can, have recourse also to yet purer fountains, the holy Scriptures which alone give to sinful mortals any sure hopes of an happy immortality; that you may adorn your souls with every virtue, prepare yourselves for every honourable office in life, and quench that manly and laudable thirst you should have after knowledge. {Let not philosophy rest in speculation} let it be a medicine for the disorders of the soul, freeing the heart from anxious solicitudes and turbulent desires; and dispelling its fears: let your manners, your tempers, and conduct be such as {right} reason requires. Look not upon this part of philosophy as matter of ostentation, or shew of knowledge, but as the most sacred law of life and conduct, which none can despise with impunity, or without impiety toward God: and whose precepts whoever seriously endeavours to obey, as far as he is capable, shews the truest worth and excellence, and the highest wisdom; and is truly the most prosperous as to his greatest interests in life.4 <v> <vi>
Choose the best course of life, and custom will make it the most pleasant.
Pythagoras.
Assume to yourself to live like a perfect man, or one who has made great proficiency in philosophy, and let it be an inviolable law, to act the part that appears most virtuous.
Epictetus.
{Other animals are committed to the government of men, but} God has committed men to the government of their own natural conscience. This governor we never should disobey; for it is offensive to God, and makes us enemies to the conscience within us.
Epictet. Fragm.
Choose rather to correct your own passions, than to be corrected and punished on their account.
The same author.
In this one thing delight and rest yourself, in going on constantly from one social action to another with remembrance of the Deity.
Marcus Antonin.
In every design, or attempt whether great or small we ought to invoke God.
Plato.
Give joy to the immortal Gods and those that love you.
An unknown Poet in Antonin.
LIBRORUM ET CAPITUM ARGUMENTA.
[THE CONTENTS OF BOOKS AND CHAPTERS.]
In epistola ad Juvent. Philosophia moralis “ars vitae ad virtutem et beatitudinem assequendam instituendae.” Ejus partes Ethica, et Jurisprudentia naturalis. Hujus itidem tres partes. 1. Jurisprudentia privata. 2. Oeconomica. 3. Politica. [In a Letter to the youth, moral philosophy is the art of living to pursue virtue and happiness. Its parts are Ethics, and Natural jurisprudence. The parts of the last are three: 1. Private jurisprudence 2. Economics 3. Politics.] p. 3. Operis suscipiendi causa. [The reason for undertaking this work.] p. 4. Quo consilio scripti libri Ciceronis de officiis. [The design of Cicero’s De officiis.] p. 5. et cohortatio ad Philosophiam. [and an exhortation to philosophy.]
