VII. But among the worst I
count also those who have time for nothing but wine and lust; for none have
more shameful engrossments.14 The others, even if they are possessed by
the empty dream of glory, nevertheless go astray in a seemly manner; though you
should cite to me the men who are avaricious, the men who are wrathful, whether
busied with unjust hatreds or with unjust wars, these all sin in more manly
fashion. But those who are plunged into the pleasures of the belly and into
lust bear a stain that is dishonourable. Search into the hours of all these
people,15 see how much time they give to accounts, how much to laying
snares, how much to fearing them, how much to paying court, how much to being
courted, how much is taken up in giving or receiving bail, how much by
banquets—for even these have now become a matter of business—, and you will see
how their interests, whether you call them evil or good, do not allow them time
to breathe.
Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a
man who is busied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal
studies—since the mind, when its interests are divided, takes in nothing very
deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is
nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is
harder to learn. Of the other arts there are many teachers everywhere; some of
them we have seen that mere boys have mastered so thoroughly that they could
even play the master. It takes the whole of life to learn how to live, and—what
will perhaps make you wonder more—it takes the whole of life to learn how to
die. Many very great men, having laid aside all their encumbrances, having
renounced riches, business, and pleasures, have made it their one aim up to the
very end of life to know how to live; yet the greater number of them have
departed from life confessing that they did not yet know—still less do those
others know. Believe me, it takes a great man and one who has risen far above
human weaknesses not to allow any of his time to be filched from him, and it
follows that the life of such a man is very long because he has devoted wholly
to himself whatever time he has had. None of it lay neglected and idle; none of
it was under the control of another, for, guarding it most grudgingly, he found
nothing that was worthy to be taken in exchange for his time. And so that man
had time enough, but those who have been robbed of much of their life by the
public, have necessarily had too little of it.
And there is no reason for you to suppose that these people are not sometimes
aware of their loss. Indeed, you will hear many of those who are burdened by
great prosperity cry out at times in the midst of their throngs of clients, or
their pleadings in court, or their other glorious miseries: "I have no
chance to live." Of course you have no chance! All those who summon you to
themselves, turn you away from your own self. Of how many days has that
defendant robbed you? Of how many that candidate? Of how many that old woman
wearied with burying her heirs?16 Of how many that man who is shamming
sickness for the purpose of exciting the greed of the legacy-hunters? Of how
many that very powerful friend who has you and your like on the list, not of
his friends, but of his retinue? Check off, I say, and review the days of your
life; you will see that very few, and those the refuse. have been left for you.
That man who had prayed for the fasces,17 when he attains them, desires
to lay them aside and says over and over: "When will this year be
over!" That man gives games,18 and, after setting great value on
gaining the chance to give them, now says: "When shall I be rid of
them?" That advocate is lionized throughout the whole forum, and fills all
the place with a great crowd that stretches farther than he can be heard, yet
he says: "When will vacation time come?" Everyone hurries his life on
and suffers from a yearning for the future and a weariness of the present. But
he who bestows all of his time on his own needs, who plans out every day as if
it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the morrow. For what new pleasure
is there that any hour can now bring? They are all known, all have been enjoyed
to the full. Mistress Fortune may deal out the rest as she likes; his life has
already found safety. Something may be added to it, but nothing taken from it,
and he will take any addition as the man who is satisfied and filled takes the
food which he does not desire and yet can hold. And so there is no reason for
you to think that any man has lived long because he has grey hairs or wrinkles;
he has not lived long—he has existed long. For what if you should think that
that man had had a long voyage who had been caught by a fierce storm as soon as
he left harbour, and, swept hither and thither by a succession of winds that
raged from different quarters, had been driven in a circle around the same
course? Not much voyaging did he have, but much tossing about.
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