Letter 94

That part of philosophy which gives to each person his own precepts, and does not shape man in the general, but counsels the husband how to bear himself toward his wife, the father how to rear his children, the master how to govern his slaves, some have accepted alone, leaving the rest as though wandering outside our advantage, as if anyone could give counsel about a part who had not first embraced the sum of the whole of life.

But Ariston the Stoic, on the contrary, holds this part to be trifling, and one that does not sink right down into the breast, having in it nothing but old wives' counsels, and says that the greatest profit comes from the very decrees of philosophy and from the definition of the highest good; "when a man has understood and learned this well, he prescribes for himself what is to be done in each particular case."

As one who learns to throw the javelin aims at a fixed mark and trains his hand to direct what he is to hurl, and when by training and practice he has gained this power, uses it for whatever he wishes, for he has learned to strike not this or that, but whatever he wishes: so he who has equipped himself for the whole of life does not need to be admonished piecemeal, being taught for the whole; for he has learned not how he should live with a wife or with a son, but how he should live well. And in this is included how he should live with wife and children.

Cleanthes judges this part useful indeed, but weak unless it flows from the whole, unless one has learned the very decrees and chief points of philosophy. This topic, then, is divided into two questions: whether it is useful or useless, and whether it alone can make a man good, that is, whether it is superfluous, or makes all the rest superfluous.

Those who wish this part to seem superfluous say this: "If anything set before the eyes delays the sight, it must be removed. While that thing is in the way, he who gives the precept, 'You shall walk so, you shall stretch out your hand thus,' wastes his labour. In the same way, when something blinds the mind and hinders it from discerning the order of duties, he who gives the precept, 'You shall live thus with your father, thus with your wife,' does nothing. For precepts will be of no profit so long as error is poured over the mind; if that is dispelled, it will appear what is owed to each duty. Otherwise you teach him what a healthy man should do, but you do not make him healthy.

You show the poor man how to act the rich man; how can this be done while his poverty remains? You show the hungry man what to do as though he were full; rather, pluck out the hunger fixed in his marrow. The same I say to you of all the vices: they themselves must be removed, and you must not prescribe what cannot be done while they remain. Unless you drive out the false opinions by which we labour, neither will the greedy man heed how money is to be used, nor the timid how to despise dangers.

You must bring it about that he knows money is neither good nor evil; show him the most wretched of the rich. You must bring it about that he knows that whatever we have publicly dreaded is not so much to be feared as rumour spreads abroad; that no one feels pain for long, and that it is short if great, light if long; that against pain a remedy is to be sought in firmness of mind, which makes lighter for itself whatever it has borne stubbornly. The best feature of pain's nature is that one which is prolonged cannot be great, and one which is great cannot be prolonged; that all things must be received bravely which the necessity of the universe lays upon us.

When by these decrees you have brought him into the sight of his own condition, and he has learned that the happy life is not the one that is according to pleasure, but the one that is according to nature; when he has loved virtue as the one good of man and shunned baseness as its only evil, and has known that the rest, riches, offices, good health, strength, dominion, are things in the middle, to be reckoned neither among goods nor among evils: then he will not need a monitor for each thing, to say, 'Walk thus, dine thus; this becomes a man, this a woman; this a married man, this an unmarried.'

For those who give such counsels most diligently cannot themselves do the things. This the pedagogue prescribes to the boy, this the grandmother to her grandson, and the most irascible schoolmaster argues that one must not be angry. If you enter a primary school, you will learn that these things, which the philosophers bandy about with mighty eyebrows, are in the children's primer.

Then will you prescribe things plain or doubtful? Plain things do not need a monitor; in things doubtful the man who prescribes is not believed; therefore it is superfluous to prescribe. Learn this thus: if you admonish on a thing obscure and ambiguous, it will have to be helped by proofs. If you are going to prove it, the things by which you prove are of more avail and are enough by themselves.

'Use a friend thus, a fellow citizen thus, an ally thus.' Why? 'Because it is just.' All these things the topic of justice hands to me. There I find that fairness is to be sought for itself, that we are neither forced to it by fear nor hired by reward, that he is not just to whom anything in this virtue pleases except itself. When I have persuaded myself of this and drunk it in, what good do those precepts do, which teach the man already taught? To give precepts to one who knows is superfluous, to one who does not know too little; for he must hear not only what is prescribed, but why.

Are they, I say, necessary to one who holds true opinions about goods and evils, or to one who does not hold them? He who does not hold them will be helped in nothing by you; rumour, contrary to your admonitions, has taken possession of his ears. He who has an exact judgment about things to be shunned and sought knows what he must do, even though you are silent. Therefore this whole part of philosophy can be done away with."

There are two things on account of which we go wrong: either there is in the mind a wickedness contracted from depraved opinions, or, even if it is not occupied by false ones, it is prone to false ones and is quickly corrupted when an appearance draws it where it ought not. Therefore we must either thoroughly cure the sick mind and free it from vices, or, when it is empty, occupy it beforehand. Both these things the decrees of philosophy do; therefore that kind of prescribing accomplishes nothing.

Besides, if we give precepts to individuals, the task is incomprehensible. For we must give some to the money-lender, some to the tiller of the field, some to the trader, some to one who follows the friendships of kings, some to one who will love equals, some inferiors.

In marriage you will prescribe how a man is to live with a wife whom he has married a virgin, how with one who had experience of another before her marriage; how with a rich wife, how with one without a dowry. Or do you not think there is some difference between the barren and the fruitful, between the older woman and the girl, between the mother and the stepmother? We cannot embrace all the kinds, and yet each demands its own; but the laws of philosophy are brief and bind all things.

Add now that the precepts of wisdom ought to be defined and certain; if any cannot be defined, they are outside wisdom; wisdom knows the bounds of things. Therefore this preceptive part must be removed, because what it promises to a few it cannot furnish to all; but wisdom holds all.

Between public madness and this which is handed over to physicians there is no difference, save that the latter labours from disease, the former from false opinions. The one has drawn the causes of its frenzy from ill health, the other is the ill health of the mind. If anyone gives precepts to a madman how he ought to speak, how to walk, how to behave in public, how in private, he will be more insane than the man he admonishes. His bile must be treated and the very cause of the madness removed. The same must be done in the other case, the mental disease: it itself must be shaken off, otherwise words of admonition are wasted."

These things are said by Ariston; to which we shall answer point by point. First, against that which he says, that if anything blocks the eye and hinders the sight, it must be removed. I confess that this man does not need precepts for seeing, but a remedy by which the sight may be cleared and may escape the obstruction that stands in its way. For we see by nature, to which he who removes the impediments gives back its use. But nature does not teach a man his duty in each case.

Then he whose cataract has been cured does not at once recover his sight, but can also give it back to others; he who is freed from wickedness also frees others. There is no need of exhortation, nor even of counsel, that the eye should understand the properties of colours; it will distinguish white from black even with no one admonishing it. But the mind, on the contrary, needs many precepts to see what is to be done in life; although even the eyes of the sick the physician not only cures but also admonishes.

'There is no reason,' he says, 'why you should at once commit your weak sight to a too-strong light; from darkness first proceed to shaded places, then dare more and gradually accustom yourself to bear the clear light. There is no reason why you should study after food, no reason why you should put a strain on full and swollen eyes; avoid the draught and the force of the cold striking your face'; and other things of the kind, which profit no less than the medicines. Medicine adds counsel to its remedies.

'Error,' he says, 'is the cause of sinning. Precepts do not take this from us, nor do they overthrow false opinions about goods and evils.' I grant that precepts are not of themselves effective for overturning a depraved persuasion of the mind; but they do not therefore avail nothing, even when joined with others. First, they refresh the memory; then what was seen confusedly when all together, when separated, is more clearly observed in its parts. Or by this reasoning you may say that consolation, too, and exhortation are superfluous. But they are not superfluous; neither, therefore, is counsel.

'It is foolish,' he says, 'to prescribe to a sick man what he ought to do as though healthy, when his health must be restored, without which the precepts are vain.' But what of this, that the sick and the healthy have some things in common about which they must be admonished? As that they should not greedily reach for food, that they should avoid weariness. The poor man and the rich have certain precepts in common.

'Cure avarice,' he says, 'and you will have nothing to admonish either the poor man or the rich about, if the desire of both has settled down.' But what of this, that it is one thing not to covet money, another to know how to use money? The avaricious know not the measure of it, those who are not avaricious know not its use. 'Take away the errors,' he says, 'precepts are superfluous.' It is false. For suppose avarice relaxed, suppose luxury checked, the reins thrown on rashness, the spur applied to sloth; even when the vices are removed, we must learn what we should do and how.

'Admonitions,' he says, 'applied to grave vices will accomplish nothing.' Not even medicine conquers incurable diseases, yet it is applied to some as a cure, to others as a relief. Not even the very force of all philosophy, though it summon all its strength to this, will draw out from minds a plague now hard and old. But it does not therefore cure nothing, because it does not cure all.

'What good is it,' he says, 'to point out things that are plain?' Very much; for sometimes we know and do not attend. Admonition does not teach, but it directs the attention, but it rouses, but it holds the memory and does not suffer it to slip away. We pass by most things set before our eyes. To admonish is a kind of exhorting. Often the mind shuts its eyes even to the plain; therefore the knowledge of the best-known things must be pressed upon it. Here that saying of Calvus against Vatinius is to be repeated: 'You know that bribery has been committed, and all know that you know this.'

You know that friendships are to be cultivated reverently, but you do not do it. You know that the man is base who demands chastity of his wife while himself a corrupter of others' wives; you know that as she has no business with an adulterer, so neither have you with a mistress, and yet you do not do it. Therefore you must be brought back again and again to memory; for those things must not be laid away, but kept at hand. Whatever things are wholesome must often be stirred, often turned over, that they may be not only known to us, but also ready. Add now that even plain things are wont to become plainer.

'If the things you prescribe are doubtful,' he says, 'you will have to add proofs; therefore those proofs, not the precepts, will profit.' But what of this, that even without proofs the very authority of the one who admonishes does good? Just as the responses of the jurisconsults are valid, even though no reason is given. Besides, the very things that are prescribed have much weight of themselves, especially if they are either woven into verse or compressed into a sentence in prose, as those of Cato: 'Buy not what is useful, but what is necessary; what is not useful is dear at a farthing'; such as those given by an oracle or like them: 'Spare your time'; 'Know yourself.'

Will you demand a reason when someone has said to you these verses: 'The remedy for wrongs is to forget them'; 'Fortune aids the daring'; 'The slothful man is his own hindrance'? These things do not ask for an advocate; they touch the very feelings, and, with nature exerting her own force, they profit.

The mind bears the seeds of all honourable things, which are roused by admonition, no otherwise than as a spark, helped by a light breath, unfolds its own fire. Virtue is raised up when it is touched and impelled. Besides, there are certain things which are indeed in the mind, but not ready, which begin to be at hand when they have been spoken. Some things lie scattered in different places, which the unexercised mind cannot draw together. Therefore they must be brought into one and joined, that they may be of more avail and lift the mind up more.

Or if precepts help in nothing, all instruction must be done away with, and we ought to be content with nature herself. Those who say this do not see that one man is of a mobile and erect temper, another of a slow and dull one, and at any rate that one is more gifted than another. The force of the mind is fed and grows by precepts, and adds new persuasions to the inborn, and corrects the distorted.

'If a man,' he says, 'has not right decrees, how will admonitions help him, bound as he is by vicious ones?' In this way, that he may be freed from them; for the natural disposition in him is not quenched, but darkened and oppressed. Even so it tries to rise again and strives against depravity, but, having gained a defence and being aided by precepts, it grows strong, if only a long plague has not infected and killed it; for this not even the discipline of philosophy, straining with its whole force, will restore. For what difference is there between the decrees of philosophy and precepts, except that the former are general precepts, the latter special? Both things prescribe, but the one in general, the other in particular.

'If a man,' he says, 'has right and honourable decrees, he is admonished superfluously.' By no means; for this man too has indeed been taught to do what he ought, but he does not see these things clearly enough. For we are hindered not only by the passions from doing what we approve, but also by the want of skill in finding out what each case demands. We have sometimes a composed mind, but one inert and unexercised in finding the way of duty, which admonition points out.

'Expel,' he says, 'false opinions about goods and evils, and put true ones in their place, and admonition will have nothing to do.' The mind is no doubt set in order by this method, but not by this alone. For although it is gathered by arguments which things are goods and evils, nevertheless precepts have their own parts. Both prudence and justice consist of duties; duties are arranged by precepts.

Besides, the very judgment about goods and evils is confirmed by the doing of duty, and to this admonition leads. For both follow each other: precept cannot exist unless the judgment about goods and evils has gone before, and this very judgment is made fuller by precept.

'Precepts,' he says, 'are infinite.' It is false. For about the greatest and most necessary matters they are not infinite. They have slight differences, which times, places, persons demand, but for these too general precepts are given.

'No one,' he says, 'cures madness by precepts; therefore not wickedness either.' It is unlike. For if you take away madness, health returns; but false opinions about goods and evils are not removed when wickedness has been removed; one must learn what to do.

'Laws,' he says, 'do not bring it about that we do what we ought, and what else are they than precepts mixed with threats?' First of all, they do not persuade for this reason, that they threaten; but precepts do not compel, but entreat. Then laws deter from crime, precepts exhort to duty. Add to this that the laws too profit toward good morals, especially if they not only command but teach. In this matter I dissent from Posidonius, who says: 'I disapprove that prologues were added to the laws of Plato. A law ought to be brief, that it may the more easily be understood by the unskilled. Let it be a voice sent down from heaven; let it command, not dispute. Nothing seems to me colder, nothing more silly, than a law with a preface. Warn me, tell me what you wish me to do; I do not learn, I obey.' But laws of this kind profit; therefore you will see states with bad laws have bad morals.

'But they do not profit with all.'

Neither does philosophy; and yet it is not therefore useless and ineffective for the shaping of minds. What then? Is philosophy not the law of life? But let us grant that laws do not profit; it does not therefore follow that admonitions do not profit. Or by this reasoning deny that consolations profit, and dissuasions, and exhortations, and reproaches, and praises. All these are kinds of admonition. Through these one comes to the perfect state of the mind.

Nothing more clothes minds with honour, and recalls the doubtful and those inclining to depravity to the right, than the company of good men. For little by little it sinks into the breast, and to be often looked upon, often heard, has the force of precepts. The mere meeting with the wise, by Hercules, profits, and there is something that flows from a great man even when he is silent.

Nor could I easily tell you in what way it profits, just as I understand that it does profit. 'Certain tiny creatures,' as Phaedo says, 'when they bite are not felt; so fine and deceptive into peril is their force. The bite is shown by a swelling, and in the very swelling no wound appears.' The same will befall you in the company of wise men: you will not detect how or when it profits you, you will detect that it has profited.

'To what,' you say, 'does this tend?' That good precepts, if they are often with you, will profit as much as good examples. Pythagoras says that the mind becomes different for those who enter a temple and behold the images of the gods close at hand, and await the voice of some oracle.

And who will deny that even the most ignorant are struck by the force of certain precepts, such as these very brief ones: 'Nothing too much'; 'The greedy mind is sated by no gain'; 'Expect from another what you have done to another'? We hear these with a kind of shock, nor is anyone permitted to doubt or to ask 'Why?'; to such a degree does the very truth lead, even without reason.

If reverence reins in minds and checks vices, why should not admonition do the same? If chastisement imposes shame, why should not admonition, even though it uses bare precepts? But that admonition is more effective and penetrates more deeply which helps by reason what it prescribes, which adds why each thing is to be done, and what fruit awaits the doer obedient to the precepts. If we profit by command, then also by admonition; and we do profit by command; therefore also by admonition.

Virtue is divided into two parts, into the contemplation of truth and action. Contemplation instruction hands over, action admonition. Right action both exercises and displays virtue. But if one who counsels profits a man about to act, then one who admonishes will profit too. Therefore, if right action is necessary to virtue, and admonition points out right actions, admonition too is necessary.

Two things give the most strength to the mind, faith in the truth and confidence: both Marcus Agrippa, a man of mighty mind, who alone of those whom the civil wars made famous and powerful was fortunate for the common good, used to say he owed much to this maxim: 'For by concord small things grow, by discord the greatest fall apart.' By this, he said, he was made both the best of brothers and the best of friends.

If maxims of this kind, received familiarly into the mind, shape it, why cannot this part of philosophy, which consists of such maxims, do the same? Part of virtue consists of teaching, part of exercise; you must both learn and confirm by doing what you have learned. If this is so, not only the doctrines of wisdom profit, but also the precepts, which coerce and banish our passions as by an edict.

'Philosophy,' he says, 'is divided into these, knowledge and a habit of mind. For he who has learned and grasped what is to be done and avoided is not yet wise, unless his mind has been transformed into the things he has learned. This third part, the preceptive, is from both, both from decrees and from habit. And so it is superfluous for the completion of virtue, for which those two suffice.'

By that reasoning, then, consolation too is superfluous, for this also is from both, and exhortation and persuasion and argumentation itself. For this too proceeds from a composed and strong habit of mind. But although these things come from the best habit of mind, the best habit of mind comes from these; both it produces them, and from them it is itself produced.

Then, what you say is the mark of a man already perfect and having attained the height of human happiness. But to these things one comes slowly; meanwhile the way in things to be done must be shown even to the imperfect but advancing man. This perhaps wisdom itself will give to itself even without admonition, since it has now brought the mind to such a point that it cannot be moved except toward the right. But for weaker talents it is necessary that someone go before: 'This you shall avoid, this you shall do.'

Besides, if he waits for the time when of himself he may know what is best to do, meanwhile he will err, and by erring will be hindered from coming to that point at which he may be content with himself. He must therefore be governed, while he is beginning to be able to govern himself. Boys learn by a copy. Their fingers are held and led by another's hand through the shapes of letters; then they are bidden to imitate the models set before them and to fashion their handwriting after them. So the mind is helped while it learns by following a pattern.

These are the things by which it is proved that this part of philosophy is not superfluous. It is asked next whether it alone suffices to make a man wise. To this question we shall give its own day; meanwhile, omitting the arguments, is it not plain that we need some advocate to prescribe against the precepts of the crowd?

No voice is borne to our ears without harm; they harm who wish us well, they harm who curse us. For the imprecation of these instils in us false fears, and the love of those teaches us ill by wishing us well. For it sends us to far-off goods, uncertain and wandering, when we could draw happiness from home.

We are not allowed, I say, to go by the straight road. Parents drag us to depravity, slaves drag us. No one errs for himself alone, but scatters his madness among those nearest and receives theirs in turn. And therefore in individuals are the vices of whole peoples, because the people gave them. While each makes another worse, he has been made worse himself; he has learned the worse things, then, when wickedness has been heaped into one, what is worst for each is gathered.

Let there be, then, some guardian, and let him pluck our ear from time to time and drive off rumours and cry out against the praising crowds. For you are mistaken if you think the vices are born with us; they came upon us, they were heaped on us. Therefore by frequent admonitions let the opinions that din around us be repulsed.

Nature attaches us to no vice; she brought us forth free and untrammelled. She set nothing in the open which would arouse our greed;

gold and silver, and the iron that on account of these never keeps peace, she hid away, as though they were ill committed to us. We have brought into the light the things over which we should fight; we have dug out both the causes of our perils and their instruments by tearing apart the mass of the earth; we have handed over our evils to fortune, and we do not blush that the highest things among us are those that had been lowest in the earth.

Do you wish to know how false a gleam has deceived your eyes? There is nothing fouler than those metals, nothing more obscure, so long as they lie sunk and wrapped in their own mire; why not, since they are dragged out through the darkness of the longest shafts? There is nothing more shapeless than they while they are being made and separated from their dross. Look, finally, at the very workmen through whose hands the barren and infernal kind of earth is purged; you will see with how great a soot they are smeared.

And yet these things stain minds more than bodies, and there is more filth in the possessor of them than in the craftsman. It is necessary, therefore, to be admonished, to have someone of sound judgment, and amid so many uproars of false things to hear one true voice. But what shall that be? Surely one that whispers wholesome words into ears deafened by ambition, which says:

'There is no reason why you should envy those whom the people call great and happy, no reason why applause should shake out of you the habit and soundness of a composed mind, no reason why that man clad in purple beneath his fasces should make you loathe your own tranquillity, no reason why you should judge him happier for whom the crowd is cleared away than yourself whom the lictor thrusts back from his path. If you wish to wield a power profitable to you and burdensome to no one, clear away your own vices.

There are many found who would set fire to cities, who would lay low things impregnable for ages and safe for several generations, who would raise a mound level with the citadel and batter walls drawn up to a marvellous height with rams and engines. There are many who drive armies before them and press upon the backs of the enemy, who, drenched in much blood, come to the great sea; but these too conquered, that they might conquer their desire.

No one withstood them as they came and aimed at dominion and destruction; but they did not withstand themselves. The madness of laying waste another's land drove on the unhappy Alexander and sent him to unknown places. Do you think him sound who begins with the disasters of Greece, in which he was educated? Who snatches from each people what is best to it, bids Lacedaemon serve, Athens be silent? Not content with the wreck of so many cities which Philip had either conquered or bought, he throws down some in one place, some in another, and carries his arms round the whole world, nor does his cruelty stop anywhere, weary, after the manner of savage beasts that bite more than hunger demands.

Already he has heaped many kingdoms into one kingdom; already Greeks and Persians fear the same man; already nations even free from Darius receive the yoke: yet he goes beyond the ocean and the sun, he is indignant to turn his victory aside from the footsteps of Hercules and Bacchus, he prepares force against nature herself. He does not wish to go, but he cannot stand still, no otherwise than weights cast down a precipice, whose end of going is to have lain still.

To Gnaeus Pompey too it was not virtue or reason that counselled foreign and domestic wars, but the insane love of false greatness. Now into Spain and the arms of Sertorius, now to fettering the pirates and pacifying the seas, he went; these were the pretexts put forward for prolonging his power.

What drew him into Africa, what into the north, what against Mithridates and Armenia and all the corners of Asia? Doubtless a boundless desire of growing greater, since to himself alone he seemed too little great. What flung Gaius Caesar against his own fate and that of the commonwealth alike? Glory and ambition and no measure of standing out above the rest. He could not endure one man before himself, when the commonwealth bore two above itself.

What, do you think that Gaius Marius, once consul, for he received one consulship, the rest he snatched, when he was cutting down the Teutones and Cimbri, when he was pursuing Jugurtha through the deserts of Africa, sought so many perils at the prompting of virtue? Marius led the armies, ambition led Marius.

These men, while they shook all things, were themselves shaken, after the manner of whirlwinds, which whirl about what they snatch up, but are themselves first whirled, and for this reason rush on with greater force, because they have no governance of themselves; and so, when they have been an evil to many, they themselves too feel that pestilent force by which they have harmed most men. There is no reason why you should believe that anyone becomes happy by another's unhappiness.

All those examples, which are pressed upon our eyes and ears, must be unwoven, and the breast filled with evil speech must be emptied. Virtue must be brought into the occupied place, which may root out lies and the things that please contrary to truth, which may separate us from the people, whom we trust too much, and give us back to sincere opinions. For this is wisdom, to be turned back to nature and restored to that place from which the common error has driven us out.

A great part of soundness is to have left behind the encouragers of madness and to have gone far from that mutually harmful gathering. That you may know this is true, look how differently each man lives for the people and for himself. Solitude is not of itself a teacher of innocence, nor do the fields teach frugality, but when the witness and spectator has withdrawn, the vices subside, whose fruit is to be displayed and beheld.

Who puts on purple that he is to show to no one? Who lays out a feast in secret on gold? Who, flung beneath the shade of some rustic tree, unfolds alone the pomp of his luxury? No one is fine for his own eyes, nor even for those of a few or of his household, but spreads out the apparatus of his vices in proportion to the crowd that looks on.

So it is: the admirer and the witness is the incitement of all the things over which we are mad. You will bring it about that we do not covet, if you bring it about that we do not display. Ambition and luxury and ungovernableness need a stage: you will cure these things if you hide them.

And so, if we are placed in the midst of the uproar of cities, let a monitor stand at our side and, against those who praise vast estates, let him praise the man rich on little and measuring wealth by use. Against those who exalt influence and power, let him himself look up to the leisure handed over to letters and to a mind turned back from externals to its own.

Let him show that those happy by the world's reckoning are, on that envied pinnacle of theirs, trembling and stunned, and holding a far different opinion of themselves than is held by others. For the things that seem lofty to others are, to themselves, sheer precipices. And so they are breathless and tremble as often as they have looked down on that precipice of their own greatness. For they think on the various mishaps, and on heights especially slippery.

Then they dread the things they sought, and happiness, which makes them burdensome to others, lies the more heavily upon themselves. Then they praise leisure, gentle and in one's own power; brightness is hateful, and flight from things still standing is sought. Then at last you may see men philosophizing through fear, and taking good counsel through their evils. For, as though these things were contrary to each other, good fortune and a good mind, so we grow wiser in evils; prosperity takes away the right. Farewell.