited over it, and
deceive himself by the fancy that he will be happy to win what he would
not have as a gift on condition of not playing; and he must make for
himself an object of passion, and excite over it his desire, his anger,
his fear, to obtain his imagined end, as children are frightened at the
face they have blackened.

Whence comes it that this man, who lost his only son a few months ago,
or who this morning was in such trouble through being distressed by
lawsuits and quarrels, now no longer thinks of them? Do not wonder; he
is quite taken up in looking out for the boar which his dogs have been
hunting so hotly for the last six hours. He requires nothing more.
However full of sadness a man may be, he is happy for the time, if you
can prevail upon him to enter into some amusement; and however happy a
man may be, he will soon be discontented and wretched, if he be not
diverted and occupied by some passio