What
is there among the actions of beasts so illogical and repugnant to
reason? When they do anything which seems to proceed from that
which we call reason, we disdain to allow them that perfection, and
attribute it only to a natural instinct. If we could but learn to
number our days (as we are taught to pray that we might) we should
adjust much better our other accounts, but whilst we never consider
an end of them, it is no wonder if our cares for them be without end
too. Horace advises very wisely, and in excellent good words,
spatio brevi spem longam reseces; from a short life cut off all
hopes that grow too long. They must be pruned away like suckers
that choke the mother-plant, and hinder it from bearing fruit. And
in another place to the same sense, Vitae summa brevis spem nos
vetat inchoare longam, which Seneca does not mend when he says, Oh
quanta dementia est spes longas inchoantium! but he gives an example
there of an acquaintance of his named Senecio, who from a very mean
beginning by great industry in turning about of money through all
ways of gain, had attained to extraordinary riches, but died on a
sudden after having supped merrily, In ipso actu bene cedentium
rerum, in ipso procurrentis fortunae impetu; in the full course of
his good fortune, when she had a high tide and a stiff gale and all
her sails on; upon which occasion he cries, out of Virgil:
Insere nunc Melibaee pyros, pone ordine vites:
Go to, Melibaeus, now,
Go graff thy orchards and thy vineyards plant;
Behold the fruit!
For this Senecio I have no compassion, because he was taken, as we
say, in ipso facto, still labouring in the work of avarice; but the
poor rich man in St.
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