He said that each of us in entering the world resembles a man on a hard and uncomfortable bed. As soon as the man lies down, he feels restless and begins to toss from side to side and change his position momentarily, in the hope of inducing sleep to close his eyes. Thus he spends the whole night, and though sometimes he believes himself on the point of falling asleep, he never actually succeeds in doing so. At length dawn comes, and he rises unrefreshed.
Watching some bees at work one day in company with certain acquaintances, he remarked: "Blessed are ye, if ye know not your unhappiness."
He considered the miseries of mortals to be incalculable, and that no single one of them could be adequately deplored.
In answer to Horace's question, "Why is no one content with his lot?" he said: "Because no one's lot is happy. Subjects equally with princes, the weak and the strong, were they happy, would be contented, and would envy no one. For men are no more incapable of being satisfied than other animals. But since happiness alone can satisfy them, they are necessarily dissatisfied, because essentially unhappy."
"If a man could be found," he said, "who had attained to the summit of human happiness, that man would be the most miserable of mortals. For even the oldest of us have hopes and schemes for the improvement of our condition." He recalled a passage in Zenophon, where a purchaser of land is advised to buy badly cultivated fields, because such as do not in the future bring forth more abundantly than at the time of purchase, give less satisfaction than if they were to increase in productiveness. Similarly, all things in which we can observe improvement please us more than others in which improvement is impossible.
On the other hand, he observed that no condition is so bad that it cannot be worse; and that however unhappy a man may be, he cannot console or boast himself that his misfortunes are incapable of increase. Though hope is unbounded, the good things of life are limited. Thus, were we to consider a single day in the life of a rich or poor man, master or servant, bearing in mind all the circumstances and needs of their respective positions, we should generally find an equality of good throughout. But nature has not limited our misfortunes; nor can the mind scarcely conceive a cause of suffering which is non-existent, or which at some time was not to be found among humanity. Thus, whereas most men vainly hope for an increase of the good things they possess, they never want for genuine objects of fear; and if Fortune sometimes obstinately refuses to benefit us in the least degree, she never fails to afflict us with new torments of such a nature as to crush within us even the courage of despair.
He often used to laugh at those philosophers who think that a man is able to free himself from the tyranny of Fortune, by having a contempt for good and evil things which are entirely beyond his control; as if happiness and the contrary were absolutely in his own power to accept or refuse. On the same subject he also said, amongst other things, that however much a man may act as a philosopher in his relations with others, he is never a philosopher to himself. Again, he said that it is as impossible to take more interest in the affairs of others than in our own, as to regard their affairs as though they were our own. But, supposing this philosophical disposition of mind were possible, winch it is not, and possessed by one of us, how would it stand the test of a thousand trials? Would it not be evident that the happiness or unhappiness of such a person is nevertheless a matter of fortune? Would not the very disposition they boast of be dependent on circumstances? Is not man's reason daily governed by accidents of all kinds? Do not the numberless bodily disturbances due to stupidity, excitement, madness, rage, dullness, and a hundred other species of folly, temporary or continuous, trouble, weaken, distract, and even extinguish it? Does not memory, wisdom's ally, lose strength as we advance in age? How many of us fall into a second childhood! And we almost all decrease in mental vigour as we grow old; or when our mind remains unimpaired, time, by means of some bodily disease, enfeebles our courage and firmness, and not infrequently deprives us of both attributes altogether. In short, it is utter folly to confess that physically we are subject to many things over which we have no control, and at the same time to assert that the mind, which is so greatly dependent on the body, is not similarly controlled by external influences. He summed up by saying that man as a whole is absolutely in the power of Fortune. Being asked for what purpose he thought men were born, he laughingly replied: "To realise how much better it were not to be born."
CHAPTER III.
On the occasion of a certain misfortune, Ottonieri said: "It is less hard to lose a much-loved person suddenly, or after a short illness, than to see him waste away gradually, so that before his death he is transformed in body and mind into quite another being from what he formerly was. This latter is a cruel thing; for the beloved one, instead of leaving to us the tender recollections of his real identity, remains with us a changed being, in whose presence our old affection slowly but surely fades away. At length he dies; but the remembrance of him as he was at the last destroys the sweeter and earlier image within us. Thus he is lost entirely, and our imagination, instead of comforting, saddens us. Such misfortunes as these are inconsolable."