In that sense it is a very
intelligible and practical piece of advice, that the wise man should
labour to have no passions. It is the advice embodied in Horace's _Nil
admirari_, Talleyrand's "No zeal," Beaconsfield's "Beware of
enthusiasm." It would have man to work like a scientific instrument,
calm as a chronometer, regulated by reason alone. This was the Stoic
teaching, this the perfection that they inculcated, quite a possible
goal to make for, if not to attain. And it is worth a wise man's while
to consider, whether he should bend his efforts in this direction or
not. The determination here taken and acted upon will elaborate quite
a different character of man one way or the other. The effort made as
the Stoics direct, would mean no yielding to excitement, no poetry, no
high-strung devotion, no rapture, no ecstasy, no ardour of love, no
earnest rhetoric spoken or listened to, no mourning, no rejoicing
other than the most conventional, to the persistent smothering of
whatever is natural and really felt, no tear of pity freely let flow,
no touch of noble anger responded to, no scudding before the breeze of
indignation,--all this, that reason may keep on the even tenour of her
way undisturbed.
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