X. Should I choose to divide my
subject into heads with their separate proofs, many arguments will occur to me
by which I could prove that busy men find life very short. But
Fabianus,20 who was none of your lecture-room philosophers of to-day,
but one of the genuine and old-fashioned kind, used to say that we must fight
against the passions with main force, not with artifice, and that the
battle-line must be turned by a bold attack, not by inflicting pinpricks; that
sophistry is not serviceable, for the passions must be, not nipped, but
crushed. Yet, in order that the victims of them nay be censured, each for his
own particular fault, I say that they must be instructed, not merely wept over.
Life is divided into three periods—that which has been, that which is, that
which will be. Of these the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the
past is certain. For the last is the one over which Fortune has lost control,
is the one which cannot be brought back under any man's power. But men who are
engrossed lose this; for they have no time to look back upon the past, and even
if they should have, it is not pleasant to recall something they must view with
regret. They are, therefore, unwilling to direct their thoughts backward to
ill-spent hours, and those whose vices become obvious if they review the past,
even the vices which were disguised under some allurement of momentary
pleasure, do not have the courage to revert to those hours. No one willingly
turns his thought back to the past, unless all his acts have been submitted to
the censorship of his conscience, which is never deceived; he who has
ambitiously coveted, proudly scorned, recklessly conquered, treacherously
betrayed, greedily seized, or lavishly squandered, must needs fear his own
memory. And yet this is the part of our time that is sacred and set apart, put
beyond the reach of all human mishaps, and removed from the dominion of
Fortune, the part which is disquieted by no want, by no fear, by no attacks of
disease; this can neither be troubled nor be snatched away—it is an everlasting
and unanxious possession. The present offers only one day at a time, and each
by minutes; but all the days of past time will appear when you bid them, they
will suffer you to behold them and keep them at your will—a thing which those
who are engrossed have no time to do. The mind that is untroubled and tranquil
has the power to roam into all the parts of its life; but the minds of the
engrossed, just as if weighted by a yoke, cannot turn and look behind. And so
their life vanishes into an abyss; and as it does no good, no matter how much
water you pour into a vessel, if there is no bottom21 to receive and
hold it, so with time—it makes no difference how much is given; if there is
nothing for it to settle upon, it passes out through the chinks and holes of
the mind. Present time is very brief, so brief, indeed, that to some there
seems to be none; for it is always in motion, it ever flows and hurries on; it
ceases to be before it has come, and can no more brook delay than the firmament
or the stars, whose ever unresting movement never lets them abide in the same
track. The engrossed, therefore, are concerned with present time alone, and it
is so brief that it cannot be grasped, and even this is filched away from them,
distracted as they are among many things.
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