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If we are once able to restrain the offices of human life within their just and natural limits, we shall find that most of the sciences in use are of no great use to us, and even in those that are, that there are many very unnecessary cavities and dilatations which we had better let alone, and, following Socrates' direction, limit the course of our studies to those things only where is a true and real utility: "Sapere aude; Incipe; Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam, Rusticus exspectat, dum defluat amnis; at ille Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis oevum."
But 'defluat amnis', the time runs on; and I am tired of waiting for the ford which the tides refuse.
"Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis: at ille Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum." We are imitating the man who made the experiment of constantly reducing the food on which his horse is to live. Let us take care that, just as he is learning to live on nothing, we do not find him dead in his stall. This, however, is no joking matter.
They were not wiser than the clown of Horace, who seated himself by the rushing stream, thinking it must soon run itself out Expectat rusticus dum defluat amnis; at ille Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis ævum. Vain is the dream that man will ever reach the point when he will think no more of the gods.
See ante, iii. 124, for mention of her father and brother. The verse in Martial is: 'Defluat, et lento splendescat turbida limo. In the common editions it has the number 45, and not 44. See ante, iii. 187. Johnson wrote on Nov. 27, 1772, 'I was yesterday at Chatsworth. They complimented me with playing the fountain and opening the cascade.
Every one that looks towards infinity does, as I have said, at first glance make some very large idea of that which he applies it to, let it be space or duration; and possibly he wearies his thoughts, by multiplying in his mind that first large idea: but yet by that he comes no nearer to the having a positive clear idea of what remains to make up a positive infinite, than the country fellow had of the water which was yet to come, and pass the channel of the river where he stood: 'Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis, at ille Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.
See Boswell's Hebrides, Sept. 30. 'They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden. Genesis, iii. 8. ... 'Vivendi recte qui prorogat horam, Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.
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