No. 170.
[Steele.
Tuesday, May 9, to Thursday, May 11, 1710.
Fortuna sævo læta negotio et
Ludum insolentem ludere pertinax
Transmutat incertos honores,
Nunc mihi, nunc alii, benigna.
Hor., 3 Od. xxix. 49.
From my own Apartment, May 10.
Having this morning spent some time in reading on the subject of the vicissitude of human life, I laid aside my book, and began to ruminate on the discourse which raised in me those reflections. I believed it a very good office to the world, to sit down and show others the road in which I am experienced by my wanderings and errors. This is Seneca's way of thinking, and he had half convinced me, how dangerous it is to our true happiness and tranquillity to fix our minds upon anything which is in the power of Fortune. It is excusable only in animals who have not the use of reason, to be catched by hooks and baits. Wealth, glory, and power, which the ordinary people look up at with admiration, the learned and wise know to be only so many snares laid to enslave them. There is nothing further to be sought for with earnestness, than what will clothe and feed us. If we pamper ourselves in our diet, or give our imaginations a loose in our desires, the body will no longer obey the mind. Let us think no further than to defend ourselves against hunger, thirst, and cold. We are to remember, that everything else is despicable, and not worth our care. To want little is true grandeur, and very few things are great to a great mind. Those who form their thoughts in this manner, and abstract themselves from the world, are out of the way of Fortune, and can look with contempt both on her favours and her frowns. At the same time, they who separate themselves from the immediate commerce with the busy part of mankind, are still beneficial to them, while by their studies and writings they recommend to them the small value which ought to be put upon what they pursue with so much labour and disquiet. Whilst such men are thought the most idle, they are the most usefully employed. They have all things, both human and divine, under consideration. To be perfectly free from the insults of fortune, we should arm ourselves with their reflections. We should learn, that none but intellectual possessions are what we can properly call our own. All things from without are but borrowed. What Fortune gives us, is not ours; and whatever she gives, she can take away.
It is a common imputation to Seneca, that though he declaimed with so much strength of reason, and a stoical contempt of riches and power, he was at the same time one of the richest and most powerful men in Rome. I know no instance of his being insolent in that fortune, and can therefore read his thoughts on those subjects with the more deference. I will not give philosophy so poor a look, as to say it cannot live in courts; but I am of opinion, that it is there in the greatest eminence, when amidst the affluence of all the world can bestow, and the addresses of a crowd who follow him for that reason, a man can think both of himself and those about him abstracted from these circumstances. Such a philosopher is as much above an anchorite, as a wise matron, who passes through the world with innocence, is preferable to the nun who locks herself up from it.
Full of these thoughts I left my lodgings, and took a walk to the Court end of the town; and the hurry, and busy faces I met with about Whitehall, made me form to myself ideas of the different prospects of all I saw, from the turn and cast of their countenances. All, methought, had the same thing in view, but prosecuted their hopes with a different air: some showed an unbecoming eagerness, some a surly impatience, some a winning deference, but the generality a servile complaisance.
I could not but observe, as I roved about the offices, that all who were still but in expectation, murmured at Fortune; and all who had obtained their wishes, immediately began to say, there was no such being. Each believed it an act of blind chance that any other man was preferred, but owed only to service and merit what he had obtained himself. It is the fault of studious men to appear in public with too contemplative a carriage; and I began to observe, that my figure, age, and dress, made me particular: for which reason I thought it better to remove a studious countenance from among busy ones, and take a turn with a friend in the Privy Garden.[259]