Some persons are like the waters of Siloam, and require to be troubled before they can exercise their virtue. "We shall get more contentedness,' says Plutarch, "from the presence of all these blessings if we fancy them as absent, and remember from time to time how people when ill yearn for health, and people in war for peace, and strangers and unknown in a great city for reputation and friends, and how painful it is to be deprived of all these when one has once had them. For then each of these blessings will not appear to us only great and valuable when it is lost, and of no value when we have it. . . . And yet it makes much for contentedness of mind to look for the most part at home and to our own condition; or if not, to look at the case of people worse off than ourselves, and not, as people do, to compare ourselves with those who are better off. . will find others, Chians, or Galatians, or Bithynians, not content with the share of glory or power they have among their fellow-citizens, but weeping because they do not wear senators' shoes; or, if they have them, that they cannot be prætors of Rome; or if they get that office, that they are not consuls; or if they are consuls, that they are only proclaimed second and not first. Whenever, then, you admire any one carried by in his litter as a greater man than yourself, lower your eyes and look at those that bear the litter." And again, "I am very taken with Diogenes' remark to a stranger at But you Lacedæmon, who was dressing with much display for a feast, Does not a good man consider every day a feast?'... Seeing then that life is the most complete initiation into all these things, it ought to be full of ease of mind and joy; and if properly understood, would enable us to acquiesce in the present without repining, to remember the past with thankfulness, and to meet the future hopefully and cheerfully without fear of suspicion." 66 |