) I apply to you to come and hear that you are in
evil case; that what deserves your attention most in the last thing to
gain it; that you know not good from evil, and are in short a hapless
wretch; a fine way to apply! though unless the words of the Philosopher
affect you thus, speaker and speech are alike dead.
CXXI
A Philosopher's school is a Surgery: pain, not pleasure, you should have
felt therein. For on entering none of you is whole. One has a shoulder
out of joint, another an abscess: a third suffers from an issue, a
fourth from pains in the head. And am I then to sit down and treat you
to pretty sentiments and empty flourishes, so that you may applaud me
and depart, with neither shoulder, nor head, nor issue, nor abscess a
whit the better for your visit? Is it then for this that young men are
to quit their homes, and leave parents, friends, kinsmen and substance
to mouth out Bravo to your empty phrases!
CXXII
If any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of
himself alone. For God hath made all men to enjoy felicity and constancy
of good.
CXXIII
Shall we never wean ourselves--shall we never heed the teachings of
Philosophy (unless perchance they have been sounding in our ears like
and enchanter's drone):--
This World is one great City, and one if the substance whereof it is
fashioned: a certain period indeed there needs must be, while these give
place to those; some must perish for others to succeed; some move and
some abide: yet all is full of friends--first God, then Men, whom Nature
hath bound by ties of kindred each to each.
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