"
It is necessary to the completion of every good, that it be timely
obtained; for whatever comes at the close of life will come too late to
give much delight; yet all human happiness has its defects. Of what we
do not gain for ourselves we have only a faint and imperfect fruition,
because we cannot compare the difference between want and possession, or
at least can derive from it no conviction of our own abilities, nor any
increase of self-esteem; what we acquire by bravery or science, by
mental or corporeal diligence, comes at last when we cannot communicate,
and, therefore, cannot enjoy it.
Thus every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from the
time to come. In youth we have nothing past to entertain us, and in age,
we derive little from retrospect but hopeless sorrow. Yet the future
likewise has its limits, which the imagination dreads to approach, but
which we see to be not far distant. The loss of our friends and
companions impresses hourly upon us the necessity of our own departure;
we know that the schemes of man are quickly at an end, that we must soon
lie down in the grave with the forgotten multitudes of former ages, and
yield our place to others, who, like us, shall be driven awhile by hope
or fear about the surface of the earth, and then like us be lost in the
shades of death.
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