4 THE GARDENS OF EPICURUS 



sports, pleasures, play or business. But because the two 

 first are of short continuance, soon ending with weari- 

 ness, or decay of vigour and appetite, the return where- 

 of must be attended, before the others can be renewed ; 

 and because play grows dull if it be not enlivened with 

 the hopes of gain, the general diversion of mankind 

 seems to be business, or the pursuit of riches in one kind 

 or other ; which is an amusement that has this one 

 advantage above all others, that it lasts those men who 

 engage in it to the very ends of their lives ; none ever 

 growing too old for the thoughts and desires of increas- 

 ing his wealth and fortunes, either for himself, his 

 friends, or his posterity. 



In the first and most simple ages of each country, 

 the conditions and lives of men seem to have been very 

 near of kin with the rest of the creatures ; they lived 

 by the hour, or by the day, and satisfied their appetite 

 with what they could get from the herbs, the fruits, the 

 springs they met with when they were hungry or dry ; 

 then, with what fish, fowl, or beasts they could kill, by 

 swiftness or strength, by craft or contrivance, by their 

 hands, or such instruments as wit helped or necessity 

 forced them to invent. When a man had got enough 

 for the day, he laid up the rest for the morrow, and 

 spent one day in labour, that he might pass the other 



