I serve my prince more cheerfully because it is by the free election of my own judgment and reason, without any particular obligation; and that I am not reduced and constrained so to do for being rejected or disliked by the other party; and so of all the rest. I hate the morsels that necessity carves me; any commodity upon which I had only to depend would have me by the throat; "Alter remus aquas, alter mihi radat arenas;" ["Let me have one oar in the water, and with the other rake the shore."--Propertius, iii. 3, 23.] one cord will never hold me fast enough. You will say, there is vanity in this way of living. But where is there not? All these fine precepts are vanity, and all wisdom is vanity: "Dominus novit cogitationes sapientum, quoniam vanae sunt." ["The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain." --Ps. xciii. II; or I Cor. iii. 20.] These exquisite subtleties are only fit for sermons; they are discourses that will send us all saddled into the other world. Life is a material and corporal motion, an action imperfect and irregular of its own proper essence; I make it my business to serve it according to itself: "Quisque suos patimur manes." ["We each of us suffer our own particular demon."--AEneid, vi. 743.] "Sic est faciendum, ut contra naturam universam nihil contendamus; ea tamen conservata propriam sequamur." ["We must so order it as by no means to contend against universal nature; but yet, that rule being observed, to follow our own." --Cicero, De Offcc., i. 31.] To what end are these elevated points of philosophy, upon which no human being can rely? and those rules that exceed both our use and force?