_Vanity._--How wonderful it is that a thing so evident as the vanity of the world is so little known, that it is a strange and surprising thing to say that it is foolish to seek greatness!
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He who will know fully the vanity of man has only to consider the causes and effects of love. The cause is a _je ne sais quoi_ (Corneille),[76]
and the effects are dreadful. This _je ne sais quoi_, so small an object that we cannot recognise it, agitates a whole country, princes, armies, the entire world.
Cleopatra"s nose: had it been shorter, the whole aspect of the world would have been altered.
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_Vanity._--The cause and the effects of love: Cleopatra.
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He who does not see the vanity of the world is himself very vain. Indeed who do not see it but youths who are absorbed in fame, diversion, and the thought of the future? But take away diversion, and you will see them dried up with weariness. They feel then their nothingness without knowing it; for it is indeed to be unhappy to be in insufferable sadness as soon as we are reduced to thinking of self, and have no diversion.
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_Thoughts._--_In omnibus requiem quaesivi._[77] If our condition were truly happy, we would not need diversion from thinking of it in order to make ourselves happy.
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_Diversion._--Death is easier to bear without thinking of it, than is the thought of death without peril.
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The miseries of human life have established all this: as men have seen this, they have taken up diversion.
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_Diversion._--As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.
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Despite these miseries, man wishes to be happy, and only wishes to be happy, and cannot wish not to be so. But how will he set about it? To be happy he would have to make himself immortal; but, not being able to do so, it has occurred to him to prevent himself from thinking of death.
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_Diversion._--If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the Saints and G.o.d.--Yes; but is it not to be happy to have a faculty of being amused by diversion?--No; for that comes from elsewhere and from without, and thus is dependent, and therefore subject to be disturbed by a thousand accidents, which bring inevitable griefs.
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_Misery._--The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this it the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which princ.i.p.ally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves, and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.
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We do not rest satisfied with the present. We antic.i.p.ate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists.
For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and if it be delightful to us, we regret to see it pa.s.s away. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching.
Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end.[78] So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.
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They say that eclipses foretoken misfortune, because misfortunes are common, so that, as evil happens so often, they often foretell it; whereas if they said that they predict good fortune, they would often be wrong. They attribute good fortune only to rare conjunctions of the heavens; so they seldom fail in prediction.
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_Misery._--Solomon[79] and Job have best known and best spoken of the misery of man; the former the most fortunate, and the latter the most unfortunate of men; the former knowing the vanity of pleasures from experience, the latter the reality of evils.
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We know ourselves so little, that many think they are about to die when they are well, and many think they are well when they are near death, unconscious of approaching fever,[80] or of the abscess ready to form itself.
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Cromwell[81] was about to ravage all Christendom; the royal family was undone, and his own for ever established, save for a little grain of sand which formed in his ureter. Rome herself was trembling under him; but this small piece of gravel having formed there, he is dead, his family cast down, all is peaceful, and the king is restored.
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[Three hosts.[82]] Would he who had possessed the friendship of the King of England, the King of Poland, and the Queen of Sweden, have believed he would lack a refuge and shelter in the world?
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Macrobius:[83] on the innocents slain by Herod.
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When Augustus learnt that Herod"s own son was amongst the infants under two years of age, whom he had caused to be slain, he said that it was better to be Herod"s pig than his son.--Macrobius, _Sat._, book ii, chap. 4.
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