Justus Lipsius, On Constancy 1.9

The vizard of dissimulation is more plainly discovered, by examples. By the way mention is made of our true country. Also the malice of men rejoicing at other men's harms when they themselves be without danger thereof. 

"Wherefore you yourself shall sit as judge in this cause, but yet with the veil removed from your face. 

"You fear the war. I know it. Why? Because war draws with it punishment and destruction. To whom? To others at this present, but it may be shortly to you. Behold the head, behold the fountain of your grief. For as a thunderbolt having stricken one man, makes all that stood near him to tremble: so in these universal and public calamities, the loss touches few, the fear redounds to all, which fear if it were away, there would be no place for sorrow. 

"Behold, if war be among the Ethiopians or Indians, it moves you not (you are out of danger): if it be in Belgica you weep, cry out, rub your forehead, and smite your thigh. But now if it were so that you did bewail the public evils as public, and for themselves, there should be no difference had of you between those countries and this. 

"You will say, 'It is none of my country.' O fool: are not they men, sprung first out of the same stock with you? Living under the same globe of heaven? Upon the same mold of earth? Think you that this little plot of ground environed by such and such mountains, compassed with this or that river, is your country? 

"You are deceived. The whole world is our country, wheresoever is the race of mankind sprung of that celestial seed. Socrates being asked of what country he was, answered: 'Of the world.' For a high and lofty mind will not suffer itself to be penned by opinion within such narrow bounds, but conceives and knows the whole world to be his own. 

"We scorn and laugh at fools, who suffer their masters to tie them with a straw or small thread to a post, where they stand as if they were fettered fast with iron. Our folly is not inferior to theirs, who with the weak link of opinion are wedded to one corner of the world. 

"But to let pass these deep arguments (which I doubt how you will conceive of them), I demand, if God would assure you in the midst of these broils, that your field should be unspoiled, your house and substance in safety, and yourself on some high mountain placed out of all danger: would you lament for all this? 

"I am loath to affirm it of you, but I am certain there are many that would be glad thereof, and feed their eyes greedily with the spectacle of such blood butcheries. Why do you turn aside? Why do you marvel at this? Such is the natural corruption of man, that, as the poet says, it rejoices at other men's harms. And as some apples there be though bitter in the belly yet relishing sweet in taste: so are other men's miseries, we ourselves being free from them. 

Suppose a man be on the shore beholding a shipwreck, it will move him somewhat, yet truly not without an inward tickling of his mind, because he sees other men's danger, himself being in security. But if he in person were in that distressed ship, he would be touched with another manner of grief. 

"Even so verily is it in this case, let us say, or make what show we list to the contrary. For we bewail our own misfortunes earnestly and from the heart, but public calamities in words only and for fashion's sake. 

"Wherefore, Lipsius, take away these stage-hangings, draw back the curtain that is before you, and without all counterfeiting or dissimulation, acquaint us with the true cause of your sorrow." 

IMAGE: Jan Martszen de Jonge, A Cavalry Skirmish with Two Fallen Soldiers (c. 1640)