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| It is Not Essential to Man’s Happiness that He Should Know the Causes of Physical Convulsions; But It Is, that He Should Know the Causes of Good and Evil.
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Chapter 16.—It is Not Essential to Man’s Happiness
that He Should Know the Causes of Physical Convulsions; But It Is,
that He Should Know the Causes of Good and Evil.
Now, in view of these
considerations, when we are pleased with that line of Maro,
“Happy the man who has attained to the knowledge of the causes of
things,”1109
| 1109 Virgil, Georgics, ii.
490. | we should
not suppose that it is necessary to happiness to know the causes of
the great physical convulsions, causes which lie hid in the most
secret recesses of nature’s kingdom, “whence comes the
earthquake whose force makes the deep seas to swell and burst their
barriers, and again to return upon themselves and settle down.”1110
But we
ought to know the causes of good and evil as far as man may in this
life know them, in order to avoid the mistakes and troubles of
which this life is so full. For our aim must always be to reach
that state of happiness in which no trouble shall distress us, and
no error mislead us. If we must know the causes of physical
convulsions, there are none which it concerns us more to know than
those which affect our own health. But seeing that, in our
ignorance of these, we are fain to resort to physicians, it would
seem that we might bear with considerable patience our ignorance of
the secrets that lie hid in the earth and heavens.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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