OF THE COLOURS OF GOOD AND EVIL 159 



the considering and recording inwardly that a man is clear 

 and free from fault and just imputation doth attemper 

 outward calamities. For if the evil be in the sense and in 

 the conscience both, there is a gemination of it ; but if evil 

 be in the one and comfort in the other, it is a kind of 

 compensation. So the poets in tragedies do make the most 

 passionate lamentations, and those that fore-run final 

 despair, to be accusing, questioning, arid torturing of a 

 man's self : 



Seque unum clamat causamque caputque malorum. 



And contrariwise, the extremities of worthy persons have 

 been annihilated in the consideration of their own good 

 deserving. Besides, when the evil cometh from without, 

 there is left a kind of evaporation of grief, if it come by 

 human injury, either by indignation and meditating of 

 revenge from ourselves, or by expecting or fore-conceiving 

 that Nemesis and retribution will take hold of the authors 

 of our hurt ; or if it be by fortune or accident, yet there is 

 left a kind of expostulation against the divine powers : 



Atque Deos atque astra vocat crudetia mater. 



But where the evil is derived from a man's own fault, 

 there all strikes deadly inwards and suffocateth. 



The reprehension of this colour is first in respect of hope; 

 for reformation of our faults is in nostra potestate, but 

 amendment of our fortune simply is not. Therefore 

 Demosthenes in many of his orations saith thus to the 

 people of Athens : ' That which having regard to the time 

 past is the worst point and circumstance of all the rest, 

 that as to the time to come is the best. What is that ? 

 Even this, that by your sloth, irresolution, and misgovern- 

 ment, your affairs are grown to this declination and decay. 

 For had you used and ordered your means and forces to 

 the best, and done your parts every way to the full, and 

 notwithstanding your matters should have gone backward 

 in this manner as they do, there had been no hope left of 

 recovery or reparation; but since it hath been only by your 

 own errors,' etc. So Epictetus in his degrees saith, ' The 



