Book 1
12
You are mad; you have lost your senses. Do not you know that freedom is a very beautiful and valuable thing? But for me to choose at random, and for things to happen agreeably to such a choice, may be so far from a beautiful thing, as to be of all things the most undesirable. For how do we proceed in writing? Do I choose to write the name of Dion (for instance) as I will? No, but I am taught to be willing to write it as it ought to be written. And what is the case in music? The same. And what in every other art or science? Otherwise, it would be of no purpose to learn anything if it were to be adapted to each one’s particular humor. Is it, then, only in the greatest and principal matter, that of freedom, permitted me to desire at random? By no means; but true instruction is this,—learning to desire that things should happen as they do. And how do they happen? As the appointer of them hath appointed. He hath appointed that there should be summer and winter, plenty and dearth, virtue and vice, and all such contrarieties, for the harmony of the whole. To each of us he has given a body and its parts, and our several possessions and companions. Mindful of this appointment, we should enter upon a course of education and instruction, not in order to change the constitution of things,—a gift neither practicable nor desirable,—but that, things being as they are with regard to us, we may have our minds accommodated to the facts. Can we, for instance, flee from mankind? How is that possible? Can we, by conversing with them, transform them? Who has given us such a power? What, then, remains, or what method is there to be found, for such a commerce with them that, while they act according to the appearances in their own minds, we may nevertheless be affected conformably to nature?
