SI nous nous amusions par fois à nous considerer, et le temps que nous mettons à contreroller autruy, et à connoistre les choses qui sont hors de nous, que nous l’employissions à nous sonder nous mesmes, nous sentirions aisément combien toute cette nostre contexture est bastie de pieces foibles et defaillantes. N’est-ce pas vn singulier tesmoignage d’imperfection, ne pouuoir r’assoir nostre contentement en aucune chose, et que par desir mesme et imagination il soit hors de nostre puissance de choisir ce qu’il nous faut? Dequoy porte bon tesmoignage cette grande dispute, qui a tousiours esté entre les Philosophes, pour trouuer le souuerain bien de l’homme, et qui dure encores et durera eternellement, sans resolution et sans accord.
If we sometimes took the trouble to consider ourselves, and spent in sounding ourselves the time we spend in checking up on others and in getting to know things outside us, we would easily feel how much this whole fabric of ours is built of weak and failing pieces. Is it not a singular proof of imperfection that we cannot settle our contentment on any one thing, and that even in desire and imagination it is beyond our power to choose what we need? Good evidence of this is the great dispute that has always gone on among the philosophers about finding man’s sovereign good, and that still goes on and will go on forever, without resolution and without agreement.
Dum abest quod auemus, id exsuperare videtur / Cætera; post aliud, cùm contigit, illud auemus, / Et sitis æqua tenet.
While what we long for is absent, it seems to surpass / all the rest; then, once we have it, we long for something else, / and the same thirst holds us.
Quoy que ce soit qui tombe en nostre connoissance et iouïssance, nous sentons qu’il ne nous satisfait pas, et allons beant apres les choses aduenir et inconnuës, d’autant que les presentes ne nous soulent point. Non pas à mon aduis qu’elles n’ayent assez dequoy nous souler, mais c’est que nous les saisissons d’vne prise malade et desreglée. Nam cùm vidit hic ad vsum quæ flagitat vsus, / Omnia iam fermè mortalibus esse parata; / Diuitiis homines et honore et laude potentes / Affluere, atque bona natorum excellere fama; / Nec minus esse domi, cuiquam tamen anxia corda, / Atque animum infestis cogi seruire querelis: / Intellexit ibi vitium vas facere ipsum, / Omniáque, illius vitio, corrumpier intus / Quæ collata foris et commoda quæque venirent.
Whatever comes within our knowledge and enjoyment, we feel that it does not satisfy us, and we go gaping after things to come and unknown, because present things do not fill us up. Not, in my opinion, that they do not have enough in them to fill us, but because we seize them with a sick and disordered grip. For when he saw that what need demands for living / was nearly all already provided for mortals, / that men, powerful in wealth, honor and praise, / were abounding, and excelled in the good name of their children, / and yet that at home no one had a heart the less anxious, / and that the mind was forced to slave under hostile complaints, / he understood then that the fault lay in the vessel itself, / and that by its fault everything was spoiled within, / whatever good things were gathered from outside and came into it.
Nostre appetit est irresolu et incertain: il ne sçait rien tenir, ny rien iouyr de bonne façon. L’homme estimant que ce soit le vice de ces choses qu’il tient, se remplit et se paist d’autres choses qu’il ne sçait point, et qu’il ne cognoist point, où il applique ses desirs et ses esperances, les prend en honneur et reuerence: comme dit Cæsar, Communi fit vitio naturæ, vt inuisis, latitantibus atque incognitis rebus magis confidamus, vehementiùsque exterreamur.
Our appetite is irresolute and uncertain; it can neither hold on to anything nor enjoy anything in the right way. Man, thinking it is the fault of the things he holds, fills and feeds himself with other things that he does not know and does not understand, on which he sets his desires and hopes, and holds them in honor and reverence. As Caesar says: It happens through a common fault of nature that we have more confidence in things unseen, hidden and unknown, and are more violently terrified by them.