an antiperistasis<96> become more excellent, or by the
excellency of their antipathies are able to preserve them-
selves from the contagion of their enemy vices, and
persist entire beyond the general corruption. For it is
also thus in nature: the greatest balsams do lie en-
veloped in the bodies of the most powerful corrosives.
I say moreover, and I ground upon experience, that
poisons contain within themselves their own antidote,
and that which preserves them from the venom of them-
selves; without which they were not deleterious to
others only, but to themselves also. But it is the cor-
ruption that I fear within me; not the contagion of
commerce without me. 'Tis that unruly regiment
within me, that will destroy me; 'tis that I do infect
myself; the man without a navel<97> yet lives in me.
I feel that original canker corrode and devour me: and
therefore, "Defenda me, Dios, de me!" "Lord, deliver me
from myself!" is a part of my litany, and the first voice
of my retired imaginations. There is no man alone,
because every man is a microcosm, and carries the whole
world about him. "Nunquam minus solus quam cum
solus,"* though it be the apothegm of a wise man is yet
true in the mouth of a fool: for indeed, though in a
wilderness, a man is never alone; not only because he
is with himself, and his own thoughts, but because he
is with the devil, who ever consorts with our solitude,
and is that unruly rebel that musters up those disordered
motions which accompany our sequestered imaginations.
And to speak more narrowly, there is no such thing as
solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone, and