PHILOSOPHY ON THE HEATH
From 'The Labyrinth'
Caillard was a man of experience, taste, and knowledge. He told me the story of his life from beginning to end, he confided to me his principles and his affairs, and I took him to be the happiest man in the world. "I have everything," he said, "all that I have wished for or can wish for: health, riches, domestic peace (being unmarried), a tolerably good conscience, books--and as much sense as I need to enjoy them. I experience only one single want, lack only one single pleasure in this world; but that one is enough to embitter my life and class me with other unfortunates."
I could not guess what might yet be wanting to such a man under such conditions, "It cannot be liberty," I said, "for how can a rich merchant in a free town lack this?"
"No! Heaven save me--I neither would nor could live one single day without liberty."
"You do not happen to be in love with some cruel or unhappy princess?"
"That is still less the case."
"Ah!--now I have it, no doubt--your soul is consumed with a thirst for truth, for a satisfactory answer to the many questions which are but philosophic riddles. You are seeking what so many brave men from Anaxagoras to Spinoza have sought in vain--the corner-stone of philosophy, the foundation of the structure of our ideas."
He assured me that in this respect he was quite at ease. "Then, in spite of your good health, you must be subject to that miserable thing, a cold in the head?" I said.
"Uno minor--Jove, dives
Liber, honoratus, pulcher rex denique regum,
Praecipue sanus--nisi cum pituita molesta est."
--HORACE.