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If you reflect on this at your death, you will depart with the lefs reluctance; when you confider that you are leaving a world, where the very partners of your fortune, for whom you have undergone fo many toils, whom you have been fo anxious to serve, the conftant fubjects of your good wishes, these very people wish to have you gone; hoping, perhaps, to be more eafy and happy without you.

*

Why then should any one wish for a longer abode in fuch a world as this? Yet do not, on that account, depart with lefs good-will towards them; but ftill preferve your own confiftent character, and be friendly, benevolent, and at peace with all mankind.

On the other hand, do not depart as if dragged out of life by force; but as when a man dies an eafy death, the foul quits the body almost infenfibly, fuch ought your departure from your friends to be. For na

* He seems to allude to fome profligate retainers to his fon Commodus, who hoped to get into power, when he came to the throne; which was really the case.

ture

ture has indeed connected and united you with them, but now diffolves the union. F feparate myself from them, therefore, as from relations; yet not by force, but voluntarily for this feparation is one of those things which are according to nature.

35. In the actions of other people, which come under your obfervation, accustom yourself, as far as it is practicable, to discover what they propofe by them: yet your first attention ought to be directed to your own

conduct.

36. Remember that it is fome latent paffion or opinion, that actuates and impels you different ways, as the wires do a puppet. This has the force of eloquence, this gives a colour to your life, this, in fhort, if I may fo speak, is really the man.

Never confound in your ideas with this ruling part, that veffel of clay which furrounds it; nor its material inftruments or members which adhere to it: for they are no more than the tools of a mechanick, with this only difference, that these members are united to the body. Though they are of

no

no more use, without the cause that actuates them or checks their motion, than the shuttle to the weaver, the pen to the writer, or the whip to the charioteer.

END OF THE TENTH BOOK.

BOOK XI

§. I.

THE

HE privileges of the rational foul are thefe: it contemplates itself, it regulates itself, and renders itself fuch as it wishes to be. The fruits* which it produces, itself enjoys: whereas others enjoy the product of trees, or of domestick animals, and the like.

The rational foul likewise obtains its end, at whatever period the termination of life approaches: contrary to what happens in a dance, (fuppofe) or a dramatic performance on the stage, where, if any thing interrupts it, the whole action is rendered incomplete. But the foul, in whatever part of the drama it is surprised by death, has performed what is past to perfection, and without any defect,

* See B. ix. §. 9.

and

and can truly fay, "I have obtained all that is really my own.”

Moreover, it ranges over this univerfal fyftem, and the void spaces which furround it, and extends its views into the boundless gulph of duration, and comprehends and surveys in imagination the periodical renovation of all things; and discovers, that our fucceffors will fee nothing new, as our predeceffors faw nothing more than what we have seen.

But he who has lived forty years, if he is a man of any obfervation, (fuch is the uniformity of events) may be faid to have seen every thing paft or to come.

It is likewife the property of the rational foul to love those who ftand in any near relation to it, to have a regard to truth and modefty, and to reverence her own authority beyond all things; which is also the property of the law, or the rule of justice. So that right reason and the rule of justice really coincide, and are the fame thing.

2. If you find yourself too much captivated with an agreeable fong, a dance, or

the

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