have whereon to employ their drugs and their art. If we have not known
how to live, 'tis injustice to teach us how to die, and make the end
difform from all the rest; if we have known how to live firmly and
quietly, we shall know how to die so too. They may boast as much as they
please:

"Tota philosophorum vita commentatio mortis est;"

["The whole life of philosophers is the meditation of death."
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 30.]

but I fancy that, though it be the end, it is not the aim of life; 'tis
its end, its extremity, but not, nevertheless, its object; it ought
itself to be its own aim and design; its true study is to order, govern,
and suffer itself. In the number of several other offices, that the
general and principal chapter of Knowing how to live comprehends, is this
article of Knowing how to die; and, did not our fears give it weight,
one of the lightest too.

To judge of them by utility and by the naked truth, the lessons of
simplicity are not much inferior to those which learning teaches us: nay,
quite the contrary. Men differ in sentiment and force; we must lead them
to their own good according to their capacities and by various ways:

"Quo me comque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes."

["Wherever the season takes me,(where the tempest drives me)
there I am carried as a guest."--Horace, Ep., i. i, 15.]

I never saw any peasant among my neighbours cogitate with what