disgrace, backbite, rail, bear false witness, swear, forswear, fight and
wrangle, spend their goods, lives, fortunes, friends, undo one another, to
enrich an harpy advocate, that preys upon them both, and cries _Eia
Socrates, Eia Xantippe_; or some corrupt judge, that like the [350]kite in
Aesop, while the mouse and frog fought, carried both away. Generally they
prey one upon another as so many ravenous birds, brute beasts, devouring
fishes, no medium, [351]_omnes hic aut captantur aut captant; aut cadavera
quae lacerantur, aut corvi qui lacerant_, either deceive or be deceived;
tear others or be torn in pieces themselves; like so many buckets in a
well, as one riseth another falleth, one's empty, another's full; his ruin
is a ladder to the third; such are our ordinary proceedings. What's the
market? A place, according to [352]Anacharsis, wherein they cozen one
another, a trap; nay, what's the world itself? [353]A vast chaos, a
confusion of manners, as fickle as the air, _domicilium insanorum_, a
turbulent troop full of impurities, a mart of walking spirits, goblins, the
theatre of hypocrisy, a shop of knavery, flattery, a nursery of villainy,
the scene of babbling, the school of giddiness, the academy of vice; a
warfare, _ubi velis nolis pugnandum, aut vincas aut succumbas_, in which
kill or be killed; wherein every man is for himself, his private ends, and
stands upon his own guard. No charity, [354]love, friendship, fear of God,
alliance, affinity, consanguinity, Christianity, can contain them, but if
they be any ways offended, or that string of commodity be touched, they
fall foul. Old friends become bitter enemies on a sudden for toys and small
offences, and they that erst were willing to do all mutual offices of love
and kindness, now revile and persecute one another to death, with more than
Vatinian hatred, and will not be reconciled. So long as they are behoveful,
they love, or may bestead each other, but when there is no more good to be
expected, as they do by an old dog, hang him up or cashier him: which [355]
Cato counts a great indecorum, to use men like old shoes or broken glasses,
which are flung to the dunghill; he could not find in his heart to sell an