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Ancient Books ~ Politics, Philosophy & Liberty Religio Medici, Hydriotahia, And The Letter To A Friend ~ Sect. 44.Sect. 44.--I am much taken with two verses of Lucan, since I have been able not only, as we do at school, to construe, but understand: "Victurosque Dei celant ut vivere, durent, Felix esse mori."* We're all deluded, vainly searching ways To make us happy by the length of days; For cunningly, to make's protract this breath, The gods conceal the happiness of death. There be many excellent strains in that poet, where- with his stoical genius hath liberally supplied him: and truly there are singular pieces in the philosophy of Zeno,<61> and doctrine of the stoics, which I perceive, delivered in a pulpit, pass for current divinity: yet herein are they in extremes, that can allow a man to be his own assassin, and so highly extol the end and suicide of Cato. This is indeed not to fear death, but yet to be afraid of life. It is a brave act of valour to contemn death; but, where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live: and herein religion hath taught us a noble example; for all the * Pharsalia, iv. 519. valiant acts of Curtius, Scaevola, or Codrus, do not parallel, or match, that one of Job; and sure there is no torture to the rack of a disease, nor any poniards in death itself, like those in the way or prologue unto it. "Emori nolo, sed me esse mortuum nihil curo;" I would not die, but care not to be dead. Were I of Caesar's religion,<62> I should be of his desires, and wish rather to go off at one blow, than to be sawed in pieces by the grating torture of a disease. Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I, that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabrick hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and, considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once. 'Tis not only the mischief of diseases, and the villany of poisons, that make an end of us; we vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death:--it is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet, he doth not kill us. There is therefore but one comfort left, that though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death. God would not ex- empt himself from that; the misery of immortality in the flesh he undertook not, that was immortal. Certainly there is no happiness within this circle of flesh; nor is it in the opticks of these eyes to behold felicity. The first day of our jubilee is death; the devil hath therefore failed of his desires; we are hap- pier with death than we should have been without it: there is no misery but in himself, where there is no end of misery; and so indeed, in his own sense, the stoic is in the right.<63> He forgets that he can die, who complains of misery: we are in the power of no calamity while death is in our own. Religio Medici, Hydriotahia, And The Letter To A Friend ~
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