mess assigned him; so that he that endeavors to retrieve the ancient custom will likewise recover thrift and almost lost frugality again. But, you object, where only property is, community is lost. True indeed, where equality is not; for not the possession of what is proper and our own, but the taking away of another's and coveting that which is common, is the cause of all injury and contention; and the laws, restraining and confining these within the proper bounds, receive their name from their office, being a power distributing equally to every one in order to the common good. Thus every one is not to be honored by the entertainer with the garland or the chiefest place; but if any one brings with him his sweetheart or a singing girl, they must be common to him and his friends, that all possessions may be brought together, as Anaxagoras would have it. Now if propriety in these things doth not in the least hinder but that things of greater moment, and the only considerable, as discourse and civility, may be still common, let us leave off abasing distributions or the lot, the son of Fortune (as Euripides hath it), which hath no respect either to riches or honor, but in its inconsiderate wheel now and then raiseth up the humble and the poor, and makes him master of himself, and, by accustoming the great and rich to endure and not be offended at equality, pleasingly instructs. BOOK III Simonides the poet, my Sossius Senecio, seeing one of the company sit silent and discourse nobody, said: Sir, if you are fool, it is wisely done; if a wise man, very foolishly. It is good to conceal a man's folly (but as Heraclitus says) it is very hard to do it over a glass of wine,-- Which doth the gravest men to mirth advance, And let them loose to sing, to laugh, and dance, And speak what had been better unsaid. ("Odyssey," xiv. 464.) In which lines the poet in my mind shows the difference between being a little heated and downright drunk; for to sing, laugh, and dance may agree very well with those that have gone no farther than the merry cup; but to prattle, and speak what had been better left unsaid, argues a man to be quite gone. And therefore Plato thinks that wine is the must ingenious discoverer of men's humors; and Homer, when he says,-- At feasts they had not known each other's minds, (Ibid. xxi. 35.)