were truly
happy, we not need diversion from thinking of it in order to make ourselves
happy.

166. Diversion.--Death is easier to bear without thinking of it than is the
thought of death without peril.

167. The miseries of human life has established all this: as men have seen
this, they have taken up diversion.

168. Diversion.--As men are not able to fight against death, misery,
ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to
think of them at all.

169. Despite these miseries, man wishes to be happy, and only wishes to be
happy, and cannot wish not to be so. But how will he set about it? To be
happy he would have to make himself immortal; but, not being able to do so,
it has occurred to him to prevent himself from thinking of death.

170. Diversion.--If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was
diverted, like the Saints and God. Yes; but is it not to be happy to have a
faculty of being amused by diversion? No; for that comes from elsewhere and
from without, and thus is dependent, and therefore subject to be disturbed
by a thousand accidents, which bring inevitable griefs.

171. Misery.--The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is
diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this
which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves and which makes
us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of
weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of
escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to
death.

172. We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as
too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the
past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in
the times which are not ours and do not think of the only one which belongs
to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those t