--the golden mean is best--to live free from the squalor of a mean
abode, and yet not be a mark for envy. It is the tall pine which is
cruelly shaken by the wind, the highest summits that are struck in the
storm, and the lofty towers that fall so heavily.

[Footnote 1: Letters to and from Merck.]

[Footnote 2: Horace. Odes II. x.]

He who has taken to heart the teaching of my philosophy--who knows,
therefore, that our whole existence is something which had better
not have been, and that to disown and disclaim it is the highest
wisdom--he will have no great expectations from anything or any
condition in life: he will spend passion upon nothing in the world,
nor lament over-much if he fails in any of his undertakings. He
will feel the deep truth of what Plato[1] says: [Greek: oute ti ton
anthropinon haxion on megalaes spondaes]--nothing in human affairs is
worth any great anxiety; or, as the Persian poet has it,

_Though from thy grasp all worldly things should flee,
Grieve not for them, for they are nothing worth:
And though a world in thy possession be,
Joy not, for worthless are the things of earth.
Since to that better world 'tis given to thee
To pass, speed on, for this is nothing worth._[2]

[Footnote 1: _Republic_, x. 604.]

[Footnote 2: _Translator's Note_. From the Anvár-i Suhailí--_The
Lights of Canopus_--being the Persian version of the _Table of