A HAPPY, SUCCESSFUL LIFE Time Wasted By SENECA N the distribution of human life, we find that a great part of it passes away in evil-doing, a greater yet in doing just nothing at all, and in effect, the whole in doing things beside our business. Some hours we bestow upon ceremony and servile attendance, some upon our pleasures, and the remainder runs to waste. What a deal of time is it that we spend in hopes and fears, love and revenge; in entertainments, in treats, making of interests, suing for offices, soliciting of causes, and slavish flatteries! The shortness of life, I know, is the common complaint both of fools and philosophers—as if the time we have were not sufficient for our duties. But it is with our lives as with our estates-a good husband makes a little go a great way; whereas, let the revenue of a prince fall into the hand of a prodigal, it is gone in a moment. So that the time allotted us, if it were well employed, were abundant enough to answer all the ends and purposes of mankind; but we squander it away in avarice, drink, sleep, luxury, ambition, fawning, addresses, envy, rambling voyages, impertinent studies, change of councils, and the like: and when our portion is spent we find the want of it, though we give no heed to it in the passage; insomuch that we have rather made our life short than found it so. You shall have some people perpetually playing with their fingers, whistling, humming, and talking to themselves; and others consume their days in the composing, hearing, or recit. ing of songs and lampoons. How many precious mornings do we spend in consultation with barbers, tailors, and tirewomen, patching and painting betwixt the comb and the glass? A council must be called upon every hair we cut, and one curl amiss is as much as a body's life is worth. The truth is, we are more solicitous about our dress than our manners, and about the order of our wigs than that of the government. At this rate let us but discount, out of a life of a hundred years, that time which has been spent upon popular negotiations, frivolous amours, domestic brawls, saunterings up and down to no purpose, diseases that we have brought upon ourselves -and this large extent of life will not amount, perhaps, to the minority of another man. It is a long being, but perchance a short life. And what is the reason of all this? We live as if we should never die, and without any thought of human frailty; when yet the very moment we bestow upon this man or thing may peradventure be our last. WE A HAPPY, SUCCESSFUL LIFE The Troubles of Life By JOHN LUBBOCK E have in life many troubles, and troubles are of many kinds. Some sorrows, alas, are real enough, especially those we bring on ourselves, but others, and by no means the least numerous, are mere ghosts of troubles: if we face them boldly, we find that they have no substance or reality, but are mere creations of our own morbid imagination, and that it is as true now as in the time of David that "Man disquieteth himself in a vain shadow." Some, indeed, of our troubles are evils, but not real; while others are real, but not evils. "And yet, into how unfathomable a gulf the mind rushes when the troubles of this world agitate it. If it then forget its own light, which is eternal joy, and rush into the outer darkness, which are the cares of this world, as the mind now does, it knows nothing else but lamentations."* "Athens," said Epictetus, "is a good place-but happiness is much better; to be free from passions, free from disturbance." We should endeavor to maintain ourselves in "that blessed mood In which the burden of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight, Of all this unintelligible world Is lightened." So shall we fear "neither the exile of Aristides, nor the prison of Anaxagoras, nor the poverty of Socrates, nor the con King Alfred's translation of the "Consolations of Boethius." |