"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." [1]
"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." [2]
So shall we fear "neither the exile of Aristides, nor the prison of Anaxagoras, nor the poverty of Socrates, nor the condemnation of Phocion, but think virtue worthy our love even under such trials." [3] We should then be, to a great extent, independent of external circumstances, for
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage,
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.
"If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free;
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty." [4]
Happiness indeed depends much more on what is within than without us. When Hamlet says the world is "a goodly prison; in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons; Denmark being one of the worst," and Rosencrantz differs from him, he rejoins wisely, "Why then, 'tis none to you: for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me it is a prison." "All is opinion," said Marcus Aurelius. "That which does not make a man worse, how can it make his life worse? But death certainly, and life, honor and dishonor, pain and pleasure, all these things happen equally to good men and bad, being things which make us neither better nor worse."
"The greatest evils," says Jeremy Taylor, "are from within us; and from ourselves also we must look for our greatest good."
"The mind," says Milton,