The Essays, vol 12 | Page 9

testimony of their consanguinity and
consubstantiality. The most profound joy has more of severity than
gaiety, in it. The highest and fullest contentment offers more of the
grave than of the merry:
"Ipsa felicitas, se nisi temperat, premit."
["Even felicity, unless it moderate itself, oppresses? --Seneca, Ep. 74.]
Pleasure chews and grinds us; according to the old Greek verse, which
says that the gods sell us all the goods they give us; that is to say, that
they give us nothing pure and perfect, and that we do not purchase but
at the price of some evil.
Labour and pleasure, very unlike in nature, associate, nevertheless, by I
know not what natural conjunction. Socrates says, that some god tried
to mix in one mass and to confound pain and pleasure, but not being
able to do it; he bethought him at least to couple them by the tail.
Metrodorus said, that in sorrow there is some mixture of pleasure. I
know not whether or no he intended anything else by that saying; but
for my part, I am of opinion that there is design, consent, and
complacency in giving a man's self up to melancholy. I say, that
besides ambition, which may also have a stroke in the business, there is
some shadow of delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us
even in the very lap of melancholy. Are there not some constitutions
that feed upon it?
"Est quaedam flere voluptas;"

["'Tis a certain kind of pleasure to weep." --Ovid, Trist., iv. 3, 27.]
and one Attalus in Seneca says, that the memory of our lost friends is
as grateful to us, as bitterness in wine, when too old, is to the palate:
"Minister vetuli, puer, Falerni Inger' mi calices amariores"--
["Boy, when you pour out old Falernian wine, the bitterest put into my
bowl."--Catullus, xxvii. I.]
and as apples that have a sweet tartness.
Nature discovers this confusion to us; painters hold that the same
motions and grimaces of the face that serve for weeping; serve for
laughter too; and indeed, before the one or the other be finished, do but
observe the painter's manner of handling, and you will be in doubt to
which of the two the design tends; and the extreme of laughter does at
last bring tears:
"Nullum sine auctoramento malum est."
["No evil is without its compensation."--Seneca, Ep., 69.]
When I imagine man abounding with all the conveniences that are to be
desired (let us put the case that all his members were always seized
with a pleasure like that of generation, in its most excessive height) I
feel him melting under the weight of his delight, and see him utterly
unable to support so pure, so continual, and so universal a pleasure.
Indeed, he is running away whilst he is there, and naturally makes haste
to escape, as from a place where he cannot stand firm, and where he is
afraid of sinking.
When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue I
have has in it some tincture of vice; and I am afraid that Plato, in his
purest virtue (I, who am as sincere and loyal a lover of virtue of that
stamp as any other whatever), if he had listened and laid his ear close to
himself and he did so no doubt--would have heard some jarring note of
human mixture, but faint and only perceptible to himself. Man is

wholly and throughout but patch and motley. Even the laws of justice
themselves cannot subsist without mixture of injustice; insomuch that
Plato says, they undertake to cut off the hydra's head, who pretend to
clear the law of all inconveniences:
"Omne magnum exemplum habet aliquid ex iniquo, quod contra
singulos utilitate publics rependitur,"
["Every great example has in it some mixture of injustice, which
recompenses the wrong done to particular men by the public utility."
--Annals, xiv. 44.]
says Tacitus.
It is likewise true, that for the use of life and the service of public
commerce, there may be some excesses in the purity and perspicacity
of our minds; that penetrating light has in it too much of subtlety and
curiosity: we must a little stupefy and blunt them to render them more
obedient to example and practice, and a little veil and obscure them, the
better to proportion them to this dark and earthly life. And therefore
common and less speculative souls are found to be more proper for and
more successful in the management of affairs, and the elevated and
exquisite opinions of philosophy unfit for business. This sharp vivacity
of soul, and the supple and restless volubility attending it, disturb our
negotiations. We are to manage human enterprises more superficially
and roughly, and leave a great part to fortune; it is not necessary