That traveling into foreign countries is not available against the inward maladies of the mind: that it is a testimony of them but not a remedy against them, except only in slight and first motions of the affection.
Langius beckoning somewhat with his head, "I hear you, Lipsius, but I had rather you would hearken to the voice of wisdom and reason. For these mists and clouds that thus compass you, do proceed from the smoke of opinions. Wherefore, I say with Diogenes, you have more need of reason than of a rope. That bright beam of reason, I mean, which may illuminate the obscurity of your brain.
"Behold, you forsake your country: tell me in good sooth, in forsaking it, can you forsake yourself also? See that the contrary not fall out: and that whithersoever you go, you carry not in your breast the fountain and food of your own grief.
"As they that be holden with a fever, do toss and turn themselves unquietly, and often change their beds through a vain hope of remedy: in like case are we, who being sick in our minds do without any fruit wander from one country to another. This is indeed to bewray our grief, but not to allay it. To discover this inward flame, but not to quench it: very fitly said that wise Roman, Seneca:
It is proper to a sick person not to suffer anything long, but to use mutations instead of medicines: Hereof proceed wandering peregrinations, and walkings on sundry shores: and our inconstancy, always loathing things present, one while will be upon the sea, and incontinent desires the land.
"Therefore you fly from troubles always, but never escape them, not unlike the hind that Virgil speaks of:
Whom ranging through the chase, some hunter shooting far by chance
All unaware has smit, and in her side has left his lance,
She fast to wilderness and woods does draw, and there complains,
"But all in vain: because as the poet adds,
That underneath her ribs the deadly dart remains.
"So that you are wounded with this dart of affections, do not shake it out, but in traveling carry it with you to another place. He that has broken his thigh or his arm, is not inclined, I think, to go on horseback or into his chariot, but to a surgeon. And what madness is this in you, to seek remedy of this inward wound by motion and trudging from place to place?
"It is the mind that is wounded, and all this external imbecility, despair, and languishing, spring from this fountain, that the mind is thus prostrated and cast down. The principal and sovereign part has let the scepter fall and is become so vile and abject that it willingly serves its own servants.
"Tell me, what can any place or peregrination work in this case? Except perhaps there be some region in the world which can bring order of out fear, bridle hope, and draw out these evil dregs of vice, which we have sucked from our infancy. But none such is there, no not in the fortunate Islands: or if there be, show it unto us, and we will all hasten thither in troupes.
"But you will say that mutation and change itself has that force in it: And that the daily beholding of strange fashions, men, and places do refresh and lighten the mind loaded with oppressions.
"No, Lipsius, you are deceived. For, to tell you the truth plainly, I do not so much derogate from peregrination and traveling as though it bare no sway over men and their affections: Yes verily it avails, but yet thus far to the expelling of some small tediousness and weariness of our minds, not to the curing of maladies rooted so deeply, as that these external medicines cannot pluck them out.
"Music, wine, and sleep have oftentimes quenched the first enkindled sparks of anger, sorrow, and love: but never weeded out any settled or deep rooted grief. Likewise I say, that traveling might perhaps cure superficial scars, but not substantial sores. For these first motions having their original from the body do stick in the body or at the most do but cleave to the outer limit of the mind, as a man may say.
"And therefore no marvel is it, through though with a sponge they be lightly washed away: otherwise it is of old festered affections, which hold their seat, yea, and scepter in the castle of the mind.
"When you have gone far, and wandered every sea and shore, you shall neither drown them in the deep sea, nor bury them in the bowels of the earth. They will follow you at an inch: and, as the poet says, foul care will sit close in the skirts of footman and horseman.
"One demanded of Socrates how it came to pass that his traveling did him no good. 'Because,' said he, 'you forsook not your self.' So say I, that wherever you flee, you carry with you a corrupt mind, no good companion. And would to God it were but as your companion, I fear lest he be your captain, in that your affections follow not you, but you them."
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