Other things that we buy we can carry home
in a vessel, and there examine our purchase,
and decide when and how much of it we will
take. From the very first, we put our knowl-
edge into no vessel but the soul. We swallow
it as we buy it, and return from the market
already injured or benefited. Some things
only burden and overcharge the stomach in-
stead of nourishing; and others, under the
pretence of curing, poison us. I have been
pleased in places where I have travelled to see
men out of devotion make a vow of ignorance
as well as of chastity, poverty, and penitence.
It is also a checking of our unruly appetites to
blunt this cupidity that spurs us on to the
study of books, and to deprive the soul of this
voluptuous complacency that tickles us with
the idea of knowledge. It is fully to carry
out the vow of poverty to add unto it that
of the mind. We need little learning to show



OF PHYSIOGNOMY. I33

US how to live at ease. Socrates tells us that
it is in us, how we may find it and how to use
it. All knowledge that exceeds the natural is
well-nigh superfluous. It is more likely to
burden us than do us good. " Paucis opus est
litteris ad mentem bonam." ^^^ ("A man of good
natural parts needs little learning.") It is a
feverish excess of the mind, a tempestuous
and unquiet instrument. Collect yourself ; you
will find in your own mind the arguments of
nature against death and those best suited to
serve you in time of need. It is these argu-
ments that make a peasant, an entire people,
die with as much firmness as a philosopher.
