Complete. From “Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political.”

EVERY man is a vast and spacious sea; his passions are the winds which make him swell and foam; sometimes the west of pleasure fans him with luxurious gales; sometimes the moist south makes him sorrowful and full of tears; sometimes the sharp east pierces him with a testy spleen; sometimes the violent and blustering north swells his cheek with anger’s boiling blood. Any of these, in extremes, makes the waters become unnavigable, and full of danger to the vessel which shall sail upon them. When these winds are too loud, it is perilous; but when again they are all laid in the stillness of a quiet calm, it is useless; and though such a state of weather is, in itself, less dangerous than any other, yet it is far from availing, to the profit of a voyage, and the passengers may sooner famish, by being becalmed, than coast it over, for the advantage of their mart. Surely the man who is always still and reposed in his own thoughts is at best but a piece of deadened charity. I care not for the insensible stoic, there is a sect between him and the epicure. An unmoved man is but a living statue, harmless and unprofitable. Fury, however, is a worse extreme than passiveness; for, besides the trouble it brings on others, it always leads the author into successive mischiefs:—

    I neither like a devouring stork, nor a Jupiter’s log. Man is not fit for conversation when his passions hurry him into an odious violence, nor when they are all laid asleep in a silent and unstirring calm. The sea is best in a pleasant gale; and so is man, when his passions are alive without raging. God implanted passions in the soul, as he gave his talents in the Gospel; neither to be lavished impetuously, nor to be buried in a napkin. We may warm ourselves at these fires, though we burn not. Man without any is no better than a speaking stone. Cato’s best emperor was, qui potuit imperare affectibus; he does not say, deponere. Moderate passions are the most affable expressions of humanity, without which the soul finds nothing like itself to love. A horse too hot and fiery is the danger of his rider, one too dull is his trouble; and as the first will not endure any man, so the last will be endured by no man. The one will suffer none to back him, the other admits every child to abuse him. A good temper is a sure expression of a well-composed soul. Our wild passions are like so many lawyers, wrangling and bawling at the bar. Discretion is the lord keeper of man, who sits as judge and moderates their contentions. Too great a spirit in a man born to poor means is like a high-heeled shoe to one of mean stature: it advances his height, but renders him more liable to falls. The flat sole walks more surely, though it takes from the gracefulness of the wearer; yet, being too low, it is apt to bemire the foot. A little elevation is the best mediocrity, it is both raised from the earth, and sure. I will neither walk so lifted as to occasion falling, nor so dejected as at every step to take soil. As I care not to be the cap of the company, so I would not be earth, or the fool’s football.