has done for me; am well pleased with it, and proud of it. A man does
wrong to that great and omnipotent giver to refuse, annul, or disfigure
his gift: all goodness himself, he has made everything good:

"Omnia quae secundum naturam sunt, aestimatione digna sunt."

["All things that are according to nature are worthy of esteem."
--Cicero, De Fin., iii. 6.]

Of philosophical opinions, I preferably embrace those that are most
solid, that is to say, the most human and most our own: my discourse is,
suitable to my manners, low and humble: philosophy plays the child, to my
thinking, when it puts itself upon its Ergos to preach to us that 'tis a
barbarous alliance to marry the divine with the earthly, the reasonable
with the unreasonable, the severe with the indulgent, the honest with the
dishonest. That pleasure is a brutish quality, unworthy to be tasted by
a wise man; that the sole pleasure he extracts from the enjoyment of a
fair young wife is a pleasure of his conscience to perform an action
according to order, as to put on his boots for a profitable journey.
Oh, that its followers had no more right, nor nerves, nor vigour in
getting their wives' maidenheads than in its lesson.

This is not what Socrates says, who is its master and ours: he values, as
he ought, bodily pleasure; but he prefers that of the mind as having more
force, constancy, facility, variety, and dignity. This, according to
him, goes by no means alone--he is not so fantastic--but only it goes
first; temperance with him is the moderatrix, not the adversary of
pleasure. Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than
prudent and just.