It is, however, impossible but that, as the attention tends strongly
towards one thing, it must retire from another; and he that omits the
care of domestick business, because he is engrossed by inquiries of more
importance to mankind, has, at least, the merit of suffering in a good
cause. But there are many who can plead no such extenuation of their
folly; who shake off the burden of their situation, not that they may
soar with less incumbrance to the heights of knowledge or virtue, but
that they may loiter at ease and sleep in quiet; and who select for
friendship and confidence not the faithful and the virtuous, but the
soft, the civil, and compliant.
This openness to flattery is the common disgrace of declining life. When
men feel weakness increasing on them, they naturally desire to rest from
the struggles of contradiction, the fatigue of reasoning, the anxiety of
circumspection; when they are hourly tormented with pains and diseases,
they are unable to bear any new disturbance, and consider all opposition
as an addition to misery, of which they feel already more than they can
patiently endure. Thus desirous of peace, and thus fearful of pain, the
old man seldom inquires after any other qualities in those whom he
caresses, than quickness in conjecturing his desires, activity in
supplying his wants, dexterity in intercepting complaints before they
approach near enough to disturb him, flexibility to his present humour,
submission to hasty petulance, and attention to wearisome narrations.
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