Читать книгу Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century - Various - Страница 27

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Hath surveyed and fortified his disposition, and converts all occurrents into experience, between which experience and his reason there is marriage; the issue are his actions. He circuits his intents, and seeth the end before he shoot. Men are the instruments of his art, and there is no man without his use. Occasion incites him, none enticeth him; and he moves by affection, not for affection. He loves glory, scorns shame, and governeth and obeyeth with one countenance, for it comes from one consideration. He calls not the variety of the world chances, for his meditation hath travelled over them, and his eye, mounted upon his understanding, seeth them as things underneath. He covers not his body with delicacies, nor excuseth these delicacies by his body, but teacheth it, since it is not able to defend its own imbecility, to show or suffer. He licenseth not his weakness to wear fate, but knowing reason to be no idle gift of nature, he is the steersman of his own destiny. Truth is the goddess, and he takes pains to get her, not to look like her. He knows the condition of the world, that he must act one thing like another, and then another. To these he carries his desires, and not his desires him, and sticks not fast by the way (for that contentment is repentance), but knowing the circle of all courses, of all intents, of all things, to have but one centre or period, without all distraction, he hasteth thither and ends there, as his true and natural element. He doth not contemn Fortune, but not confess her. He is no gamester of the world (which only complain and praise her), but being only sensible of the honesty of actions, contemns a particular profit as the excrement of scum. Unto the society of men he is a sun, whose clearness directs their steps in a regular motion. When he is more particular, he is the wise man's friend, the example of the indifferent, the medicine of the vicious. Thus time goeth not from him, but with him; and he feels age more by the strength of his soul than the weakness of his body. Thus feels he no pain, but esteems all such things as friends that desire to file off his fetters, and help him out of prison.