If the diviner predicts sickness on a particular day, they will be sick at that very time: “Stricken by the force of fear, they fall ill”; and often they die as foretold. A true saying: “Fear of death is worse than death.” The fear of death is worse than death itself; and to some prosperous and wealthy people the thought of that sad hour is as bitter as gall, Ecclesiasticus 41:1.

“Fear of death makes our life unquiet.” No worse affliction can befall a person than such turmoil of mind. It is “a sorrowful parting,” a grievous separation: to leave, all at once, possessions won with so much labour, the worldly pleasures they have enjoyed so deliciously, and friends and companions they have loved so dearly.

Axiochus the philosopher was bold and courageous throughout his life, and gave others sound advice “on despising death” and against the vanity of the world. But when he himself was about to die, he became deeply dejected: “Shall I be deprived of this light? Bereft of these good things?” He lamented like a child, and so on. Though Socrates himself was there to comfort him—“Where is your former boasting of virtue, Axiochus?”—he was still very fearful, unable to bear death, and deeply troubled in mind: “unmanly fear and lack of fortitude,” and so on.

“O Clotho,” cries the tyrant Megapenthes in Lucian, as he is about to depart, “let me live a little longer. I will give you a thousand talents of gold, and two bowls besides, which I took from Cleocritus, worth a hundred talents apiece.”

“Alas for me,” says another, “what fine estates I shall leave! What fertile fields! What a beautiful house! What lovely children! How many servants! Who will gather my grapes, my grain? Must I die now, so well settled? Leave everything, when I am so richly and well provided for? Alas for me, what shall I do?”

Little soul, wandering, gentle, to what places will you now depart?

To these torments of fear and sorrow we may well add curiosity: that wearisome, tyrannical preoccupation, “excessive anxiety,” or unnecessary effort over useless things and their qualities, as Thomas defines it. It is an itching impulse, a kind of longing to see what is not to be seen, to do what ought not to be done, to know a secret that should not be known, to eat the forbidden fruit.

We commonly distress and exhaust ourselves over things inappropriate and unnecessary, as Martha troubled herself to little purpose. Whether in religion, classical learning, magic, philosophy, politics, or any undertaking or study, it is needless trouble, sheer torment.

For what else is scholastic theology? How many people it perplexes! What fruitless questions about the Trinity, resurrection, election, predestination, reprobation, hellfire and so on: how many will be saved, how many damned? What else is all superstition but an endless observance of idle ceremonies and traditions?

What is most of our philosophy but a labyrinth of opinions, idle questions, propositions and metaphysical terms? Socrates therefore considered all philosophers quibblers and madmen: “He regarded those who quibbled over subtleties as insane, openly reproving them,” says Eusebius, because they commonly pursued things “which we could neither perceive nor comprehend”; or, supposing they did understand them, they were still altogether useless.

For what does it matter to us to know how high the Pleiades are, how far Perseus and Cassiopeia lie from us, how deep the sea is, and so on? As he goes on to say, knowing these things makes us neither wiser, more temperate, better, richer nor stronger. “What is above us is no concern of ours.”

I may say the same of those studies of birth horoscopes. What is astrology but futile choices of auspicious times and predictions? All magic but a troubling error, a pernicious absurdity? Medicine but intricate rules and prescriptions? Philology but vain textual criticisms? Logic but needless sophisms? Metaphysics itself but intricate subtleties and fruitless abstractions? Alchemy but a bundle of errors?

What purpose do such enormous books serve? Why do we spend so many years studying them? Far better to know nothing at all, as those barbarous Indians are wholly ignorant, than to be, as some of us are, so grievously vexed over useless trifles: “Labour spent on trifles is foolish”—building a house without pegs, making a rope of sand. To what end? “What good does it do?”

He studies on; but, as the boy told Saint Augustine, “When I have emptied the sea, you shall understand the mystery of the Trinity.” He makes observations, attends to times and seasons; and, like the emperor Conrad, who would not touch his new bride until an astrologer had told him an hour favourable to conceiving a boy—but with what success?

He travels through Europe, Africa and Asia, explores every inlet, sea, city, mountain and gulf—to what end? See one headland, said Socrates long ago, one mountain, one sea, one river, and you have seen them all.

An alchemist spends his fortune to discover the philosopher’s stone, forsooth—to cure every disease, make men long-lived, victorious, fortunate and invisible—and reduces himself to beggary, misled by those beguiling impostors, in the hope of making gold, which he will never achieve.

An antiquary consumes his money and time scraping together a collection of old coins, statues, rolls, edicts, manuscripts and so on. He must know what happened long ago in Athens and Rome, what lodgings, food and houses they had; and he must have all the latest news, however distant, before anyone else—what schemes, counsels, deliberations, and so on; “what Juno whispers into Jupiter’s ear”; what is now decreed in France, what in Italy; who that man was, where he comes from, which way he is going, where he is bound, and so on.