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"Consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi, neque admirantur, neque requirunt rationes earum rerum, quas semper vident." The novelty, rather than the greatness of things, tempts us to inquire into their causes. We are to judge with more reverence, and with greater acknowledgment of our own ignorance and infirmity, of the infinite power of nature.
So, in spite of the fact that travel is never-ending, and that "peregrinatio animi causa" of the sixteenth century is not very different from the Wanderlust of the nineteenth, we feel we have come to the end of the particular phase of travel which had its beginning in the Renaissance.
In the Constantio Sapientis he praises and holds up to imitation the absurd apathy recommended by Stilpo. In the De Animi Tranquillitate, addressed to Annaeus Serenus, the captain of Nero's body- guard, he adopts the same line of thought, but shows signs of limiting its application by the necessities of circumstances.
Emotion, which is called animi pathema, is a confused idea by which the mind affirms of its body, or any part of it, a greater or less power of existence than before; and this increase of power being given, the mind itself is determined to one particular thought rather than to another. Explanation. I say, in the first place, that an emotion or passion of the mind is a confused idea.
It is entitled De Animi Tranquillitate . I earnestly desire tranquillity. Bona res quies: but I fear I shall never attain it: for, when unoccupied, I grow gloomy, and occupation agitates me to feverishness. 'I am, dear Sir, 'Your most affectionate humble servant, 'To JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.
"Nil igitur mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum; quando quidem natura animi mortalis habetur!" cries Lucretius. With the advent of Christianity, condemning as it did the barbarous customs of self-mutilation and self-murder, these practices seem to disappear gradually; but stoicism and indifference to pain were exhibited in martyrdom.
But a young man should be ambitious to shine, and excel; alert, active, and indefatigable in the means of doing it; and, like Caesar, 'Nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum. You seem to want that 'vivida vis animi, which spurs and excites most young men to please, to shine, to excel.
Is it not that mixed condition which partakes of both and secures neither? "Per quem neutrum licet, nec tanquam in bello paratum esse, nec tanquam in pace securum." Seneca De Trang: Animi, cap. Is it not this partial and imperfect association which gives rise to tyranny and war? And are not tyranny and war the worst scourges of humanity?
MAIOR ATQUE LONGIOR: 'very intense and protracted'. Superlatives might have been expected, in view of quanta percipi posset maxima above. Longus in the sense of 'long-continued' is rare in Ciceronian Latin, excepting when, as in 66 longa aetate, it is joined with a word distinctly referring to time. For the general drift of the passage cf. Cic. ANIMI LUMEN: a common metaphor; e.g. Cic.
These will exist, for the future, I trust, only in the poetic strains, which the feelings at the time called forth. In those only, gentle reader, Affectus animi varios, bellumque sequacis Perlegis invidiae, curasque revolvis inanes, Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in aevo. Perlegis et lacrymas, et quod pharetratus acuta Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus.
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