To be a husbandman, is but a retreat from
the city; to be a philosopher, from the world; or rather, a retreat
from the world, as it is Man's--into the world, as it is God's. But
since Nature denies to most men the capacity or appetite, and
Fortune allows but to a very few the opportunities or possibility,
of applying themselves wholly to philosophy, the best mixture of
human affairs that we can make are the employments of a country
life. It is, as Columella calls it, Res sine dubitatione proxima et
quasi consanguinea sapientiae, the nearest neighbour, or rather next
in kindred to Philosophy. Varro says the principles of it are the
same which Ennius made to be the principles of all nature; earth,
water, air, and the sun. It does certainly comprehend more parts of
philosophy than any one profession, art, or science in the world
besides; and, therefore, Cicero says, the pleasures of a husbandman,
Mihi ad sapientis vitam proxime videntur aecedere, come very nigh to
those of a philosopher. There is no other sort of life that affords
so many branches of praise to a panegyrist: The utility of it to a
man's self; the usefulness, or, rather, necessity of it to all the
rest of mankind; the innocence, the pleasure, the antiquity, the
dignity.
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