Selected quad for the lemma: earth_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
earth_n	great_a	heaven_n	star_n	6,109	5	8.1401	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A37105	The morall philosophy of the stoicks written originally in French by that ingenious gentleman Monsieur du Vaix, first president of the Parliament of Provence ; Englished by Charles Cotton ...; Philosophie morale des stoïques. English	Du Vair, Guillaume, 1556-1621.; Cotton, Charles, 1630-1687.	1663 (1663)	Wing D2915; ESTC R3984	38,326	126

Passions and to behave himself upon all occasions with moderate Reason We must as necessary to our happiness purge the Mind from Passions and learn how to animate our selves against whatever may happen to us Now that which can best instruct us in this way and teach us the inclinations of a right spirit and a will governed by reason is Prudence which is the beginning and end of all Vertue For that making us exactly and truly to know the condition and quality of things objected to us renders us sit to distinguish what is according to Nature what is not what we ought to pursue and what we ought to fly She removes the erroneous opinions that afflict us restores our natural affections and in her Train follow all other Vertues of which she is at once the Mother Nurse and Guardian Oh! the life of Man were happy if alwaies conducted by this excellent guide But alas by how much this Vertue is excellent by so much is it rare and is in our minds like the veins of Gold in the earth found in few places It is in my judgement that great magnificent and impenetrable Buckler sorged by Vulcan for Achilles in which he carried the Heavens the Earth the Ocean Clouds Stars Thunder Cities Armies Assemblies and Battels and to be short what in this world is to be seen thereby intimating to us that knowledge renders the Soul of Man more invulnerable than a large seven-sold sheild can do the body But as Achilles went to the School of Chiron to make himself sit to bear this massy sheild so must you come to that of Philosophy to learn the use of Prudence which will teach you that Prudence is to be exercised two waies one to advance us to good the other to repell evil But as we bring not our minds pure to Philosophy our Physitian but rather prepossessed and contaminated with froward popular humours we must like a skilful Chirurgion who before he make any application to the wounded part draws forth malignant humours begin by purging our mind of all such rebellious Passions as by their smoak obnubilate the eye of Reason otherwise the Precept of good manners and sound affections is of no more advantage to the Soul than abundance of of food to a corrupt body which the more you endeavour to nourish you offend We call that Passion which is a violent motion of the Soul in her sensitive part and makes her either apply her self to what she thinks is good or recede from what she takes to be ill For though we have but one Soul cause of life and action which is all in all and all in every part yet hath that one Soul very different agitations even contrary to one another according to the diversity of Vessels where she is retained and the variety of objects presented to her In one she hath her Encrease in another her Motion in a third her Sence in a fourth her Memory in a sift her Discourse as the Sun who from one essence distributing his raies in diverse places warms one and illuminates another melts wax and dries the earth dissipates clouds and exhausts lakes and marshes When the Parts where she is inclosed only keep and imploy her to the proportion of their capacity and the necessity of their right use her effects are sweet benigne and well governed but on the contrary when they usurp more motion and heat than they should they change and become more dangerous like the raies of the Sun that wandering at their natural liberty warm gently and faintly but contracted and united in the Concave of a glass burn and consume what they were wont to give life to and nourish Now Nature hath given this force and power borrowed from the Soul to the Senses to apply themselves to things to extract their forms and as they are fit or unfit harmonious or dissonant to Nature to embrace or reject them and that for these two Reasons One that they should be as Centinels to the Body for its preservation the other and the chiefest to the end they should be as Messengers and Carriers of the understanding and soveraign part of the Soul and to serve as Ministers and Instruments of discourse and Reason But in giving them this power she hath also prescribed her Law and Command which is to be satisfied with a careful observation and intelligence of what shall pass without attempting to usurp the more high and eminent power and so to put all things into alarm and confusion For as in an Army the Centinels oftentimes not knowing the design of their Commander may be deceived and take an enemy disguised for a friend or for enemies such as come to their relief so the Sences not comprehending the whole sum of Reason are oft abused by apparence and take for advantageous what is wholly against us When upon this judgement and without expecting the command of Reason they come to disturb the Irascible and Concupiscible powers they raise a sedition and tumult in the Soul during which Reason is no more heard nor the understanding obeyed than is the Law or Magistrate in a troubled estate of civil discord Now in this Commotion the Passions which disturb the peace of the mind and mutiny against the Soul make their first insurrection in the Concupiscible part that is to say in the place where the Soul exerciseth this faculty of desiring or rejecting things offered to her as they are proper or contrary to her delight or conservation They move then according to the apparence of a Good or Ill. If it be a present good and of which they enter into a present fruition we call that Motion Pleasure or Delight If it be of a good to come from which we are far distant we call it desire if of a present Ill of which we already resent the incommodity and distast and which we lament in other men we call it Hate or Horrour if of any Ill we bewail in our selves vexation if this vexation be occasioned by what concerns us nearly we call it Grief if by mischance in another Pitty if occasioned by an apparent Good in which we pretend to share Jealousie if by good we have no part in Envy if occasioned by an Ill to come we call it Fear This is the first body of Mutineers that disturb the peace of the Soul whose effects though very dangerous are nevertheless much inferiour in violence to them that sollow For those first motions formed in that part by the presented object immediately shift thence into the irascible part that is to say into that part where the Soul seeks the means she hath to obtain or shun what appears good or evil to her and there as a wheel already moving by a new access of force falls into a prompter speed so the Soul already stirred with the first apprehension and adding a second effort to the first is hurried with more violence than before and raises up Passions more powerful and more

are and ought to be the manners and humours of persons with whom we converse in this world and we shall soon resolve to suffer much from their indiscretion The common race of men are so inclined that they delight in mischief and only by the disdain and oppression of others measure their own greatness so few are they that delight in well doing Let us then make account that which way soever we turn we shall meet some to offend us and encounter injuries wherever there are men But that they surprize us not let us stand upon our guard expecting their attempts Into what place soever we go or whatever we undertake we must consider how in that place or that affair we shall be entertained Will you go to the Baths consider what you must there expect One whoops another pushes a third dashes water a fourth steals a cloak if we have foreseen we shall but laugh at these inconveniences when they happen We make an address to a great Person expect before hand that he will make us wait that when we would enter we shall be locked out and find him so busie as not to be spoke with or when he is that we shall be scornfully received and we shall neither wonder nor be angry when all this shall happen There is yet another thing that serves much for the moderation of offences which is when we our selves excuse the Person offending by a presumption they might casually commit them for example if you call your servant and he answer not you must suppose he did not hear you he hath not been where you commanded him suppose he had not leisure and the like but chiefly in matters of injury we should serve our selves with the advantage they present For injuries are like poysonous plants of which none are so malignant which by allayes and proper application may not be made of wholesome use From injuries we have at the least two kinds of advantage one that we know the offenders to avoid them the other that they discover to us our own weakness where we are to be assaulted that we may fortifie that place insomuch that when you meet a Person that depraves you he is to be concluded a malicious fellow uncapable of trust then examine whether the report he blemishes you with all be true wholly or in part and correct that fault lest you give occasion to another for the same or a worse character What fairer revenge can a man take of his Enemy than to convert his injuries to his own advantage But the best protection and securest Rampire we can have against such accidents is this determination that we can receive no harm but by our selves and that we are invulnerable whilst our Reason stands in her true condition And therefore let us say with Socrates Anitus and Melitus may put me to death but they can never do me harm Whoever is fortified against humane injuries is prepared for banishment which usually happens to the most vertuous by the injury of malevolent men but since it is a face of ill with which Opinion stupifies the mind and helps to contract this acrimony of perturbation and sorrow let us consider it apart and examine if it be so troublesome at hand as it appears at distance Who tells us that we are born to live only in one place what greater displeasure can we receive than to be so confin'd Seek throughout all the Cities of the world number the Inhabitants how many are Naturals of each place and you will find that the greater part of men are voluntarily banished their own clime All the world is a wise mans Country or rather no one spot of earth any mans Heaven whither he aspires is his Country only he takes a Pilgrimage here below and stayes in Cities and Provinces as in an Inn ten or twelve leagues of earth bound our sight but the face of the vast Heaven illustrated with so many beautiful stars discovers it self wholly to us by a continued revolution Why should we then with so much reluctancy part with the little place of our birth it was in our Mothers choice to lye-in elsewhere and make us change our Country therefore considering the chance of being born here or there the parting with this or that place should not so much concern us Pompey perceiving the faint courages of his Romans at the battail of Pharsalia who had their eyes and minds retreated to the walls of Rome bewailing their houses and sighing as if banished their Country Friends said he a good mans Country is the place of his liberty Rutilius made that appear to Sylla who being called back from exile would never return to Rome but had rather suffer the wildness and solitude of a strange Island than the face of a Tyrant in his native City All Climats nourish men all Lands bear them kindred for Nature hath allyed us All in Charity and blood Every soil produces friends to vertue who contracts them of her self What have we then to bewail in shifting our abode the same Heaven the same Elements remain by Banishment we lose nothing if the courage be preserved entire If you could resolve upon what I have proposed for the eschewing these first Passions it were enough and I should not need a further discourse to prepare you for the rest for if you never receive into you such as take birth in the Concupiscible you shall never be attached by such as are formed in the Irascible part for as much as these which are Hope and Despair Fear and Anger swell and move not in the Heart till after Desire and Vexation are formed in us As the first we mentioned take birth by the application of the object and the Opinion we have that it is favourable to us or adverse so the second derive from the consideration and diligent search the Soul makes for the means she hath to obtain or avoid what she desires or shuns It is no other than a motion as it were of the Soul out of her self made by the reinforcement of the first Passion and therefore like a fire which the more it is kindled is the harder to be quenched For they immediately possess themselves of the greatest part of the Soul and give a shrewd shock to her strongest powers Now to secure us let us know the most troublesome accidents by their Names and Liveries For the first which is hope sweetly fanning our fond desires kindles in our minds a fire full of thick smoak that choaks the understanding carryes away our thoughts hangs them in the clouds deprives us of judgement and makes us dream waking whilst our hopes continue we never part with our desires On the contrary when Despair is lodged within us it doth so torment our minds with the Opinion that we cannot obtain what we desire that all must give place to it and we must lose all the rest for the love of that we think we shall never obtain This is a Passion