Consolation to Apollonius (30-31)

But many there are who blame all things; and whatsoever unexpectedly happens to them, they think is procured them by the malignity of Fortune and the spite of some evil genius. Wherefore they are querulous and cry out upon every occasion, inveighing against the bitterness of their mishaps. Their complaints we may not unfitly obviate with this expression,—

The Gods do hurt thee not, but thou thyself,—

even thou thyself through perverseness and want of good instruction. And by reason of this false and deceiving opinion they accuse any kind of death; for if one die upon his travel, they exclaim after this manner:—

The wretch, his father being absent, dies;

Nor did his aged mother close his eyes.

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If he die in his own country, with his parents about him, they lament that he is ravished out of their hands, and hath left them nothing but regret for his loss. If he die silent, giving them no instructions at parting, they complain thus:— His tender dying words I (lid not hear, Which I in my remembrance still should bear.[*] If he spoke any thing before he breathed out his soul, they keep those last accents as fuel to maintain their sorrow still kindled. If he die a sudden death, they cry out that he is snatched away; if chronical pains waste him, they will tell you that the slow distemper hath emaciated him to death. Thus every appearance, take it which way you will, is sufficient to stir up your complaints. These thingsthe poets have introduced, and the chiefest among them, Homer, who sung after this manner:—

As a poor father, helpless and undone,

Mourns o’er the ashes of an only son,

Takes a sad pleasure the last bones to burn,

And pours in tears ere yet they close the urn.

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And whether these things are justly lamented doth not yet appear. But see what he elsewhere sings:—

Born in his elder years, his only boy,

Who was designed his riches to enjoy.

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Who knows but that the Deity, with a fatherly providence and out of tenderness to mankind, foreseeing what would happen, hath taken some purposely out of this life by an untimely death? So we should think that nothing has befallen them which they should have sought to shun,— For nought that cometh by necessity is hard,[*] neither of those things which fall out by a precedent ratiocination or a subsequent. And many by a timely death have been withdrawn from greater calamities; so that it hath been good for some never to have been born at all; for others, that as soon as life hath been blown in it should be extinguished; for some, that they should live a little longer; and for others again, that they should be

cropped in the prime of their youth. These several sorts of deaths should be taken in good part, since Fate is inevitable. Therefore it becomes men well educated to consider that those who have paid their debt to mortality have only gone before us a little time; that the longest life is but as a point in respect of eternity, and that many who have indulged their sorrow to excess have themselves followed in a small while those that they have lamented, having reaped no profit out of their complaints, but macerated themselves with voluntary afflictions. Since then the time of our pilgrimage in this life is but short, we ought not to consume ourselves with sordid grief, and so render ourselves unhappy by afflicting our minds and tormenting our bodies; but we should endeavor after a more manly and rational sort of life, and not associate ourselves with those who will be companions in grief and by flattering our tears will only excite them the more, but rather with those who will diminish our grief by solemn and generous consolation. And we ought to hear and keep in our remembrance those words of Homer wherewith Hector answers Andromache, comforting her after this manner:— Andromache, my soul’s far better part, Why with untimely sorrows heaves thy heart No hostile hand can antedate my doom, Till Fate condemns me to the silent tomb. Fix’d is the term to all the race of earth, And such the hard condition of our birth: No force can then resist, no flight can save, All sinkalike, the fearful and the brave.[*] Which the poet expresseth in another place thus: The thread which at his birth for him was spun.[*]