Page:Thoughts on art and life.djvu/215

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96.

Take pains to preserve thy health; and thou wilt all the more easily do this if thou avoidest physicians, because their drugs are a kind of alchemy, and there are as many books on this subject as there are on medicine.

97.

Oh ! meditators on perpetual motion, how many vain projects of similar character you have devised ! Go and join the seekers of gold.

98.

The water which flows in a river moves either because it is summoned or driven, or because it moves of its own accord. If it is summoned,— and I mean sought after, — who is the seeker? If it is driven, who is the driver? If it moves of its own accord, it gives evidence of reasoning; and reasoning in bodies which continually change their shape is impossible, because in such bodies there is no consciousness.

99.

I wish to work miracles. I may have less than other and less energetic men; and those who wish to grow rich in a day live a long time in great poverty, as happens, and will always happen, to alchemists, who seek to make gold and silver, and to the engineers who wish from still

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