Part 21 (1/2)

SUBSECT. X.--_Discontents, Cares, Miseries, &c. Causes_.

Discontents, cares, crosses, miseries, or whatsoever it is, that shall cause any molestation of spirits, grief, anguish, and perplexity, may well be reduced to this head, (preposterously placed here in some men's judgments they may seem,) yet in that Aristotle in his [1741]Rhetoric defines these cares, as he doth envy, emulation, &c. still by grief, I think I may well rank them in this irascible row; being that they are as the rest, both causes and symptoms of this disease, producing the like inconveniences, and are most part accompanied with anguish and pain. The common etymology will evince it, _Cura quasi cor uro, Dementes curae, insomnes curae, d.a.m.nosae curae, tristes, mordaces, carnifices_, &c. biting, eating, gnawing, cruel, bitter, sick, sad, unquiet, pale, tetric, miserable, intolerable cares, as the poets [1742]call them, worldly cares, and are as many in number as the sea sands. [1743]Galen, Fernelius, Felix Plater, Valescus de Taranta, &c., reckon afflictions, miseries, even all these contentions, and vexations of the mind, as princ.i.p.al causes, in that they take away sleep, hinder concoction, dry up the body, and consume the substance of it. They are not so many in number, but their causes be as divers, and not one of a thousand free from them, or that can vindicate himself, whom that _Ate dea_,

[1744] ”Per hominum capita molliter ambulans, Plantas pedum teneras habens:”

”Over men's heads walking aloft, With tender feet treading so soft,”

Homer's G.o.ddess Ate hath not involved into this discontented [1745]rank, or plagued with some misery or other. Hyginus, _fab. 220_, to this purpose hath a pleasant tale. Dame Cura by chance went over a brook, and taking up some of the dirty slime, made an image of it; Jupiter eftsoons coming by, put life to it, but Cura and Jupiter could not agree what name to give him, or who should own him; the matter was referred to Saturn as judge; he gave this arbitrement: his name shall be _h.o.m.o ab humo, Cura eum possideat quamdiu vivat_, Care shall have him whilst he lives, Jupiter his soul, and Tellus his body when he dies. But to leave tales. A general cause, a continuate cause, an inseparable accident, to all men, is discontent, care, misery; were there no other particular affliction (which who is free from?) to molest a man in this life, the very cogitation of that common misery were enough to macerate, and make him weary of his life; to think that he can never be secure, but still in danger, sorrow, grief, and persecution.

For to begin at the hour of his birth, as [1746]Pliny doth elegantly describe it, ”he is born naked, and falls [1747]a whining at the very first: he is swaddled, and bound up like a prisoner, cannot help himself, and so he continues to his life's end.” _Cujusque ferae pabulum_, saith [1748]Seneca, impatient of heat and cold, impatient of labour, impatient of idleness, exposed to fortune's contumelies. To a naked mariner Lucretius compares him, cast on sh.o.r.e by s.h.i.+pwreck, cold and comfortless in an unknown land: [1749]no estate, age, s.e.x, can secure himself from this common misery. ”A man that is born of a woman is of short continuance, and full of trouble,” Job xiv. 1, 22. ”And while his flesh is upon him he shall be sorrowful, and while his soul is in him it shall mourn. All his days are sorrow and his travels griefs: his heart also taketh not rest in the night.” Eccles. ii. 23, and ii. 11. ”All that is in it is sorrow and vexation of spirit. [1750]Ingress, progress, regress, egress, much alike: blindness seizeth on us in the beginning, labour in the middle, grief in the end, error in all. What day ariseth to us without some grief, care, or anguish? Or what so secure and pleasing a morning have we seen, that hath not been overcast before the evening?” One is miserable, another ridiculous, a third odious. One complains of this grievance, another of that. _Aliquando nervi, aliquando pedes vexant_, (Seneca) _nunc distillatio, nunc epatis morbus; nunc deest, nunc superest sanguis_: now the head aches, then the feet, now the lungs, then the liver, &c. _Huic sensus exuberat, sed est pudori degener sanguis_, &c. He is rich, but base born; he is n.o.ble, but poor; a third hath means, but he wants health peradventure, or wit to manage his estate; children vex one, wife a second, &c. _Nemo facile c.u.m conditione sua concordat_, no man is pleased with his fortune, a pound of sorrow is familiarly mixed with a dram of content, little or no joy, little comfort, but [1751]everywhere danger, contention, anxiety, in all places: go where thou wilt, and thou shalt find discontents, cares, woes, complaints, sickness, diseases, enc.u.mbrances, exclamations: ”If thou look into the market, there” (saith [1752]

Chrysostom) ”is brawling and contention; if to the court, there knavery and flattery, &c.; if to a private man's house, there's cark and care, heaviness,” &c. As he said of old,

[1753] ”Nil homine in terra spirat miserum magis alma?”

No creature so miserable as man, so generally molested, [1754]”in miseries of body, in miseries of mind, miseries of heart, in miseries asleep, in miseries awake, in miseries wheresoever he turns,” as Bernard found, _Nunquid tentatio est vita humana super terram_? A mere temptation is our life, (Austin, _confess. lib. 10. cap. 28_,) _catena perpetuorum malorum, et quis potest molestias et difficultates pati_? Who can endure the miseries of it? [1755]”In prosperity we are insolent and intolerable, dejected in adversity, in all fortunes foolish and miserable.” [1756]”In adversity I wish for prosperity, and in prosperity I am afraid of adversity. What mediocrity may be found? Where is no temptation? What condition of life is free?” [1757]”Wisdom hath labour annexed to it, glory, envy; riches and cares, children and enc.u.mbrances, pleasure and diseases, rest and beggary, go together: as if a man were therefore born” (as the Platonists hold) ”to be punished in this life for some precedent sins.” Or that, as [1758]Pliny complains, ”Nature may be rather accounted a stepmother, than a mother unto us, all things considered: no creature's life so brittle, so full of fear, so mad, so furious; only man is plagued with envy, discontent, griefs, covetousness, ambition, superst.i.tion.” Our whole life is an Irish sea, wherein there is nought to be expected but tempestuous storms and troublesome waves, and those infinite,

[1759] ”Tantum malorum pelagus aspicio, Ut non sit inde enatandi copia,”

no halcyonian times, wherein a man can hold himself secure, or agree with his present estate; but as Boethius infers, [1760]”there is something in every one of us which before trial we seek, and having tried abhor: [1761]

we earnestly wish, and eagerly covet, and are eftsoons weary of it.” Thus between hope and fear, suspicions, angers, [1762]_Inter spemque metumque, timores inter et iras_, betwixt falling in, falling out, &c., we bangle away our best days, befool out our times, we lead a contentious, discontent, tumultuous, melancholy, miserable life; insomuch, that if we could foretell what was to come, and it put to our choice, we should rather refuse than accept of this painful life. In a word, the world itself is a maze, a labyrinth of errors, a desert, a wilderness, a den of thieves, cheaters, &c., full of filthy puddles, horrid rocks, precipitiums, an ocean of adversity, an heavy yoke, wherein infirmities and calamities overtake, and follow one another, as the sea waves; and if we scape Scylla, we fall foul on Charybdis, and so in perpetual fear, labour, anguish, we run from one plague, one mischief, one burden to another, _duram servientes servitutem_, and you may as soon separate weight from lead, heat from fire, moistness from water, brightness from the sun, as misery, discontent, care, calamity, danger, from a man. Our towns and cities are but so many dwellings of human misery. ”In which grief and sorrow” ([1763]as he right well observes out of Solon) ”innumerable troubles, labours of mortal men, and all manner of vices, are included, as in so many pens.” Our villages are like molehills, and men as so many emmets, busy, busy still, going to and fro, in and out, and crossing one another's projects, as the lines of several sea-cards cut each other in a globe or map. ”Now light and merry,”

but ([1764]as one follows it) ”by-and-by sorrowful and heavy; now hoping, then distrusting; now patient, tomorrow crying out; now pale, then red; running, sitting, sweating, trembling, halting,” &c. Some few amongst the rest, or perhaps one of a thousand, may be Pullus Jovis, in the world's esteem, _Gallinae filius albae_, an happy and fortunate man, _ad invidiam felix_, because rich, fair, well allied, in honour and office; yet peradventure ask himself, and he will say, that of all others [1765]he is most miserable and unhappy. A fair shoe, _Hic soccus novus, elegans_, as he [1766]said, _sed nescis ubi urat_, but thou knowest not where it pincheth.

It is not another man's opinion can make me happy: but as [1767]Seneca well hath it, ”He is a miserable wretch that doth not account himself happy, though he be sovereign lord of a world: he is not happy, if he think himself not to be so; for what availeth it what thine estate is, or seem to others, if thou thyself dislike it?” A common humour it is of all men to think well of other men's fortunes, and dislike their own: [1768]_Cui placet alterius, sua nimirum est odio sors_; but [1769]_qui fit Mecoenas_, &c., how comes it to pa.s.s, what's the cause of it? Many men are of such a perverse nature, they are well pleased with nothing, (saith [1770]

Theodoret,) ”neither with riches nor poverty, they complain when they are well and when they are sick, grumble at all fortunes, prosperity and adversity; they are troubled in a cheap year, in a barren, plenty or not plenty, nothing pleaseth them, war nor peace, with children, nor without.”

This for the most part is the humour of us all, to be discontent, miserable, and most unhappy, as we think at least; and show me him that is not so, or that ever was otherwise. Quintus Metellus his felicity is infinitely admired amongst the Romans, insomuch that as [1771]Paterculus mentioneth of him, you can scarce find of any nation, order, age, s.e.x, one for happiness to be compared unto him: he had, in a word, _Bona animi, corporis et fortunae_, goods of mind, body, and fortune, so had P.

Mutia.n.u.s, [1772]Cra.s.sus. Lampsaca, that Lacedaemonian lady, was such another in [1773]Pliny's conceit, a king's wife, a king's mother, a king's daughter: and all the world esteemed as much of Polycrates of Samos. The Greeks brag of their Socrates, Phocion, Aristides; the Psophidians in particular of their Aglaus, _Omni vita felix, ab omni periculo immunis_ (which by the way Pausanias held impossible;) the Romans of their [1774]

Cato, Curius, Fabricius, for their composed fortunes, and retired estates, government of pa.s.sions, and contempt of the world: yet none of all these were happy, or free from discontent, neither Metellus, Cra.s.sus, nor Polycrates, for he died a violent death, and so did Cato; and how much evil doth Lactantius and Theodoret speak of Socrates, a weak man, and so of the rest. There is no content in this life, but as [1775]he said, ”All is vanity and vexation of spirit;” lame and imperfect. Hadst thou Sampson's hair, Milo's strength, Scanderbeg's arm, Solomon's wisdom, Absalom's beauty, Croesus' wealth, _Pasetis obulum_, Caesar's valour, Alexander's spirit, Tully's or Demosthenes' eloquence, Gyges' ring, Perseus' Pegasus, and Gorgon's head, Nestor's years to come, all this would not make thee absolute; give thee content, and true happiness in this life, or so continue it. Even in the midst of all our mirth, jollity, and laughter, is sorrow and grief, or if there be true happiness amongst us, 'tis but for a time,

[1776] ”Desinat in piscem mulier formosa superne:”

”A handsome woman with a fish's tail,”

a fair morning turns to a lowering afternoon. Brutus and Ca.s.sius, once renowned, both eminently happy, yet you shall scarce find two (saith Paterculus) _quos fortuna maturius dest.i.turit_, whom fortune sooner forsook. Hannibal, a conqueror all his life, met with his match, and was subdued at last, _Occurrit forti, qui mage fortis erit._ One is brought in triumph, as Caesar into Rome, Alcibiades into Athens, _coronis aureis donatus_, crowned, honoured, admired; by-and-by his statues demolished, he hissed out, ma.s.sacred, &c. [1777]Magnus Gonsalva, that famous Spaniard, was of the prince and people at first honoured, approved; forthwith confined and banished. _Admirandas actiones; graves plerunque sequuntur invidiae, et acres calumniae_: 'tis Polybius his observation, grievous enmities, and bitter calumnies, commonly follow renowned actions. One is born rich, dies a beggar; sound today, sick tomorrow; now in most flouris.h.i.+ng estate, fortunate and happy, by-and-by deprived of his goods by foreign enemies, robbed by thieves, spoiled, captivated, impoverished, as they of [1778]”Rabbah put under iron saws, and under iron harrows, and under axes of iron, and cast into the tile kiln,”

[1779] ”Quid me felicem toties jactastis amici, Qui cecidit, stabili non erat ille gradu.”

He that erst marched like Xerxes with innumerable armies, as rich as Croesus, now s.h.i.+fts for himself in a poor c.o.c.k-boat, is bound in iron chains, with Bajazet the Turk, and a footstool with Aurelian, for a tyrannising conqueror to trample on. So many casualties there are, that as Seneca said of a city consumed with fire, _Una dies interest inter maximum civitatem et nullam_, one day betwixt a great city and none: so many grievances from outward accidents, and from ourselves, our own indiscretion, inordinate appet.i.te, one day betwixt a man and no man. And which is worse, as if discontents and miseries would not come fast enough upon us: _h.o.m.o homini daemon_, we maul, persecute, and study how to sting, gall, and vex one another with mutual hatred, abuses, injuries; preying upon and devouring as so many, [1780]ravenous birds; and as jugglers, panders, bawds, cozening one another; or raging as [1781]wolves, tigers, and devils, we take a delight to torment one another; men are evil, wicked, malicious, treacherous, and [1782]naught, not loving one another, or loving themselves, not hospitable, charitable, nor sociable as they ought to be, but counterfeit, dissemblers, ambidexters, all for their own ends, hard-hearted, merciless, pitiless, and to benefit themselves, they care not what mischief they procure to others. [1783]Praxinoe and Gorgo in the poet, when they had got in to see those costly sights, they then cried _bene est_, and would thrust out all the rest: when they are rich themselves, in honour, preferred, full, and have even that they would, they debar others of those pleasures which youth requires, and they formerly have enjoyed. He sits at table in a soft chair at ease, but he doth remember in the mean time that a tired waiter stands behind him, ”an hungry fellow ministers to him full, he is athirst that gives him drink” (saith [1784]Epictetus) ”and is silent whilst he speaks his pleasure: pensive, sad, when he laughs.”

_Pleno se proluit auro_: he feasts, revels, and profusely spends, hath variety of robes, sweet music, ease, and all the pleasure the world can afford, whilst many an hunger-starved poor creature pines in the street, wants clothes to cover him, labours hard all day long, runs, rides for a trifle, fights peradventure from sun to sun, sick and ill, weary, full of pain and grief, is in great distress and sorrow of heart. He loathes and scorns his inferior, hates or emulates his equal, envies his superior, insults over all such as are under him, as if he were of another species, a demiG.o.d, not subject to any fall, or human infirmities. Generally they love not, are not beloved again: they tire out others' bodies with continual labour, they themselves living at ease, caring for none else, _sibi nati_; and are so far many times from putting to their helping hand, that they seek all means to depress, even most worthy and well deserving, better than themselves, those whom they are by the laws of nature bound to relieve and help, as much as in them lies, they will let them caterwaul, starve, beg, and hang, before they will any ways (though it be in their power) a.s.sist or ease: [1785]so unnatural are they for the most part, so unregardful; so hard-hearted, so churlish, proud, insolent, so dogged, of so bad a disposition. And being so brutish, so devilishly bent one towards another, how is it possible but that we should be discontent of all sides, full of cares, woes, and miseries?

If this be not a sufficient proof of their discontent and misery, examine every condition and calling apart. Kings, princes, monarchs, and magistrates seem to be most happy, but look into their estate, you shall [1786]find them to be most enc.u.mbered with cares, in perpetual fear, agony, suspicion, jealousy: that, as [1787]he said of a crown, if they knew but the discontents that accompany it, they would not stoop to take it up.

_Quem mihi regent dabis_ (saith Chrysostom) _non curis plenum_? What king canst thou show me, not full of cares? [1788]”Look not on his crown, but consider his afflictions; attend not his number of servants, but mult.i.tude of crosses.” _Nihil aliud potestas culminis, quam tempestas mentis_, as Gregory seconds him; sovereignty is a tempest of the soul: Sylla like they have brave t.i.tles, but terrible fits: _splendorem t.i.tulo, cruciatum animo_: which made [1789]Demosthenes vow, _si vel ad tribunal, vel ad interitum duceretur_: if to be a judge, or to be condemned, were put to his choice, he would be condemned. Rich men are in the same predicament; what their pains are, _stulti nesciunt, ipsi sentiunt_: they feel, fools perceive not, as I shall prove elsewhere, and their wealth is brittle, like children's rattles: they come and go, there is no certainty in them: those whom they elevate, they do as suddenly depress, and leave in a vale of misery. The middle sort of men are as so many a.s.ses to bear burdens; or if they be free, and live at ease, they spend themselves, and consume their bodies and fortunes with luxury and riot, contention, emulation, &c. The poor I reserve for another [1790]place and their discontents.

For particular professions, I hold as of the rest, there's no content or security in any; on what course will you pitch, how resolve? to be a divine, 'tis contemptible in the world's esteem; to be a lawyer, 'tis to be a wrangler; to be a physician, [1791]_pudet lotii_, 'tis loathed; a philosopher, a madman; an alchemist, a beggar; a poet, _esurit_, an hungry jack; a musician, a player; a schoolmaster, a drudge; an husbandman, an emmet; a merchant, his gains are uncertain; a mechanician, base; a chirurgeon, fulsome; a tradesman, a [1792]liar; a tailor, a thief; a serving-man, a slave; a soldier, a butcher; a smith, or a metalman, the pot's never from his nose; a courtier a parasite, as he could find no tree in the wood to hang himself; I can show no state of life to give content.

The like you may say of all ages; children live in a perpetual slavery, still under that tyrannical government of masters; young men, and of riper years, subject to labour, and a thousand cares of the world, to treachery, falsehood, and cozenage,

[1793] ------”Incedit per ignes, Suppositos cineri doloso,”

------”you incautious tread On fires, with faithless ashes overhead.”

[1794]old are full of aches in their bones, cramps and convulsions, _silicernia_, dull of hearing, weak sighted, h.o.a.ry, wrinkled, harsh, so much altered as that they cannot know their own face in a gla.s.s, a burthen to themselves and others, after 70 years, ”all is sorrow” (as David hath it), they do not live but linger. If they be sound, they fear diseases; if sick, weary of their lives: _Non est vivere, sed valere vita._ One complains of want, a second of servitude, [1795]another of a secret or incurable disease; of some deformity of body, of some loss, danger, death of friends, s.h.i.+pwreck, persecution, imprisonment, disgrace, repulse, [1796]

contumely, calumny, abuse, injury, contempt, ingrat.i.tude, unkindness, scoffs, flouts, unfortunate marriage, single life, too many children, no children, false servants, unhappy children, barrenness, banishment, oppression, frustrate hopes and ill-success, &c.