A Book of English Prose | Page 9

and reins; shooting
for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the
head; and the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the
mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so
little, he must begin again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find
differences, let him study the school-men; for they are Cymini sectores.
If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove
and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases. So every defect
of the mind may have a special receipt.
(Essays.)

WILLIAM DRUMMOND 1585-1649
MEDITATION ON DEATH
If on the great theatre of this earth among the numberless number of
men, to die were only proper to thee and thine, then undoubtedly thou
had reason to repine at so severe and partial a law. But since it is a
necessity, from which never any age by-past hath been exempted, and
unto which they which be, and so many as are to come, are thralled (no
consequent of life being more common and familiar), why shouldst
thou with unprofitable and nought-availing stubbornness, oppose so
inevitable and necessary a condition? This is the high-way of morality,
and our general home: Behold what millions have trod it before thee,
what multitudes shall after thee, with them which at that same instant
{20} run. In so universal a calamity (if Death be one) private
complaints cannot be heard: with so many royal palaces, it is no loss to

see thy poor cabin burn. Shall the heavens stay their ever-rolling
wheels (for what is the motion of them but the motion of a swift and
ever-whirling wheel, which twineth forth and again uprolleth our life),
and hold still time to prolong thy miserable days, as if the highest of
their working were to do homage unto thee? Thy death is a pace of the
order of this All, a part of the life of this world; for while the world is
the world, some creatures must die, and others take life. Eternal things
are raised far above this sphere of generation and corruption, where the
first matter, like an ever flowing and ebbing sea, with divers waves, but
the same water, keepeth a restless and never tiring current; what is
below in the universality of the kind, not in itself doth abide: Man a
long line of years hath continued, This man every hundred is swept
away. This globe environed with air is the sole region of Death, the
grave where everything that taketh life must rot, the stage of fortune
and change, only glorious in the inconstancy and varying alterations of
it, which though many, seem yet to abide one, and being a certain entire
one, are ever many. The never agreeing bodies of the elemental
brethren turn one into another; the earth changeth her countenance with
the seasons, sometimes looking cold and naked, other times hot and
flowery: nay, I cannot tell how, but even the lowest of those celestial
bodies, that mother of months, and empress of seas and moisture, as if
she were a mirror of our constant mutability, appeareth (by her too
great nearness {21} unto us) to participate of our changes, never seeing
us twice with that same face: now looking black, then pale and wan,
sometimes again in the perfection and fulness of her beauty shining
over us. Death no less than life doth here act a part, the taking away of
what is old being the making way for what is young.
(A Cypress Grove.)

THOMAS HOBBES 1588-1679
PRIMITIVE LIFE
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man
is enemy to every man, the same is consequent to the time, wherein

men live without other security, than what their own strength and their
own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no
place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and
consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the
commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no
instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force;
no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no
letters; no society; and, which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger
of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short.
It may seem strange to some man that has not well weighed these
things, that nature should thus dissociate, and render men apt to invade
and destroy one another: and he may therefore, not trusting to this
inference, {22} made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the
same confirmed by experience. Let him therefore consider