226 PHYSICAL SCIENCE UK. vi 



2 If you wish to fear nothing, think that every 

 thing is to be feared ; consider by how slight 

 causes our life is dissipated. Neither food nor 

 drink, nor waking nor sleeping, is healthful, except 

 in due measure. One may soon realise that 

 we are but puny, insignificant bodies, weak and 

 unstable, that small effort is needed to compass our 

 destruction. The only sufficiency of danger, doubt 

 less, would be the earth s trembling, its sudden 

 dissipation, the rending of its surface into chasms ! 



3 Surely he sets a high value on his life who dreads 

 only lightning, and earthquakes with their yawning 

 abysses ; won t he allow himself to open his eyes to 

 his frailty and be afraid of choking on his phlegm ? 

 Such, forsooth, is our constitution by birth, such 

 the powerful frames we have obtained, such the 

 size we have grown to, that we cannot perish unless 

 the four quarters of the world are moved, the 



4 heavens thunder, and the earth subside ! Why, a 

 pain in a tiny nail, not even the whole nail, but a 

 little ragnail at the side, may finish us ! And I must 

 fear only the trembling of the world, when too 

 thick a spittle will choke me ! I am to await with 

 dread the removal of the sea from its place, or the 

 overflowing of an abnormal tide with its excess of 

 water ; why, some ere now have been strangled by 

 a drink that took a wrong course down the throat ! 

 What folly to be afraid of the sea when you know 



5 that a single drop may kill you ! There is no 

 solace of death greater than the very liability to 

 death, no solace of all the terrors from without equal 

 to the thought that there are countless dangers 

 within our own bosom. What greater madness than 

 to collapse at the sound of thunder, and through 

 fear of lightning to creep under the ground ? What 



