A
sober man cannot get too soon out of drunken company; though they be
never so kind and merry among themselves, it is not unpleasant only,
but dangerous to him. Do ye wonder that a virtuous man should love
to be alone? It is hard for him to be otherwise; he is so, when he
is among ten thousand; neither is the solitude so uncomfortable to
be alone without any other creature, as it is to be alone in the
midst of wild beasts. Man is to man all kind of beasts--a fawning
dog, a roaring lion, a thieving fox, a robbing wolf, a dissembling
crocodile, a treacherous decoy, and a rapacious vulture. The
civilest, methinks, of all nations, are those whom we account the
most barbarous; there is some moderation and good nature in the
Toupinambaltians who eat no men but their enemies, whilst we learned
and polite and Christian Europeans, like so many pikes and sharks,
prey upon everything that we can swallow. It is the great boast of
eloquence and philosophy, that they first congregated men dispersed,
united them into societies, and built up the houses and the walls of
cities. I wish they could unravel all they had woven; that we might
have our woods and our innocence again instead of our castles and
our policies.
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