26
The will of Nature may be learned from things upon which we are all agreed. As, when our neighbor’s boy has broken a cup, or the like, we are ready at once to say, These are casualties that will happen; be assured, then, that when your own cup is likewise broken, you ought to be affected just as when another’s cup was broken. Now apply this to greater things. Is the child or wife of another dead? There is no one who would not say, This is an accident of mortality. But if any one’s own child happens to die, it is immediately, Alas ! how wretched am I! It should be always remembered how we are affected on hearing the same thing concerning others.
27
As a mark Happiness, the effect of virtue, is the mark which God hath set up for us to aim at. Our missing it is no work of His; nor so properly anything real, as a mere negative and failure of our own.—C. is not set up for the sake of missing the aim, so neither does the nature of evil exist in the world.
28
If a person had delivered up your body to some passer-by, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in delivering up your own mind to any reviler, to be disconcerted and confounded?
29
This chapter, except some very trifling differences, is the same with the fifteenth of the third book of the Discourses.-H.
