Among Martial's requisites to happiness is, Res
non parta labore, sed relicta, "an estate not gained
by industry, but left by inheritance." It is necessary
to the completion of every good, that it be timely
obtained; for whatever comes at the close of life will
come too late to give much delight; yet all human
happiness has its defects. Of what we do not gain
for ourselves we have only a faint and imperfect
fruition, because we cannot compare the difference
between want and possession, or at least can derive
from it no conviction of our own abilities, nor any
increase of self-esteem; what we acquire by bravery
or science, by mental or corporal diligence, comes
at last when we cannot communicate, and therefore
cannot enjoy it.
Thus every period of life is obliged to borrow its
happiness from the time to come. In youth we have
nothing past to entertain us, and in age, we derive
little from retrospect but hopeless sorrow. Yet the
future likewise has its limits, which the imagination
dreads to approach, but which we see to be not far
distant. The loss of our friends and companions
impresses hourly upon us the necessity of our own
departure; we know that the schemes of man are
quickly at an end, that we must soon lie down in
the grave with the forgotten multitudes of former
ages, and yield our place to others, who, like us, shall
be driven a while by hope or fear about the surface
of the earth, and then like us be lost in the shades
of death.
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