[1] IT is apparent that clothes make a man warm, not by warming him themselves or by imparting heat to him (for every garment is of itself cold, which is the reason that we see those that are very hot and in a fever often shifting and changing one thing for another), but what heat a man exhales out of himself, that the garment lying close to his body keeps together and contracts, and when it hath driven it inward, it will not suffer it again to dissipate. This being the very case of external affairs too, it is this that cheats vulgar heads, by making them think that, if they might but enclose themselves in great houses and heap together abundance of slaves and riches, they might then live to their own minds. But an agreeable and gay life is not to be found without us; on the contrary, it is man that out of his own temper, as out of a spring, adds pleasure and gayety to the things about him:
The house looks merrier when the fire burns.
And wealth is the more agreeable, and fame and power the more resplendent, when they have the joy of the mind to accompany them; since we see how that through a mild and tame disposition men can bear poverty, banishment, and old age easily and sweetly.De virtute et vitio. Plutarch. ed. William W. Goodwin. Boston. 1874.
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