I Am Not So Much

To Call Ourselves A Microcosme, Or Little World, I Thought It Onely A Pleasant Trope Of Rhetorick, Till My Neare Judgement And Second Thoughts Told Me There Was A Reall Truth Therein: For First Wee Are A Rude Masse, And In The Ranke Of Creatures, Which Only Are, And Have A Dull Kinde Of Being Not Yet Priviledged With Life, Or Preferred To Sense Or Reason; Next We Live The Life Of Plants, The Life Of Animals, The Life Of Men, And At Last The Life Of Spirits, Running On In One Mysterious Nature Those Five Kinds Of Existence, Which Comprehend The Creatures Not Onely Of World, But Of The Universe.

Whosoever Enjoys Not This Life, I Count Him But An Apparition, Though He Wear About Him The Sensible Affections Of Flesh. In These Moral Acceptions, The Way To Be Immortal Is To Die Daily.

Now With My Friend I Desire Not To Share Or Participate, But To Engross His Sorrows, That, By Making Them Mine Own, I May More Easily Discuss Them; For In Mine Own Reason, And Within Myself, I Can Command That Which I Cannot Entreat Without Myself, And Within The Circle Of Another.

Half Our Days We Pass In The Shadow Of The Earth; And The Brother Of Death Exacteth A Third Part Of Our Lives.

No One Should Approach The Temple Of Science With The Soul Of A Money Changer.