now see the withering; happily, however, because naturally. I bear the
infirmities I have the better, because they came not till I had reason to
expect them, and because also they make me with greater pleasure remember
that long felicity of my past life. My wisdom may have been just the
same in both ages, but it was more active, and of better grace whilst
young and sprightly, than now it is when broken, peevish, and uneasy.
I repudiate, then, these casual and painful reformations. God must touch
our hearts; our consciences must amend of themselves, by the aid of our
reason, and not by the decay of our appetites; pleasure is, in itself,
neither pale nor discoloured, to be discerned by dim and decayed eyes.

We ought to love temperance for itself, and because God has commanded
that and chastity; but that which we are reduced to by catarrhs, and for
which I am indebted to the stone, is neither chastity nor temperance; a
man cannot boast that he despises and resists pleasure if he cannot see
it, if he knows not what it is, and cannot discern its graces, its force,
and most alluring beauties; I know both the one and the other, and may
therefore the better say it. But; methinks, our souls in old age are
subject to more troublesome maladies and imperfections than in youth;
I said the same when young and when I was reproached with the want of a
beard; and I say so now that my grey hairs give me some authority. We
call the difficulty of our humours and the disrelish of present things
wisdom; but, in truth, we do not so much forsake vices as we change them,
and in my opinion, for worse. Besides a foolish and feeble pride, an
impertinent prating, froward and insociable humours, superstition, and a
ridiculous desire of riches when we have lost the use of them, I find
there more envy, injustice, and malice. Age imprints more wrinkles in
the mind than it does on the face; and souls are never, or very rarely
seen, that, in growing old, do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all
together, both towards his perfection and decay. In observing the wisdom
of Socrates, and many circumstances of his condemnation, I should dare to
believe that he in some sort himself purposely, by collusion, contributed
to it, seeing that, at the age of seventy years, he might fear to suffer
the lofty motions of his mind to be cramped and his wonted lustre
obscured. What strange metamorphoses do I see age every day make in many
of my acquaintance! '