break my rest with considering which way he is likely to decide it, but receive what|ever comes with equal indifference and se|curity.
Such was the philosophy of the stoics. A philosophy which affords the noblest lessons of magnanimity, is the best school of heroes and patriots, and to the greater part of whose precepts there can be no other objection, except that honourable one, that they teach us to aim at a per|fection altogether beyond the reach of hu|man nature. I shall not at present stop to examine it. I shall only observe, in con|firmation of what has formerly been said, that the most dreadful calamities are not always those which it is most difficult to support. It is often more mortifying to appear in publick, under small disasters, than under great misfortunes. The first excite no sympathy; but the second, tho' they may excite none that approaches to the anguish of the sufferer, call forth, however, a very lively compassion. The sentiments of the spectators are, in this last case, therefore, less wide of those of the sufferer, and their imperfect fel|low-feeling
