generation by the mediation of beauty. And when I consider the
ridiculous titillation of this pleasure, the absurd, crack-brained, wild
motions with which it inspires Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage,
the countenance inflamed with fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects of
love, and then that austere air, so grave, severe, ecstatic, in so wanton
an action; that our delights and our excrements are promiscuously
shuffled together; and that the supreme pleasure brings along with it, as
in pain, fainting and complaining; I believe it to be true, as Plato
says, that the gods made man for their sport:

"Quaenam ista jocandi
Saevitia!"

["With a sportive cruelty" (Or:) "What an unkindness there is in
jesting!"--Claudian in Eutrop. i. 24.]

and that it was in mockery that nature has ordered the most agitative of
actions and the most common, to make us equal, and to put fools and wise
men, beasts and us, on a level. Even the most contemplative and prudent
man, when I imagine him in this posture, I hold him an impudent fellow to
pretend to be prudent and contemplative; they are the peacocks' feet that
abate his pride:

"Ridentem dicere verum
Quid vetat?"

["What prevents us from speaking truth with a smile?"
--Horace, Sat., i. I, 24.]

They who banish serious imaginations from their sports, do, says one,