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

whom, therefore, Cicero says with good reason, Cynicorum ratio [al. natio] tota est ejicienda. Est enim inimica verecundiæ, sine qua nihil rectum esse potest, nihil honestum: “The method [some copies have it, ‘the nation’] of the Cynics ought entirely to be rejected; for they are enemies to modesty, without which nothing can be right, nothing virtuous.” (De Officiis.) אל אשתו יבא [איש] בצנעא: “A man should go in unto his wife in private.” (Judah ben Samuel, Sefer Hasidim.) That in Herodotus, Ἅμα κιθῶνι ἑκδυομένῳ συνεεδυεται τὴν ἀιδὼ γυνὴν: “that a woman should put off her modesty with her clothes,” ought not to be true (Histories). Verecundiâ naturali habent provifum lupanaria ipsa secretum: “Even public stews have a private place provided, out of natural modesty.” (St. Augustine, City of God.) ↩

Εις τὸ τῆς τύχης ἀτεκμαρτον ἀφορῶσα: “Providing for contingencies that we cannot so much as guess at.” (Philo Judaeus, De Humanitate.) ↩

Simonides was wont to say, Βουλοιμην ἂν ἀποθανὼν τοῖς ἐχθροῖς μᾶλλον άπολιπεῖν, ἢ ζᾶν δεῖσθαι τῶν φίλων: “I had rather leave something to my enemies when I die, than want friends while I am alive.” (Joannes Stobaeus, On Injustice.) ↩

Non intelligunt homines quàm magnum vectigal sit parsimonia: “Men don’t understand how great a revenue sparingness is.” (Cicero, Paradoxa Stoicorum.) ↩

Like them, who ἐν τῇ νεότητι τὰ τοῦ γήρως ἐφόδια, προκαταναλίσκουσιν: “in their youth, devoured the provision that should have supported them in their old age,” as in Athenæus. (Deipnosophistae.) ↩

Ea liberalitate utamur, quæ prosit amicis, noceat nemini: “We should use such liberality as may be of advantage to our friends, but not to the hurt of anybody else.” (Cicero, De Officiis.) ↩

Non est incommodum, quale quodque⁠ ⁠… sit, ex aliis judicare: ut si quid dedeceat in aliis, vitemus et ipsi. Fit enim nescio quo modo, ut magis in aliis cernamus, quàm in nobismet ipsis, si quid delinquitur: “It is by no means an ill way of judging of anything, by seeing how it looks in others; so that if anything is unbecoming them, we may avoid it ourselves. For I don’t know how it is, but we are apt to see faults in others more than in ourselves.” (Cicero, De Officiis.) ↩

Οἷον, ἐν δέιπνῳ προπίνει τις ἄδηνἔχοντι; μὴ δυσωπηθῇς, μηδὲ προσβιάσῃ σεαυτὸν, ἀλλὰ κατάθου τὸ ποτήριον, κ.τ.λ.: “As if, at an entertainment, anyone drinks to another that has drank enough, he ought not to be out of countenance, nor force himself, but refuse the cup.” (Plutarch, Moralia.) ↩

Even Epicurus himself ἀχώριστον φησὶ τῆς ἡδονῆς τὴν ἀρετὴν μόνην: “says that it is virtue, only, that is necessarily attended with pleasure;” and διὰ τὴν ἡδονὴν τὰς ἀρετὰς δεῖν ἁιρεῖσθαι: “that we ought to choose virtue for the sake of such pleasure.” (Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Epicurus.) ↩

Isocrates gives one reason for this, where he compares vicious pleasures with virtue. Ἐκεῖ μὲν πρῶτον ἡοθέντες, ὕστερον ἐλυπήθημεν· ἐντᾶυθα δὲ μετὰ τὰς λύπας τὰς ἡδονὰς ἔχομεν: “In the one case, we have the pleasure first and the uneasiness afterwards; in the other case (that of virtue) we have the uneasiness first, and the pleasure afterwards.” (Discourse to Demonicus.) ↩

Whereas virtue is ἐφόδιον πρὸς γῆρας: “like provision which will maintain us till we are old.” (Bias, in Basil’s On Greek Literature.) ↩

For who can bear such rants as that, Epicurus ait, sapientem, si in Phalaridis tauro peruratur, exclamaturum, Dulce est, et ad me nihil pertinet? “Epicurus says that if a wise man were burnt alive in Phalaris’s bull, he would cry out, ‘How agreeable a thing is this, and it does not affect me at all’ ” (Seneca, Epistles)? Cicero reports the same. ↩

It is in the power of very few to act like him, qui dum varices exsecandas præberet, legere librum perseveravit: “who continued reading in a book while they were cutting swellings out of his legs,” or him, qui non desiit ridere, dum ob hoc ipsum irati tortores omnia instrumenta crudelitatis experirentur: “who continued laughing, though his tormentors, who were enraged at him for it, tried all their instruments of cruelty upon that very account.” (Seneca, Epistles.) ↩

Ει μάλα καρτερός ἐσσι, θεός που σοὶ τόγ᾿ ἔδωκεν: “If you are a very valiant man, yet it is the gift of God that you are so.” (Homer, Iliad.) ↩

Propter virtutem jure laudamur, et in virtute recte gloriamur. Quod non contingeret, si id donum à Deo, non à nobis haberemus: “We are justly commended upon the account of our virtue, and it is right in us to boast of our virtue; which it would not be, if it were the gift of God, and we had it not from ourselves.” (Cicero, De Natura Deorum.) ↩

As that word is used here. For when it is used as in that in Lucian, Ἀρετὴ μὲν σώματος ἰσχὺς: “virtue is the strength of the body,” and the like passages, it has another meaning. (The Cynic.) ↩

Καπνοῦ καὶ κύματος ἐκτὸς ἔεργε Νῆα: “Guide the ship on the outside of the smoke and waves.” (Homer, Odyssey.) ↩

Εἰσὶ δ᾿ οἳ καὶ ἐν ὀικίᾳ διατρίβοντες, τῶν σωμάτων αὐτοῖς ἢ μακραῖς νόσοις ἢ ἐπιπόνῳ γήρᾳ κατεσκελετευμένων⁠ ⁠… τὴν ἀληθῆ διαπονοῦσιν ἀνδρίαν, ἀσκηταὶ σοφίας ὄντες: “There are some that live retired in their own houses, who have their bodies reduced