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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