no one had hitherto been able to solve. Many more
expose themselves to extreme perils, in my opinion as foolishly, in order to
boast afterwards that they have captured a town. Lastly, others wear
themselves out in studying all these things, not in order to become wiser,
but only in order to prove that they know them; and these are the most
senseless of the band, since they are so knowingly, whereas one may suppose
of the others that, if they knew it, they would no longer be foolish.

This man spends his life without weariness in playing every day for a small
stake. Give him each morning the money he can win each day, on condition he
does not play; you make him miserable. It will perhaps be said that he seeks
the amusement of play and not the winnings. Make him, then, play for
nothing; he will not become excited over it and will feel bored. It is,
then, not the amusement alone that he seeks; a languid and passionless
amusement will weary him. He must get excited over it and deceive himself by
the fancy that he will be happy to win what he would not have as a gift on
condition of not playing; and he must make for himself an object of passion,
and excite over it his desire, his anger, his fear, to obtain his imagined
end, as children are frightened at the face they have blackened.

Whence comes it that this man, who lost his only son a few months ago, or
who this morning was in such trouble through being distressed by lawsuits
and quarrels, now no longer thinks of them? Do not wonder; he is quite taken
up in looking out for the boar which his dogs have been hunting so hotly for
the last six hours. He requires nothing more. However full of sadness a man
may be, he is happy for the time, if you can prevail upon him to enter into
some amusement; and however happy a man may be, he will soon be discontented
and wretched, if he be not diverted and occupied by some passion or pursu