of man. In a natural state man is only eager to preserve his life
while he has the means for its preservation; when self-preservation
is no longer possible, he resigns himself to his fate and dies without
vain torments. Nature teaches us the first law of resignation.
Savages, like wild beasts, make very little struggle against
death, and meet it almost without a murmur. When this natural law
is overthrown reason establishes another, but few discern it, and
man's resignation is never so complete as nature's.

Prudence! Prudence which is ever bidding us look forward into the
future, a future which in many cases we shall never reach; here is
the real source of all our troubles! How mad it is for so short-lived
a creature as man to look forward into a future to which he rarely
attains, while he neglects the present which is his? This madness
is all the more fatal since it increases with years, and the old,
always timid, prudent, and miserly, prefer to do without necessaries
to-day that they may have luxuries at a hundred. Thus we grasp
everything, we cling to everything; we are anxious about time,
place, people, things, all that is and will be; we ourselves are
but the least part of ourselves. We spread ourselves, so to speak,
over the whole world, and all this vast expanse becomes sensitive.
No wonder our woes increase when we may be wounded on every side.
How many princes make themselves miserable for the loss of lands
they never saw, and how many merchants lament in Paris over some
misfortune in the Indies!

Is it nature that carries men so far from their real selves? Is it
her will that each should learn his fate from others and even be
the last to learn it; so that a man dies happy or miserable before
he knows what he is about. There is a healthy, cheerful, strong,