(125.) Antagoras has a familiar[576] and popular countenance; he is as well known to the mob as the parish beadle or as the saint carved in stone adorning the high altar. Every morning he runs up and down the courts and the offices of parliament,[577] and every evening up and down the streets and highways of the town. He has had a lawsuit these forty years, and has always been nearer his death than the end of his legal troubles. There has not been any celebrated case or any long and difficult lawsuit tried that he has not had something to do with; his name is in the mouth of every barrister, and agrees as naturally with such words as “plaintiff” or “defendant” as an adjective does with a substantive. He is everybodyʼs kinsman, and disliked by all; there is scarcely a family of whom he does not complain, or who does not complain of him; he is perpetually engaged in seizing some property, in asking for an injunction[578] to prevent the sale of an office[579] or some stocks, in using the privilege of pleading in certain cases[580] or of seeing some judgments put into execution; besides this, he is every day at some meeting of creditors, is appointed chairman of their committee,[581] and loses money by every bankruptcy; he finds some spare moments for a few private visits, and like an old gossip[582] talks about lawsuits, and tells you all the news about them. You leave him one hour at one end of the town and find him the next at another end,[583] where he arrived before you, and has been giving again all the details of his lawsuit. If you yourself are engaged in a lawsuit and wait early the next morning on your judge,[584] you are sure to meet Antagoras, who must first leave before you can be admitted.[585]
(126.) Some men pass their long lives in defending themselves and in injuring other people, and die at last, worn out with age, after having caused as many evils as they suffered.
(127.) There must, I confess, be seizures of land, distraint on furniture, prisons, and punishments; but without taking into consideration justice, law, and stern necessity, it has always astonished me to observe with what violence some men treat other men.
(128.) Certain wild animals, male and female, are scattered over the country, dark, livid, and quite tanned by the sun, who are chained, as it were, to the land they are always digging and turning up and down with an unwearied stubbornness; their voice is somewhat articulate, and when they stand erect they discover a human face, and, indeed, are men. At night they retire to their burrows, where they live on black bread, water, and roots; they spare other men the trouble of sowing, tilling the ground, and reaping for their sustenance, and, therefore, deserve not to be in want of that bread they sow themselves.
(129.) Don Fernando resides in his province, and is idle, ignorant, slanderous, quarrelsome, knavish, intemperate, and impertinent; but he draws his sword against his neighbours, and exposes his life for the smallest trifle; he has killed several men, and will be killed in his turn.[586]
(130.) A provincial nobleman, useless to his country, his family and himself, often without a roof to cover himself, without clothes or the least merit, tells you ten times a day that he is of noble lineage, despises all graduates, doctors, and presidents of parliaments[587] as upstarts, and spends all his time among parchments and old title-deeds, which he would not part with to be appointed chancellor.[588]
(131.) Power, favour, genius, riches, dignity, nobility, force, industry, capacity, virtue, vice, weakness, stupidity, poverty, impotence, plebeianism, and servility generally are combined in men in endless variety. These qualities mixed together in a thousand various manners, and compensating one another in many ways, form the different states and conditions of human life. Moreover, people who are acquainted with each otherʼs strength and weakness act reciprocally, for they believe it their duty; they know their equals, are conscious that some men are their superiors, and that they are superior to some others; and hence familiarity, respect or deference, pride or contempt. This is the reason why, in places of public resort, we see each moment some persons we wish to accost or bow to, and others we pretend not to know, and still less desire to meet; and why we are proud of being with the first and ashamed of the others. Hence it even happens that the very person with whom you think it an honour to be seen, and with whom you are desirous to converse, deems you troublesome and leaves you; and that often the very person who blushes when he meets others, receives the same treatment when others meet him, and that a man who treated others with contempt is himself disdained, for it is common enough to despise those who despise us. How wretched is such a behaviour; and since it is certain that in this strange interchange we gain on one side what we lose on another, should we not do better to abandon all haughtiness and pride, qualities so unsuited to frail humanity, and make an arrangement to treat one another with mutual kindness, by which we should at once gain the advantage of never being mortified ourselves, and the happiness, which is just as great, of never mortifying others?
(132.) Instead of being frightened, or even ashamed, at being called a philosopher, everybody in this world ought to have a strong tincture of philosophy;[589] it suits every one: its practice is useful to people of all ages, sexes, and conditions; it consoles us for the happiness of others, for the promotion of those whom we think undeserving, for failures, and decay of strength and beauty; it steels us against poverty, age, sickness, and death, against fools and buffoons; it will help us to pass away our life without a wife, or to bear with the one with whom we have to live.
(133.) Men are one hour overjoyed at trifles, and the next overcome with grief for a mere disappointment; nothing is more unequal and incoherent than the emotions stirring their hearts and minds in so short a time. If they would set no higher value on the things of this world than they really deserve, this evil would be cured.
(134.) It is as difficult to find a vain man who believes himself as happy as he deserves, as a modest man who believes himself too unhappy.