by John Donne
XX. MEDITATION
THOUGH counsel seeme rather to consist of spirituall parts, than action, yet action is the spirit and the soule of counsell. Counsels are not alwaies determined in Resolutions; wee cannot alwaies say, this was concluded; actions are alwaies determined in effects; wee can say this was done. Then have Lawes their reverence, and their majestie, when we see the Judge upon the Bench executing them. Then have counsels of warre their impressions, and their operations, when we see the seale of an Armie set to them. It was an ancient way of celebrating the memorie of such as deserved well of the State, to afford them that kinde of statuarie representation, which was then called Hermes; which was, the head and shoulders of a man, standing upon a Cube, but those shoulders without armes and hands. All together it figured a constant supporter of the State, by his counsell: But in this Hieroglyphique, which they made without hands, they passe their consideration no farther, but that the Counsellor should bee without hands, so farre as not to reach out his hand to forraigne tentations of bribes, in matters of Counsell, and that it was not necessary, that the head should employ his owne hand; that the same men should serve in the execution, which assisted in the Counsell; but that there should not belong hands to every head, action to every counsell, was never intended, so much as in figure, and representation. For, as Matrimonie is scarce to bee called Matrimonie, where there is a resolution against the fruits of matrimonie, against the having of Children, so counsels are not counsels, but illusions, where there is from the beginning no purpose to execute the determinations of those counsels. The arts and sciences are most properly referred to the head; that is their proper Element and Spheare; but yet the art of proving, Logique, and the art of perswading, Rhetorique, are deduced to the hand, and that expressed by a hand contracted into a fist, and this by a hand enlarged, and expanded; and evermore the power of man, and the power of God himselfe is expressed so, All things are in his hand; neither is God so often presented to us, by names that carry our consideration upon counsell, as upon execution of counsell; he is oftener called the Lord of Hosts, than by all other names, that may be referred to the other signification. Hereby therefore wee take into our meditation, the slipperie condition of man, whose happinesse, in any kinde, the defect of any one thing, conducing to that happinesse, may ruine; but it must have all the peeces to make it up. Without counsell, I had not got thus farre; without action and practise, I should goe no farther towards health. But what is the present necessary action? purging: A withdrawing, a violating of Nature, a farther weakening: O deare price, and O strange way of addition, to doe it by substraction; of restoring Nature, to violate Nature; of providing strength, by increasing weaknesses! Was I not sicke before? And is it a question of comfort to be asked now, Did your Physicke make you sicke? Was that it that my Physicke promised, to make me sicke? This is another step, upon which we may stand, and see farther into the miserie of man, the time, the season of his Miserie; It must bee done now: O over-cunning, over-watchfull, overdiligent, and over-sociable misery of man, that seldome comes alone, but then when it may accompanie other miseries, and so put one another into the higher exaltation, and better heart! I am ground even to an attenuation, and must proceed to evacuation, all waies to exinanition and annihilation.
XXI. MEDITATION
IF MAN had beene left alone in this world, at first, shall I thinke, that he would not have fallen? If there had beene no Woman, would not man have served, to have beene his own Tempter? When I see him now, subject to infinite weaknesses, fall into infinite sinne, without any forraine tentations, shall I thinke, hee would have had none, if hee had beene alone? God saw that Man needed a Helper, if hee should bee well; but to make Woman ill, the Devill saw, that there needed no third. When God, and wee were alone, in Adam, that was not enough; when the Devill and wee were alone, in Eve, it was enough. O what a Giant is Man, when he fights against himselfe, and what a Dwarfe when hee needs, or exercises his owne assistance for himselfel I cannot rise out of my bed, till the Physitian enable mee, nay I cannot tel, that I am able to rise, till hee tell me so. I doe nothing, I know nothing of myselfe: how little, and how impotent a peece of the world, is any Man alone! and how much lesse a peece of himselfe is that Man! So little, as that when it falls out, (as it falls out in some cases) that more misery, and more oppression, would be an ease to a man, he cannot give himselfe that miserable addition, of more misery; a man that is pressed to death, and might be eased by more weights, cannot lay those more weights upon himselfe: Hee can sinne alone, and suffer alone, but not repent, not bee absolved, without another. Another tels mee, I may rise; and I doe so. But is every raising a preferment? or is every present Preferment a station? I am readier to fall to the Earth, now I am up, than I was when I lay in the bed: O perverse way, irregular motion of Man; even rising it selfe is the way to Ruine. How many men are raised, and then doe not fill the place they are raised to? No corner of any place can bee empty; there can be no vacuity; If that Man doe not fill the place, other men will; complaints of his insufficiency will fill it; Nay, such an abhorring is there in Nature, of vacuity, that if there be but an imagination of not filling, in any man, that which is but imagination neither, will fill it, that is rumor and voice, and it will be given out, (upon no ground, but Imagination, and no man knowes whose imagination) that hee is corrupt in his place, or insufficient in his place, and another prepared to succeed him in his place. A man rises, sometimes, and stands not, because hee doth not, or is not beleeved to fill his place; and sometimes he stands not, because hee overfills his place: Hee may bring so much vertue, so much Justice, so much integrity to the place, as shall spoile the place, burthen the place; his integrity may bee a Libell upon his Predecessor, and cast an infamy upon him, and a burthen upon his successor, to proceede by example, and to bring the place itselfe to an under-value, and the market to an uncertainty. I am up, and I seeme to stand, and I goe round; and I am a new Argument of the new Philosophie, That the Earth moves round; why may I not beleeve, that the whole earth moves in a round motion, though that seeme to mee to stand, when as I seeme to stand to my Company, and yet am carried, in a giddy, and circular motion, as I stand? Man hath no center but misery; there and onely there, hee is fixt, and sure to finde himselfe. How little soever hee bee raised, he moves, and moves in a circle, giddily; and as in the Heavens, there are but a few Circles, that goe about the whole world, but many Epicircles, and other lesser Circles, but yet Circles, so of those men, which are raised, and put into Circles, few of them move from place to place, and passe through many and beneficiall places, but fall into little Circles, and, within a step or two, are at their end, and not so well, as they were in the Center, from which they were raised. Every thing serves to exemplifies to illustrate mans misery. But I need goe no farther, than my selfe: for a long time, I was not able to rise; At last, I must bee raised by others; and now I am up, I am ready to sinke lower than before.
XXII. MEDITATION
HOW ruinous a farme hath man taken, in taking himselfe! How ready is the house every day to fall downe, and how is all the ground overspread with weeds, all the body with diseases! where not onely every turfe, but every stone, beares weeds; not onely every muscle of the flesh, but every bone of the body, hath some infirmitie; every little flint upon the face of this soile, hath some infectious weede, every tooth in our head, such a paine as a constant man is afraid of, and yet ashamed of that feare, of that sense of the paine. How deare, and how often a rent doth Man pay for this farme! hee paies twice a day, in double meales, and how little time he hath to raise his rent! How many holy daies to call him from his labour! Every day is halfe-holy day, halfe spent in sleepe. What repararations, and subsidies, and contributions he is put to, besides his rent! What medicines, besides his diet! and what Inmates he is faine to take in, besides his owne families what infectious diseases, from other men! Adam might have had Paradise for dressing and keeping it; and then his rent was not improved to such a labour, as would have made his brow sweat; and yet he g
ave it over; how farre greater a rent doe wee pay for this farme, this body, who pay our selves, who pay the farme it selfe, and cannot live upon it! Neither is our labour at an end, when wee have cut downe some weed, as soone as it sprung up, corrected some violent and dangerous accident of a disease, which would have destroied speedily; nor when wee have pulled up that weed, from the very root, recovered entirely and soundly, from that particular disease; but the whole ground is of an ill nature, the whole soile ill disposed; there are inclinations, there is a propensenesse to diseases in the body, out of which without any other disorder, diseases will grow, and so wee are put to a continuall labour upon this farme, to a continuall studie of the whole complexion and constitution of our body. In the distempers and diseases of soiles, sourenesse, drinesse, weeping, any kinde of barrennesse, the remedy and the physicke, is, for a great part, sometimes in themselves; sometime[s] the very situation releeves them; the hanger of a hill, will purge and vent his owne malignant moisture; and the burning of the upper turfe of some ground (as health from cauterizing) puts a new and a vigorous youth into that soile, and there rises a kinde of Phœnix out of the ashes, a fruitfulnesse out of that which was barren before, and by that, which is the barrennest of all, ashes. And where the ground cannot give itselfe Physicke, yet it receives Physicke from other grounds, from other soiles, which are not the worse, for having contributed that helpe to them, from Marle in other hils, or from slimie sand in other shoares: grounds helpe themselves, or hurt not other grounds, from whence they receive helpe. But I have taken a farme at this hard rent, and upon those heavie covenants, that it can afford it selfe no helpe; (no part of my body, if it were cut off, would cure another part; in some cases it might preserve a sound part, but in no case recover an infected) and, if my body may have any Physicke, any Medicine from another body, one Man from the flesh of another Man (as by Mummy, or any such composition,) it must bee from a man that is dead, and not, as in other soiles, which are never the worse for contributing their Marle, or their fat slime to my ground. There is nothing in the same man, to helpe man, nothing in mankind to helpe one another (in this sort, by way of Physicke) but that hee who ministers the helpe, is in as ill case, as he that receives it would have beene, if he had not had it; for hee from whose body the Physicke comes, is dead. When therefore I tooke this farme, undertooke this body, I undertooke to draine, not a marish, but a moat, where there was, not water mingled to offend, but all was water; I undertooke to perfume dung, where no one part, but all was equally unsavory; I undertooke to make such a thing wholsome, as was not poison by any manifest quality, intense heat, or cold, but poison in the whole substance, and in the specifique forme of it. To cure the sharpe accidents of diseases, is a great worke; to cure the disease it selfe is a greater; but to cure the body, the root, the occasion of diseases, is a worke reserved for the great Phisitian, which he doth never any other way, but by glorifying these bodies in the next world.
XXIII. MEDITATION
IT IS not in mans body, as it is in the Citie, that when the Bell hath rung, to cover your fire, and rake up the embers, you may lie downe and sleepe without feare. Though you have by physicke and diet, raked up the embers of your disease, stil there is a feare of a relapse; and the greater danger is in that. Even in pleasures, and in paines, there is a propriety, a Meum and Tuum; and a man is most affected with that pleasure which is his, his by former enjoying and experience, and most intimidated with those paines which are his, his by a wofull sense of them, in former afflictions. A covetous person, who hath preoccupated all his senses, filled all his capacities, with the delight of gathering, wonders how any man can have any taste of any pleasure in any opennesse, or liberalitie; So also in bodily paines, in a fit of the stone, the Patient wonders why any man should call the Gout a paine: And hee that hath felt neither, but the tooth-ache is as much afraid of a fit of that, as either of the other, of either of the other. Diseases, which we never felt in our selves, come but to a compassion of others that have endured them; Nay, compassion it selfe comes to no great degree, if wee have not felt in some proportion, in our selves, that which wee lament and condole in another. But when wee have had those torments in their exaltation, our selves, wee tremble at a relapse. When wee must pant through all those fierie heats, and saile thorow all those overflowing sweats, when wee must watch through all those long nights, and mourne through all those long daies, (daies and nights, so long, as that Nature her selfe shall seeme to be perverted, and to have put the longest day, and the longest night, which should bee six moneths asunder, into one naturall, unnaturall day) when wee must stand at the same barre, expect the returne of Physitians from their consultations, and not bee sure of the same verdict, in any good Indications, when we must goe the same way over againe, and not see the same issue, this is a state, a condition, a calamitie, in respect of which, any other sicknesse, were a convalescence, and any greater, lesse. It addes to the affliction, that relapses are, (and for the most part justly) imputed to our selves, as occasioned by some disorder in us; and so we are not onely passive, but active, in our owne ruine; we doe not onely stand under a falling house, but pull it downe upon us; and wee are not onely executed, (that implies guiltinesse) but wee are executioners, (that implies dishonor) and executioners of our selves, (and that implies impietie). And wee fall from that comfort which wee might have in our first sicknesse, from that meditation, Alas, how generally miserable is Man, and how subject to diseases, (for in that it is some degree of comfort, that wee are but in the state common to all) we fall, I say, to this discomfort, and selfe accusing, and selfe condemning; Alas, how unprovident, and in that, how unthankfull to God and his instruments am I, in making so ill use of so great benefits, in destroying so soone, so long a worke, in relapsing, by my disorder, to that from which they had delivered mee; and so my meditation is fearefully transferred from the body to the minde, and from the consideration of the sicknesse to that sinne, that sinful carelessness by which I have occasioned my relapse. And amongst the many weights that aggravate a relapse, this also is one, that a relapse proceeds with a more violent dispatch, and more irremediably, because it finds the Countrie weakned, and depopulated before. Upon a sicknesse, which as yet appeares not, wee can scarce fix a feare, because wee know not what to feare; but as feare is the busiest, and irksomest affection, so is a relapse (which is still ready to come) into that, which is but newly gone, the nearest object, the most immediate exercise of that affection of feare.