XVI. But those who forget the
past, neglect the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very
brief and troubled; when they have reached the end of it, the poor wretches
perceive too late that for such a long while they have been busied in doing
nothing. Nor because they sometimes invoke death, have you any reason to think
it any proof that they find life long. In their folly they are harassed by
shifting emotions which rush them into the very things they dread; they often
pray for death because they fear it. And, too, you have no reason to think that
this is any proof that they are living a long time—the fact that the day often
seems to them long, the fact that they complain that the hours pass slowly
until the time set for dinner arrives; for, whenever their engrossments fail
them, they are restless because they are left with nothing to do, and they do
not know how to dispose of their leisure or to drag out the time. And so they strive
for something else to occupy them, and all the intervening time is irksome;
exactly as they do when a gladiatorial exhibition\b is been announced, or when
they are waiting for the appointed time of some other show or amusement, they
want to skip over the days that lie between. All postponement of something they
hope for seems long to them. Yet the time which they enjoy is short and swift,
and it is made much shorter by their own fault; for they flee from one pleasure
to another and cannot remain fixed in one desire. Their days are not long to
them, but hateful; yet, on the other hand, how scanty seem the nights which
they spend in the arms of a harlot or in wine! It is this also that accounts
for the madness of poets in fostering human frailties by the tales in which
they represent that Jupiter under the enticement of the pleasures of a lover
doubled the length of the night. For what is it but to inflame our vices to
inscribe the name of the gods as their sponsors, and to present the excused
indulgence of divinity as an example to our own weakness? Can the nights which
they pay for so dearly fail to seem all too short to these men? They lose the
day in expectation of the night, and the night in fear of the dawn.
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