The Religion of Nature Delineated William Wollaston (my reading book .TXT) 📖

the world” (in Lucretius, De Rerum Natura), may be aptly applied to the wicked. Multi famam, conscientiam pauci verentur: “Many are afraid of common report, but few stand in awe of their own consciences.” (Pliny the Younger, Epistles.) ↩

Neque; mala vel bona, quæ vulgus putat: multi, qui conflictari adversis videntur, beati; ac plerique; quanquam magnas per opes, miserrimi, etc.: “We are not to judge things to be good or bad, from the opinion which the vulgar have of them; for abundance of people are happy, who have many difficulties to struggle with; and a great many men are very miserable, though they be very rich.” (Tacitus, Annals.) ↩

Feliciorem tu Mecænatem putas, cui amoribus anxio, et morosæ uxoris quotidiana repudia deflenti, somnus per symphoniarum cantum, ex longinquo bene resonantium, quæritur? Mero se licet spoiat,⁠ ⁠… ; tam vigilabit in plumâ, quàm ille [Regulus] in cruce⁠ ⁠… ut dubium [non] sit, an electione fati datâ, plures Reguli nasci, quàm Mecænates velint: “Do you think Mecænas was very happy, who was always solicitious about intrigues, and complaining of the refusals of an ill-natured wife, insomuch that he could have no other sleep but what was procured by the agreeable sound of soft music at a distance. Though he dozes himself with wine,⁠ ⁠… he will be as restless in a bed of down, as [Regulus] upon a gibbet.⁠ ⁠… So that there is no doubt, but if fate would put it to men’s choice, there would more men choose to be born Regulus’s than Mecænas’s.” (Seneca, De Providentia.) Isti, quos prop felicibus aspicitis, si non qua occurrunt, sed qua latent, videritis, miseri sunt: “Those men which you look upon to be happy, if you were to see how different they are in private from what they are in public, you would think miserable.” (Tacitus, Annals.) ↩

Archimedes, having found the way of solving a problem (examinandi, an corona aurea prorsus esset: “viz. whether a crown was made of pure gold or no”) ran in an ecstasy out of the bath, crying Εὕρηκα: “I have found out a solution;” but who ever heard of a man, that after a luxurious meal, or the enjoyment of a woman, ran out thus, crying out Βέβρωκα or Πεφίληκα: “I have glutted myself; I have enjoyed her”? (Plutarch, Moralia.) ↩

Fatis contraria fata rependens: “Balancing the loss determined by one fate, with the prospect of good determined by another.” (Virgil, Aeneid.) See what Pliny writes of Agrippa, the other great favorite and minister of Augustus, whom he reckons to be the only instance of felicity among them who were called Agrippæ. Is quoque adversa pedum valetudine, misera juventa, exercito ævo inter arma mortesque,⁠ ⁠… infelici terris stirpe omni,⁠ ⁠… præterea brevitate ævi,⁠ ⁠… in tormentis adulteriorum conjugis, socerique prægravi servitio, luisse augurium præposteri natalis existimatur: “He also, by a disease in his feet, by a miserable young time, having spent his years among arms and death,⁠ ⁠… all his relations miserable upon earth,⁠ ⁠… besides, his life very short,⁠ ⁠… it was the general opinion, that what his unnatural birth foreboded was fulfilled in the torments he endured by his wife’s adulteries, and the cruel bondage of his father-in-law.” (Pliny the Elder, Natural History.) ↩

Ὀφθαλμῶν μὲν ἄμερσε, δίδου δ᾿ ἡδεῖαν ἀοιδήν: “The loss of his (Homer’s) eyes was compensated by the gift of sweet harmony.” (Homer, Odyssey.) ↩

Zeno reckoned he made a good voyage, when he was shipwrecked. (Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Zeno.) ↩

If a good man labors under poverty, sickness, or the like, εἰς ἀγαθόν τι τελευτήσει ζῶντι ἢ καὶ ἀποθανόντι: “it must end in something that is good, either in his lifetime or after death,” for how can he be neglected of God, who studies according to his poor abilities to be like Him? (Plato, Republic.) ↩

Who blames a drama, because all the persons are not heroes? (Plotinus, Enneads.) ↩

העולם נידון אחר רובו: “We must judge of the world, according to what it is as to the greatest part.” (Abravanel, and what follows.) ↩

Μέρος μὲν ἕνεκα ὅλου καὶ οὐχ ὅλον μέρους ἕνεκα ἀπεργάζεται, κ.τ.λ.: “The part is made for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for the sake of the part.” (Plato, Laws.) ↩

Divine providence and the immortality of the soul must stand and fall together. Θάτερον οὐκ ἔστιν ἀπολιπεῖν ἀναιροῦντα θάτερον: “If you take away the one, the other will follow.” (Plutarch, Moralia.) ↩

Τοῦτο ταυτόν ἐστι τὸ μὴ ὄιεσθαι εἶναι Θεον· ἢ ὄντα μὴ προνοεῖν· ἢ προνοοῦντα μἠ ἀγαθὸν εἶναι καὶ δίκαιον: “It is the same thing to think there is no God; or if there be one, that he does not govern the world; or if he does govern it, he is not a good and just governor.” (Hierocles, Commentary on the Carmen Aureum.) ↩

Sure nobody ever did, in reality, pretend to do this. According to Diogenes Laërtius, the Egyptians set up ἀγάλματα, “some ornaments,” in their temples, τῷ μὴ εἰδέναι τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ μορφήν: for that very reason, because they did not know his shape; or, how to represent Him. Their images seem to have been symbols, or hieroglyphics, expressing something of their sense or opinion concerning Him (Lives of Eminent Philosophers). For, as Maimonides observes, no man ever did or ever will worship an idol made of metal, stone, or wood, as that Being who made heaven and earth (The Guide for the Perplexed I, 36.) ↩