ate consolation, which you shall hear whenever you please. But we must have recourse again to the same original principle, that a wise man is free from all sorrow, because it is vain, because it answers no purpose, because it is not founded in nature, but on opinion and prejudice, and is engendered by a kind of invitation to grieve, when once men have imagined that it is their duty to do so. When, then, we have subtracted what is altogether voluntary, that mournful uneasiness will be removed; yet some little anxiety, some slight pricking, will still remain. They may indeed call this natural, provided they give it not that horrid, solemn, melancholy name of grief, which can by no means consist with wisdom. But how various and how bitter are the roots of grief! Whatever they are, I propose, after having felled the trunk, to destroy them all; even if it should be necessary, by allotting a separate dissertation to each, for I have leisure enough to do so, what ever time it may take up. But the principle of every uneasiness is the same, though they may appear under different names. For envy is an uneasiness; so are emulation, detraction, anguish, sorrow, sadness, tribulation, lamentation, vexation, grief, trouble, affliction, and despair. The Stoics define all these different feelings; and all those words which I have mentioned belong to different things, and do not, as they seem, express the same ideas; but they are to a certain extent distinct, as I shall make appear perhaps in another place. These are those fibres of the roots which, as I said at first, must be traced back and cut off and destroyed, so that not one shall remain. You say it is a great and difficult undertaking: who denies it? But what is there of any excellency which has not its difficulty? Yet philosophy undertakes to effect it, provided we admit its superintendence. But enough of this. The other books, whenever you please, shall be ready for you here or anywhere else.
