The Life of Solitude

Introductory, noting certain things which contribute to the understanding of what follows

|[ sein Go that a noble spirit will never find repose save in God, in whom is our end, or in himself and his private thoughts, or in some intellect united by a close sympathy with his own. For though pleasure be covered with the most entangling lime and full of sweet and alluring baits, yet has it not the force to detain powerful wings very long upon the ground. But whether we are intent upon God, or upon ourselves and our serious studies, or whether we are seeking for a mind in harmony with our own, it behooves us to withdraw as far as may be from the haunts of men and crowded cities. That I speak truly, perhaps even they will hardly deny who find a charm in the stir and hum of many people, provided they are not so deeply whelmed and sunk in their false notions that they do not at times come to themselves, as it were, and return to the lofty path of truth, if only with a crawling motion. Would this were not the state of so many, and that men had at least as much concern for the cultivation of their minds as of their fields and many less important things; for the human mind teems with errors like a fat field overrun with brambles and if these are not diligently uprooted and with studious toil cleared away, the fruit in both cases will equally perish with the flower. But we sing to deaf ears. Yet, however lightly people in general may regard these matters, men of learning, I am sure, will second me in thought and word; and even if all should oppose me, you at least will not—indeed you would be.the first to confute my opponents. You will recognize your own thoughts in my words, and I shall appear to have attained the ultimate goal of all eloquence—to have moved the mind of the listener according to my wish, and that with no trouble. It is a sore task for the pleader when he is bent on dragging over to his own view a mind that resists persuasion; but what trouble is there for an argument when it enters the ears of a person whose own thought chimes with what he hears and who, having the evidence of his own experience, in order to yield his assent requires neither concrete examples, nor weighty authority, nor pointed reasoning, but in silence says to himself, “It is true!