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ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
By Michel De Montaigne
CONTENTS
PREFACE
THE LETTERS OF MONTAIGNE
I. — To Monsieur de MONTAIGNE
II. — To Monseigneur, Monseigneur de
MONTAIGNE.
III. — To
Monsieur, Monsieur de LANSAC,
IV.
— To Monsieur, Monsieur de MESMES, Lord of Roissy and
Malassize, Privy
V. — To
Monsieur, Monsieur de L'HOSPITAL, Chancellor of France
VI. — To Monsieur, Monsieur de Folx,
Privy Councillor, to the Signory of Venice.
VII. — To Mademoiselle de MONTAIGNE, my
Wife.
VIII. — To
Monsieur DUPUY,
IX. — To
the Jurats of Bordeaux.
X. —
To the same.
XI. — To
the same.
XII. —
XIII. — To Mademoiselle
PAULMIER.
XIV. — To the
KING, HENRY IV.
XV. — To
the same.
XVI. — To the
Governor of Guienne.
BOOK THE
FIRST —
CHAPTER I
— THAT MEN BY VARIOUS WAYS ARRIVE AT THE SAME END.
CHAPTER II — OF SORROW
CHAPTER III — THAT OUR AFFECTIONS CARRY
THEMSELVES BEYOND US
CHAPTER IV
— THAT THE SOUL EXPENDS ITS PASSIONS UPON FALSE OBJECTS
CHAPTER V — WHETHER THE GOVERNOR
HIMSELF GO OUT TO PARLEY
CHAPTER VI
— THAT THE HOUR OF PARLEY DANGEROUS
CHAPTER VII — THAT THE INTENTION IS
JUDGE OF OUR ACTIONS
CHAPTER VIII
— OF IDLENESS
CHAPTER IX
— OF LIARS
CHAPTER X
— OF QUICK OR SLOW SPEECH
CHAPTER XI — OF PROGNOSTICATIONS
CHAPTER XII — OF CONSTANCY
CHAPTER XIII — THE CEREMONY OF THE
INTERVIEW OF PRINCES
CHAPTER XIV
— THAT MEN ARE JUSTLY PUNISHED FOR BEING OBSTINATE
CHAPTER XV — OF THE PUNISHMENT OF
COWARDICE
CHAPTER XVI — A
PROCEEDING OF SOME AMBASSADORS
CHAPTER XVII — OF FEAR
CHAPTER XVIII — NOT TO JUDGE OF OUR HAPPINESS TILL AFTER
DEATH.
CHAPTER XIX — THAT
TO STUDY PHILOSOPY IS TO LEARN TO DIE
CHAPTER XX — OF THE FORCE OF IMAGINATION
CHAPTER XXI — THAT THE PROFIT OF ONE MAN
IS THE DAMAGE OF ANOTHER
CHAPTER
XXII — OF CUSTOM; WE SHOULD NOT EASILY CHANGE A LAW RECEIVED
CHAPTER XXIII — VARIOUS
EVENTS FROM THE SAME COUNSEL
CHAPTER
XXIV — OF PEDANTRY
CHAPTER
XXV — OF THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
CHAPTER XXVI — FOLLY TO MEASURE TRUTH
AND ERROR BY OUR OWN CAPACITY
CHAPTER XXVII — OF FRIENDSHIP
CHAPTER XXVIII — NINE AND TWENTY SONNETS
OF ESTIENNE DE LA BOITIE
CHAPTER
XXIX — OF MODERATION
CHAPTER XXX — OF CANNIBALS
CHAPTER XXXI — THAT A MAN IS SOBERLY TO JUDGE OF THE DIVINE
ORDINANCES
CHAPTER XXXII —
WE ARE TO AVOID PLEASURES, EVEN AT THE EXPENSE OF LIFE
CHAPTER XXXIII — FORTUNE IS OFTEN
OBSERVED TO ACT BY THE RULE OF REASON
CHAPTER XXXIV — OF ONE DEFECT IN OUR GOVERNMENT
CHAPTER XXXV — OF THE CUSTOM OF WEARING
CLOTHES
CHAPTER XXXVI — OF
CATO THE YOUNGER
CHAPTER XXXVII
— THAT WE LAUGH AND CRY FOR THE SAME THING
CHAPTER XXXVIII — OF
SOLITUDE
CHAPTER XXXIX — A
CONSIDERATION UPON CICERO
CHAPTER XL
— RELISH FOR GOOD AND EVIL DEPENDS UPON OUR OPINION
CHAPTER XLI — NOT TO COMMUNICATE A
MAN'S HONOUR
CHAPTER XLII —
OF THE INEQUALITY AMOUNGST US.
CHAPTER XLIII — OF SUMPTUARY LAWS
CHAPTER XLIV — OF SLEEP
CHAPTER XLV — OF THE BATTLE OF DREUX
CHAPTER XLVI — OF NAMES
CHAPTER XLVII — OF THE
UNCERTAINTY OF OUR JUDGMENT
CHAPTER
XLVIII — OF WAR HORSES, OR DESTRIERS
CHAPTER XLIX — OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS
CHAPTER L — OF DEMOCRITUS AND
HERACLITUS
CHAPTER LI — OF
THE VANITY OF WORDS
CHAPTER LII
— OF THE PARSIMONY OF THE ANCIENTS
CHAPTER LIII — OF A SAYING OF CAESAR
CHAPTER LIV — OF VAIN
SUBTLETIES
CHAPTER LV — OF
SMELLS
CHAPTER LVI — OF
PRAYERS
CHAPTER LVII — OF
AGE
BOOK THE SECOND —
CHAPTER I — OF THE
INCONSTANCY OF OUR ACTIONS
CHAPTER
II — OF DRUNKENNESS
CHAPTER III — A CUSTOM OF THE ISLE OF CEA
CHAPTER IV — TO-MORROW'S A NEW DAY
CHAPTER V — OF CONSCIENCE
CHAPTER VI — USE MAKES PERFECT
CHAPTER VII — OF RECOMPENSES OF
HONOUR
CHAPTER VIII — OF
THE AFFECTION OF FATHERS TO THEIR CHILDREN
CHAPTER IX — OF THE ARMS OF THE
PARTHIANS
CHAPTER X — OF
BOOKS
CHAPTER XI — OF
CRUELTY
CHAPTER XII — APOLOGY
FOR RAIMOND SEBOND
CHAPTER XIII
— OF JUDGING OF THE DEATH OF ANOTHER
CHAPTER XIV — THAT OUR MIND HINDERS
ITSELF
CHAPTER XV — THAT
OUR DESIRES ARE AUGMENTED BY DIFFICULTY
CHAPTER XVI — OF GLORY
CHAPTER XVII — OF PRESUMPTION
CHAPTER XVIII — OF GIVING THE LIE
CHAPTER XIX — OF LIBERTY
OF CONSCIENCE
CHAPTER XX —
THAT WE TASTE NOTHING PURE
CHAPTER XXI — AGAINST IDLENESS
CHAPTER XXII — OF POSTING
CHAPTER XXIII — OF ILL MEANS EMPLOYED TO
A GOOD END
CHAPTER XXIV — OF
THE ROMAN GRANDEUR
CHAPTER XXV
— NOT TO COUNTERFEIT BEING SICK
CHAPTER XXVI — OF THUMBS
CHAPTER XXVII — COWARDICE THE MOTHER OF
CRUELTY
CHAPTER XXVIII — ALL
THINGS HAVE THEIR SEASON
CHAPTER
XXIX — OF VIRTUE
CHAPTER
XXX — OF A MONSTROUS CHILD
CHAPTER XXXI — OF ANGER
CHAPTER XXXII — DEFENCE OF SENECA AND PLUTARCH
CHAPTER XXXIII — THE
STORY OF SPURINA
CHAPTER XXXIV
— OBSERVATION ON A WAR ACCORDING TO JULIUS CAESAR
CHAPTER XXXV — OF THREE GOOD WOMEN
CHAPTER XXXVI — OF THE
MOST EXCELLENT MEN
CHAPTER XXXVII
— OF THE RESEMBLANCE OF CHILDREN TO THEIR FATHERS
BOOK THE THIRD —
CHAPTER I — OF PROFIT AND HONESTY
CHAPTER II — OF REPENTANCE
CHAPTER III — OF THREE
COMMERCES
CHAPTER IV — OF
DIVERSION
CHAPTER V — UPON
SOME VERSES OF VIRGIL
CHAPTER VI
— OF COACHES
CHAPTER VII
— OF THE INCONVENIENCE OF GREATNESS
CHAPTER VIII — OF
THE ART OF CONFERENCE
CHAPTER IX
— OF VANITY
CHAPTER X
— OF MANAGING THE WILL
CHAPTER XI — OF CRIPPLES
CHAPTER XII — OF PHYSIOGNOMY
CHAPTER XIII — OF EXPERIENCE
PREFACE
The present publication is intended to supply a recognised deficiency in
our literature—a library edition of the Essays of Montaigne. This
great French writer deserves to be regarded as a classic, not only in the
land of his birth, but in all countries and in all literatures. His
Essays, which are at once the most celebrated and the most permanent of
his productions, form a magazine out of which such minds as those of Bacon
and Shakespeare did not disdain to help themselves; and, indeed, as Hallam
observes, the Frenchman's literary importance largely results from the
share which his mind had in influencing other minds, coeval and
subsequent. But, at the same time, estimating the value and rank of the
essayist, we are not to leave out of the account the drawbacks and the
circumstances of the period: the imperfect state of education, the
comparative scarcity of books, and the limited opportunities of
intellectual intercourse. Montaigne freely borrowed of others, and he has
found men willing to borrow of him as freely. We need not wonder at the
reputation which he with seeming facility achieved. He was, without being
aware of it, the leader of a new school in letters and morals. His book
was different from all others which were at that date in the world. It
diverted the ancient currents of thought into new channels. It told its
readers, with unexampled frankness, what its writer's opinion was about
men and things, and threw what must have been a strange kind of new light
on many matters but darkly understood. Above all, the essayist uncased
himself, and made his intellectual and physical organism public property.
He took the world into his confidence on all subjects. His essays were a
sort of literary anatomy, where we get a diagnosis of the writer's mind,
made by himself at different levels and under a large variety of operating
influences.
Of all egotists, Montaigne, if not the greatest, was the most fascinating,
because, perhaps, he was the least affected and most truthful. What he
did, and what he had professed to do, was to dissect his mind, and show
us, as best he could, how it was made, and what relation it bore to
external objects. He investigated his mental structure as a schoolboy
pulls his watch to pieces, to examine the mechanism of the works; and the
result, accompanied by illustrations abounding with originality and force,
he delivered to his fellow-men in a book.
Eloquence, rhetorical effect, poetry, were alike remote from his design.
He did not write from necessity, scarcely perhaps for fame. But he desired
to leave France, nay, and the world, something to be remembered by,
something which should tell what kind of a man he was—what he felt,
thought, suffered—and he succeeded immeasurably, I apprehend, beyond
his expectations.
It was reasonable enough that Montaigne should expect for his work a
certain share of celebrity in Gascony, and even, as time went on,
throughout France; but it is scarcely probable that he foresaw how his
renown was to become world-wide; how he was to occupy an almost unique
position as a man of letters and a moralist; how the Essays would be read,
in all the principal languages of Europe, by millions of intelligent human
beings, who never heard of Perigord or the League, and who are in doubt,
if they are questioned, whether the author lived in the sixteenth or the
eighteenth century. This is true fame. A man of genius belongs to no
period and no country. He speaks the language of nature, which is always
everywhere the same.
The text of these volumes is taken from the first edition of Cotton's
version, printed in 3 vols. 8vo, 1685-6, and republished in 1693, 1700,
1711, 1738, and 1743, in the same number of volumes and the same size. In
the earliest impression the errors of the press are corrected merely as
far as page 240 of the first volume, and all the editions follow one
another. That of 1685-6 was the only one which the translator lived to
see. He died in 1687, leaving behind him an interesting and little-known
collection of poems, which appeared posthumously, 8vo, 1689.
It was considered imperative to correct Cotton's translation by a careful
collation with the 'variorum' edition of the original, Paris, 1854, 4
vols. 8vo or 12mo, and parallel passages from Florin's earlier undertaking
have occasionally been inserted at the foot of the page. A Life of the
Author and all his recovered Letters, sixteen in number, have also been
given; but, as regards the correspondence, it can scarcely be doubted that
it is in a purely fragmentary state. To do more than furnish a sketch of
the leading incidents in Montaigne's life seemed, in the presence of Bayle
St. John's charming and able biography, an attempt as difficult as it was
useless.
The besetting sin of both Montaigne's translators seems to have been a
propensity for reducing his language and phraseology to the language and
phraseology of the age and country to which they belonged, and, moreover,
inserting paragraphs and words, not here and there only, but constantly
and habitually, from an evident desire and view to elucidate or strengthen
their author's meaning. The result has generally been unfortunate; and I
have, in the case of all these interpolations on Cotton's part, felt
bound, where I did not cancel them, to throw them down into the notes, not
thinking it right that Montaigne should be allowed any longer to stand
sponsor for what he never wrote; and reluctant, on the other hand, to
suppress the intruding matter entirely, where it appeared to possess a
value of its own.
Nor is redundancy or paraphrase the only form of transgression in Cotton,
for there are places in his author which he thought proper to omit, and it
is hardly necessary to say that the restoration of all such matter to the
text was considered essential to its integrity and completeness.
My warmest thanks are due to my father, Mr Registrar Hazlitt, the author
of the well-known and excellent edition of Montaigne published in 1842,
for the important assistance which he has rendered to me in verifying and
retranslating the quotations, which were in a most corrupt state, and of
which Cotton's English versions were singularly loose and inexact, and for
the zeal with which he has co-operated with me in collating the English
text, line for line and word for word, with the best French edition.
By the favour of Mr F. W. Cosens, I have had by me, while at work on this
subject, the copy of Cotgrave's Dictionary, folio, 1650, which belonged to
Cotton. It has his autograph and copious MSS. notes, nor is it too much to
presume that it is the very book employed by him in his translation.
W. C. H.
KENSINGTON, November 1877.
THE LIFE OF MONTAIGNE
[This is translated freely from that prefixed to the 'variorum' Paris
edition, 1854, 4 vols. 8vo. This biography is the more desirable that it
contains all really interesting and important matter in the journal of the
Tour in Germany and Italy, which, as it was merely written under
Montaigne's dictation, is in the third person, is scarcely worth
publication, as a whole, in an English dress.]
The author of the Essays was born, as he informs us himself, between
eleven and twelve o'clock in the day, the last of February 1533, at the
chateau of St. Michel de Montaigne. His father, Pierre Eyquem, esquire,
was successively first Jurat of the town of Bordeaux (1530), Under-Mayor
1536, Jurat for the second time in 1540, Procureur in 1546, and at length
Mayor from 1553 to 1556. He was a man of austere probity, who had "a
particular regard for honour and for propriety in his person and attire .
. . a mighty good faith in his speech, and a conscience and a religious
feeling inclining to superstition, rather than to the other
extreme."[Essays, ii. 2.] Pierre Eyquem bestowed great care on the
education of his children, especially on the practical side of it. To
associate closely his son Michel with the people, and attach him to those
who stand in need of assistance, he caused him to be held at the font by
persons of meanest position; subsequently he put him out to nurse with a
poor villager, and then, at a later period, made him accustom himself to
the most common sort of living, taking care, nevertheless, to cultivate
his mind, and superintend its development without the exercise of undue
rigour or constraint. Michel, who gives us the minutest account of his
earliest years, charmingly narrates how they used to awake him by the
sound of some agreeable music, and how he learned Latin, without suffering
the rod or shedding a tear, before beginning French, thanks to the German
teacher whom his father had placed near him, and who never addressed him
except in the language of Virgil and Cicero. The study of Greek took
precedence. At six years of age young Montaigne went to the College of
Guienne at Bordeaux, where he had as preceptors the most eminent scholars
of the sixteenth century, Nicolas Grouchy, Guerente, Muret, and Buchanan.
At thirteen he had passed through all the classes, and as he was destined
for the law he left school to study that science. He was then about
fourteen, but these early years of his life are involved in obscurity. The
next information that we have is that in 1554 he received the appointment
of councillor in the Parliament of Bordeaux; in 1559 he was at Bar-le-Duc
with the court of Francis II, and in the year following he was present at
Rouen to witness the declaration of the majority of Charles IX. We do not
know in what manner he was engaged on these occasions.
Between 1556 and 1563 an important incident occurred in the life of
Montaigne, in the commencement of his romantic friendship with Etienne de
la Boetie, whom he had met, as he tells us, by pure chance at some festive
celebration in the town. From their very first interview the two found
themselves drawn irresistibly close to one another, and during six years
this alliance was foremost in the heart of Montaigne, as it was afterwards
in his memory, when death had severed it.
Although he blames severely in his own book [Essays, i. 27.] those who,
contrary to the opinion of Aristotle, marry before five-and-thirty,
Montaigne did not wait for the period fixed by the philosopher of Stagyra,
but in 1566, in his thirty-third year, he espoused Francoise de
Chassaigne, daughter of a councillor in the Parliament of Bordeaux. The
history of his early married life vies in obscurity with that of his
youth. His biographers are not agreed among themselves; and in the same
degree that he lays open to our view all that concerns his secret
thoughts, the innermost mechanism of his mind, he observes too much
reticence in respect to his public functions and conduct, and his social
relations. The title of Gentleman in Ordinary to the King, which he
assumes, in a preface, and which Henry II. gives him in a letter, which we
print a little farther on; what he says as to the commotions of courts,
where he passed a portion of his life; the Instructions which he wrote
under the dictation of Catherine de Medici for King Charles IX., and his
noble correspondence with Henry IV., leave no doubt, however, as to the
part which he played in the transactions of those times, and we find an
unanswerable proof of the esteem in which he was held by the most exalted
personages, in a letter which was addressed to him by Charles at the time
he was admitted to the Order of St. Michael, which was, as he informs us
himself, the highest honour of the French noblesse.
According to Lacroix du Maine, Montaigne, upon the death of his eldest
brother, resigned his post of Councillor, in order to adopt the military
profession, while, if we might credit the President Bouhier, he never
discharged any functions connected with arms. However, several passages in
the Essays seem to indicate that he not only took service, but that he was
actually in numerous campaigns with the Catholic armies. Let us add, that
on his monument he is represented in a coat of mail, with his casque and
gauntlets on his right side, and a lion at his feet, all which signifies,
in the language of funeral emblems, that the departed has been engaged in
some important military transactions.
However it may be as to these conjectures, our author, having arrived at
his thirty-eighth year, resolved to dedicate to study and contemplation
the remaining term of his life; and on his birthday, the last of February
1571, he caused a philosophical inscription, in Latin, to be placed upon
one of the walls of his chateau, where it is still to be seen, and of
which the translation is to this effect:—"In the year of Christ . .
. in his thirty-eighth year, on the eve of the Calends of March, his
birthday, Michel Montaigne, already weary of court employments and public
honours, withdrew himself entirely into the converse of the learned
virgins where he intends to spend the remaining moiety of the to allotted
to him in tranquil seclusion."
At the time to which we have come, Montaigne was unknown to the world of
letters, except as a translator and editor. In 1569 he had published a
translation of the "Natural Theology" of Raymond de Sebonde, which he had
solely undertaken to please his father. In 1571 he had caused to be
printed at Paris certain 'opuscucla' of Etienne de la Boetie; and these
two efforts, inspired in one case by filial duty, and in the other by
friendship, prove that affectionate motives overruled with him mere
personal ambition as a literary man. We may suppose that he began to
compose the Essays at the very outset of his retirement from public
engagements; for as, according to his own account, observes the President
Bouhier, he cared neither for the chase, nor building, nor gardening, nor
agricultural pursuits, and was exclusively occupied with reading and
reflection, he devoted himself with satisfaction to the task of setting
down his thoughts just as they occurred to him. Those thoughts became a
book, and the first part of that book, which was to confer immortality on
the writer, appeared at Bordeaux in 1580. Montaigne was then fifty-seven;
he had suffered for some years past from renal colic and gravel; and it
was with the necessity of distraction from his pain, and the hope of
deriving relief from the waters, that he undertook at this time a great
journey. As the account which he has left of his travels in Germany and
Italy comprises some highly interesting particulars of his life and
personal history, it seems worth while to furnish a sketch or analysis of
it.
"The Journey, of which we proceed to describe the course simply," says the
editor of the Itinerary, "had, from Beaumont-sur-Oise to Plombieres, in
Lorraine, nothing sufficiently interesting to detain us . . . we must go
as far, as Basle, of which we have a description, acquainting us with its
physical and political condition at that period, as well as with the
character of its baths. The passage of Montaigne through Switzerland is
not without interest, as we see there how our philosophical traveller
accommodated himself everywhere to the ways of the country. The hotels,
the provisions, the Swiss cookery, everything, was agreeable to him; it
appears, indeed, as if he preferred to the French manners and tastes those
of the places he was visiting, and of which the simplicity and freedom (or
frankness) accorded more with his own mode of life and thinking. In the
towns where he stayed, Montaigne took care to see the Protestant divines,
to make himself conversant with all their dogmas. He even had disputations
with them occasionally.
"Having left Switzerland he went to Isne, an imperial then on to Augsburg
and Munich. He afterwards proceeded to the Tyrol, where he was agreeably
surprised, after the warnings which he had received, at the very slight
inconveniences which he suffered, which gave him occasion to remark that
he had all his life distrusted the statements of others respecting foreign
countries, each person's tastes being according to the notions of his
native place; and that he had consequently set very little on what he was
told beforehand.
"Upon his arrival at Botzen, Montaigne wrote to Francois Hottmann, to say
that he had been so pleased with his visit to Germany that he quitted it
with great regret, although it was to go into Italy. He then passed
through Brunsol, Trent, where he put up at the Rose; thence going to
Rovera; and here he first lamented the scarcity of crawfish, but made up
for the loss by partaking of truffles cooked in oil and vinegar; oranges,
citrons, and olives, in all of which he delighted."
After passing a restless night, when he bethought himself in the morning
that there was some new town or district to be seen, he rose, we are told,
with alacrity and pleasure.
His secretary, to whom he dictated his Journal, assures us that he never
saw him take so much interest in surrounding scenes and persons, and
believes that the complete change helped to mitigate his sufferings in
concentrating his attention on other points. When there was a complaint
made that he had led his party out of the beaten route, and then returned
very near the spot from which they started, his answer was that he had no
settled course, and that he merely proposed to himself to pay visits to
places which he had not seen, and so long as they could not convict him of
traversing the same path twice, or revisiting a point already seen, he
could perceive no harm in his plan. As to Rome, he cared less to go there,
inasmuch as everybody went there; and he said that he never had a lacquey
who could not tell him all about Florence or Ferrara. He also would say
that he seemed to himself like those who are reading some pleasant story
or some fine book, of which they fear to come to the end: he felt so much
pleasure in travelling that he dreaded the moment of arrival at the place
where they were to stop for the night.
We see that Montaigne travelled, just as he wrote, completely at his ease,
and without the least constraint, turning, just as he fancied, from the
common or ordinary roads taken by tourists. The good inns, the soft beds,
the fine views, attracted his notice at every point, and in his
observations on men and things he confines himself chiefly to the
practical side. The consideration of his health was constantly before him,
and it was in consequence of this that, while at Venice, which
disappointed him, he took occasion to note, for the benefit of readers,
that he had an attack of colic, and that he evacuated two large stones
after supper. On quitting Venice, he went in succession to Ferrara,
Rovigo, Padua, Bologna (where he had a stomach-ache), Florence, &c.;
and everywhere, before alighting, he made it a rule to send some of his
servants to ascertain where the best accommodation was to be had. He
pronounced the Florentine women the finest in the world, but had not an
equally good opinion of the food, which was less plentiful than in
Germany, and not so well served. He lets us understand that in Italy they
send up dishes without dressing, but in Germany they were much better
seasoned, and served with a variety of sauces and gravies. He remarked
further, that the glasses were singularly small and the wines insipid.
After dining with the Grand-Duke of Florence, Montaigne passed rapidly
over the intermediate country, which had no fascination for him, and
arrived at Rome on the last day of November, entering by the Porta del
Popolo, and putting up at Bear. But he afterwards hired, at twenty crowns
a month, fine furnished rooms in the house of a Spaniard, who included in
these terms the use of the kitchen fire. What most annoyed him in the
Eternal City was the number of Frenchmen he met, who all saluted him in
his native tongue; but otherwise he was very comfortable, and his stay
extended to five months. A mind like his, full of grand classical
reflections, could not fail to be profoundly impressed in the presence of
the ruins at Rome, and he has enshrined in a magnificent passage of the
Journal the feelings of the moment: "He said," writes his secretary, "that
at Rome one saw nothing but the sky under which she had been built, and
the outline of her site: that the knowledge we had of her was abstract,
contemplative, not palpable to the actual senses: that those who said they
beheld at least the ruins of Rome, went too far, for the ruins of so
gigantic a structure must have commanded greater reverence-it was nothing
but her sepulchre. The world, jealous of her, prolonged empire, had in the
first place broken to pieces that admirable body, and then, when they
perceived that the remains attracted worship and awe, had buried the very
wreck itself.—[Compare a passage in one of Horace Walpole's letters
to Richard West, 22 March 1740 (Cunningham's edit. i. 41), where Walpole,
speaking of Rome, describes her very ruins as ruined.]—As to those
small fragments which were still to be seen on the surface,
notwithstanding the assaults of time and all other attacks, again and
again repeated, they had been favoured by fortune to be some slight
evidence of that infinite grandeur which nothing could entirely extingish.
But it was likely that these disfigured remains were the least entitled to
attention, and that the enemies of that immortal renown, in their fury,
had addressed themselves in the first instance to the destruction of what
was most beautiful and worthiest of preservation; and that the buildings
of this bastard Rome, raised upon the ancient productions, although they
might excite the admiration of the present age, reminded him of the crows'
and sparrows' nests built in the walls and arches of the old churches,
destroyed by the Huguenots. Again, he was apprehensive, seeing the space
which this grave occupied, that the whole might not have been recovered,
and that the burial itself had been buried. And, moreover, to see a
wretched heap of rubbish, as pieces of tile and pottery, grow (as it had
ages since) to a height equal to that of Mount Gurson,—[In Perigord.]—and
thrice the width of it, appeared to show a conspiracy of destiny against
the glory and pre-eminence of that city, affording at the same time a
novel and extraordinary proof of its departed greatness. He (Montaigne)
observed that it was difficult to believe considering the limited area
taken up by any of her seven hills and particularly the two most favoured
ones, the Capitoline and the Palatine, that so many buildings stood on the
site. Judging only from what is left of the Temple of Concord, along the
'Forum Romanum', of which the fall seems quite recent, like that of some
huge mountain split into horrible crags, it does not look as if more than
two such edifices could have found room on the Capitoline, on which there
were at one period from five-and-twenty to thirty temples, besides private
dwellings. But, in point of fact, there is scarcely any probability of the
views which we take of the city being correct, its plan and form having
changed infinitely; for instance, the 'Velabrum', which on account of its
depressed level, received the sewage of the city, and had a lake, has been
raised by artificial accumulation to a height with the other hills, and
Mount Savello has, in truth, grown simply out of the ruins of the theatre
of Marcellus. He believed that an ancient Roman would not recognise the
place again. It often happened that in digging down into earth the workmen
came upon the crown of some lofty column, which, though thus buried, was
still standing upright. The people there have no recourse to other
foundations than the vaults and arches of the old houses, upon which, as
on slabs of rock, they raise their modern palaces. It is easy to see that
several of the ancient streets are thirty feet below those at present in
use."
Sceptical as Montaigne shows himself in his books, yet during his sojourn
at Rome he manifested a great regard for religion. He solicited the honour
of being admitted to kiss the feet of the Holy Father, Gregory XIII.; and
the Pontiff exhorted him always to continue in the devotion which he had
hitherto exhibited to the Church and the service of the Most Christian
King.
"After this, one sees," says the editor of the Journal, "Montaigne
employing all his time in making excursions bout the neighbourhood on
horseback or on foot, in visits, in observations of every kind. The
churches, the stations, the processions even, the sermons; then the
palaces, the vineyards, the gardens, the public amusements, as the
Carnival, &c.—nothing was overlooked. He saw a Jewish child
circumcised, and wrote down a most minute account of the operation. He met
at San Sisto a Muscovite ambassador, the second who had come to Rome since
the pontificate of Paul III. This minister had despatches from his court
for Venice, addressed to the 'Grand Governor of the Signory'. The court of
Muscovy had at that time such limited relations with the other powers of
Europe, and it was so imperfect in its information, that it thought Venice
to be a dependency of the Holy See."
Of all the particulars with which he has furnished us during his stay at
Rome, the following passage in reference to the Essays is not the least
singular: "The Master of the Sacred Palace returned him his Essays,
castigated in accordance with the views of the learned monks. 'He had only
been able to form a judgment of them,' said he, 'through a certain French
monk, not understanding French himself'"—we leave Montaigne himself
to tell the story—"and he received so complacently my excuses and
explanations on each of the passages which had been animadverted upon by
the French monk, that he concluded by leaving me at liberty to revise the
text agreeably to the dictates of my own conscience. I begged him, on the
contrary, to abide by the opinion of the person who had criticised me,
confessing, among other matters, as, for example, in my use of the word
fortune, in quoting historical poets, in my apology for Julian, in my
animadversion on the theory that he who prayed ought to be exempt from
vicious inclinations for the time being; item, in my estimate of cruelty,
as something beyond simple death; item, in my view that a child ought to
be brought up to do everything, and so on; that these were my opinions,
which I did not think wrong; as to other things, I said that the corrector
understood not my meaning. The Master, who is a clever man, made many
excuses for me, and gave me to suppose that he did not concur in the
suggested improvements; and pleaded very ingeniously for me in my presence
against another (also an Italian) who opposed my sentiments."
Such is what passed between Montaigne and these two personages at that
time; but when the Essayist was leaving, and went to bid them farewell,
they used very different language to him. "They prayed me," says he, "to
pay no attention to the censure passed on my book, in which other French
persons had apprised them that there were many foolish things; adding,
that they honoured my affectionate intention towards the Church, and my
capacity; and had so high an opinion of my candour and conscientiousness
that they should leave it to me to make such alterations as were proper in
the book, when I reprinted it; among other things, the word fortune. To
excuse themselves for what they had said against my book, they instanced
works of our time by cardinals and other divines of excellent repute which
had been blamed for similar faults, which in no way affected reputation of
the author, or of the publication as a whole; they requested me to lend
the Church the support of my eloquence (this was their fair speech), and
to make longer stay in the place, where I should be free from all further
intrusion on their part. It seemed to me that we parted very good
friends."
Before quitting Rome, Montaigne received his diploma of citizenship, by
which he was greatly flattered; and after a visit to Tivoli he set out for
Loretto, stopping at Ancona, Fano, and Urbino. He arrived at the beginning
of May 1581, at Bagno della Villa, where he established himself, order to
try the waters. There, we find in the Journal, of his own accord the
Essayist lived in the strictest conformity with the regime, and henceforth
we only hear of diet, the effect which the waters had by degrees upon
system, of the manner in which he took them; in a word, he does not omit
an item of the circumstances connected with his daily routine, his habit
of body, his baths, and the rest. It was no longer the journal of a
traveller which he kept, but the diary of an invalid,—["I am reading
Montaigne's Travels, which have lately been found; there is little in them
but the baths and medicines he took, and what he had everywhere for
dinner."—H. Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, June 8, 1774.]—attentive
to the minutest details of the cure which he was endeavouring to
accomplish: a sort of memorandum book, in which he was noting down
everything that he felt and did, for the benefit of his medical man at
home, who would have the care of his health on his return, and the
attendance on his subsequent infirmities. Montaigne gives it as his reason
and justification for enlarging to this extent here, that he had omitted,
to his regret, to do so in his visits to other baths, which might have
saved him the trouble of writing at such great length now; but it is
perhaps a better reason in our eyes, that what he wrote he wrote for his
own use.
We find in these accounts, however, many touches which are valuable as
illustrating the manners of the place. The greater part of the entries in
the Journal, giving the account of these waters, and of the travels, down
to Montaigne's arrival at the first French town on his homeward route, are
in Italian, because he wished to exercise himself in that language.
The minute and constant watchfulness of Montaigne over his health and over
himself might lead one to suspect that excessive fear of death which
degenerates into cowardice. But was it not rather the fear of the
operation for the stone, at that time really formidable? Or perhaps he was
of the same way of thinking with the Greek poet, of whom Cicero reports
this saying: "I do not desire to die; but the thought of being dead is
indifferent to me." Let us hear, however, what he says himself on this
point very frankly: "It would be too weak and unmanly on my part if,
certain as I am of always finding myself in the position of having to
succumb in that way,—[To the stone or gravel.]—and death
coming nearer and nearer to me, I did not make some effort, before the
time came, to bear the trial with fortitude. For reason prescribes that we
should joyfully accept what it may please God to send us. Therefore the
only remedy, the only rule, and the sole doctrine for avoiding the evils
by which mankind is surrounded, whatever they are, is to resolve to bear
them so far as our nature permits, or to put an end to them courageously
and promptly."
He was still at the waters of La Villa, when, on the 7th September 1581,
he learned by letter that he had been elected Mayor of Bordeaux on the 1st
August preceding. This intelligence made him hasten his departure; and
from Lucca he proceeded to Rome. He again made some stay in that city, and
he there received the letter of the jurats of Bordeaux, notifying to him
officially his election to the Mayoralty, and inviting him to return as
speedily as possible. He left for France, accompanied by young D'Estissac
and several other gentlemen, who escorted him a considerable distance; but
none went back to France with him, not even his travelling companion. He
passed by Padua, Milan, Mont Cenis, and Chambery; thence he went on to
Lyons, and lost no time in repairing to his chateau, after an absence of
seventeen months and eight days.
We have just seen that, during his absence in Italy, the author of the
Essays was elected mayor of Bordeaux. "The gentlemen of Bordeaux," says
he, "elected me Mayor of their town while I was at a distance from France,
and far from the thought of such a thing. I excused myself; but they gave
to understand that I was wrong in so doing, it being also the command of
the king that I should stand." This the letter which Henry III. wrote to
him on the occasion:
MONSIEUR, DE MONTAIGNE,—Inasmuch as I hold in great esteem your
fidelity and zealous devotion to my service, it has been a pleasure to me
to learn that you have been chosen mayor of my town of Bordeaux. I have
had the agreeable duty of confirming the selection, and I did so the more
willingly, seeing that it was made during your distant absence; wherefore
it is my desire, and I require and command you expressly that you proceed
without delay to enter on the duties to which you have received so
legitimate a call. And so you will act in a manner very agreeable to me,
while the contrary will displease me greatly. Praying God, M. de
Montaigne, to have you in his holy keeping.
"Written at Paris, the 25th day of November 1581.
"HENRI.
"A Monsieur de MONTAIGNE, Knight of my Order, Gentleman in Ordinary of my
Chamber, being at present in Rome."
Montaigne, in his new employment, the most important in the province,
obeyed the axiom, that a man may not refuse a duty, though it absorb his
time and attention, and even involve the sacrifice of his blood. Placed
between two extreme parties, ever on the point of getting to blows, he
showed himself in practice what he is in his book, the friend of a middle
and temperate policy. Tolerant by character and on principle, he belonged,
like all the great minds of the sixteenth century, to that political sect
which sought to improve, without destroying, institutions; and we may say
of him, what he himself said of La Boetie, "that he had that maxim
indelibly impressed on his mind, to obey and submit himself religiously to
the laws under which he was born. Affectionately attached to the repose of
his country, an enemy to changes and innovations, he would have preferred
to employ what means he had towards their discouragement and suppression,
than in promoting their success." Such was the platform of his
administration.
He applied himself, in an especial manner, to the maintenance of peace
between the two religious factions which at that time divided the town of
Bordeaux; and at the end of his two first years of office, his grateful
fellow-citizens conferred on him (in 1583) the mayoralty for two years
more, a distinction which had been enjoyed, as he tells us, only twice
before. On the expiration of his official career, after four years'
duration, he could say fairly enough of himself that he left behind him
neither hatred nor cause of offence.
In the midst of the cares of government, Montaigne found time to revise
and enlarge his Essays, which, since their appearance in 1580, were
continually receiving augmentation in the form of additional chapters or
papers. Two more editions were printed in 1582 and 1587; and during this
time the author, while making alterations in the original text, had
composed part of the Third Book. He went to Paris to make arrangements for
the publication of his enlarged labours, and a fourth impression in 1588
was the result. He remained in the capital some time on this occasion, and
it was now that he met for the first time Mademoiselle de Gournay. Gifted
with an active and inquiring spirit, and, above all, possessing a sound
and healthy tone of mind, Mademoiselle de Gournay had been carried from
her childhood with that tide which set in with sixteenth century towards
controversy, learning, and knowledge. She learnt Latin without a master;
and when, the age of eighteen, she accidentally became possessor of a copy
of the Essays, she was transported with delight and admiration.
She quitted the chateau of Gournay, to come and see him. We cannot do
better, in connection with this journey of sympathy, than to repeat the
words of Pasquier: "That young lady, allied to several great and noble
families of Paris, proposed to herself no other marriage than with her
honour, enriched with the knowledge gained from good books, and, beyond
all others, from the essays of M. de Montaigne, who making in the year
1588 a lengthened stay in the town of Paris, she went there for the
purpose of forming his personal acquaintance; and her mother, Madame de
Gournay, and herself took him back with them to their chateau, where, at
two or three different times, he spent three months altogether, most
welcome of visitors." It was from this moment that Mademoiselle de Gournay
dated her adoption as Montaigne's daughter, a circumstance which has
tended to confer immortality upon her in a far greater measure than her
own literary productions.
Montaigne, on leaving Paris, stayed a short time at Blois, to attend the
meeting of the States-General. We do not know what part he took in that
assembly: but it is known that he was commissioned, about this period, to
negotiate between Henry of Navarre (afterwards Henry IV.) and the Duke of
Guise. His political life is almost a blank; but De Thou assures us that
Montaigne enjoyed the confidence of the principal persons of his time. De
Thou, who calls him a frank man without constraint, tells us that, walking
with him and Pasquier in the court at the Castle of Blois, he heard him
pronounce some very remarkable opinions on contemporary events, and he
adds that Montaigne had foreseen that the troubles in France could not end
without witnessing the death of either the King of Navarre or of the Duke
of Guise. He had made himself so completely master of the views of these
two princes, that he told De Thou that the King of Navarre would have been
prepared to embrace Catholicism, if he had not been afraid of being
abandoned by his party, and that the Duke of Guise, on his part, had no
particular repugnance to the Confession of Augsburg, for which the
Cardinal of Lorraine, his uncle, had inspired him with a liking, if it had
not been for the peril involved in quitting the Romish communion. It would
have been easy for Montaigne to play, as we call it, a great part in
politics, and create for himself a lofty position but his motto was, 'Otio
et Libertati'; and he returned quietly home to compose a chapter for his
next edition on inconveniences of Greatness.
The author of the Essays was now fifty-five. The malady which tormented
him grew only worse and worse with years; and yet he occupied himself
continually with reading, meditating, and composition. He employed the
years 1589, 1590, and 1591 in making fresh additions to his book; and even
in the approaches of old age he might fairly anticipate many happy hours,
when he was attacked by quinsy, depriving him of the power utterance.
Pasquier, who has left us some details his last hours, narrates that he
remained three days in full possession of his faculties, but unable to
speak, so that, in order to make known his desires, he was obliged to
resort to writing; and as he felt his end drawing near, he begged his wife
to summon certain of the gentlemen who lived in the neighbourhood to bid
them a last farewell. When they had arrived, he caused mass to be
celebrated in apartment; and just as the priest was elevating the host,
Montaigne fell forward with his arms extended in front of him, on the bed,
and so expired. He was in his sixtieth year. It was the 13th September
1592.
Montaigne was buried near his own house; but a few years after his
decease, his remains were removed to the church of a Commandery of St.
Antoine at Bordeaux, where they still continue. His monument was restored
in 1803 by a descendant. It was seen about 1858 by an English traveller
(Mr. St. John).'—["Montaigne the Essayist," by Bayle St. John, 1858,
2 vols. 8vo, is one of most delightful books of the kind.]— and was
then in good preservation.
In 1595 Mademoiselle de Gournay published a new edition of Montaigne's
Essays, and the first with the latest emendations of the author, from a
copy presented to her by his widow, and which has not been recovered,
although it is known to have been in existence some years after the date
of the impression, made on its authority.
Coldly as Montaigne's literary productions appear to have been received by
the generation immediately succeeding his own age, his genius grew into
just appreciation in the seventeenth century, when such great spirits
arose as La Bruyere, Moliere, La Fontaine, Madame de Sevigne. "O,"
exclaimed the Chatelaine des Rochers, "what capital company he is, the
dear man! he is my old friend; and just for the reason that he is so, he
always seems new. My God! how full is that book of sense!" Balzac said
that he had carried human reason as far and as high as it could go, both
in politics and in morals. On the other hand, Malebranche and the writers
of Port Royal were against him; some reprehended the licentiousness of his
writings; others their impiety, materialism, epicureanism. Even Pascal,
who had carefully read the Essays, and gained no small profit by them, did
not spare his reproaches. But Montaigne has outlived detraction. As time
has gone on, his admirers and borrowers have increased in number, and his
Jansenism, which recommended him to the eighteenth century, may not be his
least recommendation in the nineteenth. Here we have certainly, on the
whole, a first-class man, and one proof of his masterly genius seems to
be, that his merits and his beauties are sufficient to induce us to leave
out of consideration blemishes and faults which would have been fatal to
an inferior writer.
THE LETTERS OF MONTAIGNE.
I.——To Monsieur de MONTAIGNE
[This account of the death of La Boetie begins imperfectly. It first
appeared in a little volume of Miscellanies in 1571. See Hazlitt, ubi sup.
p. 630.]—As to his last words, doubtless, if any man can give good
account of them, it is I, both because, during the whole of his sickness
he conversed as fully with me as with any one, and also because, in
consequence of the singular and brotherly friendship which we had
entertained for each other, I was perfectly acquainted with the
intentions, opinions, and wishes which he had formed in the course of his
life, as much so, certainly, as one man can possibly be with those of
another man; and because I knew them to be elevated, virtuous, full of
steady resolution, and (after all said) admirable. I well foresaw that, if
his illness permitted him to express himself, he would allow nothing to
fall from him, in such an extremity, that was not replete with good
example. I consequently took every care in my power to treasure what was
said. True it is, Monseigneur, as my memory is not only in itself very
short, but in this case affected by the trouble which I have undergone,
through so heavy and important a loss, that I have forgotten a number of
things which I should wish to have had known; but those which I recollect
shall be related to you as exactly as lies in my power. For to represent
in full measure his noble career suddenly arrested, to paint to you his
indomitable courage, in a body worn out and prostrated by pain and the
assaults of death, I confess, would demand a far better ability than mine:
because, although, when in former years he discoursed on serious and
important matters, he handled them in such a manner that it was difficult
to reproduce exactly what he said, yet his ideas and his words at the last
seemed to rival each other in serving him. For I am sure that I never knew
him give birth to such fine conceptions, or display so much eloquence, as
in the time of his sickness. If, Monseigneur, you blame me for introducing
his more ordinary observations, please to know that I do so advisedly; for
since they proceeded from him at a season of such great trouble, they
indicate the perfect tranquillity of his mind and thoughts to the last.
On Monday, the 9th day of August 1563, on my return from the Court, I sent
an invitation to him to come and dine with me. He returned word that he
was obliged, but, being indisposed, he would thank me to do him the
pleasure of spending an hour with him before he started for Medoc. Shortly
after my dinner I went to him. He had laid himself down on the bed with
his clothes on, and he was already, I perceived, much changed. He
complained of diarrhoea, accompanied by the gripes, and said that he had
it about him ever since he played with M. d'Escars with nothing but his
doublet on, and that with him a cold often brought on such attacks. I
advised him to go as he had proposed, but to stay for the night at
Germignac, which is only about two leagues from the town. I gave him this
advice, because some houses, near to that where he was ping, were visited
by the plague, about which he was nervous since his return from Perigord
and the Agenois, here it had been raging; and, besides, horse exercise
was, from my own experience, beneficial under similar circumstances. He
set out, accordingly, with his wife and M. Bouillhonnas, his uncle.
Early on the following morning, however, I had intelligence from Madame de
la Boetie, that in the night he had fresh and violent attack of dysentery.
She had called in physician and apothecary, and prayed me to lose no time
coming, which (after dinner) I did. He was delighted to see me; and when I
was going away, under promise to turn the following day, he begged me more
importunately and affectionately than he was wont to do, to give him as
such of my company as possible. I was a little affected; yet was about to
leave, when Madame de la Boetie, as if she foresaw something about to
happen, implored me with tears to stay the night. When I consented, he
seemed to grow more cheerful. I returned home the next day, and on the
Thursday I paid him another visit. He had become worse; and his loss of
blood from the dysentery, which reduced his strength very much, was
largely on the increase. I quitted his side on Friday, but on Saturday I
went to him, and found him very weak. He then gave me to understand that
his complaint was infectious, and, moreover, disagreeable and depressing;
and that he, knowing thoroughly my constitution, desired that I should
content myself with coming to see him now and then. On the contrary, after
that I never left his side.
It was only on the Sunday that he began to converse with me on any subject
beyond the immediate one of his illness, and what the ancient doctors
thought of it: we had not touched on public affairs, for I found at the
very outset that he had a dislike to them.
But, on the Sunday, he had a fainting fit; and when he came to himself, he
told me that everything seemed to him confused, as if in a mist and in
disorder, and that, nevertheless, this visitation was not unpleasing to
him. "Death," I replied, "has no worse sensation, my brother." "None so
bad," was his answer. He had had no regular sleep since the beginning of
his illness; and as he became worse and worse, he began to turn his
attention to questions which men commonly occupy themselves with in the
last extremity, despairing now of getting better, and intimating as much
to me. On that day, as he appeared in tolerably good spirits, I took
occasion to say to him that, in consideration of the singular love I bore
him, it would become me to take care that his affairs, which he had
conducted with such rare prudence in his life, should not be neglected at
present; and that I should regret it if, from want of proper counsel, he
should leave anything unsettled, not only on account of the loss to his
family, but also to his good name.
He thanked me for my kindness; and after a little reflection, as if he was
resolving certain doubts in his own mind, he desired me to summon his
uncle and his wife by themselves, in order that he might acquaint them
with his testamentary dispositions. I told him that this would shock them.
"No, no," he answered, "I will cheer them by making out my case to be
better than it is." And then he inquired, whether we were not all much
taken by surprise at his having fainted? I replied, that it was of no
importance, being incidental to the complaint from which he suffered.
"True, my brother," said he; "it would be unimportant, even though it
should lead to what you most dread." "For you," I rejoined, "it might be a
happy thing; but I should be the loser, who would thereby be deprived of
so great, so wise, and so steadfast a friend, a friend whose place I
should never see supplied." "It is very likely you may not," was his
answer; "and be sure that one thing which makes me somewhat anxious to
recover, and to delay my journey to that place, whither I am already
half-way gone, is the thought of the loss both you and that poor man and
woman there (referring to his uncle and wife) must sustain; for I love
them with my whole heart, and I feel certain that they will find it very
hard to lose me. I should also regret it on account of such as have, in my
lifetime, valued me, and whose conversation I should like to have enjoyed
a little longer; and I beseech you, my brother, if I leave the world, to
carry to them for me an assurance of the esteem I entertained for them to
the last moment of my existence. My birth was, moreover, scarcely to so
little purpose but that, had I lived, I might have done some service to
the public; but, however this may be, I am prepared to submit to the will
of God, when it shall please Him to call me, being confident of enjoying
the tranquillity which you have foretold for me. As for you, my friend, I
feel sure that you are so wise, that you will control your emotions, and
submit to His divine ordinance regarding me; and I beg of you to see that
that good man and woman do not mourn for my departure unnecessarily."
He proceeded to inquire how they behaved at present. "Very well," said I,
"considering the circumstances." "Ah!" he replied, "that is, so long as
they do not abandon all hope of me; but when that shall be the case, you
will have a hard task to support them." It was owing to his strong regard
for his wife and uncle that he studiously disguised from them his own
conviction as to the certainty of his end, and he prayed me to do the
same. When they were near him he assumed an appearance of gaiety, and
flattered them with hopes. I then went to call them. They came, wearing as
composed an air as possible; and when we four were together, he addressed
us, with an untroubled countenance, as follows: "Uncle and wife, rest
assured that no new attack of my disease, or fresh doubt that I have as to
my recovery, has led me to take this step of communicating to you my
intentions, for, thank God, I feel very well and hopeful; but taught by
observation and experience the instability of all human things, and even
of the life to which we are so much attached, and which is, nevertheless,
a mere bubble; and knowing, moreover, that my state of health brings me
more within the danger of death, I have thought proper to settle my
worldly affairs, having the benefit of your advice." Then addressing
himself more particularly to his uncle, "Good uncle," said he, "if I were
to rehearse all the obligations under which I lie to you, I am sure that I
never should make an end. Let me only say that, wherever I have been, and
with whomsoever I have conversed, I have represented you as doing for me
all that a father could do for a son; both in the care with which you
tended my education, and in the zeal with which you pushed me forward into
public life, so that my whole existence is a testimony of your good
offices towards me. In short, I am indebted for all that I have to you,
who have been to me as a parent; and therefore I have no right to part
with anything, unless it be with your approval."
There was a general silence hereupon, and his uncle was prevented from
replying by tears and sobs. At last he said that whatever he thought for
the best would be agreeable to him; and as he intended to make him his
heir, he was at liberty to dispose of what would be his.
Then he turned to his wife. "My image," said he (for so he often called
her, there being some sort of relationship between them), "since I have
been united to you by marriage, which is one of the most weighty and
sacred ties imposed on us by God, for the purpose of maintaining human
society, I have continued to love, cherish, and value you; and I know that
you have returned my affection, for which I have no sufficient
acknowledgment. I beg you to accept such portion of my estate as I
bequeath to you, and be satisfied with it, though it is very inadequate to
your desert."
Afterwards he turned to me. "My brother," he began, "for whom I have so
entire a love, and whom I selected out of so large a number, thinking to
revive with you that virtuous and sincere friendship which, owing to the
degeneracy of the age, has grown to be almost unknown to us, and now
exists only in certain vestiges of antiquity, I beg of you, as a mark of
my affection to you, to accept my library: a slender offering, but given
with a cordial will, and suitable to you, seeing that you are fond of
learning. It will be a memorial of your old companion."
Then he addressed all three of us. He blessed God that in his extremity he
had the happiness to be surrounded by those whom he held dearest in the
world, and he looked upon it as a fine spectacle, where four persons were
together, so unanimous in their feelings, and loving each other for each
other's sake. He commended us one to the other; and proceeded thus: "My
worldly matters being arranged, I must now think of the welfare of my
soul. I am a Christian; I am a Catholic. I have lived one, and I shall die
one. Send for a priest; for I wish to conform to this last Christian
obligation." He now concluded his discourse, which he had conducted with
such a firm face and with so distinct an utterance, that whereas, when I
first entered his room, he was feeble, inarticulate in his speech, his
pulse low and feverish, and his features pallid, now, by a sort of
miracle, he appeared to have rallied, and his pulse was so strong that for
the sake of comparison, I asked him to feel mine.
I felt my heart so oppressed at this moment, that I had not the power to
make him any answer; but in the course of two or three hours, solicitous
to keep up his courage, and, likewise, out of the tenderness which I had
had all my life for his honour and fame, wishing a larger number of
witnesses to his admirable fortitude, I said to him, how much I was
ashamed to think that I lacked courage to listen to what he, so great a
sufferer, had the courage to deliver; that down to the present time I had
scarcely conceived that God granted us such command over human
infirmities, and had found a difficulty in crediting the examples I had
read in histories; but that with such evidence of the thing before my
eyes, I gave praise to God that it had shown itself in one so excessively
dear to me, and who loved me so entirely, and that his example would help
me to act in a similar manner when my turn came. Interrupting me, he
begged that it might happen so, and that the conversation which had passed
between us might not be mere words, but might be impressed deeply on our
minds, to be put in exercise at the first occasion; and that this was the
real object and aim of all philosophy.
He then took my hand, and continued: "Brother, friend, there are many acts
of my life, I think, which have cost me as much difficulty as this one is
likely to do; and, after all, I have been long prepared for it, and have
my lesson by heart. Have I not lived long enough? I am just upon
thirty-three. By the grace of God, my days so far have known nothing but
health and happiness; but in the ordinary course of our unstable human
affairs, this could not have lasted much longer; it would have become time
for me to enter on graver avocations, and I should thus have involved
myself in numberless vexations, and, among them, the troubles of old age,
from which I shall now be exempt. Moreover, it is probable that hitherto
my life has been spent more simply, and with less of evil, than if God had
spared me, and I had survived to feel the thirst for riches and worldly
prosperity. I am sure, for my part, that I now go to God and the place of
the blessed." He seemed to detect in my expression some inquietude at his
words; and he exclaimed, "What, my brother, would you make me entertain
apprehensions? Had I any, whom would it become so much as yourself to
remove them?"
The notary, who had been summoned to draw up his will, came in the
evening, and when he had the documents prepared, I inquired of La Boetie
if he would sign them. "Sign them," cried he; "I will do so with my own
hand; but I could desire more time, for I feel exceedingly timid and weak,
and in a manner exhausted." But when I was going to change the
conversation, he suddenly rallied, said he had but a short time to live,
and asked if the notary wrote rapidly, for he should dictate without
making any pause. The notary was called, and he dictated his will there
and then with such speed that the man could scarcely keep up with him; and
when he had done, he asked me to read it out, saying to me, "What a good
thing it is to look after what are called our riches." 'Sunt haec, quoe
hominibus vocantur bona'. As soon as the will was signed, the chamber
being full, he asked me if it would hurt him to talk. I answered, that it
would not, if he did not speak too loud. He then summoned Mademoiselle de
Saint Quentin, his niece, to him, and addressed her thus: "Dear niece,
since my earliest acquaintance with thee, I have observed the marks of,
great natural goodness in thee; but the services which thou rendered to
me, with so much affectionate diligence, in my present and last necessity,
inspire me with high hopes of thee; and I am under great obligations to
thee, and give thee most affectionate thanks. Let me relieve my conscience
by counselling thee to be, in the first place, devout, to God: for this
doubtless is our first duty, failing which all others can be of little
advantage or grace, but which, duly observed, carries with it necessarily
all other virtues. After God, thou shouldest love thy father and mother—thy
mother, my sister, whom I regard as one of the best and most intelligent
of women, and by whom I beg of thee to let thy own life be regulated.
Allow not thyself to be led away by pleasures; shun, like the plague, the
foolish familiarities thou seest between some men and women; harmless
enough at first, but which by insidious degrees corrupt the heart, and
thence lead it to negligence, and then into the vile slough of vice.
Credit me, the greatest safeguard to female chastity is sobriety of
demeanour. I beseech and direct that thou often call to mind the
friendship which was betwixt us; but I do not wish thee to mourn for me
too much—an injunction which, so far as it is in my power, I lay on
all my friends, since it might seem that by doing so they felt a jealousy
of that blessed condition in which I am about to be placed by death. I
assure thee, my dear, that if I had the option now of continuing in life
or of completing the voyage on which I have set out, I should find it very
hard to choose. Adieu, dear niece."
Mademoiselle d'Arsat, his stepdaughter, was next called. He said to her:
"Daughter, you stand in no great need of advice from me, insomuch as you
have a mother, whom I have ever found most sagacious, and entirely in
conformity with my own opinions and wishes, and whom I have never found
faulty; with such a preceptress, you cannot fail to be properly
instructed. Do not account it singular that I, with no tie of blood to
you, am interested in you; for, being the child of one who is so closely
allied to me, I am necessarily concerned in what concerns you; and
consequently the affairs of your brother, M. d'Arsat, have ever been
watched by me with as much care as my own; nor perhaps will it be to your
disadvantage that you were my step-daughter. You enjoy sufficient store of
wealth and beauty; you are a lady of good family; it only remains for you
to add to these possessions the cultivation of your mind, in which I
exhort you not to fail. I do not think necessary to warn you against vice,
a thing so odious in women, for I would not even suppose that you could
harbour any inclination for it—nay, I believe that you hold the very
name in abhorrence. Dear daughter, farewell."
All in the room were weeping and lamenting; but he held without
interruption the thread of his discourse, which was pretty long. But when
he had done, he directed us all to leave the room, except the women
attendants, whom he styled his garrison. But first, calling to him my
brother, M. de Beauregard, he said to him: "M. de Beauregard, you have my
best thanks for all the care you have taken of me. I have now a thing
which I am very anxious indeed to mention to you, and with your permission
I will do so." As my brother gave him encouragement to proceed, he added:
"I assure you that I never knew any man who engaged in the reformation of
our Church with greater sincerity, earnestness, and single-heartedness
than yourself. I consider that you were led to it by observing the vicious
character of our prelates, which no doubt much requires setting in order,
and by imperfections which time has brought into our Church. It is not my
desire at present discourage you from this course, for I would have no one
act in opposition to his conscience; but I wish, having regard to the good
repute acquired by your family from its enduring concord—a family
than which none can be dearer to me; a family, thank God! no member of
which has ever been guilty of dishonour —in regard, further, to the
will of your good father to whom you owe so much, and of your, uncle, I
wish you to avoid extreme means; avoid harshness and violence: be
reconciled with your relatives; do not act apart, but unite. You perceive
what disasters our quarrels have brought upon this kingdom, and I
anticipate still worse mischiefs; and in your goodness and wisdom, beware
of involving your family in such broils; let it continue to enjoy its
former reputation and happiness. M. de Beauregard, take what I say in good
part, and as a proof of the friendship I feel for you. I postponed till
now any communication with you on the subject, and perhaps the condition
in which you see me address you, may cause my advice and opinion to carry
greater authority." My brother expressed his thanks to him cordially.
On the Monday morning he had become so ill that he quite despaired of
himself; and he said to me very pitifully: "Brother, do not you feel pain
for all the pain I am suffering? Do you not perceive now that the help you
give me has no other effect than that of lengthening my suffering?"
Shortly afterwards he fainted, and we all thought him gone; but by the
application of vinegar and wine he rallied. But he soon sank, and when he
heard us in lamentation, he murmured, "O God! who is it that teases me so?
Why did you break the agreeable repose I was enjoying? I beg of you to
leave me." And then, when he caught the sound of my voice, he continued:
"And art thou, my brother, likewise unwilling to see me at peace? O, how
thou robbest me of my repose!" After a while, he seemed to gain more
strength, and called for wine, which he relished, and declared it to be
the finest drink possible. I, in order to change the current of his
thoughts, put in, "Surely not; water is the best." "Ah, yes," he returned,
"doubtless so;—(Greek phrase)—." He had now become, icy-cold
at his extremities, even to his face; a deathly perspiration was upon him,
and his pulse was scarcely perceptible.
This morning he confessed, but the priest had omitted to bring with him
the necessary apparatus for celebrating Mass. On the Tuesday, however, M.
de la Boetie summoned him to aid him, as he said, in discharging the last
office of a Christian. After the conclusion of Mass, he took the
sacrament; when the priest was about to depart, he said to him: "Spiritual
father, I implore you humbly, as well as those over whom you are set, to
pray to the Almighty on my behalf; that, if it be decreed in heaven that I
am now to end my life, He will take compassion on my soul, and pardon me
my sins, which are manifold, it not being possible for so weak and poor a
creature as I to obey completely the will of such a Master; or, if He
think fit to keep me longer here, that it may please Him to release my
present extreme anguish, and to direct my footsteps in the right path,
that I may become a better man than I have been." He paused to recover
breath a little; priest was about to go away, he called him back and
proceeded: "I desire to say, besides, in your hearing this: I declare that
I was christened and I have lived, and that so I wish to die, in the faith
which Moses preached in Egypt; which afterwards the Patriarchs accepted
and professed in Judaea; and which, in the course of time, has been
transmitted to France and to us." He seemed desirous of adding something
more, but he ended with a request to his uncle and me to send up prayers
for him; "for those are," he said, "the best duties that Christians can
fulfil one for another." In the course of talking, his shoulder was
uncovered, and although a man-servant stood near him, he asked his uncle
to re-adjust the clothes. Then, turning his eyes towards me, he said,
"Ingenui est, cui multum debeas, ei plurimum velle debere."
M. de Belot called in the afternoon to see him, and M. de la Boetie,
taking his hand, said to him: "I was on the point of discharging my debt,
but my kind creditor has given me a little further time." A little while
after, appearing to wake out of a sort of reverie, he uttered words which
he had employed once or twice before in the course of his sickness: "Ah
well, ah well, whenever the hour comes, I await it with pleasure and
fortitude." And then, as they were holding his mouth open by force to give
him a draught, he observed to M. de Belot: "An vivere tanti est?"
As the evening approached, he began perceptibly to sink; and while I
supped, he sent for me to come, being no more than the shadow of a man,
or, as he put it himself, 'non homo, sed species hominis'; and he said to
me with the utmost difficulty: "My brother, my friend, please God I may
realise the imaginations I have just enjoyed." Afterwards, having waited
for some time while he remained silent, and by painful efforts was drawing
long sighs (for his tongue at this point began to refuse its functions), I
said, "What are they?" "Grand, grand!" he replied. "I have never yet
failed," returned I, "to have the honour of hearing your conceptions and
imaginations communicated to me; will you not now still let me enjoy
them?" "I would indeed," he answered; "but, my brother, I am not able to
do so; they are admirable, infinite, and unspeakable." We stopped short
there, for he could not go on. A little before, indeed, he had shown a
desire to speak to his wife, and had told her, with as gay a countenance
as he could contrive to assume, that he had a story to tell her. And it
seemed as if he was making an attempt to gain utterance; but, his strength
failing him, he begged a little wine to resuscitate it. It was of no
avail, for he fainted away suddenly, and was for some time insensible.
Having become so near a neighbour to death, and hearing the sobs of
Mademoiselle de la Boetie, he called her, and said to her thus: "My own
likeness, you grieve yourself beforehand; will you not have pity on me?
take courage. Assuredly, it costs me more than half the pain I endure, to
see you suffer; and reasonably so, because the evils which we ourselves
feel we do not actually ourselves suffer, but it certain sentient
faculties which God plants in us, that feel them: whereas what we feel on
account of others, we feel by consequence of a certain reasoning process
which goes on within our minds. But I am going away" —That he said
because his strength was failing him; and fearing that he had frightened
his wife, he resumed, observing: "I am going to sleep. Good night, my
wife; go thy way." This was the last farewell he took of her.
After she had left, "My brother," said he to me, "keep near me, if you
please;" and then feeling the advance of death more pressing and more
acute, or else the effect of some warm draught which they had made him
swallow, his voice grew stronger and clearer, and he turned quite with
violence in his bed, so that all began again to entertain the hope which
we had lost only upon witnessing his extreme prostration.
At this stage he proceeded, among other things, to pray me again and
again, in a most affectionate manner, to give him a place; so that I was
apprehensive that his reason might be impaired, particularly when, on my
pointing out to him that he was doing himself harm, and that these were
not of the words of a rational man, he did not yield at first, but
redoubled his outcry, saying, "My brother, my brother! dost thou then
refuse me a place?" insomuch that he constrained me to demonstrate to him
that, as he breathed and spoke, and had his physical being, therefore he
had his place. "Yes, yes," he responded, "I have; but it is not that which
I need; and, besides, when all is said, I have no longer any existence."
"God," I replied, "will grant you a better one soon." "Would it were now,
my brother," was his answer. "It is now three days since I have been eager
to take my departure."
Being in this extremity, he frequently called me, merely to satisfy him
that I was at his side. At length, he composed himself a little to rest,
which strengthened our hopes; so much so, indeed, that I left the room,
and went to rejoice thereupon with Mademoiselle de la Boetie. But, an hour
or so afterwards, he called me by name once or twice, and then with a long
sigh expired at three o'clock on Wednesday morning, the 18th August 1563,
having lived thirty-two years, nine months, and seventeen days.
II.——To Monseigneur, Monseigneur de MONTAIGNE.
[This letter is prefixed to Montaigne's translation of the "Natural
Theology" of Raymond de Sebonde, printed at Paris in 1569.]
In pursuance of the instructions which you gave me last year in your house
at Montaigne, Monseigneur, I have put into a French dress, with my own
hand, Raymond de Sebonde, that great Spanish theologian and philosopher;
and I have divested him, so far as I could, of that rough bearing and
barbaric appearance which you saw him wear at first; that, in my opinion,
he is now qualified to present himself in the best company. It is
perfectly possible that some fastidious persons will detect in the book
some trace of Gascon parentage; but it will be so much the more to their
discredit, that they allowed the task to devolve on one who is quite a
novice in these things. It is only right, Monseigneur, that the work
should come before the world under your auspices, since whatever
emendations and polish it may have received, are owing to you. Still I see
well that, if you think proper to balance accounts with the author, you
will find yourself much his debtor; for against his excellent and
religious discourses, his lofty and, so to speak, divine conceptions, you
will find that you will have to set nothing but words and phraseology; a
sort of merchandise so ordinary and commonplace, that whoever has the most
of it, peradventure is the worst off.
Monseigneur, I pray God to grant you a very long and happy life. From
Paris, this 18th of June 1568. Your most humble and most obedient son,
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
III.——To Monsieur, Monsieur de LANSAC,
—[This letter appears to belong to 1570.]—Knight of the King's
Order, Privy Councillor, Sub-controller of his Finance, and Captain of the
Cent Gardes of his Household.
MONSIEUR,—I send you the OEconomics of Xenophon, put into French by
the late M. de la Boetie,—[Printed at Paris, 8vo, 1571, and
reissued, with the addition of some notes, in 1572, with a fresh
title-page.]—a present which appears to me to be appropriate, as
well because it is the work of a gentleman of mark,—[Meaning
Xenophon.]—a man illustrious in war and peace, as because it has
taken its second shape from a personage whom I know to have been held by
you in affectionate regard during his life. This will be an inducement to
you to continue to cherish towards his memory, your good opinion and
goodwill. And to be bold with you, Monsieur, do not fear to increase these
sentiments somewhat; for, as you had knowledge of his high qualities only
in his public capacity, it rests with me to assure you how many endowments
he possessed beyond your personal experience of him. He did me the honour,
while he lived, and I count it amongst the most fortunate circumstances in
my own career, to have with me a friendship so close and so intricately
knit, that no movement, impulse, thought, of his mind was kept from me,
and if I have not formed a right judgment of him, I must suppose it to be
from my own want of scope. Indeed, without exaggeration, he was so nearly
a prodigy, that I am afraid of not being credited when I speak of him,
even though I should keep much within the mark of my own actual knowledge.
And for this time, Monsieur, I shall content myself with praying you, for
the honour and respect we owe to truth, to testify and believe that our
Guienne never beheld his peer among the men of his vocation. Under the
hope, therefore, that you will pay him his just due, and in order to
refresh him in your memory, I present you this book, which will answer for
me that, were it not for the insufficiency of my power, I would offer you
as willingly something of my own, as an acknowledgment of the obligations
I owe to you, and of the ancient favour and friendship which you have
borne towards the members of our house. But, Monsieur, in default of
better coin, I offer you in payment the assurance of my desire to do you
humble service.
Monsieur, I pray God to have you in His keeping. Your obedient servant,
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE.
IV.——To Monsieur, Monsieur de MESMES, Lord of Roissy and
Malassize, Privy
Councillor to the King.
MONSIEUR,—It is one of the most conspicuous follies committed by
men, to employ the strength of their understanding in overturning and
destroying those opinions which are commonly received among us, and which
afford us satisfaction and content; for while everything beneath heaven
employs the ways and means placed at its disposal by nature for the
advancement and commodity of its being, these, in order to appear of a
more sprightly and enlightened wit, not accepting anything which has not
been tried and balanced a thousand times with the most subtle reasoning,
sacrifice their peace of mind to doubt, uneasiness, and feverish
excitement. It is not without reason that childhood and simplicity have
been recommended by holy writ itself. For my part, I prefer to be quiet
rather than clever: give me content, even if I am not to be so wide in my
range. This is the reason, Monsieur, why, although persons of an ingenious
turn laugh at our care as to what will happen after our own time, for
instance, to our souls, which, lodged elsewhere, will lose all
consciousness of what goes on here below, yet I consider it to be a great
consolation for the frailty and brevity of life, to reflect that we have
the power of prolonging it by reputation and fame; and I embrace very
readily this pleasant and favourable notion original with our being,
without inquiring too critically how or why it is. Insomuch that having
loved, beyond everything, the late M. de la Boetie, the greatest man, in
my judgment, of our age, I should think myself very negligent of my duty
if I failed, to the utmost of my power, to prevent such a name as his, and
a memory so richly meriting remembrance, from falling into oblivion; and
if I did not use my best endeavour to keep them fresh. I believe that he
feels something of what I do on his behalf, and that my services touch and
rejoice him. In fact, he lives in my heart so vividly and so wholly, that
I am loath to believe him committed to the dull ground, or altogether cast
off from communication with us. Therefore, Monsieur, since every new light
I can shed on him and his name, is so much added to his second period of
existence, and, moreover, since his name is ennobled and honoured by the
place which receives it, it falls to me not only to extend it as widely as
I can, but to confide it to the keeping of persons of honour and virtue;
among whom you hold such a rank, that, to afford you the opportunity of
receiving this new guest, and giving him good entertainment, I decided on
presenting to you this little work, not for any profit you are likely to
derive from it, being well aware that you do not need to have Plutarch and
his companions interpreted to you—but it is possible that Madame de
Roissy, reading in it the order of her household management and of your
happy accord painted to the life, will be pleased to see how her own
natural inclination has not only reached but surpassed the theories of the
wisest philosophers, regarding the duties and laws of the wedded state.
And, at all events, it will be always an honour to me, to be able to do
anything which shall be for the pleasure of you and yours, on account of
the obligation under which I lie to serve you.
Monsieur, I pray God to grant you a long and happy life. From Montaigne,
this 30th April 1570. Your humble servant, MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE.
V.——To Monsieur, Monsieur de L'HOSPITAL, Chancellor of France
MONSEIGNEUR,—I am of the opinion that persons such as you, to whom
fortune and reason have committed the charge of public affairs, are not
more inquisitive in any point than in ascertaining the character of those
in office under you; for no society is so poorly furnished, but that, if a
proper distribution of authority be used, it has persons sufficient for
the discharge of all official duties; and when this is the case, nothing
is wanting to make a State perfect in its constitution. Now, in proportion
as this is so much to be desired, so it is the more difficult of
accomplishment, since you cannot have eyes to embrace a multitude so large
and so widely extended, nor to see to the bottom of hearts, in order that
you may discover intentions and consciences, matters principally to be
considered; so that there has never been any commonwealth so well
organised, in which we might not detect often enough defect in such a
department or such a choice; and in those systems, where ignorance and
malice, favouritism, intrigue, and violence govern, if any selection
happens to be made on the ground of merit and regularity, we may doubtless
thank Fortune, which, in its capricious movements, has for once taken the
path of reason.
This consideration, Monseigneur, often consoled me, when I beheld M.
Etienne de la Boetie, one of the fittest men for high office in France,
pass his whole life without employment and notice, by his domestic hearth,
to the singular detriment of the public; for, so far as he was concerned,
I may assure you, Monseigneur, that he was so rich in those treasures
which defy fortune, that never was man more satisfied or content. I know,
indeed, that he was raised to the dignities connected with his
neighbourhood—dignities accounted considerable; and I know also,
that no one ever acquitted himself better of them; and when he died at the
age of thirty-two, he enjoyed a reputation in that way beyond all who had
preceded him.
But for all that, it is no reason that a man should be left a common
soldier, who deserves to become a captain; nor to assign mean functions to
those who are perfectly equal to the highest. In truth, his powers were
badly economised and too sparingly employed; insomuch that, over and above
his actual work, there was abundant capacity lying idle which might have
been called into service, both to the public advantage and his own private
glory.
Therefore, Monseigneur, since he was so indifferent to his own fame (for
virtue and ambition, unfortunately, seldom lodge together), and since he
lived in an age when others were too dull or too jealous to witness to his
character, I have it marvellously at heart that his memory, at all events,
to which I owe the good offices of a friend, should enjoy the recompense
of his brave life; and that it should survive in the good report of men of
honour and virtue. On this account, sir, I have been desirous to bring to
light, and present to you, such few Latin verses as he left behind.
Different from the builder, who places the most attractive, portion of his
house towards the street, and to the draper, who displays in his window
his best goods, that which was most precious in my friend, the juice and
marrow of his genius, departed with him, and there have remained to us but
the bark and the leaves.
The exactly regulated movements of his mind, his piety, his virtue, his
justice, his vivacity, the solidity and soundness of his judgment, the
loftiness of his ideas, raised so far above the common level, his
learning, the grace which accompanied his most ordinary actions, the
tender affection he had for his miserable country, and his supreme and
sworn detestation of all vice, but principally of that villainous traffic
which disguises itself under the honourable name of justice, should
certainly impress all well-disposed persons with a singular love towards
him, and an extraordinary regret for his loss. But, sir, I am unable to do
justice to all these qualities; and of the fruit of his own studies it had
not entered into his mind to leave any proof to posterity; all that
remains, is the little which, as a pastime, he did at intervals.
However this may be, I beg you, sir, to receive it kindly; and as our
judgment of great things is many times formed from lesser things, and as
even the recreations of illustrious men carry with them, to intelligent
observers, some honourable traits of their origin, I would have you form
from this, some knowledge of him, and hence lovingly cherish his name and
his memory. In this, sir, you will only reciprocate the high opinion which
he had of your virtue, and realise what he infinitely desired in his
lifetime; for there was no one in the world in whose acquaintance and
friendship he would have been so happy to see himself established, as in
your own. But if any man is offended by the freedom which I use with the
belongings of another, I can tell him that nothing which has been written
or been laid down, even in the schools of philosophy, respecting the
sacred duties and rights of friendship, could give an adequate idea of the
relations which subsisted between this personage and myself.
Moreover, sir, this slender gift, to make two throws of one stone at the
same time, may likewise serve, if you please, to testify the honour and
respect which I entertain for your ability and high qualities; for as to
those gifts which are adventitious and accidental, it is not to my taste
to take them into account.
Sir, I pray God to grant you a very happy and a very long life. From
Montaigne, this 30th of April 1570.—Your humble and obedient
servant,
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE.
VI.——To Monsieur, Monsieur de Folx, Privy Councillor, and
Ambassador of His Majesty to the Signory of Venice.
—[ Printed before the 'Vers Francois' of Etienne de la Boetie, 8vo,
Paris, 1572.]
SIR,—Being on the point of commending to you and to posterity the
memory of the late Etienne de la Boetie, as well for his extreme virtue as
for the singular affection which he bore to me, it struck me as an
indiscretion very serious in its results, and meriting some coercion from
our laws, the practice which often prevails of robbing virtue of glory,
its faithful associate, in order to confer it, in accordance with our
private interests and without discrimination, on the first comer; seeing
that our two principal guiding reins are reward and punishment, which only
touch us properly, and as men, through the medium of honour and dishonour,
forasmuch as these penetrate the mind, and come home to our most intimate
feelings: just where animals themselves are susceptible, more or less, to
all other kinds of recompense and corporal chastisement. Moreover, it is
well to notice that the custom of praising virtue, even in those who are
no longer with us, impalpable as it is to them, serves as a stimulant to
the living to imitate their example; just as capital sentences are carried
out by the law, more for the sake of warning to others, than in relation
to those who suffer. Now, commendation and its opposite being analogous as
regards effects, we cannot easily deny the fact, that although the law
prohibits one man from slandering the reputation of another, it does not
prevent us from bestowing reputation without cause. This pernicious
licence in respect to the distribution of praise, has formerly been
confined in its area of operations; and it may be the reason why poetry
once lost favour with the more judicious. However this may be, it cannot
be concealed that the vice of falsehood is one very unbecoming in
gentleman, let it assume what guise it will.
As for that personage of whom I am speaking to you, sir he leads me far
away indeed from this kind of language; for the danger in his case is not,
lest I should lend him anything, but that I might take something from him;
and it is his ill-fortune that, while he has supplied me, so far as ever a
man could, with just and obvious opportunities for commendation, I find
myself unable and unqualified to render it to him —I, who am his
debtor for so many vivid communications, and who alone have it in my power
to answer for a million of accomplishments, perfections, and virtues,
latent (thanks to his unkind stars) in so noble a soul. For the nature of
things having (I know not how) permitted that truth, fair and acceptable—as
it may be of itself, is only embraced where there are arts of persuasion,
to insinuate it into our minds, I see myself so wanting, both in authority
to support my simple testimony, and in the eloquence requisite for lending
it value and weight, that I was on the eve of relinquishing the task,
having nothing of his which would enable me to exhibit to the world a
proof of his genius and knowledge.
In truth, sir, having been overtaken by his fate in the flower of his age,
and in the full enjoyment of the most vigorous health, it had been his
design to publish some day works which would have demonstrated to
posterity what sort of a man he was; and, peradventure, he was indifferent
enough to fame, having formed such a plan in his head, to proceed no
further in it. But I have come to the conclusion, that it was far more
excusable in him to bury with him all his rare endowments, than it would
be on my part to bury also with me the knowledge of them which I had
acquired from him; and, therefore, having collected with care all the
remains which I found scattered here and there among his papers, I intend
to distribute them so as to recommend his memory to as many persons as
possible, selecting the most suitable and worthy of my acquaintance, and
those whose testimony might do him greatest honour: such as you, sir, who
may very possibly have had some knowledge of him during his life, but
assuredly too slight to discover the perfect extent of his worth.
Posterity may credit me, if it chooses, when I swear upon my conscience,
that I knew and saw him to be such as, all things considered, I could
neither desire nor imagine a genius surpassing his.
I beg you very humbly, sir, not only to take his name under your general
protection, but also these ten or twelve French stanzas, which lay
themselves, as of necessity, under shadow of your patronage. For I will
not disguise from you, that their publication was deferred, upon the
appearance of his other writings, under the pretext (as it was alleged
yonder at Paris) that they were too crude to come to light. You will
judge, sir, how much truth there is in this; and since it is thought that
hereabout nothing can be produced in our own dialect but what is barbarous
and unpolished, it falls to you, who, besides your rank as the first house
in Guienne, indeed down from your ancestors, possess every other sort of
qualification, to establish, not merely by your example, but by your
authoritative testimony, that such is not always the case: the more so
that, though 'tis more natural with the Gascons to act than talk, yet
sometimes they employ the tongue more than the arm, and wit in place of
valour.
For my own part; sir, it is not in my way to judge of such matters; but I
have heard persons who are supposed to understand them, say that these
stanzas are not only worthy to be presented in the market-place, but,
independently of that, as regards beauty and wealth of invention, they are
full of marrow and matter as any compositions of the kind, which have
appeared in our language. Naturally each workman feels himself more strong
in some special part his art, and those are to be regarded as most
fortunate, who lay hands on the noblest, for all the parts essential to
the construction of any whole are not equally precious. We find elsewhere,
perhaps, greater delicacy phrase, greater softness and harmony of
language; but imaginative grace, and in the store of pointed wit, I do not
think he has been surpassed; and we should take the account that he made
these things neither his occupation nor his study, and that he scarcely
took a pen in his hand more than once a year, as is shown by the very
slender quantity of his remains. For you see here, sir, green wood and
dry, without any sort of selection, all that has come into my possession;
insomuch that there are among the rest efforts even of his boyhood. In
point of fact, he seems to have written them merely to show that he was
capable of dealing with all subjects: for otherwise, thousands of times,
in the course of ordinary conversation, I have heard things drop from him
infinitely more worthy of being admired, infinitely more worthy of being
preserved.
Such, sir, is what justice and affection, forming in this instance a rare
conjunction, oblige me to say of this great and good man; and if I have at
all offended by the freedom which I have taken in addressing myself to you
on such a subject at such a length, be pleased to recollect that the
principal result of greatness and eminence is to lay one open to
importunate appeals on behalf of the rest of the world. Herewith, after
desiring you to accept my affectionate devotion to your service, I beseech
God to vouchsafe you, sir, a fortunate and prolonged life. From Montaigne,
this 1st of September 1570.—Your obedient servant,
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE.
VII.——To Mademoiselle de MONTAIGNE, my Wife.
—[Printed as a preface to the "Consolation of Plutarch to his Wife,"
published by Montaigne, with several other tracts by La Boetie, about
1571.]
MY WIFE,—You understand well that it is not proper for a man of the
world, according to the rules of this our time, to continue to court and
caress you; for they say that a sensible person may take a wife indeed,
but that to espouse her is to act like a fool. Let them talk; I adhere for
my part the custom of the good old days; I also wear my hair as it used to
be then; and, in truth, novelty costs this poor country up to the present
moment so dear (and I do not know whether we have reached the highest
pitch yet), that everywhere and in everything I renounce the fashion. Let
us live, my wife, you and I, in the old French method. Now, you may
recollect that the late M. de la Boetie, my brother and inseparable
companion, gave me, on his death-bed, all his books and papers, which have
remained ever since the most precious part of my effects. I do not wish to
keep them niggardly to myself alone, nor do I deserve to have the
exclusive use of them; so that I have resolved to communicate them to my
friends; and because I have none, I believe, more particularly intimate
you, I send you the Consolatory Letter written by Plutarch to his Wife,
translated by him into French; regretting much that fortune has made it so
suitable a present you, and that, having had but one child, and that a
daughter, long looked for, after four years of your married life it was
your lot to lose her in the second year of her age. But I leave to
Plutarch the duty of comforting you, acquainting you with your duty
herein, begging you to put your faith in him for my sake; for he will
reveal to you my own ideas, and will express the matter far better than I
should myself. Hereupon, my wife, I commend myself very heartily to your
good will, and pray God to have you in His keeping. From Paris, this 10th
September 1570.—Your good husband,
MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE.
VIII.——To Monsieur DUPUY,
—[This is probably the Claude Dupuy, born at Paris in 1545, and one
of the fourteen judges sent into Guienne after the treaty of Fleix in
1580. It was perhaps under these circumstances that Montaigne addressed to
him the present letter.]—the King's Councillor in his Court and
Parliament of Paris.
MONSIEUR,—The business of the Sieur de Verres, a prisoner, who is
extremely well known to me, deserves, in the arrival at a decision, the
exercise of the clemency natural to you, if, in the public interest, you
can fairly call it into play. He has done a thing not only excusable,
according to the military laws of this age, but necessary and (as we are
of opinion) commendable. He committed the act, without doubt, unwillingly
and under pressure; there is no other passage of his life which is open to
reproach. I beseech you, sir, to lend the matter your attentive
consideration; you will find the character of it as I represent it to you.
He is persecuted on this crime, in a way which is far worse than the
offence itself. If it is likely to be of use to him, I desire to inform
you that he is a man brought up in my house, related to several
respectable families, and a person who, having led an honourable life, is
my particular friend. By saving him you lay me under an extreme
obligation. I beg you very humbly to regard him as recommended by me, and,
after kissing your hands, I pray God, sir, to grant you a long and happy
life. From Castera, this 23d of April 1580. Your affectionate servant,
MONTAIGNE.
IX.——To the Jurats of Bordeaux.
—[Published from the original among the archives of the town of
Bordeaux, M. Gustave Brunet in the Bulletin du Bibliophile, July 1839.]
GENTLEMEN,—I trust that the journey of Monsieur de Cursol will be of
advantage to the town. Having in hand a case so just and so favourable,
you did all in your power to put the business in good trim; and matters
being so well situated, I beg you to excuse my absence for some little
time longer, and I will abridge my stay so far as the pressure of my
affairs permits. I hope that the delay will be short; however, you will
keep me, if you please, in your good grace, and will command me, if the
occasion shall arise, in employing me in the public service and in yours.
Monsieur de Cursol has also written to me and apprised me of his journey.
I humbly commend myself to you, and pray God, gentlemen, to grant you long
and happy life. From Montaigne, this 21st of May 1582. Your humble brother
and servant, MONTAIGNE.
X.——To the same.
—[The original is among the archives of Toulouse.]
GENTLEMEN,—I have taken my fair share of the satisfaction which you
announce to me as feeling at the good despatch of your business, as
reported to you by your deputies, and I regard it as a favourable sign
that you have made such an auspicious commencement of the year. I hope to
join you at the earliest convenient opportunity. I recommend myself very
humbly to your gracious consideration, and pray God to grant you,
gentlemen, a happy and long life. From Montaigne, this 8th February 1585.
Your humble brother and servant, MONTAIGNE.
XI.——To the same.
GENTLEMEN,—I have here received news of you from M. le Marechal. I
will not spare either my life or anything else for your service, and will
leave it to your judgment whether the assistance I might be able to render
by my presence at the forthcoming election, would be worth the risk I
should run by going into the town, seeing the bad state it is in, —[This
refers to the plague then raging, and which carried off 14,000 persons at
Bordeaux.]—particularly for people coming away from so fine an air
as this is where I am. I will draw as near to you on Wednesday as I can,
that is, to Feuillas, if the malady has not reached that place, where, as
I write to M. de la Molte, I shall be very pleased to have the honour of
seeing one of you to take your directions, and relieve myself of the
credentials which M. le Marechal will give me for you all: commending
myself hereupon humbly to your good grace, and praying God to grant you,
gentlemen, long and happy life. At Libourne, this 30th of July 1585. Your
humble servant and brother, MONTAIGNE.
XII.
—["According to Dr. Payen, this letter belongs to 1588. Its
authenticity has been called in question; but wrongly, in our opinion. See
'Documents inedits', 1847, p. 12."—Note in 'Essais', ed. Paris,
1854, iv. 381. It does not appear to whom the letter was addressed.]
MONSEIGNEUR,—You have heard of our baggage being taken from us under
our eyes in the forest of Villebois: then, after a good deal of discussion
and delay, of the capture being pronounced illegal by the Prince. We dared
not, however, proceed on our way, from an uncertainty as to the safety of
our persons, which should have been clearly expressed on our passports.
The League has done this, M. de Barrant and M. de la Rochefocault; the
storm has burst on me, who had my money in my box. I have recovered none
of it, and most of my papers and cash—[The French word is hardes,
which St. John renders things. But compare Chambers's "Domestic Annals of
Scotland," 2d ed. i. 48.]—remain in their possession. I have not
seen the Prince. Fifty were lost . . . as for the Count of Thorigny, he
lost some ver plate and a few articles of clothing. He diverged from his
route to pay a visit to the mourning ladies at Montresor, where are the
remains of his two brothers and his grandmother, and came to us again in
this town, whence we shall resume our journey shortly. The journey to
Normandy is postponed. The King has despatched MM. De Bellieure and de la
Guiche to M. de Guise to summon him to court; we shall be there on
Thursday.
From Orleans, this 16th of February, in the morning [1588-9?].—Your
very humble servant, MONTAIGNE.
XIII.——To Mademoiselle PAULMIER.
—[This letter, at the time of the publication of the variorum
edition of 1854, appears to have been in private hands. See vol. iv. p.
382.]
MADEMOISELLE,—My friends know that, from the first moment of our
acquaintance, I have destined a copy of my book for you; for I feel that
you have done it much honour. The courtesy of M. Paulmier would deprive me
of the pleasure of giving it to you now, for he has obliged me since a
great deal beyond the worth of my book. You will accept it then, if you
please, as having been yours before I owed it to you, and will confer on
me the favour of loving it, whether for its own sake or for mine; and I
will keep my debt to M. Paulmier undischarged, that I may requite him, if
I have at some other time the means of serving him.
XIV.——To the KING, HENRY IV.
—[The original is in the French national library, in the Dupuy
collection. It was first discovered by M. Achille Jubinal, who printed it
with a facsimile of the entire autograph, in 1850. St. John gives the date
wrongly as the 1st January 1590.]
SIRE, It is to be above the weight and crowd of your great and important
affairs, to know, as you do, how to lend yourself, and attend to small
matters in their turn, according to the duty of your royal dignity, which
exposes you at all times to every description and degree of person and
employment. Yet, that your Majesty should have deigned to consider my
letter, and direct a reply to be made to it, I prefer to owe, less to your
strong understanding, than to your kindness of heart. I have always looked
forward to your enjoyment of your present fortune, and you may recollect
that, even when I had to make confession of itto my cure, I viewed your
successes with satisfaction: now, with the greater propriety and freedom,
I embrace them affectionately. They serve you where you are as positive
matters of fact; but they serve us here no less by the fame which they
diffuse: the echo carries as much weight as the blow. We should not be
able to derive from the justice of your cause such powerful arguments for
the maintenance and reduction of your subjects, as we do from the reports
of the success of your undertaking; and then I have to assure your
Majesty, that the recent changes to your advantage, which you observe
hereabouts, the prosperous issue of your proceedings at Dieppe, have
opportunely seconded the honest zeal and marvellous prudence of M. the
Marshal de Matignon, from whom I flatter myself that you do not receive
day by day accounts of such good and signal services without remembering
my assurances and expectations. I look to the next summer, not only for
fruits which we may eat, but for those to grow out of our common
tranquillity, and that it will pass over our heads with the same even
tenor of happiness, dissipating, like its predecessors, all the fine
promises with which your adversaries sustain the spirits of their
followers. The popular inclinations resemble a tidal wave; if the current
once commences in your favour, it will go on of its own force to the end.
I could have desired much that the private gain of the soldiers of your
army, and the necessity for satisfying them, had not deprived you,
especially in this principal town, of the glorious credit of treating your
mutinous subjects, in the midst of victory, with greater clemency than
their own protectors, and that, as distinguished from a passing and
usurped repute, you could have shown them to be really your own, by the
exercise of a protection truly paternal and royal. In the conduct of such
affairs as you have in hand, men are obliged to have recourse to unusual
expedients. It is always seen that they are surmounted by their magnitude
and difficulty; it not being found easy to complete the conquest by arms
and force, the end has been accomplished by clemency and generosity,
excellent lures to draw men particularly towards the just and legitimate
side. If there is to be severity and punishment, let it be deferred till
success has been assured. A great conqueror of past times boasts that he
gave his enemies as great an inducement to love him, as his friends. And
here we feel already some effect of the favourable impression produced
upon our rebellious towns by the contrast between their rude treatment,
and that of those which are loyal to you. Desiring your Majesty a
happiness more tangible and less hazardous, and that you may be beloved
rather than feared by your people, and believing that your welfare and
theirs are of necessity knit together, I rejoice to think that the
progress which you make is one towards more practicable conditions of
peace, as well as towards victory!
Sire, your letter of the last of November came to my hand only just now,
when the time which it pleased you to name for meeting you at Tours had
already passed. I take it as a singular favour that you should have
deigned to desire a visit from so useless a person, but one who is wholly
yours, and more so even by affection than from duty. You have acted very
commendably in adapting yourself, in the matter of external forms, to your
new fortunes; but the preservation of your old affability and frankness in
private intercourse is entitled to an equal share of praise. You have
condescended to take thought for my age, no less than for the desire which
I have to see you, where you may be at rest from these laborious
agitations. Will not that be soon at Paris, Sire? and may nothing prevent
me from presenting myself there!—Your very humble and very obedient
servant and subject, MONTAIGNE.
From Montaigne, this 18th of January 1590.
XV.——To the same.
—[ This letter is also in the national collection, among the Dupuy
papers. It was first printed in the "Journal de l'Instruction Publique,"
4th November 1846.]
SIRE,—The letter which it pleased your majesty to write to me on the
20th of July, was not delivered to me till this morning, and found me laid
up with a very violent tertian ague, a complaint very common in this part
of the country during the last month. Sire, I consider myself greatly
honoured by the receipt of your commands, and I have not omitted to
communicate to M. the Marshal de Matignon three times most emphatically my
intention and obligation to proceed to him, and even so far as to indicate
the route by which I proposed to join him secretly, if he thought proper.
Having received no answer, I consider that he has weighed the difficulty
and risk of the journey to me. Sire, your Majesty dill do me the favour to
believe, if you please, that I shall never complain of the expense on
occasions where I should not hesitate to devote my life. I have never
derived any substantial benefit whatever from the bounty of kings, which I
have neither sought nor merited; nor have I had any recompense for the
services which I have performed for them: whereof your majesty is in part
aware. What I have done for your predecessors I shall do still more
readily for you. I am as rich, Sire, as I desire to be. When I shall have
exhausted my purse in attendance on your Majesty at Paris, I will take the
liberty to tell you, and then, if you should regard me as worthy of being
retained any longer in your suite, you will find me more modest in my
claims upon you than the humblest of your officers.
Sire, I pray God for your prosperity and health. Your very humble and very
obedient servant and subject, MONTAIGNE.
From Montaigne, this 2d of September 1590.
XVI.——To the Governor of Guienne.
MONSEIGNEUR,—I have received this morning your letter, which I have
communicated to M. de Gourgues, and we have dined together at the house of
M.[the mayor] of Bourdeaux. As to the inconvenience of transporting the
money named in your memorandum, you see how difficult a thing it is to
provide for; but you may be sure that we shall keep as close a watch over
it as possible. I used every exertion to discover the man of whom you
spoke. He has not been here; and M. de Bordeaux has shown me a letter in
which he mentions that he could not come to see the Director of Bordeaux,
as he intended, having been informed that you mistrust him. The letter is
of the day before yesterday. If I could have found him, I might perhaps
have pursued the gentler course, being uncertain of your views; but I
entreat you nevertheless to feel no manner of doubt that I refuse to carry
out any wishes of yours, and that, where your commands are concerned, I
know no distinction of person or matter. I hope that you have in Guienne
many as well affected to you as I am. They report that the Nantes galleys
are advancing towards Brouage. M. the Marshal de Biron has not yet left.
Those who were charged to convey the message to M. d'Usee say that they
cannot find him; and I believe that, if he has been here, he is so no
longer. We keep a vigilant eye on our gates and guards, and we look after
them a little more attentively in your absence, which makes me
apprehensive, not merely on account of the preservation of the town, but
likewise for your oven sake, knowing that the enemies of the king feel how
necessary you are to his service, and how ill we should prosper without
you. I am afraid that, in the part where you are, you will be overtaken by
so many affairs requiring your attention on every side, that it will take
you a long time and involve great difficulty before you have disposed of
everything. If there is any important news, I will despatch an express at
once, and you may conclude that nothing is stirring if you do not hear
from me: at the same time begging you to bear in mind that movements of
this kind are wont to be so sudden and unexpected that, if they occur,
they will grasp me by the throat, before they say a word. I will do what I
can to collect news, and for this purpose I will make a point of visiting
and seeing men of every shade of opinion. Down to the present time nothing
is stirring. M. de Londel has seen me this morning, and we have been
arranging for some advances for the place, where I shall go to-morrow
morning. Since I began this letter, I have learnt from Chartreux that two
gentlemen, describing themselves as in the service of M. de Guise, and
coming from Agen, have passed near Chartreux; but I was not able to
ascertain which road they have taken. They are expecting you at Agen. The
Sieur de Mauvesin came as far as Canteloup, and thence returned, having
got some intelligence. I am in search of one Captain Rous, to whom . . .
wrote, trying to draw him into his cause by all sorts of promises. The
rumour of the two Nantes galleys ready to descend on Brouage is confirmed
as certain; they carry two companies of foot. M. de Mercure is at Nantes.
The Sieur de la Courbe said to M. the President Nesmond that M. d'Elbeuf
is on this side of Angiers, and lodges with his father. He is drawing
towards Lower Poictou with 4000 foot and 400 or 500 horse, having been
reinforced by the troops of M. de Brissac and others, and M. de Mercure is
to join him. The report goes also that M. du Maine is about to take the
command of all the forces they have collected in Auvergne, and that he
will cross Le Foret to advance on Rouergue and us, that is to say, on the
King of Navarre, against whom all this is being directed. M. de Lansac is
at Bourg, and has two war vessels, which remain in attendance on him. His
functions are naval. I tell you what I learn, and mix up together the more
or less probable hearsay of the town with actual matter of fact, that you
may be in possession of everything. I beg you most humbly to return
directly affairs may allow you to do so, and assure you that, meanwhile,
we shall not spare our labour, or (if that were necessary) our life, to
maintain the king's authority throughout. Monseigneur, I kiss your hands
very respectfully, and pray God to have you in His keeping. From Bordeaux,
Wednesday night, 22d May (1590-91).—Your very humble servant,
MONTAIGNE.
I have seen no one from the king of Navarre; they say that M. de Biron has
seen him.
THE AUTHOR TO THE READER.
—[Omitted by Cotton.]—
READER, thou hast here an honest book; it doth at the outset forewarn thee
that, in contriving the same, I have proposed to myself no other than a
domestic and private end: I have had no consideration at all either to thy
service or to my glory. My powers are not capable of any such design. I
have dedicated it to the particular commodity of my kinsfolk and friends,
so that, having lost me (which they must do shortly), they may therein
recover some traits of my conditions and humours, and by that means
preserve more whole, and more life-like, the knowledge they had of me. Had
my intention been to seek the world's favour, I should surely have adorned
myself with borrowed beauties: I desire therein to be viewed as I appear
in mine own genuine, simple, and ordinary manner, without study and
artifice: for it is myself I paint. My defects are therein to be read to
the life, and any imperfections and my natural form, so far as public
reverence hath permitted me. If I had lived among those nations, which
(they say) yet dwell under the sweet liberty of nature's primitive laws, I
assure thee I would most willingly have painted myself quite fully and
quite naked. Thus, reader, myself am the matter of my book: there's no
reason thou shouldst employ thy leisure about so frivolous and vain a
subject. Therefore farewell.
From Montaigne, the 12th June 1580—[So in the edition of 1595; the
edition of 1588 has 12th June 1588]
From Montaigne, the 1st March 1580.
—[See Bonnefon, Montaigne, 1893, p. 254. The book had been
licensed for the press on the 9th May previous. The edition of 1588
has 12th June 1588;]—
ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE
Translated by Charles Cotton
Edited by William Carew Hazlitt
1877
CHAPTER I——THAT MEN BY VARIOUS WAYS ARRIVE AT THE SAME END.
The most usual way of appeasing the indignation of such as we have any way
offended, when we see them in possession of the power of revenge, and find
that we absolutely lie at their mercy, is by submission, to move them to
commiseration and pity; and yet bravery, constancy, and resolution,
however quite contrary means, have sometimes served to produce the same
effect.—[Florio's version begins thus: "The most vsuall waie to
appease those minds wee have offended, when revenge lies in their hands,
and that we stand at their mercie, is by submission to move them to
commiseration and pity: Nevertheless, courage, constancie, and resolution
(means altogether opposite) have sometimes wrought the same effect."—]
[The spelling is Florio's D.W.]
Edward, Prince of Wales [Edward, the Black Prince. D.W.] (the same who so
long governed our Guienne, a personage whose condition and fortune have in
them a great deal of the most notable and most considerable parts of
grandeur), having been highly incensed by the Limousins, and taking their
city by assault, was not, either by the cries of the people, or the
prayers and tears of the women and children, abandoned to slaughter and
prostrate at his feet for mercy, to be stayed from prosecuting his
revenge; till, penetrating further into the town, he at last took notice
of three French gentlemen,—[These were Jean de Villemure, Hugh de la
Roche, and Roger de Beaufort.—Froissart, i. c. 289. {The city was
Limoges. D.W.}]—who with incredible bravery alone sustained the
power of his victorious army. Then it was that consideration and respect
unto so remarkable a valour first stopped the torrent of his fury, and
that his clemency, beginning with these three cavaliers, was afterwards
extended to all the remaining inhabitants of the city.
Scanderbeg, Prince of Epirus, pursuing one of his soldiers with purpose to
kill him, the soldier, having in vain tried by all the ways of humility
and supplication to appease him, resolved, as his last refuge, to face
about and await him sword in hand: which behaviour of his gave a sudden
stop to his captain's fury, who, for seeing him assume so notable a
resolution, received him into grace; an example, however, that might
suffer another interpretation with such as have not read of the prodigious
force and valour of that prince.
The Emperor Conrad III. having besieged Guelph, Duke of Bavaria,—[In
1140, in Weinsberg, Upper Bavaria.]—would not be prevailed upon,
what mean and unmanly satisfactions soever were tendered to him, to
condescend to milder conditions than that the ladies and gentlewomen only
who were in the town with the duke might go out without violation of their
honour, on foot, and with so much only as they could carry about them.
Whereupon they, out of magnanimity of heart, presently contrived to carry
out, upon their shoulders, their husbands and children, and the duke
himself; a sight at which the emperor was so pleased, that, ravished with
the generosity of the action, he wept for joy, and immediately
extinguishing in his heart the mortal and capital hatred he had conceived
against this duke, he from that time forward treated him and his with all
humanity. The one and the other of these two ways would with great
facility work upon my nature; for I have a marvellous propensity to mercy
and mildness, and to such a degree that I fancy of the two I should sooner
surrender my anger to compassion than to esteem. And yet pity is reputed a
vice amongst the Stoics, who will that we succour the afflicted, but not
that we should be so affected with their sufferings as to suffer with
them. I conceived these examples not ill suited to the question in hand,
and the rather because therein we observe these great souls assaulted and
tried by these two several ways, to resist the one without relenting, and
to be shook and subjected by the other. It may be true that to suffer a
man's heart to be totally subdued by compassion may be imputed to
facility, effeminacy, and over-tenderness; whence it comes to pass that
the weaker natures, as of women, children, and the common sort of people,
are the most subject to it but after having resisted and disdained the
power of groans and tears, to yield to the sole reverence of the sacred
image of Valour, this can be no other than the effect of a strong and
inflexible soul enamoured of and honouring masculine and obstinate
courage. Nevertheless, astonishment and admiration may, in less generous
minds, beget a like effect: witness the people of Thebes, who, having put
two of their generals upon trial for their lives for having continued in
arms beyond the precise term of their commission, very hardly pardoned
Pelopidas, who, bowing under the weight of so dangerous an accusation,
made no manner of defence for himself, nor produced other arguments than
prayers and supplications; whereas, on the contrary, Epaminondas, falling
to recount magniloquently the exploits he had performed in their service,
and, after a haughty and arrogant manner reproaching them with ingratitude
and injustice, they had not the heart to proceed any further in his trial,
but broke up the court and departed, the whole assembly highly commending
the high courage of this personage.—[Plutarch, How far a Man may
praise Himself, c. 5.]
Dionysius the elder, after having, by a tedious siege and through
exceeding great difficulties, taken the city of Reggio, and in it the
governor Phyton, a very gallant man, who had made so obstinate a defence,
was resolved to make him a tragical example of his revenge: in order
whereunto he first told him, "That he had the day before caused his son
and all his kindred to be drowned." To which Phyton returned no other
answer but this: "That they were then by one day happier than he." After
which, causing him to be stripped, and delivering him into the hands of
the tormentors, he was by them not only dragged through the streets of the
town, and most ignominiously and cruelly whipped, but moreover vilified
with most bitter and contumelious language: yet still he maintained his
courage entire all the way, with a strong voice and undaunted countenance
proclaiming the honourable and glorious cause of his death; namely, for
that he would not deliver up his country into the hands of a tyrant; at
the same time denouncing against him a speedy chastisement from the
offended gods. At which Dionysius, reading in his soldiers' looks, that
instead of being incensed at the haughty language of this conquered enemy,
to the contempt of their captain and his triumph, they were not only
struck with admiration of so rare a virtue, but moreover inclined to
mutiny, and were even ready to rescue the prisoner out of the hangman's
hands, he caused the torturing to cease, and afterwards privately caused
him to be thrown into the sea.—[Diod. Sic., xiv. 29.]
Man (in good earnest) is a marvellous vain, fickle, and unstable subject,
and on whom it is very hard to form any certain and uniform judgment. For
Pompey could pardon the whole city of the Mamertines, though furiously
incensed against it, upon the single account of the virtue and magnanimity
of one citizen, Zeno,—[Plutarch calls him Stheno, and also Sthemnus
and Sthenis]—who took the fault of the public wholly upon himself;
neither entreated other favour, but alone to undergo the punishment for
all: and yet Sylla's host, having in the city of Perugia —[Plutarch
says Preneste, a town of Latium.]—manifested the same virtue,
obtained nothing by it, either for himself or his fellow-citizens.
And, directly contrary to my first examples, the bravest of all men, and
who was reputed so gracious to all those he overcame, Alexander, having,
after many great difficulties, forced the city of Gaza, and, entering,
found Betis, who commanded there, and of whose valour in the time of this
siege he had most marvellous manifest proof, alone, forsaken by all his
soldiers, his armour hacked and hewed to pieces, covered all over with
blood and wounds, and yet still fighting in the crowd of a number of
Macedonians, who were laying on him on all sides, he said to him, nettled
at so dear-bought a victory (for, in addition to the other damage, he had
two wounds newly received in his own person), "Thou shalt not die, Betis,
as thou dost intend; be sure thou shall suffer all the torments that can
be inflicted on a captive." To which menace the other returning no other
answer, but only a fierce and disdainful look; "What," says Alexander,
observing his haughty and obstinate silence, "is he too stiff to bend a
knee! Is he too proud to utter one suppliant word! Truly, I will conquer
this silence; and if I cannot force a word from his mouth, I will, at
least, extract a groan from his heart." And thereupon converting his anger
into fury, presently commanded his heels to be bored through, causing him,
alive, to be dragged, mangled, and dismembered at a cart's tail.—[Quintus
Curtius, iv. 6. This act of cruelty has been doubted, notwithstanding the
statement of Curtius.]—Was it that the height of courage was so
natural and familiar to this conqueror, that because he could not admire,
he respected it the less? Or was it that he conceived valour to be a
virtue so peculiar to himself, that his pride could not, without envy,
endure it in another? Or was it that the natural impetuosity of his fury
was incapable of opposition? Certainly, had it been capable of moderation,
it is to be believed that in the sack and desolation of Thebes, to see so
many valiant men, lost and totally destitute of any further defence,
cruelly massacred before his eyes, would have appeased it: where there
were above six thousand put to the sword, of whom not one was seen to fly,
or heard to cry out for quarter; but, on the contrary, every one running
here and there to seek out and to provoke the victorious enemy to help
them to an honourable end. Not one was seen who, however weakened with
wounds, did not in his last gasp yet endeavour to revenge himself, and
with all the arms of a brave despair, to sweeten his own death in the
death of an enemy. Yet did their valour create no pity, and the length of
one day was not enough to satiate the thirst of the conqueror's revenge,
but the slaughter continued to the last drop of blood that was capable of
being shed, and stopped not till it met with none but unarmed persons, old
men, women, and children, of them to carry away to the number of thirty
thousand slaves.
CHAPTER II——OF SORROW
No man living is more free from this passion than I, who yet neither like
it in myself nor admire it in others, and yet generally the world, as a
settled thing, is pleased to grace it with a particular esteem, clothing
therewith wisdom, virtue, and conscience. Foolish and sordid guise!
—["No man is more free from this passion than I, for I neither love
nor regard it: albeit the world hath undertaken, as it were upon covenant,
to grace it with a particular favour. Therewith they adorne age, vertue,
and conscience. Oh foolish and base ornament!" Florio, 1613, p. 3] —The
Italians have more fitly baptized by this name—[La tristezza]—
malignity; for 'tis a quality always hurtful, always idle and vain; and as
being cowardly, mean, and base, it is by the Stoics expressly and
particularly forbidden to their sages.
But the story—[Herodotus, iii. 14.]—says that Psammenitus,
King of Egypt, being defeated and taken prisoner by Cambyses, King of
Persia, seeing his own daughter pass by him as prisoner, and in a wretched
habit, with a bucket to draw water, though his friends about him were so
concerned as to break out into tears and lamentations, yet he himself
remained unmoved, without uttering a word, his eyes fixed upon the ground;
and seeing, moreover, his son immediately after led to execution, still
maintained the same countenance; till spying at last one of his domestic
and familiar friends dragged away amongst the captives, he fell to tearing
his hair and beating his breast, with all the other extravagances of
extreme sorrow.
A story that may very fitly be coupled with another of the same kind, of
recent date, of a prince of our own nation, who being at Trent, and having
news there brought him of the death of his elder brother, a brother on
whom depended the whole support and honour of his house, and soon after of
that of a younger brother, the second hope of his family, and having
withstood these two assaults with an exemplary resolution; one of his
servants happening a few days after to die, he suffered his constancy to
be overcome by this last accident; and, parting with his courage, so
abandoned himself to sorrow and mourning, that some thence were forward to
conclude that he was only touched to the quick by this last stroke of
fortune; but, in truth, it was, that being before brimful of grief, the
least addition overflowed the bounds of all patience. Which, I think,
might also be said of the former example, did not the story proceed to
tell us that Cambyses asking Psammenitus, "Why, not being moved at the
calamity of his son and daughter, he should with so great impatience bear
the misfortune of his friend?" "It is," answered he, "because only this
last affliction was to be manifested by tears, the two first far exceeding
all manner of expression."
And, peradventure, something like this might be working in the fancy of
the ancient painter,—[Cicero, De Orator., c. 22 ; Pliny, xxxv. 10.]—
who having, in the sacrifice of Iphigenia, to represent the sorrow of the
assistants proportionably to the several degrees of interest every one had
in the death of this fair innocent virgin, and having, in the other
figures, laid out the utmost power of his art, when he came to that of her
father, he drew him with a veil over his face, meaning thereby that no
kind of countenance was capable of expressing such a degree of sorrow.
Which is also the reason why the poets feign the miserable mother, Niobe,
having first lost seven sons, and then afterwards as many daughters
(overwhelmed with her losses), to have been at last transformed into a
rock—
"Diriguisse malis,"
["Petrified with her misfortunes."—Ovid, Met., vi. 304.]
thereby to express that melancholic, dumb, and deaf stupefaction, which
benumbs all our faculties, when oppressed with accidents greater than we
are able to bear. And, indeed, the violence and impression of an excessive
grief must of necessity astonish the soul, and wholly deprive her of her
ordinary functions: as it happens to every one of us, who, upon any sudden
alarm of very ill news, find ourselves surprised, stupefied, and in a
manner deprived of all power of motion, so that the soul, beginning to
vent itself in tears and lamentations, seems to free and disengage itself
from the sudden oppression, and to have obtained some room to work itself
out at greater liberty.
"Et via vix tandem voci laxata dolore est."
["And at length and with difficulty is a passage opened by grief for
utterance."—AEneid, xi. 151.]
In the war that Ferdinand made upon the widow of King John of Hungary,
about Buda, a man-at-arms was particularly taken notice of by every one
for his singular gallant behaviour in a certain encounter; and, unknown,
highly commended, and lamented, being left dead upon the place: but by
none so much as by Raisciac, a German lord, who was infinitely enamoured
of so rare a valour. The body being brought off, and the count, with the
common curiosity coming to view it, the armour was no sooner taken off but
he immediately knew him to be his own son, a thing that added a second
blow to the compassion of all the beholders; only he, without uttering a
word, or turning away his eyes from the woeful object, stood fixedly
contemplating the body of his son, till the vehemency of sorrow having
overcome his vital spirits, made him sink down stone-dead to the ground.
"Chi puo dir com' egli arde, a in picciol fuoco,"
["He who can say how he burns with love, has little fire"
—Petrarca, Sonetto 137.]
say the Innamoratos, when they would represent an 'insupportable passion.
"Misero quod omneis
Eripit sensus mihi: nam simul te,
Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi,
Quod loquar amens.
Lingua sed torpet: tenuis sub artus
Flamma dimanat; sonitu suopte
Tintinant aures; gemina teguntur
Lumina nocte."
["Love deprives me of all my faculties: Lesbia, when once in thy
presence, I have not left the power to tell my distracting passion:
my tongue becomes torpid; a subtle flame creeps through my veins; my
ears tingle in deafness; my eyes are veiled with darkness."
Catullus, Epig. li. 5]
Neither is it in the height and greatest fury of the fit that we are in a
condition to pour out our complaints or our amorous persuasions, the soul
being at that time over-burdened, and labouring with profound thoughts;
and the body dejected and languishing with desire; and thence it is that
sometimes proceed those accidental impotencies that so unseasonably
surprise the lover, and that frigidity which by the force of an immoderate
ardour seizes him even in the very lap of fruition. —[The edition of
1588 has here, "An accident not unknown to myself."]— For all
passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but
moderate:
"Curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent."
["Light griefs can speak: deep sorrows are dumb."
—Seneca, Hippolytus, act ii. scene 3.]
A surprise of unexpected joy does likewise often produce the same effect:
"Ut me conspexit venientem, et Troja circum
Arma amens vidit, magnis exterrita monstris,
Diriguit visu in medio, calor ossa reliquit,
Labitur, et longo vix tandem tempore fatur."
["When she beheld me advancing, and saw, with stupefaction, the
Trojan arms around me, terrified with so great a prodigy, she
fainted away at the very sight: vital warmth forsook her limbs: she
sinks down, and, after a long interval, with difficulty speaks."—
AEneid, iii. 306.]
Besides the examples of the Roman lady, who died for joy to see her son
safe returned from the defeat of Cannae; and of Sophocles and of Dionysius
the Tyrant,—[Pliny, vii. 53. Diodorus Siculus, however (xv. c. 20),
tells us that Dionysius "was so overjoyed at the news that he made a great
sacrifice upon it to the gods, prepared sumptuous feasts, to which he
invited all his friends, and therein drank so excessively that it threw
him into a very bad distemper."]—who died of joy; and of Thalna, who
died in Corsica, reading news of the honours the Roman Senate had decreed
in his favour, we have, moreover, one in our time, of Pope Leo X., who
upon news of the taking of Milan, a thing he had so ardently desired, was
rapt with so sudden an excess of joy that he immediately fell into a fever
and died.—[Guicciardini, Storia d'Italia, vol. xiv.]—And for a
more notable testimony of the imbecility of human nature, it is recorded
by the ancients—[Pliny, 'ut supra']—that Diodorus the
dialectician died upon the spot, out of an extreme passion of shame, for
not having been able in his own school, and in the presence of a great
auditory, to disengage himself from a nice argument that was propounded to
him. I, for my part, am very little subject to these violent passions; I
am naturally of a stubborn apprehension, which also, by reasoning, I every
day harden and fortify.
CHAPTER III——THAT OUR AFFECTIONS CARRY THEMSELVES BEYOND US.
Such as accuse mankind of the folly of gaping after future things, and
advise us to make our benefit of those which are present, and to set up
our rest upon them, as having no grasp upon that which is to come, even
less than that which we have upon what is past, have hit upon the most
universal of human errors, if that may be called an error to which nature
herself has disposed us, in order to the continuation of her own work,
prepossessing us, amongst several others, with this deceiving imagination,
as being more jealous of our action than afraid of our knowledge.
We are never present with, but always beyond ourselves: fear, desire,
hope, still push us on towards the future, depriving us, in the meantime,
of the sense and consideration of that which is to amuse us with the
thought of what shall be, even when we shall be no more.—[Rousseau,
Emile, livre ii.]
"Calamitosus est animus futuri auxius."
["The mind anxious about the future is unhappy."
—Seneca, Epist., 98.]
We find this great precept often repeated in Plato, "Do thine own work,
and know thyself." Of which two parts, both the one and the other
generally, comprehend our whole duty, and do each of them in like manner
involve the other; for who will do his own work aright will find that his
first lesson is to know what he is, and that which is proper to himself;
and who rightly understands himself will never mistake another man's work
for his own, but will love and improve himself above all other things,
will refuse superfluous employments, and reject all unprofitable thoughts
and propositions. As folly, on the one side, though it should enjoy all it
desire, would notwithstanding never be content, so, on the other, wisdom,
acquiescing in the present, is never dissatisfied with itself. —[Cicero,
Tusc. Quae., 57, v. 18.]—Epicurus dispenses his sages from all
foresight and care of the future.
Amongst those laws that relate to the dead, I look upon that to be very
sound by which the actions of princes are to be examined after their
decease.—[Diodorus Siculus, i. 6.]— They are equals with, if
not masters of the laws, and, therefore, what justice could not inflict
upon their persons, 'tis but reason should be executed upon their
reputations and the estates of their successors—things that we often
value above life itself. 'Tis a custom of singular advantage to those
countries where it is in use, and by all good princes to be desired, who
have reason to take it ill, that the memories of the wicked should be used
with the same reverence and respect with their own. We owe subjection and
obedience to all our kings, whether good or bad, alike, for that has
respect unto their office; but as to esteem and affection, these are only
due to their virtue. Let us grant to political government to endure them
with patience, however unworthy; to conceal their vices; and to assist
them with our recommendation in their indifferent actions, whilst their
authority stands in need of our support. But, the relation of prince and
subject being once at an end, there is no reason we should deny the
expression of our real opinions to our own liberty and common justice, and
especially to interdict to good subjects the glory of having reverently
and faithfully served a prince, whose imperfections were to them so well
known; this were to deprive posterity of a useful example. And such as,
out of respect to some private obligation, unjustly espouse and vindicate
the memory of a faulty prince, do private right at the expense of public
justice. Livy does very truly say,—[xxxv. 48.]— "That the
language of men bred up in courts is always full of vain ostentation and
false testimony, every one indifferently magnifying his own master, and
stretching his commendation to the utmost extent of virtue and sovereign
grandeur." Some may condemn the freedom of those two soldiers who so
roundly answered Nero to his beard; the one being asked by him why he bore
him ill-will? "I loved thee," answered he, "whilst thou wert worthy of it,
but since thou art become a parricide, an incendiary, a player, and a
coachman, I hate thee as thou dost deserve." And the other, why he should
attempt to kill him? "Because," said he, "I could think of no other remedy
against thy perpetual mischiefs." —[Tacitus, Annal., xv. 67.]—But
the public and universal testimonies that were given of him after his
death (and so will be to all posterity, both of him and all other wicked
princes like him), of his tyrannies and abominable deportment, who, of a
sound judgment, can reprove them?
I am scandalised, that in so sacred a government as that of the
Lacedaemonians there should be mixed so hypocritical a ceremony at the
interment of their kings; where all their confederates and neighbours, and
all sorts and degrees of men and women, as well as their slaves, cut and
slashed their foreheads in token of sorrow, repeating in their cries and
lamentations that that king (let him have been as wicked as the devil) was
the best that ever they had;—[Herodotus, vi. 68.]—by this
means attributing to his quality the praise that only belongs to merit,
and that of right is due to supreme desert, though lodged in the lowest
and most inferior subject.
Aristotle, who will still have a hand in everything, makes a 'quaere' upon
the saying of Solon, that none can be said to be happy until he is dead:
"whether, then, he who has lived and died according to his heart's desire,
if he have left an ill repute behind him, and that his posterity be
miserable, can be said to be happy?" Whilst we have life and motion, we
convey ourselves by fancy and preoccupation, whither and to what we
please; but once out of being, we have no more any manner of communication
with that which is, and it had therefore been better said by Solon that
man is never happy, because never so, till he is no more.
"Quisquam
Vix radicitus e vita se tollit, et eicit;
Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse,
Nec removet satis a projecto corpore sese, et
Vindicat."
["Scarcely one man can, even in dying, wholly detach himself from
the idea of life; in his ignorance he must needs imagine that there
is in him something that survives him, and cannot sufficiently
separate or emancipate himself from his remains"
—Lucretius, iii. 890.]
Bertrand de Guesclin, dying at the siege of the Castle of Rancon, near
unto Puy, in Auvergne, the besieged were afterwards, upon surrender,
enjoined to lay down the keys of the place upon the corpse of the dead
general. Bartolommeo d'Alviano, the Venetian General, happening to die in
the service of the Republic in Brescia, and his corpse being to be carried
through the territory of Verona, an enemy's country, most of the army were
inclined to demand safe-conduct from the Veronese; but Theodoro Trivulzio
opposed the motion, rather choosing to make his way by force of arms, and
to run the hazard of a battle, saying it was by no means fit that he who
in his life was never afraid of his enemies should seem to apprehend them
when he was dead. In truth, in affairs of the same nature, by the Greek
laws, he who made suit to an enemy for a body to give it burial renounced
his victory, and had no more right to erect a trophy, and he to whom such
suit was made was reputed victor. By this means it was that Nicias lost
the advantage he had visibly obtained over the Corinthians, and that
Agesilaus, on the contrary, assured that which he had before very
doubtfully gained over the Boeotians.—[Plutarch, Life of Nicias, c.
ii.; Life of Agesilaus, c. vi.]
These things might appear strange, had it not been a general practice in
all ages not only to extend the concern of ourselves beyond this life,
but, moreover, to fancy that the favour of Heaven does not only very often
accompany us to the grave, but has also, even after life, a concern for
our ashes. Of which there are so many ancient examples (to say nothing of
those of our own observation), that it is not necessary I should longer
insist upon it. Edward I., King of England, having in the long wars
betwixt him and Robert, King of Scotland, had experience of how great
importance his own immediate presence was to the success of his affairs,
having ever been victorious in whatever he undertook in his own person,
when he came to die, bound his son in a solemn oath that, so soon as he
should be dead he should boil his body till the flesh parted from the
bones, and bury the flesh, reserving the bones to carry continually with
him in his army, so often as he should be obliged to go against the Scots,
as if destiny had inevitably attached victory, even to his remains. John
Zisca, the same who, to vindication of Wicliffe's heresies, troubled the
Bohemian state, left order that they should flay him after his death, and
of his skin make a drum to carry in the war against his enemies, fancying
it would contribute to the continuation of the successes he had always
obtained in the wars against them. In like manner certain of the Indians,
in their battles with the Spaniards, carried with them the bones of one of
their captains, in consideration of the victories they had formerly
obtained under his conduct. And other people of the same New World carry
about with them, in their wars, the relics of valiant men who have died in
battle, to incite their courage and advance their fortune. Of which
examples the first reserve nothing for the tomb but the reputation they
have acquired by their former achievements, but these attribute to them a
certain present and active power.
The proceeding of Captain Bayard is of a better composition, who finding
himself wounded to death with an harquebuss shot, and being importuned to
retire out of the fight, made answer that he would not begin at the last
gasp to turn his back to the enemy, and accordingly still fought on, till
feeling himself too faint and no longer able to sit on his horse, he
commanded his steward to set him down at the foot of a tree, but so that
he might die with his face towards the enemy, which he did.
I must yet add another example, equally remarkable for the present
consideration with any of the former. The Emperor Maximilian,
great-grandfather to the now King Philip,—[Philip II. of Spain.]—was
a prince endowed throughout with great and extraordinary qualities, and
amongst the rest with a singular beauty of person, but had withal a humour
very contrary to that of other princes, who for the despatch of their most
important affairs convert their close-stool into a chair of State, which
was, that he would never permit any of his bedchamber, how familiar
soever, to see him in that posture, and would steal aside to make water as
religiously as a virgin, shy to discover to his physician or any other
whomsoever those parts that we are accustomed to conceal. I myself, who
have so impudent a way of talking, am, nevertheless, naturally so modest
this way, that unless at the importunity of necessity or pleasure, I
scarcely ever communicate to the sight of any either those parts or
actions that custom orders us to conceal, wherein I suffer more constraint
than I conceive is very well becoming a man, especially of my profession.
But he nourished this modest humour to such a degree of superstition as to
give express orders in his last will that they should put him on drawers
so soon as he should be dead; to which, methinks, he would have done well
to have added that he should be blindfolded, too, that put them on. The
charge that Cyrus left with his children, that neither they, nor any
other, should either see or touch his body after the soul was departed
from it,—[Xenophon, Cyropedia, viii. 7.]—I attribute to some
superstitious devotion of his; for both his historian and himself, amongst
their great qualities, marked the whole course of their lives with a
singular respect and reverence to religion.
I was by no means pleased with a story, told me by a man of very great
quality of a relation of mine, and one who had given a very good account
of himself both in peace and war, that, coming to die in a very old age,
of excessive pain of the stone, he spent the last hours of his life in an
extraordinary solicitude about ordering the honour and ceremony of his
funeral, pressing all the men of condition who came to see him to engage
their word to attend him to his grave: importuning this very prince, who
came to visit him at his last gasp, with a most earnest supplication that
he would order his family to be there, and presenting before him several
reasons and examples to prove that it was a respect due to a man of his
condition; and seemed to die content, having obtained this promise, and
appointed the method and order of his funeral parade. I have seldom heard
of so persistent a vanity.
Another, though contrary curiosity (of which singularity, also, I do not
want domestic example), seems to be somewhat akin to this, that a man
shall cudgel his brains at the last moments of his life to contrive his
obsequies to so particular and unusual a parsimony as of one servant with
a lantern, I see this humour commended, and the appointment of Marcus.
Emilius Lepidus, who forbade his heirs to bestow upon his hearse even the
common ceremonies in use upon such occasions. Is it yet temperance and
frugality to avoid expense and pleasure of which the use and knowledge are
imperceptible to us? See, here, an easy and cheap reformation. If
instruction were at all necessary in this case, I should be of opinion
that in this, as in all other actions of life, each person should regulate
the matter according to his fortune; and the philosopher Lycon prudently
ordered his friends to dispose of his body where they should think most
fit, and as to his funeral, to order it neither too superfluous nor too
mean. For my part, I should wholly refer the ordering of this ceremony to
custom, and shall, when the time comes, accordingly leave it to their
discretion to whose lot it shall fall to do me that last office. "Totus
hic locus est contemnendus in nobis, non negligendus in nostris;"—["The
place of our sepulture is to be contemned by us, but not to be neglected
by our friends."—Cicero, Tusc. i. 45.]— and it was a holy
saying of a saint, "Curatio funeris, conditio sepultura: pompa exequiarum,
magis sunt vivorum solatia, quam subsidia mortuorum."—["The care of
death, the place of sepulture, the pomps of obsequies, are rather
consolations to the living than succours to the dead." August. De Civit.
Dei, i. 12.]—Which made Socrates answer Crito, who, at death, asked
him how he would be buried: "How you will," said he. "If I were to concern
myself beyond the present about this affair, I should be most tempted, as
the greatest satisfaction of this kind, to imitate those who in their
lifetime entertain themselves with the ceremony and honours of their own
obsequies beforehand, and are pleased with beholding their own dead
countenance in marble. Happy are they who can gratify their senses by
insensibility, and live by their death!"
I am ready to conceive an implacable hatred against all popular
domination, though I think it the most natural and equitable of all, so
oft as I call to mind the inhuman injustice of the people of Athens, who,
without remission, or once vouchsafing to hear what they had to say for
themselves, put to death their brave captains newly returned triumphant
from a naval victory they had obtained over the Lacedaemonians near the
Arginusian Isles, the most bloody and obstinate engagement that ever the
Greeks fought at sea; because (after the victory) they followed up the
blow and pursued the advantages presented to them by the rule of war,
rather than stay to gather up and bury their dead. And the execution is
yet rendered more odious by the behaviour of Diomedon, who, being one of
the condemned, and a man of most eminent virtue, political and military,
after having heard the sentence, advancing to speak, no audience till then
having been allowed, instead of laying before them his own cause, or the
impiety of so cruel a sentence, only expressed a solicitude for his
judges' preservation, beseeching the gods to convert this sentence to
their good, and praying that, for neglecting to fulfil the vows which he
and his companions had made (with which he also acquainted them) in
acknowledgment of so glorious a success, they might not draw down the
indignation of the gods upon them; and so without more words went
courageously to his death.
Fortune, a few years after, punished them in the same kind; for Chabrias,
captain-general of their naval forces, having got the better of Pollis,
Admiral of Sparta, at the Isle of Naxos, totally lost the fruits of his
victory, one of very great importance to their affairs, in order not to
incur the danger of this example, and so that he should not lose a few
bodies of his dead friends that were floating in the sea, gave opportunity
to a world of living enemies to sail away in safety, who afterwards made
them pay dear for this unseasonable superstition:—
"Quaeris, quo jaceas, post obitum, loco?
Quo non nata jacent."
["Dost ask where thou shalt lie after death?
Where things not born lie, that never being had."]
Seneca, Tyoa. Choro ii. 30.
This other restores the sense of repose to a body without a soul:
"Neque sepulcrum, quo recipiatur, habeat: portum corporis, ubi,
remissa human, vita, corpus requiescat a malis."
["Nor let him have a sepulchre wherein he may be received, a haven
for his body, where, life being gone, that body may rest from its
woes."—Ennius, ap. Cicero, Tusc. i. 44.]
As nature demonstrates to us that several dead things retain yet an occult
relation to life; wine changes its flavour and complexion in cellars,
according to the changes and seasons of the vine from whence it came; and
the flesh of—venison alters its condition in the powdering-tub, and
its taste according to the laws of the living flesh of its kind, as it is
said.
CHAPTER IV——THAT THE SOUL EXPENDS ITS PASSIONS UPON FALSE
OBJECTS, WHERE THE TRUE ARE WANTING
A gentleman of my country, marvellously tormented with the gout, being
importuned by his physicians totally to abstain from all manner of salt
meats, was wont pleasantly to reply, that in the extremity of his fits he
must needs have something to quarrel with, and that railing at and
cursing, one while the Bologna sausages, and another the dried tongues and
the hams, was some mitigation to his pain. But, in good earnest, as the
arm when it is advanced to strike, if it miss the blow, and goes by the
wind, it pains us; and as also, that, to make a pleasant prospect, the
sight should not be lost and dilated in vague air, but have some bound and
object to limit and circumscribe it at a reasonable distance.
"Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densa
Occurrant sylvae, spatio diffusus inani."
["As the wind loses its force diffused in void space, unless it in
its strength encounters the thick wood."—Lucan, iii. 362.]
So it seems that the soul, being transported and discomposed, turns its
violence upon itself, if not supplied with something to oppose it, and
therefore always requires an object at which to aim, and whereon to act.
Plutarch says of those who are delighted with little dogs and monkeys,
that the amorous part that is in us, for want of a legitimate object,
rather than lie idle, does after that manner forge and create one false
and frivolous. And we see that the soul, in its passions, inclines rather
to deceive itself, by creating a false and fantastical a subject, even
contrary to its own belief, than not to have something to work upon. After
this manner brute beasts direct their fury to fall upon the stone or
weapon that has hurt them, and with their teeth a even execute revenge
upon themselves for the injury they have received from another:
"Pannonis haud aliter, post ictum saevior ursa,
Cui jaculum parva Lybis amentavit habena,
Se rotat in vulnus, telumque irata receptum
Impetit, et secum fugientem circuit hastam."
["So the she-bear, fiercer after the blow from the Lybian's thong-
hurled dart, turns round upon the wound, and attacking the received
spear, twists it, as she flies."—Lucan, vi. 220.]
What causes of the misadventures that befall us do we not invent? what is
it that we do not lay the fault to, right or wrong, that we may have
something to quarrel with? It is not those beautiful tresses you tear, nor
is it the white bosom that in your anger you so unmercifully beat, that
with an unlucky bullet have slain your beloved brother; quarrel with
something else. Livy, speaking of the Roman army in Spain, says that for
the loss of the two brothers, their great captains:
"Flere omnes repente, et offensare capita."
["All at once wept and tore their hair."-Livy, xxv. 37.]
'Tis a common practice. And the philosopher Bion said pleasantly of the
king, who by handsful pulled his hair off his head for sorrow, "Does this
man think that baldness is a remedy for grief?"—[Cicero, Tusc.
Quest., iii. 26.]—Who has not seen peevish gamesters chew and
swallow the cards, and swallow the dice, in revenge for the loss of their
money? Xerxes whipped the sea, and wrote a challenge to Mount Athos; Cyrus
employed a whole army several days at work, to revenge himself of the
river Gyndas, for the fright it had put him into in passing over it; and
Caligula demolished a very beautiful palace for the pleasure his mother
had once enjoyed there.
—[Pleasure—unless 'plaisir' were originally 'deplaisir'—must be
understood here ironically, for the house was one in which she had
been imprisoned.—Seneca, De Ira. iii. 22]—
I remember there was a story current, when I was a boy, that one of our
neighbouring kings—[Probably Alfonso XI. of Castile]—having
received a blow from the hand of God, swore he would be revenged, and in
order to it, made proclamation that for ten years to come no one should
pray to Him, or so much as mention Him throughout his dominions, or, so
far as his authority went, believe in Him; by which they meant to paint
not so much the folly as the vainglory of the nation of which this tale
was told. They are vices that always go together, but in truth such
actions as these have in them still more of presumption than want of wit.
Augustus Caesar, having been tossed with a tempest at sea, fell to defying
Neptune, and in the pomp of the Circensian games, to be revenged, deposed
his statue from the place it had amongst the other deities. Wherein he was
still less excusable than the former, and less than he was afterwards
when, having lost a battle under Quintilius Varus in Germany, in rage and
despair he went running his head against the wall, crying out, "O Varus!
give me back my legions!" for these exceed all folly, forasmuch as impiety
is joined therewith, invading God Himself, or at least Fortune, as if she
had ears that were subject to our batteries; like the Thracians, who when
it thunders or lightens, fall to shooting against heaven with Titanian
vengeance, as if by flights of arrows they intended to bring God to
reason. Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us—
"Point ne se faut couroucer aux affaires,
Il ne leur chault de toutes nos choleres."
["We must not trouble the gods with our affairs; they take no heed
of our angers and disputes."—Plutarch.]
But we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds.
CHAPTER V——WHETHER THE GOVERNOR OF A PLACE BESIEGED OUGHT
HIMSELF TO GO OUT TO PARLEY
Quintus Marcius, the Roman legate in the war against Perseus, King of
Macedon, to gain time wherein to reinforce his army, set on foot some
overtures of accommodation, with which the king being lulled asleep,
concluded a truce for some days, by this means giving his enemy
opportunity and leisure to recruit his forces, which was afterwards the
occasion of the king's final ruin. Yet the elder senators, mindful of
their forefathers' manners, condemned this proceeding as degenerating from
their ancient practice, which, they said, was to fight by valour, and not
by artifice, surprises, and night-encounters; neither by pretended flight
nor unexpected rallies to overcome their enemies; never making war till
having first proclaimed it, and very often assigned both the hour and
place of battle. Out of this generous principle it was that they delivered
up to Pyrrhus his treacherous physician, and to the Etrurians their
disloyal schoolmaster. This was, indeed, a procedure truly Roman, and
nothing allied to the Grecian subtlety, nor to the Punic cunning, where it
was reputed a victory of less glory to overcome by force than by fraud.
Deceit may serve for a need, but he only confesses himself overcome who
knows he is neither subdued by policy nor misadventure, but by dint of
valour, man to man, in a fair and just war. It very well appears, by the
discourse of these good old senators, that this fine sentence was not yet
received amongst them.
"Dolus, an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?"
["What matters whether by valour or by strategem we overcome the
enemy?"—Aeneid, ii. 390]
The Achaians, says Polybius, abhorred all manner of double-dealing in war,
not reputing it a victory unless where the courage of the enemy was fairly
subdued:
"Eam vir sanctus et sapiens sciet veram esse victoriam, quae, salva fide
et integra dignitate, parabitur."—["An honest and prudent man will
acknowledge that only to be a true victory which shall be obtained saving
his own good faith and dignity."—Florus, i. 12.]—Says another:
"Vosne velit, an me, regnare hera, quidve ferat,
fors virtute experiamur."
["Whether you or I shall rule, or what shall happen, let us
determine by valour."—Cicero, De Offic., i. 12]
In the kingdom of Ternate, amongst those nations which we so broadly call
barbarians, they have a custom never to commence war, till it be first
proclaimed; adding withal an ample declaration of what means they have to
do it with, with what and how many men, what ammunitions, and what, both
offensive and defensive, arms; but also, that being done, if their enemies
do not yield and come to an agreement, they conceive it lawful to employ
without reproach in their wars any means which may help them to conquer.
The ancient Florentines were so far from seeking to obtain any advantage
over their enemies by surprise, that they always gave them a month's
warning before they drew their army into the field, by the continual
tolling of a bell they called Martinella.—[After St. Martin.]
For what concerns ourselves, who are not so scrupulous in this affair, and
who attribute the honour of the war to him who has the profit of it, and
who after Lysander say, "Where the lion's skin is too short, we must eke
it out with a bit from that of a fox"; the most usual occasions of
surprise are derived from this practice, and we hold that there are no
moments wherein a chief ought to be more circumspect, and to have his eye
so much at watch, as those of parleys and treaties of accommodation; and
it is, therefore, become a general rule amongst the martial men of these
latter times, that a governor of a place never ought, in a time of siege,
to go out to parley. It was for this that in our fathers' days the
Seigneurs de Montmord and de l'Assigni, defending Mousson against the
Count of Nassau, were so highly censured. But yet, as to this, it would be
excusable in that governor who, going out, should, notwithstanding, do it
in such manner that the safety and advantage should be on his side; as
Count Guido di Rangone did at Reggio (if we are to believe Du Bellay, for
Guicciardini says it was he himself) when the Seigneur de l'Escut
approached to parley, who stepped so little away from his fort, that a
disorder happening in the interim of parley, not only Monsieur de l'Escut
and his party who were advanced with him, found themselves by much the
weaker, insomuch that Alessandro Trivulcio was there slain, but he himself
follow the Count, and, relying upon his honour, to secure himself from the
danger of the shot within the walls of the town.
Eumenes, being shut up in the city of Nora by Antigonus, and by him
importuned to come out to speak with him, as he sent him word it was fit
he should to a greater man than himself, and one who had now an advantage
over him, returned this noble answer. "Tell him," said he, "that I shall
never think any man greater than myself whilst I have my sword in my
hand," and would not consent to come out to him till first, according to
his own demand, Antigonus had delivered him his own nephew Ptolomeus in
hostage.
And yet some have done very well in going out in person to parley, on the
word of the assailant: witness Henry de Vaux, a cavalier of Champagne, who
being besieged by the English in the Castle of Commercy, and Bartholomew
de Brunes, who commanded at the Leaguer, having so sapped the greatest
part of the castle without, that nothing remained but setting fire to the
props to bury the besieged under the ruins, he requested the said Henry to
come out to speak with him for his own good, which he did with three more
in company; and, his ruin being made apparent to him, he conceived himself
singularly obliged to his enemy, to whose discretion he and his garrison
surrendered themselves; and fire being presently applied to the mine, the
props no sooner began to fail, but the castle was immediately blown up
from its foundations, no one stone being left upon another.
I could, and do, with great facility, rely upon the faith of another; but
I should very unwillingly do it in such a case, as it should thereby be
judged that it was rather an effect of my despair and want of courage than
voluntarily and out of confidence and security in the faith of him with
whom I had to do.
CHAPTER VI——THAT THE HOUR OF PARLEY DANGEROUS
I saw, notwithstanding, lately at Mussidan, a place not far from my house,
that those who were driven out thence by our army, and others of their
party, highly complained of treachery, for that during a treaty of
accommodation, and in the very interim that their deputies were treating,
they were surprised and cut to pieces: a thing that, peradventure, in
another age, might have had some colour of foul play; but, as I have just
said, the practice of arms in these days is quite another thing, and there
is now no confidence in an enemy excusable till the treaty is finally
sealed; and even then the conqueror has enough to do to keep his word: so
hazardous a thing it is to entrust the observation of the faith a man has
engaged to a town that surrenders upon easy and favourable conditions, to
the licence of a victorious army, and to give the soldier free entrance
into it in the heat of blood.
Lucius AEmilius Regillus, the Roman praetor, having lost his time in
attempting to take the city of Phocaea by force, by reason of the singular
valour wherewith the inhabitants defended themselves, conditioned, at
last, to receive them as friends to the people of Rome, and to enter the
town, as into a confederate city, without any manner of hostility, of
which he gave them all assurance; but having, for the greater pomp,
brought his whole army in with him, it was no more in his power, with all
the endeavour he could use, to restrain his people: so that, avarice and
revenge trampling under foot both his authority and all military
discipline, he there saw a considerable part of the city sacked and ruined
before his face.
Cleomenes was wont to say, "that what mischief soever a man could do his
enemy in time of war was above justice, and nothing accountable to it in
the sight of gods and men." And so, having concluded a truce with those of
Argos for seven days, the third night after he fell upon them when they
were all buried in sleep, and put them to the sword, alleging that there
had no nights been mentioned in the truce; but the gods punished this
subtle perfidy.
In a time of parley also; and while the citizens were relying upon their
safety warrant, the city of Casilinum was taken by surprise, and that even
in the age of the justest captains and the most perfect Roman military
discipline; for it is not said that it is not lawful for us, in time and
place, to make advantage of our enemies' want of understanding, as well as
their want of courage.
And, doubtless, war has naturally many privileges that appear reasonable
even to the prejudice of reason. And therefore here the rule fails,
"Neminem id agere ut ex alte rius praedetur inscitia."—["No one should
preys upon another's folly."—Cicero, De Offic., iii. 17.]—But
I am astonished at the great liberty allowed by Xenophon in such cases,
and that both by precept and by the example of several exploits of his
complete emperor; an author of very great authority, I confess, in those
affairs, as being in his own person both a great captain and a philosopher
of the first form of Socrates' disciples; and yet I cannot consent to such
a measure of licence as he dispenses in all things and places.
Monsieur d'Aubigny, besieging Capua, and after having directed a furious
battery against it, Signor Fabricio Colonna, governor of the town, having
from a bastion begun to parley, and his soldiers in the meantime being a
little more remiss in their guard, our people entered the place at
unawares, and put them all to the sword. And of later memory, at Yvoy,
Signor Juliano Romero having played that part of a novice to go out to
parley with the Constable, at his return found his place taken. But, that
we might not scape scot-free, the Marquess of Pescara having laid siege to
Genoa, where Duke Ottaviano Fregosa commanded under our protection, and
the articles betwixt them being so far advanced that it was looked upon as
a done thing, and upon the point to be concluded, the Spaniards in the
meantime having slipped in, made use of this treachery as an absolute
victory. And since, at Ligny, in Barrois, where the Count de Brienne
commanded, the emperor having in his own person beleaguered that place,
and Bertheville, the said Count's lieutenant, going out to parley, whilst
he was capitulating the town was taken.
"Fu il vincer sempremai laudabil cosa,
Vincasi o per fortuna, o per ingegno,"
["Victory is ever worthy of praise, whether obtained by valour or
wisdom."—Ariosto, xv. I.]
But the philosopher Chrysippus was of another opinion, wherein I also
concur; for he was used to say that those who run a race ought to employ
all the force they have in what they are about, and to run as fast as they
can; but that it is by no means fair in them to lay any hand upon their
adversary to stop him, nor to set a leg before him to throw him down. And
yet more generous was the answer of that great Alexander to Polypercon who
was persuading him to take the advantage of the night's obscurity to fall
upon Darius. "By no means," said be; "it is not for such a man as I am to
steal a victory, 'Malo me fortunae poeniteat, quam victoria pudeat.'"—["I
had rather complain of ill-fortune than be ashamed of victory." Quint.
Curt, iv. 13]—
"Atque idem fugientem baud est dignatus Oroden
Sternere, nec jacta caecum dare cuspide vulnus
Obvius, adversoque occurrit, seque viro vir
Contulit, haud furto melior, sed fortibus armis."
["He deigned not to throw down Orodes as he fled, or with the darted
spear to give him a wound unseen; but overtaking him, he confronted
him face to face, and encountered man to man: superior, not in
stratagem, but in valiant arms."—AEneid, x. 732.]
CHAPTER VII——THAT THE INTENTION IS JUDGE OF OUR ACTIONS
'Tis a saying, "That death discharges us of all our obligations." I know
some who have taken it in another sense. Henry VII., King of England,
articled with Don Philip, son to Maximilian the emperor, or (to place him
more honourably) father to the Emperor Charles V., that the said Philip
should deliver up the Duke of Suffolk of the White Rose, his enemy, who
was fled into the Low Countries, into his hands; which Philip accordingly
did, but upon condition, nevertheless, that Henry should attempt nothing
against the life of the said Duke; but coming to die, the king in his last
will commanded his son to put him to death immediately after his decease.
And lately, in the tragedy that the Duke of Alva presented to us in the
persons of the Counts Horn and Egmont at Brussels, —[Decapitated 4th
June 1568]—there were very remarkable passages, and one amongst the
rest, that Count Egmont (upon the security of whose word and faith Count
Horn had come and surrendered himself to the Duke of Alva) earnestly
entreated that he might first mount the scaffold, to the end that death
might disengage him from the obligation he had passed to the other. In
which case, methinks, death did not acquit the former of his promise, and
that the second was discharged from it without dying. We cannot be bound
beyond what we are able to perform, by reason that effect and performance
are not at all in our power, and that, indeed, we are masters of nothing
but the will, in which, by necessity, all the rules and whole duty of
mankind are founded and established: therefore Count Egmont, conceiving
his soul and will indebted to his promise, although he had not the power
to make it good, had doubtless been absolved of his duty, even though he
had outlived the other; but the King of England wilfully and premeditately
breaking his faith, was no more to be excused for deferring the execution
of his infidelity till after his death than the mason in Herodotus, who
having inviolably, during the time of his life, kept the secret of the
treasure of the King of Egypt, his master, at his death discovered it to
his children.—[Herod., ii. 121.]
I have taken notice of several in my time, who, convicted by their
consciences of unjustly detaining the goods of another, have endeavoured
to make amends by their will, and after their decease; but they had as
good do nothing, as either in taking so much time in so pressing an
affair, or in going about to remedy a wrong with so little dissatisfaction
or injury to themselves. They owe, over and above, something of their own;
and by how much their payment is more strict and incommodious to
themselves, by so much is their restitution more just meritorious.
Penitency requires penalty; but they yet do worse than these, who reserve
the animosity against their neighbour to the last gasp, having concealed
it during their life; wherein they manifest little regard of their own
honour, irritating the party offended in their memory; and less to their
the power, even out of to make their malice die with them, but extending
the life of their hatred even beyond their own. Unjust judges, who defer
judgment to a time wherein they can have no knowledge of the cause! For my
part, I shall take care, if I can, that my death discover nothing that my
life has not first and openly declared.
CHAPTER VIII——OF IDLENESS
As we see some grounds that have long lain idle and untilled, when grown
rich and fertile by rest, to abound with and spend their virtue in the
product of innumerable sorts of weeds and wild herbs that are
unprofitable, and that to make them perform their true office, we are to
cultivate and prepare them for such seeds as are proper for our service;
and as we see women that, without knowledge of man, do sometimes of
themselves bring forth inanimate and formless lumps of flesh, but that to
cause a natural and perfect generation they are to be husbanded with
another kind of seed: even so it is with minds, which if not applied to
some certain study that may fix and restrain them, run into a thousand
extravagances, eternally roving here and there in the vague expanse of the
imagination—
"Sicut aqua tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis,
Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine lunae,
Omnia pervolitat late loca; jamque sub auras
Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti."
["As when in brazen vats of water the trembling beams of light,
reflected from the sun, or from the image of the radiant moon,
swiftly float over every place around, and now are darted up on
high, and strike the ceilings of the upmost roof."—
AEneid, viii. 22.]
—in which wild agitation there is no folly, nor idle fancy they do
not light upon:—
"Velut aegri somnia, vanae
Finguntur species."
["As a sick man's dreams, creating vain phantasms."—
Hor., De Arte Poetica, 7.]
The soul that has no established aim loses itself, for, as it is said—
"Quisquis ubique habitat, Maxime, nusquam habitat."
["He who lives everywhere, lives nowhere."—Martial, vii. 73.]
When I lately retired to my own house, with a resolution, as much as
possibly I could, to avoid all manner of concern in affairs, and to spend
in privacy and repose the little remainder of time I have to live, I
fancied I could not more oblige my mind than to suffer it at full leisure
to entertain and divert itself, which I now hoped it might henceforth do,
as being by time become more settled and mature; but I find—
"Variam semper dant otia mentem,"
["Leisure ever creates varied thought."—Lucan, iv. 704]
that, quite contrary, it is like a horse that has broke from his rider,
who voluntarily runs into a much more violent career than any horseman
would put him to, and creates me so many chimaeras and fantastic monsters,
one upon another, without order or design, that, the better at leisure to
contemplate their strangeness and absurdity, I have begun to commit them
to writing, hoping in time to make it ashamed of itself.
CHAPTER IX——OF LIARS
There is not a man living whom it would so little become to speak from
memory as myself, for I have scarcely any at all, and do not think that
the world has another so marvellously treacherous as mine. My other
faculties are all sufficiently ordinary and mean; but in this I think
myself very rare and singular, and deserving to be thought famous. Besides
the natural inconvenience I suffer by it (for, certes, the necessary use
of memory considered, Plato had reason when he called it a great and
powerful goddess), in my country, when they would say a man has no sense,
they say, such an one has no memory; and when I complain of the defect of
mine, they do not believe me, and reprove me, as though I accused myself
for a fool: not discerning the difference betwixt memory and
understanding, which is to make matters still worse for me. But they do me
wrong; for experience, rather, daily shows us, on the contrary, that a
strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment. They do, me,
moreover (who am so perfect in nothing as in friendship), a great wrong in
this, that they make the same words which accuse my infirmity, represent
me for an ungrateful person; they bring my affections into question upon
the account of my memory, and from a natural imperfection, make out a
defect of conscience. "He has forgot," says one, "this request, or that
promise; he no more remembers his friends; he has forgot to say or do, or
conceal such and such a thing, for my sake." And, truly, I am apt enough
to forget many things, but to neglect anything my friend has given me in
charge, I never do it. And it should be enough, methinks, that I feel the
misery and inconvenience of it, without branding me with malice, a vice so
contrary to my humour.
However, I derive these comforts from my infirmity: first, that it is an
evil from which principally I have found reason to correct a worse, that
would easily enough have grown upon me, namely, ambition; the defect being
intolerable in those who take upon them public affairs. That, like
examples in the progress of nature demonstrate to us, she has fortified me
in my other faculties proportionably as she has left me unfurnished in
this; I should otherwise have been apt implicitly to have reposed my mind
and judgment upon the bare report of other men, without ever setting them
to work upon their own force, had the inventions and opinions of others
been ever been present with me by the benefit of memory. That by this
means I am not so talkative, for the magazine of the memory is ever better
furnished with matter than that of the invention. Had mine been faithful
to me, I had ere this deafened all my friends with my babble, the subjects
themselves arousing and stirring up the little faculty I have of handling
and employing them, heating and distending my discourse, which were a
pity: as I have observed in several of my intimate friends, who, as their
memories supply them with an entire and full view of things, begin their
narrative so far back, and crowd it with so many impertinent
circumstances, that though the story be good in itself, they make a shift
to spoil it; and if otherwise, you are either to curse the strength of
their memory or the weakness of their judgment: and it is a hard thing to
close up a discourse, and to cut it short, when you have once started;
there is nothing wherein the force of a horse is so much seen as in a
round and sudden stop. I see even those who are pertinent enough, who
would, but cannot stop short in their career; for whilst they are seeking
out a handsome period to conclude with, they go on at random, straggling
about upon impertinent trivialities, as men staggering upon weak legs.
But, above all, old men who retain the memory of things past, and forget
how often they have told them, are dangerous company; and I have known
stories from the mouth of a man of very great quality, otherwise very
pleasant in themselves, become very wearisome by being repeated a hundred
times over and over again to the same people.
Secondly, that, by this means, I the less remember the injuries I have
received; insomuch that, as the ancient said,—[Cicero, Pro Ligar. c.
12.]—I should have a register of injuries, or a prompter, as Darius,
who, that he might not forget the offence he had received from those of
Athens, so oft as he sat down to dinner, ordered one of his pages three
times to repeat in his ear, "Sir, remember the Athenians";—[Herod.,
v. 105.]—and then, again, the places which I revisit, and the books
I read over again, still smile upon me with a fresh novelty.
It is not without good reason said "that he who has not a good memory
should never take upon him the trade of lying." I know very well that the
grammarians—[Nigidius, Aulus Gellius, xi. ii; Nonius, v. 80.]—
distinguish betwixt an untruth and a lie, and say that to tell an untruth
is to tell a thing that is false, but that we ourselves believe to be
true; and that the definition of the word to lie in Latin, from which our
French is taken, is to tell a thing which we know in our conscience to be
untrue; and it is of this last sort of liars only that I now speak. Now,
these do either wholly contrive and invent the untruths they utter, or so
alter and disguise a true story that it ends in a lie. When they disguise
and often alter the same story, according to their own fancy, 'tis very
hard for them, at one time or another, to escape being trapped, by reason
that the real truth of the thing, having first taken possession of the
memory, and being there lodged impressed by the medium of knowledge and
science, it will be difficult that it should not represent itself to the
imagination, and shoulder out falsehood, which cannot there have so sure
and settled footing as the other; and the circumstances of the first true
knowledge evermore running in their minds, will be apt to make them forget
those that are illegitimate, and only, forged by their own fancy. In what
they, wholly invent, forasmuch as there is no contrary impression to
jostle their invention there seems to be less danger of tripping; and yet
even this by reason it is a vain body and without any hold, is very apt to
escape the memory, if it be not well assured. Of which I had very pleasant
experience, at the expense of such as profess only to form and accommodate
their speech to the affair they have in hand, or to humour of the great
folks to whom they are speaking; for the circumstances to which these men
stick not to enslave their faith and conscience being subject to several
changes, their language must vary accordingly: whence it happens that of
the same thing they tell one man that it is this, and another that it is
that, giving it several colours; which men, if they once come to confer
notes, and find out the cheat, what becomes of this fine art? To which may
be added, that they must of necessity very often ridiculously trap
themselves; for what memory can be sufficient to retain so many different
shapes as they have forged upon one and the same subject? I have known
many in my time very ambitious of the repute of this fine wit; but they do
not see that if they have the reputation of it, the effect can no longer
be.
In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have other
tie upon one another, but by our word. If we did but discover the horror
and gravity of it, we should pursue it with fire and sword, and more
justly than other crimes. I see that parents commonly, and with
indiscretion enough, correct their children for little innocent faults,
and torment them for wanton tricks, that have neither impression nor
consequence; whereas, in my opinion, lying only, and, which is of
something a lower form, obstinacy, are the faults which are to be severely
whipped out of them, both in their infancy and in their progress,
otherwise they grow up and increase with them; and after a tongue has once
got the knack of lying, 'tis not to be imagined how impossible it is to
reclaim it whence it comes to pass that we see some, who are otherwise
very honest men, so subject and enslaved to this vice. I have an honest
lad to my tailor, whom I never knew guilty of one truth, no, not when it
had been to his advantage. If falsehood had, like truth, but one face
only, we should be upon better terms; for we should then take for certain
the contrary to what the liar says: but the reverse of truth has a hundred
thousand forms, and a field indefinite, without bound or limit. The
Pythagoreans make good to be certain and finite, and evil, infinite and
uncertain. There are a thousand ways to miss the white, there is only one
to hit it. For my own part, I have this vice in so great horror, that I am
not sure I could prevail with my conscience to secure myself from the most
manifest and extreme danger by an impudent and solemn lie. An ancient
father says "that a dog we know is better company than a man whose
language we do not understand."
"Ut externus alieno pene non sit hominis vice."
["As a foreigner cannot be said to supply us the place of a man."
—Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. I]
And how much less sociable is false speaking than silence?
King Francis I. vaunted that he had by this means nonplussed Francesco
Taverna, ambassador of Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, a man very famous
for his science in talking in those days. This gentleman had been sent to
excuse his master to his Majesty about a thing of very great consequence,
which was this: the King, still to maintain some intelligence with Italy,
out of which he had lately been driven, and particularly with the duchy of
Milan, had thought it convenient to have a gentleman on his behalf to be
with that Duke: an ambassador in effect, but in outward appearance a
private person who pretended to reside there upon his own particular
affairs; for the Duke, much more depending upon the Emperor, especially at
a time when he was in a treaty of marriage with his niece, daughter to the
King of Denmark, who is now dowager of Lorraine, could not manifest any
practice and conference with us without his great interest. For this
commission one Merveille, a Milanese gentleman, and an equerry to the
King, being thought very fit, was accordingly despatched thither with
private credentials, and instructions as ambassador, and with other
letters of recommendation to the Duke about his own private concerns, the
better to mask and colour the business; and was so long in that court,
that the Emperor at last had some inkling of his real employment there;
which was the occasion of what followed after, as we suppose; which was,
that under pretence of some murder, his trial was in two days despatched,
and his head in the night struck off in prison. Messire Francesco being
come, and prepared with a long counterfeit history of the affair (for the
King had applied himself to all the princes of Christendom, as well as to
the Duke himself, to demand satisfaction), had his audience at the morning
council; where, after he had for the support of his cause laid open
several plausible justifications of the fact, that his master had never
looked upon this Merveille for other than a private gentleman and his own
subject, who was there only in order to his own business, neither had he
ever lived under any other aspect; absolutely disowning that he had ever
heard he was one of the King's household or that his Majesty so much as
knew him, so far was he from taking him for an ambassador: the King, in
his turn, pressing him with several objections and demands, and
challenging him on all sides, tripped him up at last by asking, why, then,
the execution was performed by night, and as it were by stealth? At which
the poor confounded ambassador, the more handsomely to disengage himself,
made answer, that the Duke would have been very loth, out of respect to
his Majesty, that such an execution should have been performed by day. Any
one may guess if he was not well rated when he came home, for having so
grossly tripped in the presence of a prince of so delicate a nostril as
King Francis.
Pope Julius II. having sent an ambassador to the King of England to
animate him against King Francis, the ambassador having had his audience,
and the King, before he would give an answer, insisting upon the
difficulties he should find in setting on foot so great a preparation as
would be necessary to attack so potent a King, and urging some reasons to
that effect, the ambassador very unseasonably replied that he had also
himself considered the same difficulties, and had represented them to the
Pope. From which saying of his, so directly opposite to the thing
propounded and the business he came about, which was immediately to incite
him to war, the King of England first derived the argument (which he
afterward found to be true), that this ambassador, in his own mind, was on
the side of the French; of which having advertised his master, his estate
at his return home was confiscated, and he himself very narrowly escaped
the losing of his head.—[Erasmi Op. (1703), iv. col. 684.]
CHAPTER X——OF QUICK OR SLOW SPEECH
"Onc ne furent a touts toutes graces donnees."
["All graces were never yet given to any one man."—A verse
in one of La Brebis' Sonnets.]
So we see in the gift of eloquence, wherein some have such a facility and
promptness, and that which we call a present wit so easy, that they are
ever ready upon all occasions, and never to be surprised; and others more
heavy and slow, never venture to utter anything but what they have long
premeditated, and taken great care and pains to fit and prepare.
Now, as we teach young ladies those sports and exercises which are most
proper to set out the grace and beauty of those parts wherein their
chiefest ornament and perfection lie, so it should be in these two
advantages of eloquence, to which the lawyers and preachers of our age
seem principally to pretend. If I were worthy to advise, the slow speaker,
methinks, should be more proper for the pulpit, and the other for the bar:
and that because the employment of the first does naturally allow him all
the leisure he can desire to prepare himself, and besides, his career is
performed in an even and unintermitted line, without stop or interruption;
whereas the pleader's business and interest compels him to enter the lists
upon all occasions, and the unexpected objections and replies of his
adverse party jostle him out of his course, and put him, upon the instant,
to pump for new and extempore answers and defences. Yet, at the interview
betwixt Pope Clement and King Francis at Marseilles, it happened, quite
contrary, that Monsieur Poyet, a man bred up all his life at the bar, and
in the highest repute for eloquence, having the charge of making the
harangue to the Pope committed to him, and having so long meditated on it
beforehand, as, so they said, to have brought it ready made along with him
from Paris; the very day it was to have been pronounced, the Pope, fearing
something might be said that might give offence to the other princes'
ambassadors who were there attending on him, sent to acquaint the King
with the argument which he conceived most suiting to the time and place,
but, by chance, quite another thing to that Monsieur de Poyet had taken so
much pains about: so that the fine speech he had prepared was of no use,
and he was upon the instant to contrive another; which finding himself
unable to do, Cardinal du Bellay was constrained to perform that office.
The pleader's part is, doubtless, much harder than that of the preacher;
and yet, in my opinion, we see more passable lawyers than preachers, at
all events in France. It should seem that the nature of wit is to have its
operation prompt and sudden, and that of judgment to have it more
deliberate and more slow. But he who remains totally silent, for want of
leisure to prepare himself to speak well, and he also whom leisure does
noways benefit to better speaking, are equally unhappy.
'Tis said of Severus Cassius that he spoke best extempore, that he stood
more obliged to fortune than to his own diligence; that it was an
advantage to him to be interrupted in speaking, and that his adversaries
were afraid to nettle him, lest his anger should redouble his eloquence. I
know, experimentally, the disposition of nature so impatient of tedious
and elaborate premeditation, that if it do not go frankly and gaily to
work, it can perform nothing to purpose. We say of some compositions that
they stink of oil and of the lamp, by reason of a certain rough harshness
that laborious handling imprints upon those where it has been employed.
But besides this, the solicitude of doing well, and a certain striving and
contending of a mind too far strained and overbent upon its undertaking,
breaks and hinders itself like water, that by force of its own pressing
violence and abundance, cannot find a ready issue through the neck of a
bottle or a narrow sluice. In this condition of nature, of which I am now
speaking, there is this also, that it would not be disordered and
stimulated with such passions as the fury of Cassius (for such a motion
would be too violent and rude); it would not be jostled, but solicited; it
would be roused and heated by unexpected, sudden, and accidental
occasions. If it be left to itself, it flags and languishes; agitation
only gives it grace and vigour. I am always worst in my own possession,
and when wholly at my own disposition: accident has more title to anything
that comes from me than I; occasion, company, and even the very rising and
falling of my own voice, extract more from my fancy than I can find, when
I sound and employ it by myself. By which means, the things I say are
better than those I write, if either were to be preferred, where neither
is worth anything. This, also, befalls me, that I do not find myself where
I seek myself, and I light upon things more by chance than by any
inquisition of my own judgment. I perhaps sometimes hit upon something
when I write, that seems quaint and sprightly to me, though it will appear
dull and heavy to another.—But let us leave these fine compliments;
every one talks thus of himself according to his talent. But when I come
to speak, I am already so lost that I know not what I was about to say,
and in such cases a stranger often finds it out before me. If I should
make erasure so often as this inconvenience befalls me, I should make
clean work; occasion will, at some other time, lay it as visible to me as
the light, and make me wonder what I should stick at.
CHAPTER XI——OF PROGNOSTICATIONS
For what concerns oracles, it is certain that a good while before the
coming of Jesus Christ they had begun to lose their credit; for we see
that Cicero troubled to find out the cause of their decay, and he has
these words:
"Cur isto modo jam oracula Delphis non eduntur,
non modo nostro aetate, sed jam diu; ut nihil
possit esse contemptius?"
["What is the reason that the oracles at Delphi are no longer
uttered: not merely in this age of ours, but for a long time past,
insomuch that nothing is more in contempt?"
—Cicero, De Divin., ii. 57.]
But as to the other prognostics, calculated from the anatomy of beasts at
sacrifices (to which purpose Plato does, in part, attribute the natural
constitution of the intestines of the beasts themselves), the scraping of
poultry, the flight of birds—
"Aves quasdam . . . rerum augurandarum
causa natas esse putamus."
["We think some sorts of birds are purposely created to serve
the purposes of augury."—Cicero, De Natura Deor., ii. 64.]
claps of thunder, the overflowing of rivers—
"Multa cernunt Aruspices, multa Augures provident,
multa oraculis declarantur, multa vaticinationibus,
multa somniis, multa portentis."
["The Aruspices discern many things, the Augurs foresee many things,
many things are announced by oracles, many by vaticinations, many by
dreams, many by portents."—Cicero, De Natura Deor., ii. 65.]
—and others of the like nature, upon which antiquity founded most of
their public and private enterprises, our religion has totally abolished
them. And although there yet remain amongst us some practices of
divination from the stars, from spirits, from the shapes and complexions
of men, from dreams and the like (a notable example of the wild curiosity
of our nature to grasp at and anticipate future things, as if we had not
enough to do to digest the present)—
"Cur hanc tibi, rector Olympi,
Sollicitis visum mortalibus addere curam,
Noscant venturas ut dira per omina clades?...
Sit subitum, quodcumque paras; sit coeca futuri
Mens hominum fati, liceat sperare timenti."
["Why, ruler of Olympus, hast thou to anxious mortals thought fit to
add this care, that they should know by, omens future slaughter?...
Let whatever thou art preparing be sudden. Let the mind of men be
blind to fate in store; let it be permitted to the timid to hope."
—Lucan, ii. 14]
"Ne utile quidem est scire quid futurum sit;
miserum est enim, nihil proficientem angi,"
["It is useless to know what shall come to pass; it is a miserable
thing to be tormented to no purpose."
—Cicero, De Natura Deor., iii. 6.]
yet are they of much less authority now than heretofore. Which makes so
much more remarkable the example of Francesco, Marquis of Saluzzo, who
being lieutenant to King Francis I. in his ultramontane army, infinitely
favoured and esteemed in our court, and obliged to the king's bounty for
the marquisate itself, which had been forfeited by his brother; and as to
the rest, having no manner of provocation given him to do it, and even his
own affection opposing any such disloyalty, suffered himself to be so
terrified, as it was confidently reported, with the fine prognostics that
were spread abroad everywhere in favour of the Emperor Charles V., and to
our disadvantage (especially in Italy, where these foolish prophecies were
so far believed, that at Rome great sums of money were ventured out upon
return of greater, when the prognostics came to pass, so certain they made
themselves of our ruin), that, having often bewailed, to those of his
acquaintance who were most intimate with him, the mischiefs that he saw
would inevitably fall upon the Crown of France and the friends he had in
that court, he revolted and turned to the other side; to his own
misfortune, nevertheless, what constellation soever governed at that time.
But he carried himself in this affair like a man agitated by divers
passions; for having both towns and forces in his hands, the enemy's army
under Antonio de Leyva close by him, and we not at all suspecting his
design, it had been in his power to have done more than he did; for we
lost no men by this infidelity of his, nor any town, but Fossano only, and
that after a long siege and a brave defence.—(1536)
"Prudens futuri temporis exitum
Caliginosa nocte premit Deus,
Ridetque, si mortalis ultra
Fas trepidat."
["A wise God covers with thick night the path of the future, and
laughs at the man who alarms himself without reason."
—Hor., Od., iii. 29.]
"Ille potens sui
Laetusque deget, cui licet in diem
Dixisse vixi! cras vel atra
Nube polum pater occupato,
Vel sole puro."
["He lives happy and master of himself who can say as each day
passes on, 'I HAVE LIVED:' whether to-morrow our Father shall give
us a clouded sky or a clear day."—Hor., Od., iii. 29]
"Laetus in praesens animus; quod ultra est,
Oderit curare."
["A mind happy, cheerful in the present state, will take good care
not to think of what is beyond it."—Ibid., ii. 25]
And those who take this sentence in a contrary sense interpret it amiss:
"Ista sic reciprocantur, ut et si divinatio sit,
dii sint; et si dii lint, sit divinatio."
["These things are so far reciprocal that if there be divination,
there must be deities; and if deities, divination."—Cicero, De
Divin., i. 6.]
Much more wisely Pacuvius—
"Nam istis, qui linguam avium intelligunt,
Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt, quam ex suo,
Magis audiendum, quam auscultandum, censeo."
["As to those who understand the language of birds, and who rather
consult the livers of animals other than their own, I had rather
hear them than attend to them."
—Cicero, De Divin., i. 57, ex Pacuvio]
The so celebrated art of divination amongst the Tuscans took its beginning
thus: A labourer striking deep with his cutter into the earth, saw the
demigod Tages ascend, with an infantine aspect, but endued with a mature
and senile wisdom. Upon the rumour of which, all the people ran to see the
sight, by whom his words and science, containing the principles and means
to attain to this art, were recorded, and kept for many ages.—[Cicero,
De Devina, ii. 23]—A birth suitable to its progress; I, for my part,
should sooner regulate my affairs by the chance of a die than by such idle
and vain dreams. And, indeed, in all republics, a good share of the
government has ever been referred to chance. Plato, in the civil regimen
that he models according to his own fancy, leaves to it the decision of
several things of very great importance, and will, amongst other things,
that marriages should be appointed by lot; attributing so great importance
to this accidental choice as to ordain that the children begotten in such
wedlock be brought up in the country, and those begotten in any other be
thrust out as spurious and base; yet so, that if any of those exiles,
notwithstanding, should, peradventure, in growing up give any good hope of
himself, he might be recalled, as, also, that such as had been retained,
should be exiled, in case they gave little expectation of themselves in
their early growth.
I see some who are mightily given to study and comment upon their
almanacs, and produce them to us as an authority when anything has fallen
out pat; and, for that matter, it is hardly possible but that these
alleged authorities sometimes stumble upon a truth amongst an infinite
number of lies.
"Quis est enim, qui totum diem jaculans
non aliquando collineet?"
["For who shoots all day at butts that does not sometimes hit the
white?"—Cicero, De Divin., ii. 59.]
I think never the better of them for some such accidental hit. There would
be more certainty in it if there were a rule and a truth of always lying.
Besides, nobody records their flimflams and false prognostics, forasmuch
as they are infinite and common; but if they chop upon one truth, that
carries a mighty report, as being rare, incredible, and prodigious. So
Diogenes, surnamed the Atheist, answered him in Samothrace, who, showing
him in the temple the several offerings and stories in painting of those
who had escaped shipwreck, said to him, "Look, you who think the gods have
no care of human things, what do you say to so many persons preserved from
death by their especial favour?" "Why, I say," answered he, "that their
pictures are not here who were cast away, who are by much the greater
number."—[Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 37.]
Cicero observes that of all the philosophers who have acknowledged a
deity, Xenophanes the Colophonian only has endeavoured to eradicate all
manner of divination—[Cicero, De Divin., i. 3.]—; which makes
it the less a wonder if we have now and then seen some of our princes,
sometimes to their own cost, rely too much upon these vanities. I had
given anything with my own eyes to see those two great marvels, the book
of Joachim the Calabrian abbot, which foretold all the future Popes, their
names and qualities; and that of the Emperor Leo, which prophesied all the
emperors and patriarchs of Greece. This I have been an eyewitness of, that
in public confusions, men astonished at their fortune, have abandoned
their own reason, superstitiously to seek out in the stars the ancient
causes and menaces of the present mishaps, and in my time have been so
strangely successful in it, as to make me believe that this being an
amusement of sharp and volatile wits, those who have been versed in this
knack of unfolding and untying riddles, are capable, in any sort of
writing, to find out what they desire. But above all, that which gives
them the greatest room to play in, is the obscure, ambiguous, and
fantastic gibberish of the prophetic canting, where their authors deliver
nothing of clear sense, but shroud all in riddle, to the end that
posterity may interpret and apply it according to its own fancy.
Socrates demon might, perhaps, be no other but a certain impulsion of the
will, which obtruded itself upon him without the advice or consent of his
judgment; and in a soul so enlightened as his was, and so prepared by a
continual exercise of wisdom-and virtue, 'tis to be supposed those
inclinations of his, though sudden and undigested, were very important and
worthy to be followed. Every one finds in himself some image of such
agitations, of a prompt, vehement, and fortuitous opinion; and I may well
allow them some authority, who attribute so little to our prudence, and
who also myself have had some, weak in reason, but violent in persuasion
and dissuasion, which were most frequent with Socrates,—[Plato, in
his account of Theages the Pythagorean]—by which I have suffered
myself to be carried away so fortunately, and so much to my own advantage,
that they might have been judged to have had something in them of a divine
inspiration.
CHAPTER XII——OF CONSTANCY
The law of resolution and constancy does not imply that we ought not, as
much as in us lies, to decline and secure ourselves from the mischiefs and
inconveniences that threaten us; nor, consequently, that we shall not fear
lest they should surprise us: on the contrary, all decent and honest ways
and means of securing ourselves from harms, are not only permitted, but,
moreover, commendable, and the business of constancy chiefly is, bravely
to stand to, and stoutly to suffer those inconveniences which are not
possibly to be avoided. So that there is no supple motion of body, nor any
movement in the handling of arms, how irregular or ungraceful soever, that
we need condemn, if they serve to protect us from the blow that is made
against us.
Several very warlike nations have made use of a retreating and flying way
of fight as a thing of singular advantage, and, by so doing, have made
their backs more dangerous to their enemies than their faces. Of which
kind of fighting the Turks still retain something in their practice of
arms; and Socrates, in Plato, laughs at Laches, who had defined fortitude
to be a standing firm in the ranks against the enemy. "What!" says he,
"would it, then, be a reputed cowardice to overcome them by giving
ground?" urging, at the same time, the authority of Homer, who commends in
AEneas the science of flight. And whereas Laches, considering better of
it, admits the practice as to the Scythians, and, in general, all cavalry
whatever, he again attacks him with the example of the Lacedaemonian foot—a
nation of all other the most obstinate in maintaining their ground—who,
in the battle of Plataea, not being able to break into the Persian
phalanx, bethought themselves to disperse and retire, that by the enemy
supposing they fled, they might break and disunite that vast body of men
in the pursuit, and by that stratagem obtained the victory.
As for the Scythians, 'tis said of them, that when Darius went his
expedition to subdue them, he sent, by a herald, highly to reproach their
king, that he always retired before him and declined a battle; to which
Idanthyrses,—[Herod., iv. 127.]—for that was his name,
returned answer, that it was not for fear of him, or of any man living,
that he did so, but that it was the way of marching in practice with his
nation, who had neither tilled fields, cities, nor houses to defend, or to
fear the enemy should make any advantage of but that if he had such a
stomach to fight, let him but come to view their ancient places of
sepulture, and there he should have his fill.
Nevertheless, as to cannon-shot, when a body of men are drawn up in the
face of a train of artillery, as the occasion of war often requires, it is
unhandsome to quit their post to avoid the danger, forasmuch as by reason
of its violence and swiftness we account it inevitable; and many a one, by
ducking, stepping aside, and such other motions of fear, has been, at all
events, sufficiently laughed at by his companions. And yet, in the
expedition that the Emperor Charles V. made against us into Provence, the
Marquis de Guast going to reconnoitre the city of Arles, and advancing out
of the cover of a windmill, under favour of which he had made his
approach, was perceived by the Seigneurs de Bonneval and the Seneschal of
Agenois, who were walking upon the 'theatre aux ayenes'; who having shown
him to the Sieur de Villiers, commissary of the artillery, he pointed a
culverin so admirably well, and levelled it so exactly right against him,
that had not the Marquis, seeing fire given to it, slipped aside, it was
certainly concluded the shot had taken him full in the body. And, in like
manner, some years before, Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino, and father
to the queen-mother—[Catherine de' Medici, mother of Henry III.]—laying
siege to Mondolfo, a place in the territories of the Vicariat in Italy,
seeing the cannoneer give fire to a piece that pointed directly against
him, it was well for him that he ducked, for otherwise the shot, that only
razed the top of his head, had doubtless hit him full in the breast. To
say truth, I do not think that these evasions are performed upon the
account of judgment; for how can any man living judge of high or low aim
on so sudden an occasion? And it is much more easy to believe that fortune
favoured their apprehension, and that it might be as well at another time
to make them face the danger, as to seek to avoid it. For my own part, I
confess I cannot forbear starting when the rattle of a harquebuse thunders
in my ears on a sudden, and in a place where I am not to expect it, which
I have also observed in others, braver fellows than I.
Neither do the Stoics pretend that the soul of their philosopher need be
proof against the first visions and fantasies that surprise him; but, as
to a natural subjection, consent that he should tremble at the terrible
noise of thunder, or the sudden clatter of some falling ruin, and be
affrighted even to paleness and convulsion; and so in other passions,
provided his judgment remain sound and entire, and that the seat of his
reason suffer no concussion nor alteration, and that he yield no consent
to his fright and discomposure. To him who is not a philosopher, a fright
is the same thing in the first part of it, but quite another thing in the
second; for the impression of passions does not remain superficially in
him, but penetrates farther, even to the very seat of reason, infecting
and corrupting it, so that he judges according to his fear, and conforms
his behaviour to it. In this verse you may see the true state of the wise
Stoic learnedly and plainly expressed:—
"Mens immota manet; lachrymae volvuntur inanes."
["Though tears flow, the mind remains unmoved."
—Virgil, AEneid, iv. 449]
The Peripatetic sage does not exempt himself totally from perturbations of
mind, but he moderates them.
CHAPTER XIII——THE CEREMONY OF THE INTERVIEW OF PRINCES
There is no subject so frivolous that does not merit a place in this
rhapsody. According to our common rule of civility, it would be a notable
affront to an equal, and much more to a superior, to fail being at home
when he has given you notice he will come to visit you. Nay, Queen
Margaret of Navarre further adds, that it would be a rudeness in a
gentleman to go out, as we so often do, to meet any that is coming to see
him, let him be of what high condition soever; and that it is more
respectful and more civil to stay at home to receive him, if only upon the
account of missing him by the way, and that it is enough to receive him at
the door, and to wait upon him. For my part, who as much as I can
endeavour to reduce the ceremonies of my house, I very often forget both
the one and the other of these vain offices. If, peradventure, some one
may take offence at this, I can't help it; it is much better to offend him
once than myself every day, for it would be a perpetual slavery. To what
end do we avoid the servile attendance of courts, if we bring the same
trouble home to our own private houses? It is also a common rule in all
assemblies, that those of less quality are to be first upon the place, by
reason that it is more due to the better sort to make others wait and
expect them.
Nevertheless, at the interview betwixt Pope Clement and King Francis at
Marseilles,—[in 1533.]—the King, after he had taken order for
the necessary preparations for his reception and entertainment, withdrew
out of the town, and gave the Pope two or three days' respite for his
entry, and to repose and refresh himself, before he came to him. And in
like manner, at the assignation of the Pope and the Emperor,—[Charles
V. in 1532.] at Bologna, the Emperor gave the Pope opportunity to come
thither first, and came himself after; for which the reason given was
this, that at all the interviews of such princes, the greater ought to be
first at the appointed place, especially before the other in whose
territories the interview is appointed to be, intimating thereby a kind of
deference to the other, it appearing proper for the less to seek out and
to apply themselves to the greater, and not the greater to them.
Not every country only, but every city and every society has its
particular forms of civility. There was care enough to this taken in my
education, and I have lived in good company enough to know the formalities
of our own nation, and am able to give lessons in it. I love to follow
them, but not to be so servilely tied to their observation that my whole
life should be enslaved to ceremonies, of which there are some so
troublesome that, provided a man omits them out of discretion, and not for
want of breeding, it will be every whit as handsome. I have seen some
people rude, by being overcivil and troublesome in their courtesy.
Still, these excesses excepted, the knowledge of courtesy and good manners
is a very necessary study. It is, like grace and beauty, that which begets
liking and an inclination to love one another at the first sight, and in
the very beginning of acquaintance; and, consequently, that which first
opens the door and intromits us to instruct ourselves by the example of
others, and to give examples ourselves, if we have any worth taking notice
of and communicating.
CHAPTER XIV——THAT MEN ARE JUSTLY PUNISHED FOR BEING OBSTINATE
IN THE DEFENCE OF A FORT THAT IS NOT IN REASON TO BE DEFENDED
Valour has its bounds as well as other virtues, which, once transgressed,
the next step is into the territories of vice; so that by having too large
a proportion of this heroic virtue, unless a man be very perfect in its
limits, which upon the confines are very hard to discern, he may very
easily unawares run into temerity, obstinacy, and folly. From this
consideration it is that we have derived the custom, in times of war, to
punish, even with death, those who are obstinate to defend a place that by
the rules of war is not tenable; otherwise men would be so confident upon
the hope of impunity, that not a henroost but would resist and seek to
stop an army.
The Constable Monsieur de Montmorenci, having at the siege of Pavia been
ordered to pass the Ticino, and to take up his quarters in the Faubourg
St. Antonio, being hindered by a tower at the end of the bridge, which was
so obstinate as to endure a battery, hanged every man he found within it
for their labour. And again, accompanying the Dauphin in his expedition
beyond the Alps, and taking the Castle of Villano by assault, and all
within it being put to the sword by the fury of the soldiers, the governor
and his ensign only excepted, he caused them both to be trussed up for the
same reason; as also did the Captain Martin du Bellay, then governor of
Turin, with the governor of San Buono, in the same country, all his people
having been cut to pieces at the taking of the place.
But forasmuch as the strength or weakness of a fortress is always measured
by the estimate and counterpoise of the forces that attack it —for a
man might reasonably enough despise two culverins, that would be a madman
to abide a battery of thirty pieces of cannon—where also the
greatness of the prince who is master of the field, his reputation, and
the respect that is due unto him, are also put into the balance, there is
danger that the balance be pressed too much in that direction. And it may
happen that a man is possessed with so great an opinion of himself and his
power, that thinking it unreasonable any place should dare to shut its
gates against him, he puts all to the sword where he meets with any
opposition, whilst his fortune continues; as is plain in the fierce and
arrogant forms of summoning towns and denouncing war, savouring so much of
barbarian pride and insolence, in use amongst the Oriental princes, and
which their successors to this day do yet retain and practise. And in that
part of the world where the Portuguese subdued the Indians, they found
some states where it was a universal and inviolable law amongst them that
every enemy overcome by the king in person, or by his lieutenant, was out
of composition.
So above all both of ransom and mercy a man should take heed, if he can,
of falling into the hands of a judge who is an enemy and victorious.
CHAPTER XV——OF THE PUNISHMENT OF COWARDICE
I once heard of a prince, and a great captain, having a narration given
him as he sat at table of the proceeding against Monsieur de Vervins, who
was sentenced to death for having surrendered Boulogne to the English,
—[To Henry VIII. in 1544]—openly maintaining that a soldier
could not justly be put to death for want of courage. And, in truth, 'tis
reason that a man should make a great difference betwixt faults that
merely proceed from infirmity, and those that are visibly the effects of
treachery and malice: for, in the last, we act against the rules of reason
that nature has imprinted in us; whereas, in the former, it seems as if we
might produce the same nature, who left us in such a state of imperfection
and weakness of courage, for our justification. Insomuch that many have
thought we are not fairly questionable for anything but what we commit
against our conscience; and it is partly upon this rule that those ground
their opinion who disapprove of capital or sanguinary punishments
inflicted upon heretics and misbelievers; and theirs also who advocate or
a judge is not accountable for having from mere ignorance failed in his
administration.
But as to cowardice, it is certain that the most usual way of chastising
it is by ignominy and and it is supposed that this practice brought into
use by the legislator Charondas; and that, before his time, the laws of
Greece punished those with death who fled from a battle; whereas he
ordained only that they be for three days exposed in the public dressed in
woman's attire, hoping yet for some service from them, having awakened
their courage by this open shame:
"Suffundere malis homims sanguinem, quam effundere."
["Rather bring the blood into a man's cheek than let it out of his
body." Tertullian in his Apologetics.]
It appears also that the Roman laws did anciently punish those with death
who had run away; for Ammianus Marcellinus says that the Emperor Julian
commanded ten of his soldiers, who had turned their backs in an encounter
against the Parthians, to be first degraded, and afterward put to death,
according, says he, to the ancient laws,—[Ammianus Marcellinus,
xxiv. 4; xxv. i.]—and yet elsewhere for the like offence he only
condemned others to remain amongst the prisoners under the baggage ensign.
The severe punishment the people of Rome inflicted upon those who fled
from the battle of Cannae, and those who ran away with Aeneius Fulvius at
his defeat, did not extend to death. And yet, methinks, 'tis to be feared,
lest disgrace should make such delinquents desperate, and not only faint
friends, but enemies.
Of late memory,—[In 1523]—the Seigneur de Frauget, lieutenant
to the Mareschal de Chatillon's company, having by the Mareschal de
Chabannes been put in government of Fuentarabia in the place of Monsieur
de Lude, and having surrendered it to the Spaniard, he was for that
condemned to be degraded from all nobility, and both himself and his
posterity declared ignoble, taxable, and for ever incapable of bearing
arms, which severe sentence was afterwards accordingly executed at Lyons.—[In
1536] —And, since that, all the gentlemen who were in Guise when the
Count of Nassau entered into it, underwent the same punishment, as several
others have done since for the like offence. Notwithstanding, in case of
such a manifest ignorance or cowardice as exceeds all ordinary example,
'tis but reason to take it for a sufficient proof of treachery and malice,
and for such to be punished.
CHAPTER XVI——A PROCEEDING OF SOME AMBASSADORS
I observe in my travels this custom, ever to learn something from the
information of those with whom I confer (which is the best school of all
others), and to put my company upon those subjects they are the best able
to speak of:—
"Basti al nocchiero ragionar de' venti,
Al bifolco dei tori; et le sue piaghe
Conti'l guerrier; conti'l pastor gli armenti."
["Let the sailor content himself with talking of the winds; the
cowherd of his oxen; the soldier of his wounds; the shepherd of his
flocks."—An Italian translation of Propertius, ii. i, 43]
For it often falls out that, on the contrary, every one will rather choose
to be prating of another man's province than his own, thinking it so much
new reputation acquired; witness the jeer Archidamus put upon Pertander,
"that he had quitted the glory of being an excellent physician to gain the
repute of a very bad poet.—[Plutarch, Apoth. of the Lacedaemonians,
'in voce' Archidamus.]—And do but observe how large and ample Caesar
is to make us understand his inventions of building bridges and contriving
engines of war,—[De Bello Gall., iv. 17.]—and how succinct and
reserved in comparison, where he speaks of the offices of his profession,
his own valour, and military conduct. His exploits sufficiently prove him
a great captain, and that he knew well enough; but he would be thought an
excellent engineer to boot; a quality something different, and not
necessary to be expected in him. The elder Dionysius was a very great
captain, as it befitted his fortune he should be; but he took very great
pains to get a particular reputation by poetry, and yet he was never cut
out for a poet. A man of the legal profession being not long since brought
to see a study furnished with all sorts of books, both of his own and all
other faculties, took no occasion at all to entertain himself with any of
them, but fell very rudely and magisterially to descant upon a barricade
placed on the winding stair before the study door, a thing that a hundred
captains and common soldiers see every day without taking any notice or
offence.
"Optat ephippia bos piger, optat arare caballus."
["The lazy ox desires a saddle and bridle; the horse wants to
plough."—Hor., Ep., i. 14,43.]
By this course a man shall never improve himself, nor arrive at any
perfection in anything. He must, therefore, make it his business always to
put the architect, the painter, the statuary, every mechanic artisan, upon
discourse of their own capacities.
And, to this purpose, in reading histories, which is everybody's subject,
I use to consider what kind of men are the authors: if they be persons
that profess nothing but mere letters, I, in and from them, principally
observe and learn style and language; if physicians, I the rather incline
to credit what they report of the temperature of the air, of the health
and complexions of princes, of wounds and diseases; if lawyers, we are
from them to take notice of the controversies of rights and wrongs, the
establishment of laws and civil government, and the like; if divines, the
affairs of the Church, ecclesiastical censures, marriages, and
dispensations; if courtiers, manners and ceremonies; if soldiers, the
things that properly belong to their trade, and, principally, the accounts
of the actions and enterprises wherein they were personally engaged; if
ambassadors, we are to observe negotiations, intelligences, and practices,
and the manner how they are to be carried on.
And this is the reason why (which perhaps I should have lightly passed
over in another) I dwelt upon and maturely considered one passage in the
history written by Monsieur de Langey, a man of very great judgment in
things of that nature: after having given a narrative of the fine oration
Charles V. had made in the Consistory at Rome, and in the presence of the
Bishop of Macon and Monsieur du Velly, our ambassadors there, wherein he
had mixed several injurious expressions to the dishonour of our nation;
and amongst the rest, "that if his captains and soldiers were not men of
another kind of fidelity, resolution, and sufficiency in the knowledge of
arms than those of the King, he would immediately go with a rope about his
neck and sue to him for mercy" (and it should seem the Emperor had really
this, or a very little better opinion of our military men, for he
afterwards, twice or thrice in his life, said the very same thing); as
also, that he challenged the King to fight him in his shirt with rapier
and poignard in a boat. The said Sieur de Langey, pursuing his history,
adds that the forenamed ambassadors, sending a despatch to the King of
these things, concealed the greatest part, and particularly the last two
passages. At which I could not but wonder that it should be in the power
of an ambassador to dispense with anything which he ought to signify to
his master, especially of so great importance as this, coming from the
mouth of such a person, and spoken in so great an assembly; and I should
rather conceive it had been the servant's duty faithfully to have
represented to him the whole thing as it passed, to the end that the
liberty of selecting, disposing, judging, and concluding might have
remained in him: for either to conceal or to disguise the truth for fear
he should take it otherwise than he ought to do, and lest it should prompt
him to some extravagant resolution, and, in the meantime, to leave him
ignorant of his affairs, should seem, methinks, rather to belong to him
who is to give the law than to him who is only to receive it; to him who
is in supreme command, and not to him who ought to look upon himself as
inferior, not only in authority, but also in prudence and good counsel. I,
for my part, would not be so served in my little concerns.
We so willingly slip the collar of command upon any pretence whatever, and
are so ready to usurp upon dominion, every one does so naturally aspire to
liberty and power, that no utility whatever derived from the wit or valour
of those he employs ought to be so dear to a superior as a downright and
sincere obedience. To obey more upon the account of understanding than of
subjection, is to corrupt the office of command —[Taken from Aulus
Gellius, i. 13.]—; insomuch that P. Crassus, the same whom the
Romans reputed five times happy, at the time when he was consul in Asia,
having sent to a Greek engineer to cause the greater of two masts of ships
that he had taken notice of at Athens to be brought to him, to be employed
about some engine of battery he had a design to make; the other, presuming
upon his own science and sufficiency in those affairs, thought fit to do
otherwise than directed, and to bring the less, which, according to the
rules of art, was really more proper for the use to which it was designed;
but Crassus, though he gave ear to his reasons with great patience, would
not, however, take them, how sound or convincing soever, for current pay,
but caused him to be well whipped for his pains, valuing the interest of
discipline much more than that of the work in hand.
Notwithstanding, we may on the other side consider that so precise and
implicit an obedience as this is only due to positive and limited
commands. The employment of ambassadors is never so confined, many things
in their management of affairs being wholly referred to the absolute
sovereignty of their own conduct; they do not simply execute, but also, to
their own discretion and wisdom, form and model their master's pleasure. I
have, in my time, known men of command checked for having rather obeyed
the express words of the king's letters, than the necessity of the affairs
they had in hand. Men of understanding do yet, to this day, condemn the
custom of the kings of Persia to give their lieutenants and agents so
little rein, that, upon the least arising difficulties, they must fain
have recourse to their further commands; this delay, in so vast an extent
of dominion, having often very much prejudiced their affairs; and Crassus,
writing to a man whose profession it was best to understand those things,
and pre-acquainting him to what use this mast was designed, did he not
seem to consult his advice, and in a manner invite him to interpose his
better judgment?
CHAPTER XVII——OF FEAR
"Obstupui, steteruntque comae et vox faucibus haesit."
["I was amazed, my hair stood on end, and my voice stuck in my
throat." Virgil, AEneid, ii. 774.]
I am not so good a naturalist (as they call it) as to discern by what
secret springs fear has its motion in us; but, be this as it may, 'tis a
strange passion, and such a one that the physicians say there is no other
whatever that sooner dethrones our judgment from its proper seat; which is
so true, that I myself have seen very many become frantic through fear;
and, even in those of the best settled temper it is most certain that it
begets a terrible astonishment and confusion during the fit. I omit the
vulgar sort, to whom it one while represents their great-grandsires risen
out of their graves in their shrouds, another while werewolves,
nightmares, and chimaeras; but even amongst soldiers, a sort of men over
whom, of all others, it ought to have the least power, how often has it
converted flocks of sheep into armed squadrons, reeds and bullrushes into
pikes and lances, friends into enemies, and the French white cross into
the red cross of Spain! When Monsieur de Bourbon took Rome,—[In 1527]—an
ensign who was upon guard at Borgo San Pietro was seized with such a
fright upon the first alarm, that he threw himself out at a breach with
his colours upon his shoulder, and ran directly upon the enemy, thinking
he had retreated toward the inward defences of the city, and with much
ado, seeing Monsieur de Bourbon's people, who thought it had been a sally
upon them, draw up to receive him, at last came to himself, and saw his
error; and then facing about, he retreated full speed through the same
breach by which he had gone out, but not till he had first blindly
advanced above three hundred paces into the open field. It did not,
however, fall out so well with Captain Giulio's ensign, at the time when
St. Paul was taken from us by the Comte de Bures and Monsieur de Reu, for
he, being so astonished with fear as to throw himself, colours and all,
out of a porthole, was immediately, cut to pieces by the enemy; and in the
same siege, it was a very memorable fear that so seized, contracted, and
froze up the heart of a gentleman, that he sank down, stone-dead, in the
breach, without any manner of wound or hurt at all. The like madness does
sometimes push on a whole multitude; for in one of the encounters that
Germanicus had with the Germans, two great parties were so amazed with
fear that they ran two opposite ways, the one to the same place from which
the other had fled.—[Tacit, Annal., i. 63.]—Sometimes it adds
wings to the heels, as in the two first: sometimes it nails them to the
ground, and fetters them from moving; as we read of the Emperor
Theophilus, who, in a battle he lost against the Agarenes, was so
astonished and stupefied that he had no power to fly—
"Adeo pavor etiam auxilia formidat"
["So much does fear dread even the means of safety."—Quint.
Curt., ii. II.]
—till such time as Manuel, one of the principal commanders of his
army, having jogged and shaked him so as to rouse him out of his trance,
said to him, "Sir, if you will not follow me, I will kill you; for it is
better you should lose your life than, by being taken, lose your empire."
—[Zonaras, lib. iii.]—But fear does then manifest its utmost
power when it throws us upon a valiant despair, having before deprived us
of all sense both of duty and honour. In the first pitched battle the
Romans lost against Hannibal, under the Consul Sempronius, a body of ten
thousand foot, that had taken fright, seeing no other escape for their
cowardice, went and threw themselves headlong upon the great battalion of
the enemies, which with marvellous force and fury they charged through and
through, and routed with a very great slaughter of the Carthaginians, thus
purchasing an ignominious flight at the same price they might have gained
a glorious victory.—[Livy, xxi. 56.]
The thing in the world I am most afraid of is fear, that passion alone, in
the trouble of it, exceeding all other accidents. What affliction could be
greater or more just than that of Pompey's friends, who, in his ship, were
spectators of that horrible murder? Yet so it was, that the fear of the
Egyptian vessels they saw coming to board them, possessed them with so
great alarm that it is observed they thought of nothing but calling upon
the mariners to make haste, and by force of oars to escape away, till
being arrived at Tyre, and delivered from fear, they had leisure to turn
their thoughts to the loss of their captain, and to give vent to those
tears and lamentations that the other more potent passion had till then
suspended.
"Tum pavor sapientiam omnem mihiex animo expectorat."
["Then fear drove out all intelligence from my mind."—Ennius, ap.
Cicero, Tusc., iv. 8.]
Such as have been well rubbed in some skirmish, may yet, all wounded and
bloody as they are, be brought on again the next day to charge; but such
as have once conceived a good sound fear of the enemy, will never be made
so much as to look him in the face. Such as are in immediate fear of a
losing their estates, of banishment, or of slavery, live in perpetual
anguish, and lose all appetite and repose; whereas such as are actually
poor, slaves, or exiles, ofttimes live as merrily as other folk. And the
many people who, impatient of the perpetual alarms of fear, have hanged or
drowned themselves, or dashed themselves to pieces, give us sufficiently
to understand that fear is more importunate and insupportable than death
itself.
The Greeks acknowledged another kind of fear, differing from any we have
spoken of yet, that surprises us without any visible cause, by an impulse
from heaven, so that whole nations and whole armies have been struck with
it. Such a one was that which brought so wonderful a desolation upon
Carthage, where nothing was to be heard but affrighted voices and
outcries; where the inhabitants were seen to sally out of their houses as
to an alarm, and there to charge, wound, and kill one another, as if they
had been enemies come to surprise their city. All things were in disorder
and fury till, with prayers and sacrifices, they had appeased their gods—[Diod.
Sic., xv. 7]; and this is that they call panic terrors.—[Ibid. ;
Plutarch on Isis and Osiris, c. 8.]
CHAPTER XVIII——THAT MEN ARE NOT TO JUDGE OF OUR HAPPINESS TILL
AFTER DEATH.
[Charron has borrowed with unusual liberality from this and the
succeeding chapter. See Nodier, Questions, p. 206.]
"Scilicet ultima semper
Exspectanda dies homini est; dicique beatus
Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet."
["We should all look forward to our last day: no one can be called
happy till he is dead and buried."—Ovid, Met, iii. 135]
The very children know the story of King Croesus to this purpose, who
being taken prisoner by Cyrus, and by him condemned to die, as he was
going to execution cried out, "O Solon, Solon!" which being presently
reported to Cyrus, and he sending to inquire of him what it meant, Croesus
gave him to understand that he now found the teaching Solon had formerly
given him true to his cost; which was, "That men, however fortune may
smile upon them, could never be said to be happy till they had been seen
to pass over the last day of their lives," by reason of the uncertainty
and mutability of human things, which, upon very light and trivial
occasions, are subject to be totally changed into a quite contrary
condition. And so it was that Agesilaus made answer to one who was saying
what a happy young man the King of Persia was, to come so young to so
mighty a kingdom: "'Tis true," said he, "but neither was Priam unhappy at
his years."—[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedaemonians.]—In a
short time, kings of Macedon, successors to that mighty Alexander, became
joiners and scriveners at Rome; a tyrant of Sicily, a pedant at Corinth; a
conqueror of one-half of the world and general of so many armies, a
miserable suppliant to the rascally officers of a king of Egypt: so much
did the prolongation of five or six months of life cost the great Pompey;
and, in our fathers' days, Ludovico Sforza, the tenth Duke of Milan, whom
all Italy had so long truckled under, was seen to die a wretched prisoner
at Loches, but not till he had lived ten years in captivity,—[He was
imprisoned by Louis XI. in an iron cage]— which was the worst part
of his fortune. The fairest of all queens, —[Mary, Queen of Scots.]—widow
to the greatest king in Europe, did she not come to die by the hand of an
executioner? Unworthy and barbarous cruelty! And a thousand more examples
there are of the same kind; for it seems that as storms and tempests have
a malice against the proud and overtowering heights of our lofty
buildings, there are also spirits above that are envious of the
greatnesses here below:
"Usque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam
Obterit, et pulchros fasces, saevasque secures
Proculcare, ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur."
["So true it is that some occult power upsets human affairs, the
glittering fasces and the cruel axes spurns under foot, and seems to
make sport of them."—Lucretius, v. 1231.]
And it should seem, also, that Fortune sometimes lies in wait to surprise
the last hour of our lives, to show the power she has, in a moment, to
overthrow what she was so many years in building, making us cry out with
Laberius:
"Nimirum hac die
Una plus vixi mihi, quam vivendum fuit."
["I have lived longer by this one day than I should have
done."—Macrobius, ii. 7.]
And, in this sense, this good advice of Solon may reasonably be taken; but
he, being a philosopher (with which sort of men the favours and disgraces
of Fortune stand for nothing, either to the making a man happy or unhappy,
and with whom grandeurs and powers are accidents of a quality almost
indifferent) I am apt to think that he had some further aim, and that his
meaning was, that the very felicity of life itself, which depends upon the
tranquillity and contentment of a well-descended spirit, and the
resolution and assurance of a well-ordered soul, ought never to be
attributed to any man till he has first been seen to play the last, and,
doubtless, the hardest act of his part. There may be disguise and
dissimulation in all the rest: where these fine philosophical discourses
are only put on, and where accident, not touching us to the quick, gives
us leisure to maintain the same gravity of aspect; but, in this last scene
of death, there is no more counterfeiting: we must speak out plain, and
discover what there is of good and clean in the bottom of the pot,
"Nam vera; voces turn demum pectore ab imo
Ejiciuntur; et eripitur persona, manet res."
["Then at last truth issues from the heart; the visor's gone,
the man remains."—Lucretius, iii. 57.]
Wherefore, at this last, all the other actions of our life ought to be
tried and sifted: 'tis the master-day, 'tis the day that is judge of all
the rest, "'tis the day," says one of the ancients,—[Seneca, Ep.,
102]— "that must be judge of all my foregoing years." To death do I
refer the assay of the fruit of all my studies: we shall then see whether
my discourses came only from my mouth or from my heart. I have seen many
by their death give a good or an ill repute to their whole life. Scipio,
the father-in-law of Pompey, in dying, well removed the ill opinion that
till then every one had conceived of him. Epaminondas being asked which of
the three he had in greatest esteem, Chabrias, Iphicrates, or himself.
"You must first see us die," said he, "before that question can be
resolved."—[Plutarch, Apoth.]—And, in truth, he would
infinitely wrong that man who would weigh him without the honour and
grandeur of his end.
God has ordered all things as it has best pleased Him; but I have, in my
time, seen three of the most execrable persons that ever I knew in all
manner of abominable living, and the most infamous to boot, who all died a
very regular death, and in all circumstances composed, even to perfection.
There are brave and fortunate deaths: I have seen death cut the thread of
the progress of a prodigious advancement, and in the height and flower of
its increase, of a certain person,—[Montaigne doubtless refers to
his friend Etienne de la Boetie, at whose death in 1563 he was present.]—with
so glorious an end that, in my opinion, his ambitious and generous designs
had nothing in them so high and great as their interruption. He arrived,
without completing his course, at the place to which his ambition aimed,
with greater glory than he could either have hoped or desired,
anticipating by his fall the name and power to which he aspired in
perfecting his career. In the judgment I make of another man's life, I
always observe how he carried himself at his death; and the principal
concern I have for my own is that I may die well—that is, patiently
and tranquilly.
CHAPTER XIX——THAT TO STUDY PHILOSOPY IS TO LEARN TO DIE
Cicero says—[Tusc., i. 31.]—"that to study philosophy is
nothing but to prepare one's self to die." The reason of which is, because
study and contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us our soul, and
employ it separately from the body, which is a kind of apprenticeship and
a resemblance of death; or, else, because all the wisdom and reasoning in
the world do in the end conclude in this point, to teach us not to fear to
die. And to say the truth, either our reason mocks us, or it ought to have
no other aim but our contentment only, nor to endeavour anything but, in
sum, to make us live well, and, as the Holy Scripture says, at our ease.
All the opinions of the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end,
though we make use of divers means to attain it: they would, otherwise, be
rejected at the first motion; for who would give ear to him that should
propose affliction and misery for his end? The controversies and disputes
of the philosophical sects upon this point are merely verbal:
"Transcurramus solertissimas nugas"
["Let us skip over those subtle trifles."—Seneca, Ep., 117.]
—there is more in them of opposition and obstinacy than is
consistent with so sacred a profession; but whatsoever personage a man
takes upon himself to perform, he ever mixes his own part with it.
Let the philosophers say what they will, the thing at which we all aim,
even in virtue is pleasure. It amuses me to rattle in ears this word,
which they so nauseate to and if it signify some supreme pleasure and
contentment, it is more due to the assistance of virtue than to any other
assistance whatever. This pleasure, for being more gay, more sinewy, more
robust and more manly, is only the more seriously voluptuous, and we ought
give it the name of pleasure, as that which is more favourable, gentle,
and natural, and not that from which we have denominated it. The other and
meaner pleasure, if it could deserve this fair name, it ought to be by way
of competition, and not of privilege. I find it less exempt from traverses
and inconveniences than virtue itself; and, besides that the enjoyment is
more momentary, fluid, and frail, it has its watchings, fasts, and
labours, its sweat and its blood; and, moreover, has particular to itself
so many several sorts of sharp and wounding passions, and so dull a
satiety attending it, as equal it to the severest penance. And we mistake
if we think that these incommodities serve it for a spur and a seasoning
to its sweetness (as in nature one contrary is quickened by another), or
say, when we come to virtue, that like consequences and difficulties
overwhelm and render it austere and inaccessible; whereas, much more aptly
than in voluptuousness, they ennoble, sharpen, and heighten the perfect
and divine pleasure they procure us. He renders himself unworthy of it who
will counterpoise its cost with its fruit, and neither understands the
blessing nor how to use it. Those who preach to us that the quest of it is
craggy, difficult, and painful, but its fruition pleasant, what do they
mean by that but to tell us that it is always unpleasing? For what human
means will ever attain its enjoyment? The most perfect have been fain to
content themselves to aspire unto it, and to approach it only, without
ever possessing it. But they are deceived, seeing that of all the
pleasures we know, the very pursuit is pleasant. The attempt ever relishes
of the quality of the thing to which it is directed, for it is a good part
of, and consubstantial with, the effect. The felicity and beatitude that
glitters in Virtue, shines throughout all her appurtenances and avenues,
even to the first entry and utmost limits.
Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of
death is one of the greatest, as the means that accommodates human life
with a soft and easy tranquillity, and gives us a pure and pleasant taste
of living, without which all other pleasure would be extinct. Which is the
reason why all the rules centre and concur in this one article. And
although they all in like manner, with common accord, teach us also to
despise pain, poverty, and the other accidents to which human life is
subject, it is not, nevertheless, with the same solicitude, as well by
reason these accidents are not of so great necessity, the greater part of
mankind passing over their whole lives without ever knowing what poverty
is, and some without sorrow or sickness, as Xenophilus the musician, who
lived a hundred and six years in a perfect and continual health; as also
because, at the worst, death can, whenever we please, cut short and put an
end to all other inconveniences. But as to death, it is inevitable:—
"Omnes eodem cogimur; omnium
Versatur urna serius ocius
Sors exitura, et nos in aeternum
Exilium impositura cymbae."
["We are all bound one voyage; the lot of all, sooner or later, is
to come out of the urn. All must to eternal exile sail away."
—Hor., Od., ii. 3, 25.]
and, consequently, if it frights us, 'tis a perpetual torment, for which
there is no sort of consolation. There is no way by which it may not reach
us. We may continually turn our heads this way and that, as in a suspected
country:
"Quae, quasi saxum Tantalo, semper impendet."
["Ever, like Tantalus stone, hangs over us."
—Cicero, De Finib., i. 18.]
Our courts of justice often send back condemned criminals to be executed
upon the place where the crime was committed; but, carry them to fine
houses by the way, prepare for them the best entertainment you can—
"Non Siculae dapes
Dulcem elaborabunt saporem:
Non avium cyatheaceae cantus
Somnum reducent."
["Sicilian dainties will not tickle their palates, nor the melody of
birds and harps bring back sleep."—Hor., Od., iii. 1, 18.]
Do you think they can relish it? and that the fatal end of their journey
being continually before their eyes, would not alter and deprave their
palate from tasting these regalios?
"Audit iter, numeratque dies, spatioque viarum
Metitur vitam; torquetur peste futura."
["He considers the route, computes the time of travelling, measuring
his life by the length of the journey; and torments himself by
thinking of the blow to come."—Claudianus, in Ruf., ii. 137.]
The end of our race is death; 'tis the necessary object of our aim, which,
if it fright us, how is it possible to advance a step without a fit of
ague? The remedy the vulgar use is not to think on't; but from what
brutish stupidity can they derive so gross a blindness? They must bridle
the ass by the tail:
"Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro,"
["Who in his folly seeks to advance backwards"—Lucretius, iv. 474]
'tis no wonder if he be often trapped in the pitfall. They affright people
with the very mention of death, and many cross themselves, as it were the
name of the devil. And because the making a man's will is in reference to
dying, not a man will be persuaded to take a pen in hand to that purpose,
till the physician has passed sentence upon and totally given him over,
and then betwixt and terror, God knows in how fit a condition of
understanding he is to do it.
The Romans, by reason that this poor syllable death sounded so harshly to
their ears and seemed so ominous, found out a way to soften and spin it
out by a periphrasis, and instead of pronouncing such a one is dead, said,
"Such a one has lived," or "Such a one has ceased to live" —[Plutarch,
Life of Cicero, c. 22:]—for, provided there was any mention of life
in the case, though past, it carried yet some sound of consolation. And
from them it is that we have borrowed our expression, "The late Monsieur
such and such a one."—["feu Monsieur un tel."] Peradventure, as the
saying is, the term we have lived is worth our money. I was born betwixt
eleven and twelve o'clock in the forenoon the last day of February 1533,
according to our computation, beginning the year the 1st of January,—[This
was in virtue of an ordinance of Charles IX. in 1563. Previously the year
commenced at Easter, so that the 1st January 1563 became the first day of
the year 1563.]—and it is now but just fifteen days since I was
complete nine-and-thirty years old; I make account to live, at least, as
many more. In the meantime, to trouble a man's self with the thought of a
thing so far off were folly. But what? Young and old die upon the same
terms; no one departs out of life otherwise than if he had but just before
entered into it; neither is any man so old and decrepit, who, having heard
of Methuselah, does not think he has yet twenty good years to come. Fool
that thou art! who has assured unto thee the term of life? Thou dependest
upon physicians' tales: rather consult effects and experience. According
to the common course of things, 'tis long since that thou hast lived by
extraordinary favour; thou hast already outlived the ordinary term of
life. And that it is so, reckon up thy acquaintance, how many more have
died before they arrived at thy age than have attained unto it; and of
those who have ennobled their lives by their renown, take but an account,
and I dare lay a wager thou wilt find more who have died before than after
five-and-thirty years of age. It is full both of reason and piety, too, to
take example by the humanity of Jesus Christ Himself; now, He ended His
life at three-and-thirty years. The greatest man, that was no more than a
man, Alexander, died also at the same age. How many several ways has death
to surprise us?
"Quid quisque, vitet, nunquam homini satis
Cautum est in horas."
["Be as cautious as he may, man can never foresee the danger that
may at any hour befal him."—Hor. O. ii. 13, 13.]
To omit fevers and pleurisies, who would ever have imagined that a duke of
Brittany,—[Jean II. died 1305.]—should be pressed to death in
a crowd as that duke was at the entry of Pope Clement, my neighbour, into
Lyons?—[Montaigne speaks of him as if he had been a contemporary
neighbour, perhaps because he was the Archbishop of Bordeaux. Bertrand le
Got was Pope under the title of Clement V., 1305-14.]—Hast thou not
seen one of our kings—[Henry II., killed in a tournament, July 10,
1559]—killed at a tilting, and did not one of his ancestors die by
jostle of a hog?—[Philip, eldest son of Louis le Gros.]—AEschylus,
threatened with the fall of a house, was to much purpose circumspect to
avoid that danger, seeing that he was knocked on the head by a tortoise
falling out of an eagle's talons in the air. Another was choked with a
grape-stone;—[Val. Max., ix. 12, ext. 2.]—an emperor killed
with the scratch of a comb in combing his head. AEmilius Lepidus with a
stumble at his own threshold,—[Pliny, Nat. Hist., vii. 33.]—
and Aufidius with a jostle against the door as he entered the
council-chamber. And betwixt the very thighs of women, Cornelius Gallus
the proctor; Tigillinus, captain of the watch at Rome; Ludovico, son of
Guido di Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua; and (of worse example) Speusippus, a
Platonic philosopher, and one of our Popes. The poor judge Bebius gave
adjournment in a case for eight days; but he himself, meanwhile, was
condemned by death, and his own stay of life expired. Whilst Caius Julius,
the physician, was anointing the eyes of a patient, death closed his own;
and, if I may bring in an example of my own blood, a brother of mine,
Captain St. Martin, a young man, three-and-twenty years old, who had
already given sufficient testimony of his valour, playing a match at
tennis, received a blow of a ball a little above his right ear, which, as
it gave no manner of sign of wound or contusion, he took no notice of it,
nor so much as sat down to repose himself, but, nevertheless, died within
five or six hours after of an apoplexy occasioned by that blow.
These so frequent and common examples passing every day before our eyes,
how is it possible a man should disengage himself from the thought of
death, or avoid fancying that it has us every moment by the throat? What
matter is it, you will say, which way it comes to pass, provided a man
does not terrify himself with the expectation? For my part, I am of this
mind, and if a man could by any means avoid it, though by creeping under a
calf's skin, I am one that should not be ashamed of the shift; all I aim
at is, to pass my time at my ease, and the recreations that will most
contribute to it, I take hold of, as little glorious and exemplary as you
will:
"Praetulerim . . . delirus inersque videri,
Dum mea delectent mala me, vel denique fallant,
Quam sapere, et ringi."
["I had rather seem mad and a sluggard, so that my defects are
agreeable to myself, or that I am not painfully conscious of them,
than be wise, and chaptious."—Hor., Ep., ii. 2, 126.]
But 'tis folly to think of doing anything that way. They go, they come,
they gallop and dance, and not a word of death. All this is very fine; but
withal, when it comes either to themselves, their wives, their children,
or friends, surprising them at unawares and unprepared, then, what
torment, what outcries, what madness and despair! Did you ever see
anything so subdued, so changed, and so confounded? A man must, therefore,
make more early provision for it; and this brutish negligence, could it
possibly lodge in the brain of any man of sense (which I think utterly
impossible), sells us its merchandise too dear. Were it an enemy that
could be avoided, I would then advise to borrow arms even of cowardice
itself; but seeing it is not, and that it will catch you as well flying
and playing the poltroon, as standing to't like an honest man:—
"Nempe et fugacem persequitur virum,
Nec parcit imbellis juventae
Poplitibus timidoque tergo."
["He pursues the flying poltroon, nor spares the hamstrings of the
unwarlike youth who turns his back"—Hor., Ep., iii. 2, 14.]
And seeing that no temper of arms is of proof to secure us:—
"Ille licet ferro cautus, se condat et aere,
Mors tamen inclusum protrahet inde caput"
["Let him hide beneath iron or brass in his fear, death will pull
his head out of his armour."—Propertious iii. 18]
—let us learn bravely to stand our ground, and fight him. And to
begin to deprive him of the greatest advantage he has over us, let us take
a way quite contrary to the common course. Let us disarm him of his
novelty and strangeness, let us converse and be familiar with him, and
have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death. Upon all occasions
represent him to our imagination in his every shape; at the stumbling of a
horse, at the falling of a tile, at the least prick with a pin, let us
presently consider, and say to ourselves, "Well, and what if it had been
death itself?" and, thereupon, let us encourage and fortify ourselves. Let
us evermore, amidst our jollity and feasting, set the remembrance of our
frail condition before our eyes, never suffering ourselves to be so far
transported with our delights, but that we have some intervals of
reflecting upon, and considering how many several ways this jollity of
ours tends to death, and with how many dangers it threatens it. The
Egyptians were wont to do after this manner, who in the height of their
feasting and mirth, caused a dried skeleton of a man to be brought into
the room to serve for a memento to their guests:
"Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum
Grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur, hora."
["Think each day when past is thy last; the next day, as unexpected,
will be the more welcome."—Hor., Ep., i. 4, 13.]
Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The
premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned
to die has unlearned to serve. There is nothing evil in life for him who
rightly comprehends that the privation of life is no evil: to know, how to
die delivers us from all subjection and constraint. Paulus Emilius
answered him whom the miserable King of Macedon, his prisoner, sent to
entreat him that he would not lead him in his triumph, "Let him make that
request to himself."—[ Plutarch, Life of Paulus Aemilius, c. 17;
Cicero, Tusc., v. 40.]
In truth, in all things, if nature do not help a little, it is very hard
for art and industry to perform anything to purpose. I am in my own nature
not melancholic, but meditative; and there is nothing I have more
continually entertained myself withal than imaginations of death, even in
the most wanton time of my age:
"Jucundum quum aetas florida ver ageret."
["When my florid age rejoiced in pleasant spring."
—Catullus, lxviii.]
In the company of ladies, and at games, some have perhaps thought me
possessed with some jealousy, or the uncertainty of some hope, whilst I
was entertaining myself with the remembrance of some one, surprised, a few
days before, with a burning fever of which he died, returning from an
entertainment like this, with his head full of idle fancies of love and
jollity, as mine was then, and that, for aught I knew, the same-destiny
was attending me.
"Jam fuerit, nec post unquam revocare licebit."
["Presently the present will have gone, never to be recalled."
Lucretius, iii. 928.]
Yet did not this thought wrinkle my forehead any more than any other. It
is impossible but we must feel a sting in such imaginations as these, at
first; but with often turning and returning them in one's mind, they, at
last, become so familiar as to be no trouble at all: otherwise, I, for my
part, should be in a perpetual fright and frenzy; for never man was so
distrustful of his life, never man so uncertain as to its duration.
Neither health, which I have hitherto ever enjoyed very strong and
vigorous, and very seldom interrupted, does prolong, nor sickness contract
my hopes. Every minute, methinks, I am escaping, and it eternally runs in
my mind, that what may be done to-morrow, may be done to-day. Hazards and
dangers do, in truth, little or nothing hasten our end; and if we consider
how many thousands more remain and hang over our heads, besides the
accident that immediately threatens us, we shall find that the sound and
the sick, those that are abroad at sea, and those that sit by the fire,
those who are engaged in battle, and those who sit idle at home, are the
one as near it as the other.
"Nemo altero fragilior est; nemo in crastinum sui certior."
["No man is more fragile than another: no man more certain than
another of to-morrow."—Seneca, Ep., 91.]
For anything I have to do before I die, the longest leisure would appear
too short, were it but an hour's business I had to do.
A friend of mine the other day turning over my tablets, found therein a
memorandum of something I would have done after my decease, whereupon I
told him, as it was really true, that though I was no more than a league's
distance only from my own house, and merry and well, yet when that thing
came into my head, I made haste to write it down there, because I was not
certain to live till I came home. As a man that am eternally brooding over
my own thoughts, and confine them to my own particular concerns, I am at
all hours as well prepared as I am ever like to be, and death, whenever he
shall come, can bring nothing along with him I did not expect long before.
We should always, as near as we can, be booted and spurred, and ready to
go, and, above all things, take care, at that time, to have no business
with any one but one's self:—
"Quid brevi fortes jaculamur avo
Multa?"
["Why for so short a life tease ourselves with so many projects?"
—Hor., Od., ii. 16, 17.]
for we shall there find work enough to do, without any need of addition.
One man complains, more than of death, that he is thereby prevented of a
glorious victory; another, that he must die before he has married his
daughter, or educated his children; a third seems only troubled that he
must lose the society of his wife; a fourth, the conversation of his son,
as the principal comfort and concern of his being. For my part, I am,
thanks be to God, at this instant in such a condition, that I am ready to
dislodge, whenever it shall please Him, without regret for anything
whatsoever. I disengage myself throughout from all worldly relations; my
leave is soon taken of all but myself. Never did any one prepare to bid
adieu to the world more absolutely and unreservedly, and to shake hands
with all manner of interest in it, than I expect to do. The deadest deaths
are the best:
"'Miser, O miser,' aiunt, 'omnia ademit
Una dies infesta mihi tot praemia vitae.'"
["'Wretch that I am,' they cry, 'one fatal day has deprived me of
all joys of life.'"—Lucretius, iii. 911.]
And the builder,
"Manuet," says he, "opera interrupta, minaeque
Murorum ingentes."
["The works remain incomplete, the tall pinnacles of the walls
unmade."—AEneid, iv. 88.]
A man must design nothing that will require so much time to the finishing,
or, at least, with no such passionate desire to see it brought to
perfection. We are born to action:
"Quum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus."
["When I shall die, let it be doing that I had designed."
—Ovid, Amor., ii. 10, 36.]
I would always have a man to be doing, and, as much as in him lies, to
extend and spin out the offices of life; and then let death take me
planting my cabbages, indifferent to him, and still less of my gardens not
being finished. I saw one die, who, at his last gasp, complained of
nothing so much as that destiny was about to cut the thread of a chronicle
he was then compiling, when he was gone no farther than the fifteenth or
sixteenth of our kings:
"Illud in his rebus non addunt: nec tibi earum
jam desiderium rerum super insidet una."
["They do not add, that dying, we have no longer a desire to possess
things."—Lucretius, iii. 913.]
We are to discharge ourselves from these vulgar and hurtful humours. To
this purpose it was that men first appointed the places of sepulture
adjoining the churches, and in the most frequented places of the city, to
accustom, says Lycurgus, the common people, women, and children, that they
should not be startled at the sight of a corpse, and to the end, that the
continual spectacle of bones, graves, and funeral obsequies should put us
in mind of our frail condition:
"Quin etiam exhilarare viris convivia caede
Mos olim, et miscere epulis spectacula dira
Certantum ferro, saepe et super ipsa cadentum
Pocula, respersis non parco sanguine mensis."
["It was formerly the custom to enliven banquets with slaughter, and
to combine with the repast the dire spectacle of men contending with
the sword, the dying in many cases falling upon the cups, and
covering the tables with blood."—Silius Italicus, xi. 51.]
And as the Egyptians after their feasts were wont to present the company
with a great image of death, by one that cried out to them, "Drink and be
merry, for such shalt thou be when thou art dead"; so it is my custom to
have death not only in my imagination, but continually in my mouth.
Neither is there anything of which I am so inquisitive, and delight to
inform myself, as the manner of men's deaths, their words, looks, and
bearing; nor any places in history I am so intent upon; and it is manifest
enough, by my crowding in examples of this kind, that I have a particular
fancy for that subject. If I were a writer of books, I would compile a
register, with a comment, of the various deaths of men: he who should
teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live. Dicarchus made
one, to which he gave that title; but it was designed for another and less
profitable end.
Peradventure, some one may object, that the pain and terror of dying so
infinitely exceed all manner of imagination, that the best fencer will be
quite out of his play when it comes to the push. Let them say what they
will: to premeditate is doubtless a very great advantage; and besides, is
it nothing to go so far, at least, without disturbance or alteration?
Moreover, Nature herself assists and encourages us: if the death be sudden
and violent, we have not leisure to fear; if otherwise, I perceive that as
I engage further in my disease, I naturally enter into a certain loathing
and disdain of life. I find I have much more ado to digest this resolution
of dying, when I am well in health, than when languishing of a fever; and
by how much I have less to do with the commodities of life, by reason that
I begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, by so much I look upon death
with less terror. Which makes me hope, that the further I remove from the
first, and the nearer I approach to the latter, I shall the more easily
exchange the one for the other. And, as I have experienced in other
occurrences, that, as Caesar says, things often appear greater to us at
distance than near at hand, I have found, that being well, I have had
maladies in much greater horror than when really afflicted with them. The
vigour wherein I now am, the cheerfulness and delight wherein I now live,
make the contrary estate appear in so great a disproportion to my present
condition, that, by imagination, I magnify those inconveniences by
one-half, and apprehend them to be much more troublesome, than I find them
really to be, when they lie the most heavy upon me; I hope to find death
the same.
Let us but observe in the ordinary changes and declinations we daily
suffer, how nature deprives us of the light and sense of our bodily decay.
What remains to an old man of the vigour of his youth and better days?
"Heu! senibus vitae portio quanta manet."
["Alas, to old men what portion of life remains!"—-Maximian, vel
Pseudo-Gallus, i. 16.]
Caesar, to an old weather-beaten soldier of his guards, who came to ask
him leave that he might kill himself, taking notice of his withered body
and decrepit motion, pleasantly answered, "Thou fanciest, then, that thou
art yet alive."—[Seneca, Ep., 77.]—Should a man fall into this
condition on the sudden, I do not think humanity capable of enduring such
a change: but nature, leading us by the hand, an easy and, as it were, an
insensible pace, step by step conducts us to that miserable state, and by
that means makes it familiar to us, so that we are insensible of the
stroke when our youth dies in us, though it be really a harder death than
the final dissolution of a languishing body, than the death of old age;
forasmuch as the fall is not so great from an uneasy being to none at all,
as it is from a sprightly and flourishing being to one that is troublesome
and painful. The body, bent and bowed, has less force to support a burden;
and it is the same with the soul, and therefore it is, that we are to
raise her up firm and erect against the power of this adversary. For, as
it is impossible she should ever be at rest, whilst she stands in fear of
it; so, if she once can assure herself, she may boast (which is a thing as
it were surpassing human condition) that it is impossible that disquiet,
anxiety, or fear, or any other disturbance, should inhabit or have any
place in her:
"Non vulnus instants Tyranni
Mentha cadi solida, neque Auster
Dux inquieti turbidus Adriae,
Nec fulminantis magna Jovis manus."
["Not the menacing look of a tyrant shakes her well-settled soul,
nor turbulent Auster, the prince of the stormy Adriatic, nor yet the
strong hand of thundering Jove, such a temper moves."
—Hor., Od., iii. 3, 3.]
She is then become sovereign of all her lusts and passions, mistress of
necessity, shame, poverty, and all the other injuries of fortune. Let us,
therefore, as many of us as can, get this advantage; 'tis the true and
sovereign liberty here on earth, that fortifies us wherewithal to defy
violence and injustice, and to contemn prisons and chains:
"In manicis et
Compedibus saevo te sub custode tenebo.
Ipse Deus, simul atque volam, me solvet. Opinor,
Hoc sentit; moriar; mors ultima linea rerum est."
["I will keep thee in fetters and chains, in custody of a
savage keeper.—A god will when I ask Him, set me free.
This god I think is death. Death is the term of all things."
—Hor., Ep., i. 16, 76.]
Our very religion itself has no surer human foundation than the contempt
of death. Not only the argument of reason invites us to it—for why
should we fear to lose a thing, which being lost, cannot be lamented?
—but, also, seeing we are threatened by so many sorts of death, is
it not infinitely worse eternally to fear them all, than once to undergo
one of them? And what matters it, when it shall happen, since it is
inevitable? To him that told Socrates, "The thirty tyrants have sentenced
thee to death"; "And nature them," said he.—[Socrates was not
condemned to death by the thirty tyrants, but by the Athenians.-Diogenes
Laertius, ii.35.]— What a ridiculous thing it is to trouble
ourselves about taking the only step that is to deliver us from all
trouble! As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so in our death
is the death of all things included. And therefore to lament that we shall
not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we
were not alive a hundred years ago. Death is the beginning of another
life. So did we weep, and so much it cost us to enter into this, and so
did we put off our former veil in entering into it. Nothing can be a
grievance that is but once. Is it reasonable so long to fear a thing that
will so soon be despatched? Long life, and short, are by death made all
one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.
Aristotle tells us that there are certain little beasts upon the banks of
the river Hypanis, that never live above a day: they which die at eight of
the clock in the morning, die in their youth, and those that die at five
in the evening, in their decrepitude: which of us would not laugh to see
this moment of continuance put into the consideration of weal or woe? The
most and the least, of ours, in comparison with eternity, or yet with the
duration of mountains, rivers, stars, trees, and even of some animals, is
no less ridiculous.—[ Seneca, Consol. ad Marciam, c. 20.]
But nature compels us to it. "Go out of this world," says she, "as you
entered into it; the same pass you made from death to life, without
passion or fear, the same, after the same manner, repeat from life to
death. Your death is a part of the order of the universe, 'tis a part of
the life of the world.
"Inter se mortales mutua vivunt
................................
Et, quasi cursores, vitai lampada tradunt."
["Mortals, amongst themselves, live by turns, and, like the runners
in the games, give up the lamp, when they have won the race, to the
next comer.—" Lucretius, ii. 75, 78.]
"Shall I exchange for you this beautiful contexture of things? 'Tis the
condition of your creation; death is a part of you, and whilst you
endeavour to evade it, you evade yourselves. This very being of yours that
you now enjoy is equally divided betwixt life and death. The day of your
birth is one day's advance towards the grave:
"Prima, qux vitam dedit, hora carpsit."
["The first hour that gave us life took away also an hour."
—Seneca, Her. Fur., 3 Chor. 874.]
"Nascentes morimur, finisque ab origine pendet."
["As we are born we die, and the end commences with the beginning."
—Manilius, Ast., iv. 16.]
"All the whole time you live, you purloin from life and live at the
expense of life itself. The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the
foundation of death. You are in death, whilst you are in life, because you
still are after death, when you are no more alive; or, if you had rather
have it so, you are dead after life, but dying all the while you live; and
death handles the dying much more rudely than the dead, and more sensibly
and essentially. If you have made your profit of life, you have had enough
of it; go your way satisfied.
"Cur non ut plenus vita; conviva recedis?"
["Why not depart from life as a sated guest from a feast?
"Lucretius, iii. 951.]
"If you have not known how to make the best use of it, if it was
unprofitable to you, what need you care to lose it, to what end would you
desire longer to keep it?
"'Cur amplius addere quaeris,
Rursum quod pereat male, et ingratum occidat omne?'
["Why seek to add longer life, merely to renew ill-spent time, and
be again tormented?"—Lucretius, iii. 914.]
"Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil
as you make it.' And, if you have lived a day, you have seen all: one day
is equal and like to all other days. There is no other light, no other
shade; this very sun, this moon, these very stars, this very order and
disposition of things, is the same your ancestors enjoyed, and that shall
also entertain your posterity:
"'Non alium videre patres, aliumve nepotes
Aspicient.'
["Your grandsires saw no other thing; nor will your posterity."
—Manilius, i. 529.]
"And, come the worst that can come, the distribution and variety of all
the acts of my comedy are performed in a year. If you have observed the
revolution of my four seasons, they comprehend the infancy, the youth, the
virility, and the old age of the world: the year has played his part, and
knows no other art but to begin again; it will always be the same thing:
"'Versamur ibidem, atque insumus usque.'
["We are turning in the same circle, ever therein confined."
—Lucretius, iii. 1093.]
"'Atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus.'
["The year is ever turning around in the same footsteps."
—Virgil, Georg., ii. 402.]
"I am not prepared to create for you any new recreations:
"'Nam tibi prxterea quod machiner, inveniamque
Quod placeat, nihil est; eadem sunt omnia semper.'
["I can devise, nor find anything else to please you: 'tis the same
thing over and over again."—Lucretius iii. 957]
"Give place to others, as others have given place to you. Equality is the
soul of equity. Who can complain of being comprehended in the same
destiny, wherein all are involved? Besides, live as long as you can, you
shall by that nothing shorten the space you are to be dead; 'tis all to no
purpose; you shall be every whit as long in the condition you so much
fear, as if you had died at nurse:
"'Licet quot vis vivendo vincere secla,
Mors aeterna tamen nihilominus illa manebit.'
["Live triumphing over as many ages as you will, death still will
remain eternal."—Lucretius, iii. 1103]
"And yet I will place you in such a condition as you shall have no reason
to be displeased.
"'In vera nescis nullum fore morte alium te,
Qui possit vivus tibi to lugere peremptum,
Stansque jacentem.'
["Know you not that, when dead, there can be no other living self to
lament you dead, standing on your grave."—Idem., ibid., 898.]
"Nor shall you so much as wish for the life you are so concerned about:
"'Nec sibi enim quisquam tum se vitamque requirit.
..................................................
"'Nec desiderium nostri nos afficit ullum.'
"Death is less to be feared than nothing, if there could be anything less
than nothing.
"'Multo . . . mortem minus ad nos esse putandium,
Si minus esse potest, quam quod nihil esse videmus.'
"Neither can it any way concern you, whether you are living or dead:
living, by reason that you are still in being; dead, because you are no
more. Moreover, no one dies before his hour: the time you leave behind was
no more yours than that was lapsed and gone before you came into the
world; nor does it any more concern you.
"'Respice enim, quam nil ad nos anteacta vetustas
Temporis aeterni fuerit.'
["Consider how as nothing to us is the old age of times past."
—Lucretius iii. 985]
Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists
not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived
long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present
with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to
have a sufficient length of life. Is it possible you can imagine never to
arrive at the place towards which you are continually going? and yet there
is no journey but hath its end. And, if company will make it more pleasant
or more easy to you, does not all the world go the self-same way?
"'Omnia te, vita perfuncta, sequentur.'
["All things, then, life over, must follow thee."
—Lucretius, iii. 981.]
"Does not all the world dance the same brawl that you do? Is there
anything that does not grow old, as well as you? A thousand men, a
thousand animals, a thousand other creatures, die at the same moment that
you die:
"'Nam nox nulla diem, neque noctem aurora sequuta est,
Quae non audierit mistos vagitibus aegris
Ploratus, mortis comites et funeris atri.'
["No night has followed day, no day has followed night, in which
there has not been heard sobs and sorrowing cries, the companions of
death and funerals."—Lucretius, v. 579.]
"To what end should you endeavour to draw back, if there be no possibility
to evade it? you have seen examples enough of those who have been well
pleased to die, as thereby delivered from heavy miseries; but have you
ever found any who have been dissatisfied with dying? It must, therefore,
needs be very foolish to condemn a thing you have neither experimented in
your own person, nor by that of any other. Why dost thou complain of me
and of destiny? Do we do thee any wrong? Is it for thee to govern us, or
for us to govern thee? Though, peradventure, thy age may not be
accomplished, yet thy life is: a man of low stature is as much a man as a
giant; neither men nor their lives are measured by the ell. Chiron refused
to be immortal, when he was acquainted with the conditions under which he
was to enjoy it, by the god of time itself and its duration, his father
Saturn. Do but seriously consider how much more insupportable and painful
an immortal life would be to man than what I have already given him. If
you had not death, you would eternally curse me for having deprived you of
it; I have mixed a little bitterness with it, to the end, that seeing of
what convenience it is, you might not too greedily and indiscreetly seek
and embrace it: and that you might be so established in this moderation,
as neither to nauseate life, nor have any antipathy for dying, which I
have decreed you shall once do, I have tempered the one and the other
betwixt pleasure and pain. It was I that taught Thales, the most eminent
of your sages, that to live and to die were indifferent; which made him,
very wisely, answer him, 'Why then he did not die?' 'Because,' said he,
'it is indifferent.'—[Diogenes Laertius, i. 35.]—Water, earth,
air, and fire, and the other parts of this creation of mine, are no more
instruments of thy life than they are of thy death. Why dost thou fear thy
last day? it contributes no more to thy dissolution, than every one of the
rest: the last step is not the cause of lassitude: it does not confess it.
Every day travels towards death; the last only arrives at it." These are
the good lessons our mother Nature teaches.
I have often considered with myself whence it should proceed, that in war
the image of death, whether we look upon it in ourselves or in others,
should, without comparison, appear less dreadful than at home in our own
houses (for if it were not so, it would be an army of doctors and whining
milksops), and that being still in all places the same, there should be,
notwithstanding, much more assurance in peasants and the meaner sort of
people, than in others of better quality. I believe, in truth, that it is
those terrible ceremonies and preparations wherewith we set it out, that
more terrify us than the thing itself; a new, quite contrary way of
living; the cries of mothers, wives, and children; the visits of astounded
and afflicted friends; the attendance of pale and blubbering servants; a
dark room, set round with burning tapers; our beds environed with
physicians and divines; in sum, nothing but ghostliness and horror round
about us; we seem dead and buried already. Children are afraid even of
those they are best acquainted with, when disguised in a visor; and so
'tis with us; the visor must be removed as well from things as from
persons, that being taken away, we shall find nothing underneath but the
very same death that a mean servant or a poor chambermaid died a day or
two ago, without any manner of apprehension. Happy is the death that
deprives us of leisure for preparing such ceremonials.
CHAPTER XX——OF THE FORCE OF IMAGINATION
"Fortis imaginatio generat casum," say the schoolmen.
["A strong imagination begets the event itself."—Axiom. Scholast.]
I am one of those who are most sensible of the power of imagination: every
one is jostled by it, but some are overthrown by it. It has a very
piercing impression upon me; and I make it my business to avoid, wanting
force to resist it. I could live by the sole help of healthful and jolly
company: the very sight of another's pain materially pains me, and I often
usurp the sensations of another person. A perpetual cough in another
tickles my lungs and throat. I more unwillingly visit the sick in whom by
love and duty I am interested, than those I care not for, to whom I less
look. I take possession of the disease I am concerned at, and take it to
myself. I do not at all wonder that fancy should give fevers and sometimes
kill such as allow it too much scope, and are too willing to entertain it.
Simon Thomas was a great physician of his time: I remember, that happening
one day at Toulouse to meet him at a rich old fellow's house, who was
troubled with weak lungs, and discoursing with the patient about the
method of his cure, he told him, that one thing which would be very
conducive to it, was to give me such occasion to be pleased with his
company, that I might come often to see him, by which means, and by fixing
his eyes upon the freshness of my complexion, and his imagination upon the
sprightliness and vigour that glowed in my youth, and possessing all his
senses with the flourishing age wherein I then was, his habit of body
might, peradventure, be amended; but he forgot to say that mine, at the
same time, might be made worse. Gallus Vibius so much bent his mind to
find out the essence and motions of madness, that, in the end, he himself
went out of his wits, and to such a degree, that he could never after
recover his judgment, and might brag that he was become a fool by too much
wisdom. Some there are who through fear anticipate the hangman; and there
was the man, whose eyes being unbound to have his pardon read to him, was
found stark dead upon the scaffold, by the stroke of imagination. We
start, tremble, turn pale, and blush, as we are variously moved by
imagination; and, being a-bed, feel our bodies agitated with its power to
that degree, as even sometimes to expiring. And boiling youth, when fast
asleep, grows so warm with fancy, as in a dream to satisfy amorous
desires:—
"Ut, quasi transactis saepe omnibu rebu, profundant
Fluminis ingentes, fluctus, vestemque cruentent."
Although it be no new thing to see horns grown in a night on the forehead
of one that had none when he went to bed, notwithstanding, what befell
Cippus, King of Italy, is memorable; who having one day been a very
delighted spectator of a bullfight, and having all the night dreamed that
he had horns on his head, did, by the force of imagination, really cause
them to grow there. Passion gave to the son of Croesus the voice which
nature had denied him. And Antiochus fell into a fever, inflamed with the
beauty of Stratonice, too deeply imprinted in his soul. Pliny pretends to
have seen Lucius Cossitius, who from a woman was turned into a man upon
her very wedding-day. Pontanus and others report the like metamorphosis to
have happened in these latter days in Italy. And, through the vehement
desire of him and his mother:
"Volta puer solvit, quae foemina voverat, Iphis."
Myself passing by Vitry le Francois, saw a man the Bishop of Soissons had,
in confirmation, called Germain, whom all the inhabitants of the place had
known to be a girl till two-and-twenty years of age, called Mary. He was,
at the time of my being there, very full of beard, old, and not married.
He told us, that by straining himself in a leap his male organs came out;
and the girls of that place have, to this day, a song, wherein they advise
one another not to take too great strides, for fear of being turned into
men, as Mary Germain was. It is no wonder if this sort of accident
frequently happen; for if imagination have any power in such things, it is
so continually and vigorously bent upon this subject, that to the end it
may not so often relapse into the same thought and violence of desire, it
were better, once for all, to give these young wenches the things they
long for.
Some attribute the scars of King Dagobert and of St. Francis to the force
of imagination. It is said, that by it bodies will sometimes be removed
from their places; and Celsus tells us of a priest whose soul would be
ravished into such an ecstasy that the body would, for a long time, remain
without sense or respiration. St. Augustine makes mention of another, who,
upon the hearing of any lamentable or doleful cries, would presently fall
into a swoon, and be so far out of himself, that it was in vain to call,
bawl in his ears, pinch or burn him, till he voluntarily came to himself;
and then he would say, that he had heard voices as it were afar off, and
did feel when they pinched and burned him; and, to prove that this was no
obstinate dissimulation in defiance of his sense of feeling, it was
manifest, that all the while he had neither pulse nor breathing.
'Tis very probable, that visions, enchantments, and all extraordinary
effects of that nature, derive their credit principally from the power of
imagination, working and making its chiefest impression upon vulgar and
more easy souls, whose belief is so strangely imposed upon, as to think
they see what they do not see.
I am not satisfied whether those pleasant ligatures—[Les nouements
d'aiguillettes, as they were called, knots tied by some one, at a wedding,
on a strip of leather, cotton, or silk, and which, especially when passed
through the wedding-ring, were supposed to have the magical effect of
preventing a consummation of the marriage until they were untied. See
Louandre, La Sorcellerie, 1853, p. 73. The same superstition and appliance
existed in England.]—with which this age of ours is so occupied,
that there is almost no other talk, are not mere voluntary impressions of
apprehension and fear; for I know, by experience, in the case of a
particular friend of mine, one for whom I can be as responsible as for
myself, and a man that cannot possibly fall under any manner of suspicion
of insufficiency, and as little of being enchanted, who having heard a
companion of his make a relation of an unusual frigidity that surprised
him at a very unseasonable time; being afterwards himself engaged upon the
same account, the horror of the former story on a sudden so strangely
possessed his imagination, that he ran the same fortune the other had
done; and from that time forward, the scurvy remembrance of his disaster
running in his mind and tyrannising over him, he was subject to relapse
into the same misfortune. He found some remedy, however, for this fancy in
another fancy, by himself frankly confessing and declaring beforehand to
the party with whom he was to have to do, this subjection of his, by which
means, the agitation of his soul was, in some sort, appeased; and knowing
that, now, some such misbehaviour was expected from him, the restraint
upon his faculties grew less. And afterwards, at such times as he was in
no such apprehension, when setting about the act (his thoughts being then
disengaged and free, and his body in its true and natural estate) he was
at leisure to cause the part to be handled and communicated to the
knowledge of the other party, he was totally freed from that vexatious
infirmity. After a man has once done a woman right, he is never after in
danger of misbehaving himself with that person, unless upon the account of
some excusable weakness. Neither is this disaster to be feared, but in
adventures, where the soul is overextended with desire or respect, and,
especially, where the opportunity is of an unforeseen and pressing nature;
in those cases, there is no means for a man to defend himself from such a
surprise, as shall put him altogether out of sorts. I have known some, who
have secured themselves from this mischance, by coming half sated
elsewhere, purposely to abate the ardour of the fury, and others, who,
being grown old, find themselves less impotent by being less able; and
one, who found an advantage in being assured by a friend of his, that he
had a counter-charm of enchantments that would secure him from this
disgrace. The story itself is not, much amiss, and therefore you shall
have it.
A Count of a very great family, and with whom I was very intimate, being
married to a fair lady, who had formerly been courted by one who was at
the wedding, all his friends were in very great fear; but especially an
old lady his kinswoman, who had the ordering of the solemnity, and in
whose house it was kept, suspecting his rival would offer foul play by
these sorceries. Which fear she communicated to me. I bade her rely upon
me: I had, by chance, about me a certain flat plate of gold, whereon were
graven some celestial figures, supposed good against sunstroke or pains in
the head, being applied to the suture: where, that it might the better
remain firm, it was sewed to a ribbon to be tied under the chin; a foppery
cousin-german to this of which I am speaking. Jaques Pelletier, who lived
in my house, had presented this to me for a singular rarity. I had a fancy
to make some use of this knack, and therefore privately told the Count,
that he might possibly run the same fortune other bridegrooms had
sometimes done, especially some one being in the house, who, no doubt,
would be glad to do him such a courtesy: but let him boldly go to bed. For
I would do him the office of a friend, and, if need were, would not spare
a miracle it was in my power to do, provided he would engage to me, upon
his honour, to keep it to himself; and only, when they came to bring him
his caudle,—[A custom in France to bring the bridegroom a caudle in
the middle of the night on his wedding-night]— if matters had not
gone well with him, to give me such a sign, and leave the rest to me. Now
he had had his ears so battered, and his mind so prepossessed with the
eternal tattle of this business, that when he came to't, he did really
find himself tied with the trouble of his imagination, and, accordingly,
at the time appointed, gave me the sign. Whereupon, I whispered him in the
ear, that he should rise, under pretence of putting us out of the room,
and after a jesting manner pull my nightgown from my shoulders—we
were of much about the same height— throw it over his own, and there
keep it till he had performed what I had appointed him to do, which was,
that when we were all gone out of the chamber, he should withdraw to make
water, should three times repeat such and such words, and as often do such
and such actions; that at every of the three times, he should tie the
ribbon I put into his hand about his middle, and be sure to place the
medal that was fastened to it, the figures in such a posture, exactly upon
his reins, which being done, and having the last of the three times so
well girt and fast tied the ribbon that it could neither untie nor slip
from its place, let him confidently return to his business, and withal not
forget to spread my gown upon the bed, so that it might be sure to cover
them both. These ape's tricks are the main of the effect, our fancy being
so far seduced as to believe that such strange means must, of necessity,
proceed from some abstruse science: their very inanity gives them weight
and reverence. And, certain it is, that my figures approved themselves
more venereal than solar, more active than prohibitive. 'Twas a sudden
whimsey, mixed with a little curiosity, that made me do a thing so
contrary to my nature; for I am an enemy to all subtle and counterfeit
actions, and abominate all manner of trickery, though it be for sport, and
to an advantage; for though the action may not be vicious in itself, its
mode is vicious.
Amasis, King of Egypt, having married Laodice, a very beautiful Greek
virgin, though noted for his abilities elsewhere, found himself quite
another man with his wife, and could by no means enjoy her; at which he
was so enraged, that he threatened to kill her, suspecting her to be a
witch. As 'tis usual in things that consist in fancy, she put him upon
devotion, and having accordingly made his vows to Venus, he found himself
divinely restored the very first night after his oblations and sacrifices.
Now women are to blame to entertain us with that disdainful, coy, and
angry countenance, which extinguishes our vigour, as it kindles our
desire; which made the daughter-in-law of Pythagoras—[Theano, the
lady in question was the wife, not the daughter-in-law of Pythagoras.]—
say, "That the woman who goes to bed to a man, must put off her modesty
with her petticoat, and put it on again with the same." The soul of the
assailant, being disturbed with many several alarms, readily loses the
power of performance; and whoever the imagination has once put this trick
upon, and confounded with the shame of it (and she never does it but at
the first acquaintance, by reason men are then more ardent and eager, and
also, at this first account a man gives of himself, he is much more
timorous of miscarrying), having made an ill beginning, he enters into
such fever and despite at the accident, as are apt to remain and continue
with him upon following occasions.
Married people, having all their time before them, ought never to compel
or so much as to offer at the feat, if they do not find themselves quite
ready: and it is less unseemly to fail of handselling the nuptial sheets,
when a man perceives himself full of agitation and trembling, and to await
another opportunity at more private and more composed leisure, than to
make himself perpetually miserable, for having misbehaved himself and been
baffled at the first assault. Till possession be taken, a man that knows
himself subject to this infirmity, should leisurely and by degrees make
several little trials and light offers, without obstinately attempting at
once, to Force an absolute conquest over his own mutinous and indisposed
faculties. Such as know their members to be naturally obedient, need take
no other care but only to counterplot their fantasies.
The indocile liberty of this member is very remarkable, so importunately
unruly in its tumidity and impatience, when we do not require it, and so
unseasonably disobedient, when we stand most in need of it: so imperiously
contesting in authority with the will, and with so much haughty obstinacy
denying all solicitation, both of hand and mind. And yet, though his
rebellion is so universally complained of, and that proof is thence
deduced to condemn him, if he had, nevertheless, feed me to plead his
cause, I should peradventure, bring the rest of his fellow-members into
suspicion of complotting this mischief against him, out of pure envy at
the importance and pleasure especial to his employment; and to have, by
confederacy, armed the whole world against him, by malevolently charging
him alone, with their common offence. For let any one consider, whether
there is any one part of our bodies that does not often refuse to perform
its office at the precept of the will, and that does not often exercise
its function in defiance of her command. They have every one of them
passions of their own, that rouse and awaken, stupefy and benumb them,
without our leave or consent. How often do the involuntary motions of the
countenance discover our inward thoughts, and betray our most private
secrets to the bystanders. The same cause that animates this member, does
also, without our knowledge, animate the lungs, pulse, and heart, the
sight of a pleasing object imperceptibly diffusing a flame through all our
parts, with a feverish motion. Is there nothing but these veins and
muscles that swell and flag without the consent, not only of the will, but
even of our knowledge also? We do not command our hairs to stand on end,
nor our skin to shiver either with fear or desire; the hands often convey
themselves to parts to which we do not direct them; the tongue will be
interdict, and the voice congealed, when we know not how to help it. When
we have nothing to eat, and would willingly forbid it, the appetite does
not, for all that, forbear to stir up the parts that are subject to it, no
more nor less than the other appetite we were speaking of, and in like
manner, as unseasonably leaves us, when it thinks fit. The vessels that
serve to discharge the belly have their own proper dilatations and
compressions, without and beyond our concurrence, as well as those which
are destined to purge the reins; and that which, to justify the
prerogative of the will, St. Augustine urges, of having seen a man who
could command his rear to discharge as often together as he pleased,
Vives, his commentator, yet further fortifies with another example in his
time,—of one that could break wind in tune; but these cases do not
suppose any more pure obedience in that part; for is anything commonly
more tumultuary or indiscreet? To which let me add, that I myself knew one
so rude and ungoverned, as for forty years together made his master vent
with one continued and unintermitted outbursting, and 'tis like will do so
till he die of it. And I could heartily wish, that I only knew by reading,
how often a man's belly, by the denial of one single puff, brings him to
the very door of an exceeding painful death; and that the emperor,—[The
Emperor Claudius, who, however, according to Suetonius (Vita, c. 32), only
intended to authorise this singular privilege by an edict.]—who gave
liberty to let fly in all places, had, at the same time, given us power to
do it. But for our will, in whose behalf we prefer this accusation, with
how much greater probability may we reproach herself with mutiny and
sedition, for her irregularity and disobedience? Does she always will what
we would have her to do? Does she not often will what we forbid her to
will, and that to our manifest prejudice? Does she suffer herself, more
than any of the rest, to be governed and directed by the results of our
reason? To conclude, I should move, in the behalf of the gentleman, my
client, it might be considered, that in this fact, his cause being
inseparably and indistinctly conjoined with an accessory, yet he only is
called in question, and that by arguments and accusations, which cannot be
charged upon the other; whose business, indeed, it is sometimes
inopportunely to invite, but never to refuse, and invite, moreover, after
a tacit and quiet manner; and therefore is the malice and injustice of his
accusers most manifestly apparent. But be it how it will, protesting
against the proceedings of the advocates and judges, nature will, in the
meantime, proceed after her own way, who had done but well, had she
endowed this member with some particular privilege; the author of the sole
immortal work of mortals; a divine work, according to Socrates; and love,
the desire of immortality, and himself an immortal demon.
Some one, perhaps, by such an effect of imagination may have had the good
luck to leave behind him here, the scrofula, which his companion who has
come after, has carried with him into Spain. And 'tis for this reason you
may see why men in such cases require a mind prepared for the thing that
is to be done. Why do the physicians possess, before hand, their patients'
credulity with so many false promises of cure, if not to the end, that the
effect of imagination may supply the imposture of their decoctions? They
know very well, that a great master of their trade has given it under his
hand, that he has known some with whom the very sight of physic would
work. All which conceits come now into my head, by the remembrance of a
story was told me by a domestic apothecary of my father's, a blunt Swiss,
a nation not much addicted to vanity and lying, of a merchant he had long
known at Toulouse, who being a valetudinary, and much afflicted with the
stone, had often occasion to take clysters, of which he caused several
sorts to be prescribed him by the physicians, acccording to the accidents
of his disease; which, being brought him, and none of the usual forms, as
feeling if it were not too hot, and the like, being omitted, he lay down,
the syringe advanced, and all ceremonies performed, injection alone
excepted; after which, the apothecary being gone, and the patient
accommodated as if he had really received a clyster, he found the same
operation and effect that those do who have taken one indeed; and if at
any time the physician did not find the operation sufficient, he would
usually give him two or three more doses, after the same manner. And the
fellow swore, that to save charges (for he paid as if he had really taken
them) this sick man's wife, having sometimes made trial of warm water
only, the effect discovered the cheat, and finding these would do no good,
was fain to return to the old way.
A woman fancying she had swallowed a pin in a piece of bread, cried and
lamented as though she had an intolerable pain in her throat, where she
thought she felt it stick; but an ingenious fellow that was brought to
her, seeing no outward tumour nor alteration, supposing it to be only a
conceit taken at some crust of bread that had hurt her as it went down,
caused her to vomit, and, unseen, threw a crooked pin into the basin,
which the woman no sooner saw, but believing she had cast it up, she
presently found herself eased of her pain. I myself knew a gentleman, who
having treated a large company at his house, three or four days after
bragged in jest (for there was no such thing), that he had made them eat
of a baked cat; at which, a young gentlewoman, who had been at the feast,
took such a horror, that falling into a violent vomiting and fever, there
was no possible means to save her. Even brute beasts are subject to the
force of imagination as well as we; witness dogs, who die of grief for the
loss of their masters; and bark and tremble and start in their sleep; so
horses will kick and whinny in their sleep.
Now all this may be attributed to the close affinity and relation betwixt
the soul and the body intercommunicating their fortunes; but 'tis quite
another thing when the imagination works not only upon one's own
particular body, but upon that of others also. And as an infected body
communicates its malady to those that approach or live near it, as we see
in the plague, the smallpox, and sore eyes, that run through whole
families and cities:—
"Dum spectant oculi laesos, laeduntur et ipsi;
Multaque corporibus transitione nocent."
["When we look at people with sore eyes, our own eyes become sore.
Many things are hurtful to our bodies by transition."
—Ovid, De Rem. Amor., 615.]
—so the imagination, being vehemently agitated, darts out infection
capable of offending the foreign object. The ancients had an opinion of
certain women of Scythia, that being animated and enraged against any one,
they killed him only with their looks. Tortoises and ostriches hatch their
eggs with only looking on them, which infers that their eyes have in them
some ejaculative virtue. And the eyes of witches are said to be assailant
and hurtful:—
"Nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos."
["Some eye, I know not whose is bewitching my tender lambs."
—Virgil, Eclog., iii. 103.]
Magicians are no very good authority with me. But we experimentally see
that women impart the marks of their fancy to the children they carry in
the womb; witness her that was brought to bed of a Moor; and there was
presented to Charles the Emperor and King of Bohemia, a girl from about
Pisa, all over rough and covered with hair, whom her mother said to be so
conceived by reason of a picture of St. John the Baptist, that hung within
the curtains of her bed.
It is the same with beasts; witness Jacob's sheep, and the hares and
partridges that the snow turns white upon the mountains. There was at my
house, a little while ago, a cat seen watching a bird upon the top of a
tree: these, for some time, mutually fixing their eyes one upon another,
the bird at last let herself fall dead into the cat's claws, either
dazzled by the force of its own imagination, or drawn by some attractive
power of the cat. Such as are addicted to the pleasures of the field,
have, I make no question, heard the story of the falconer, who having
earnestly fixed his eyes upon a kite in the air; laid a wager that he
would bring her down with the sole power of his sight, and did so, as it
was said; for the tales I borrow I charge upon the consciences of those
from whom I have them. The discourses are my own, and found themselves
upon the proofs of reason, not of experience; to which every one has
liberty to add his own examples; and who has none, let him not forbear,
the number and varieties of accidents considered, to believe that there
are plenty of them; if I do not apply them well, let some other do it for
me. And, also, in the subject of which I treat, our manners and motions,
testimonies and instances; how fabulous soever, provided they are
possible, serve as well as the true; whether they have really happened or
no, at Rome or Paris, to John or Peter, 'tis still within the verge of
human capacity, which serves me to good use. I see, and make my advantage
of it, as well in shadow as in substance; and amongst the various readings
thereof in history, I cull out the most rare and memorable to fit my own
turn. There are authors whose only end and design it is to give an account
of things that have happened; mine, if I could arrive unto it, should be
to deliver of what may happen. There is a just liberty allowed in the
schools, of supposing similitudes, when they have none at hand. I do not,
however, make any use of that privilege, and as to that matter, in
superstitious religion, surpass all historical authority. In the examples
which I here bring in, of what I have heard, read, done, or said, I have
forbidden myself to dare to alter even the most light and indifferent
circumstances; my conscience does not falsify one tittle; what my
ignorance may do, I cannot say.
And this it is that makes me sometimes doubt in my own mind, whether a
divine, or a philosopher, and such men of exact and tender prudence and
conscience, are fit to write history: for how can they stake their
reputation upon a popular faith? how be responsible for the opinions of
men they do not know? and with what assurance deliver their conjectures
for current pay? Of actions performed before their own eyes, wherein
several persons were actors, they would be unwilling to give evidence upon
oath before a judge; and there is no man, so familiarly known to them, for
whose intentions they would become absolute caution. For my part, I think
it less hazardous to write of things past, than present, by how much the
writer is only to give an account of things every one knows he must of
necessity borrow upon trust.
I am solicited to write the affairs of my own time by some, who fancy I
look upon them with an eye less blinded with passion than another, and
have a clearer insight into them by reason of the free access fortune has
given me to the heads of various factions; but they do not consider, that
to purchase the glory of Sallust, I would not give myself the trouble,
sworn enemy as I am to obligation, assiduity, or perseverance: that there
is nothing so contrary to my style, as a continued narrative, I so often
interrupt and cut myself short in my writing for want of breath; I have
neither composition nor explanation worth anything, and am ignorant,
beyond a child, of the phrases and even the very words proper to express
the most common things; and for that reason it is, that I have undertaken
to say only what I can say, and have accommodated my subject to my
strength. Should I take one to be my guide, peradventure I should not be
able to keep pace with him; and in the freedom of my liberty might deliver
judgments, which upon better thoughts, and according to reason, would be
illegitimate and punishable. Plutarch would say of what he has delivered
to us, that it is the work of others: that his examples are all and
everywhere exactly true: that they are useful to posterity, and are
presented with a lustre that will light us the way to virtue, is his own
work. It is not of so dangerous consequence, as in a medicinal drug,
whether an old story be so or so.
CHAPTER XXI——THAT THE PROFIT OF ONE MAN IS THE DAMAGE OF
ANOTHER
Demades the Athenian—[Seneca, De Beneficiis, vi. 38, whence nearly
the whole of this chapter is taken.]—condemned one of his city,
whose trade it was to sell the necessaries for funeral ceremonies, upon
pretence that he demanded unreasonable profit, and that that profit could
not accrue to him, but by the death of a great number of people. A
judgment that appears to be ill grounded, forasmuch as no profit whatever
can possibly be made but at the expense of another, and that by the same
rule he should condemn all gain of what kind soever. The merchant only
thrives by the debauchery of youth, the husband man by the dearness of
grain, the architect by the ruin of buildings, lawyers and officers of
justice by the suits and contentions of men: nay, even the honour and
office of divines are derived from our death and vices. A physician takes
no pleasure in the health even of his friends, says the ancient Greek
comic writer, nor a soldier in the peace of his country, and so of the
rest. And, which is yet worse, let every one but dive into his own bosom,
and he will find his private wishes spring and his secret hopes grow up at
another's expense. Upon which consideration it comes into my head, that
nature does not in this swerve from her general polity; for physicians
hold, that the birth, nourishment, and increase of every thing is the
dissolution and corruption of another:
"Nam quodcumque suis mutatum finibus exit,
Continuo hoc mors est illius, quod fuit ante."
["For, whatever from its own confines passes changed, this is at
once the death of that which before it was."—Lucretius, ii. 752.]
CHAPTER XXII——OF CUSTOM, AND THAT WE SHOULD NOT EASILY CHANGE
A LAW RECEIVED
He seems to me to have had a right and true apprehension of the power of
custom, who first invented the story of a country-woman who, having
accustomed herself to play with and carry a young calf in her arms, and
daily continuing to do so as it grew up, obtained this by custom, that,
when grown to be a great ox, she was still able to bear it. For, in truth,
custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, by little and
little, slily and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority, but
having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time,
fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic
countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so
much as to lift up our eyes. We see her, at every turn, forcing and
violating the rules of nature:
"Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister."
["Custom is the best master of all things."
—Pliny, Nat. Hist.,xxvi. 2.]
I refer to her Plato's cave in his Republic, and the physicians, who so
often submit the reasons of their art to her authority; as the story of
that king, who by custom brought his stomach to that pass, as to live by
poison, and the maid that Albertus reports to have lived upon spiders. In
that new world of the Indies, there were found great nations, and in very
differing climates, who were of the same diet, made provision of them, and
fed them for their tables; as also, they did grasshoppers, mice, lizards,
and bats; and in a time of scarcity of such delicacies, a toad was sold
for six crowns, all which they cook, and dish up with several sauces.
There were also others found, to whom our diet, and the flesh we eat, were
venomous and mortal:
"Consuetudinis magna vis est: pernoctant venatores in nive:
in montibus uri se patiuntur: pugiles, caestibus contusi,
ne ingemiscunt quidem."
["The power of custom is very great: huntsmen will lie out all
night in the snow, or suffer themselves to be burned up by the sun
on the mountains; boxers, hurt by the caestus, never utter a
groan."—Cicero, Tusc., ii. 17]
These strange examples will not appear so strange if we consider what we
have ordinary experience of, how much custom stupefies our senses. We need
not go to what is reported of the people about the cataracts of the Nile;
and what philosophers believe of the music of the spheres, that the bodies
of those circles being solid and smooth, and coming to touch and rub upon
one another, cannot fail of creating a marvellous harmony, the changes and
cadences of which cause the revolutions and dances of the stars; but that
the hearing sense of all creatures here below, being universally, like
that of the Egyptians, deafened, and stupefied with the continual noise,
cannot, how great soever, perceive it—[This passage is taken from
Cicero, "Dream of Scipio"; see his De Republica, vi. II. The Egyptians
were said to be stunned by the noise of the Cataracts.]— Smiths,
millers, pewterers, forgemen, and armourers could never be able to live in
the perpetual noise of their own trades, did it strike their ears with the
same violence that it does ours.
My perfumed doublet gratifies my own scent at first; but after I have worn
it three days together, 'tis only pleasing to the bystanders. This is yet
more strange, that custom, notwithstanding long intermissions and
intervals, should yet have the power to unite and establish the effect of
its impressions upon our senses, as is manifest in such as live near unto
steeples and the frequent noise of the bells. I myself lie at home in a
tower, where every morning and evening a very great bell rings out the Ave
Maria: the noise shakes my very tower, and at first seemed insupportable
to me; but I am so used to it, that I hear it without any manner of
offence, and often without awaking at it.
Plato—[Diogenes Laertius, iii. 38. But he whom Plato censured was
not a boy playing at nuts, but a man throwing dice.]—reprehending a
boy for playing at nuts, "Thou reprovest me," says the boy, "for a very
little thing." "Custom," replied Plato, "is no little thing." I find that
our greatest vices derive their first propensity from our most tender
infancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse. Mothers
are mightily pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of a chicken, or
to please itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wise fathers there
are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of a martial spirit,
when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over a poor peasant, or
a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and a great sign of wit,
when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellow by some malicious
treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds and roots of cruelty,
tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, and afterwards shoot up
vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivated by custom. And it is a
very dangerous mistake to excuse these vile inclinations upon the
tenderness of their age, and the triviality of the subject: first, it is
nature that speaks, whose declaration is then more sincere, and inward
thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak and young; secondly, the
deformity of cozenage does not consist nor depend upon the difference
betwixt crowns and pins; but I rather hold it more just to conclude thus:
why should he not cozen in crowns since he does it in pins, than as they
do, who say they only play for pins, they would not do it if it were for
money? Children should carefully be instructed to abhor vices for their
own contexture; and the natural deformity of those vices ought so to be
represented to them, that they may not only avoid them in their actions,
but especially so to abominate them in their hearts, that the very thought
should be hateful to them, with what mask soever they may be disguised.
I know very well, for what concerns myself, that from having been brought
up in my childhood to a plain and straightforward way of dealing, and from
having had an aversion to all manner of juggling and foul play in my
childish sports and recreations (and, indeed, it is to be noted, that the
plays of children are not performed in play, but are to be judged in them
as their most serious actions), there is no game so small wherein from my
own bosom naturally, and without study or endeavour, I have not an extreme
aversion from deceit. I shuffle and cut and make as much clatter with the
cards, and keep as strict account for farthings, as it were for double
pistoles; when winning or losing against my wife and daughter, 'tis
indifferent to me, as when I play in good earnest with others, for round
sums. At all times, and in all places, my own eyes are sufficient to look
to my fingers; I am not so narrowly watched by any other, neither is there
any I have more respect to.
I saw the other day, at my own house, a little fellow, a native of Nantes,
born without arms, who has so well taught his feet to perform the services
his hands should have done him, that truly these have half forgotten their
natural office; and, indeed, the fellow calls them his hands; with them he
cuts anything, charges and discharges a pistol, threads a needle, sews,
writes, puts off his hat, combs his head, plays at cards and dice, and all
this with as much dexterity as any other could do who had more, and more
proper limbs to assist him. The money I gave him—for he gains his
living by shewing these feats—he took in his foot, as we do in our
hand. I have seen another who, being yet a boy, flourished a two-handed
sword, and, if I may so say, handled a halberd with the mere motions of
his neck and shoulders for want of hands; tossed them into the air, and
caught them again, darted a dagger, and cracked a whip as well as any
coachman in France.
But the effects of custom are much more manifest in the strange
impressions she imprints in our minds, where she meets with less
resistance. What has she not the power to impose upon our judgments and
beliefs? Is there any so fantastic opinion (omitting the gross impostures
of religions, with which we see so many great nations, and so many
understanding men, so strangely besotted; for this being beyond the reach
of human reason, any error is more excusable in such as are not endued,
through the divine bounty, with an extraordinary illumination from above),
but, of other opinions, are there any so extravagant, that she has not
planted and established for laws in those parts of the world upon which
she has been pleased to exercise her power? And therefore that ancient
exclamation was exceeding just:
"Non pudet physicum, id est speculatorem venatoremque naturae,
ab animis consuetudine imbutis petere testimonium veritatis?"
["Is it not a shame for a natural philosopher, that is, for an
observer and hunter of nature, to seek testimony of the truth from
minds prepossessed by custom?"—Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 30.]
I do believe, that no so absurd or ridiculous fancy can enter into human
imagination, that does not meet with some example of public practice, and
that, consequently, our reason does not ground and back up. There are
people, amongst whom it is the fashion to turn their backs upon him they
salute, and never look upon the man they intend to honour. There is a
place, where, whenever the king spits, the greatest ladies of his court
put out their hands to receive it; and another nation, where the most
eminent persons about him stoop to take up his ordure in a linen cloth.
Let us here steal room to insert a story.
A French gentleman was always wont to blow his nose with his fingers (a
thing very much against our fashion), and he justifying himself for so
doing, and he was a man famous for pleasant repartees, he asked me, what
privilege this filthy excrement had, that we must carry about us a fine
handkerchief to receive it, and, which was more, afterwards to lap it
carefully up, and carry it all day about in our pockets, which, he said,
could not but be much more nauseous and offensive, than to see it thrown
away, as we did all other evacuations. I found that what he said was not
altogether without reason, and by being frequently in his company, that
slovenly action of his was at last grown familiar to me; which
nevertheless we make a face at, when we hear it reported of another
country. Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of nature,
and not according to the essence of nature the continually being
accustomed to anything, blinds the eye of our judgment. Barbarians are no
more a wonder to us, than we are to them; nor with any more reason, as
every one would confess, if after having travelled over those remote
examples, men could settle themselves to reflect upon, and rightly to
confer them, with their own. Human reason is a tincture almost equally
infused into all our opinions and manners, of what form soever they are;
infinite in matter, infinite in diversity. But I return to my subject.
There are peoples, where, his wife and children excepted, no one speaks to
the king but through a tube. In one and the same nation, the virgins
discover those parts that modesty should persuade them to hide, and the
married women carefully cover and conceal them. To which, this custom, in
another place, has some relation, where chastity, but in marriage, is of
no esteem, for unmarried women may prostitute themselves to as many as
they please, and being got with child, may lawfully take physic, in the
sight of every one, to destroy their fruit. And, in another place, if a
tradesman marry, all of the same condition, who are invited to the
wedding, lie with the bride before him; and the greater number of them
there is, the greater is her honour, and the opinion of her ability and
strength: if an officer marry, 'tis the same, the same with a labourer, or
one of mean condition; but then it belongs to the lord of the place to
perform that office; and yet a severe loyalty during marriage is afterward
strictly enjoined. There are places where brothels of young men are kept
for the pleasure of women; where the wives go to war as well as the
husbands, and not only share in the dangers of battle, but, moreover, in
the honours of command. Others, where they wear rings not only through
their noses, lips, cheeks, and on their toes, but also weighty gimmals of
gold thrust through their paps and buttocks; where, in eating, they wipe
their fingers upon their thighs, genitories, and the soles of their feet:
where children are excluded, and brothers and nephews only inherit; and
elsewhere, nephews only, saving in the succession of the prince: where,
for the regulation of community in goods and estates, observed in the
country, certain sovereign magistrates have committed to them the
universal charge and overseeing of the agriculture, and distribution of
the fruits, according to the necessity of every one where they lament the
death of children, and feast at the decease of old men: where they lie ten
or twelve in a bed, men and their wives together: where women, whose
husbands come to violent ends, may marry again, and others not: where the
condition of women is looked upon with such contempt, that they kill all
the native females, and buy wives of their neighbours to supply their use;
where husbands may repudiate their wives, without showing any cause, but
wives cannot part from their husbands, for what cause soever; where
husbands may sell their wives in case of sterility; where they boil the
bodies of their dead, and afterward pound them to a pulp, which they mix
with their wine, and drink it; where the most coveted sepulture is to be
eaten by dogs, and elsewhere by birds; where they believe the souls of the
blessed live in all manner of liberty, in delightful fields, furnished
with all sorts of delicacies, and that it is these souls, repeating the
words we utter, which we call Echo; where they fight in the water, and
shoot their arrows with the most mortal aim, swimming; where, for a sign
of subjection, they lift up their shoulders, and hang down their heads;
where they put off their shoes when they enter the king's palace; where
the eunuchs, who take charge of the sacred women, have, moreover, their
lips and noses cut off, that they may not be loved; where the priests put
out their own eyes, to be better acquainted with their demons, and the
better to receive their oracles; where every one makes to himself a deity
of what he likes best; the hunter of a lion or a fox, the fisher of some
fish; idols of every human action or passion; in which place, the sun, the
moon, and the earth are the 'principal deities, and the form of taking an
oath is, to touch the earth, looking up to heaven; where both flesh and
fish is eaten raw; where the greatest oath they take is, to swear by the
name of some dead person of reputation, laying their hand upon his tomb;
where the newyear's gift the king sends every year to the princes, his
vassals, is fire, which being brought, all the old fire is put out, and
the neighbouring people are bound to fetch of the new, every one for
themselves, upon pain of high treason; where, when the king, to betake
himself wholly to devotion, retires from his administration (which often
falls out), his next successor is obliged to do the same, and the right of
the kingdom devolves to the third in succession: where they vary the form
of government, according to the seeming necessity of affairs: depose the
king when they think good, substituting certain elders to govern in his
stead, and sometimes transferring it into the hands of the commonality:
where men and women are both circumcised and also baptized: where the
soldier, who in one or several engagements, has been so fortunate as to
present seven of the enemies' heads to the king, is made noble: where they
live in that rare and unsociable opinion of the mortality of the soul:
where the women are delivered without pain or fear: where the women wear
copper leggings upon both legs, and if a louse bite them, are bound in
magnanimity to bite them again, and dare not marry, till first they have
made their king a tender of their virginity, if he please to accept it:
where the ordinary way of salutation is by putting a finger down to the
earth, and then pointing it up toward heaven: where men carry burdens upon
their heads, and women on their shoulders; where the women make water
standing, and the men squatting: where they send their blood in token of
friendship, and offer incense to the men they would honour, like gods:
where, not only to the fourth, but in any other remote degree, kindred are
not permitted to marry: where the children are four years at nurse, and
often twelve; in which place, also, it is accounted mortal to give the
child suck the first day after it is born: where the correction of the
male children is peculiarly designed to the fathers, and to the mothers of
the girls; the punishment being to hang them by the heels in the smoke:
where they circumcise the women: where they eat all sorts of herbs,
without other scruple than of the badness of the smell: where all things
are open the finest houses, furnished in the richest manner, without
doors, windows, trunks, or chests to lock, a thief being there punished
double what they are in other places: where they crack lice with their
teeth like monkeys, and abhor to see them killed with one's nails: where
in all their lives they neither cut their hair nor pare their nails; and,
in another place, pare those of the right hand only, letting the left grow
for ornament and bravery: where they suffer the hair on the right side to
grow as long as it will, and shave the other; and in the neighbouring
provinces, some let their hair grow long before, and some behind, shaving
close the rest: where parents let out their children, and husbands their
wives, to their guests to hire: where a man may get his own mother with
child, and fathers make use of their own daughters or sons, without
scandal: where, at their solemn feasts, they interchangeably lend their
children to one another, without any consideration of nearness of blood.
In one place, men feed upon human flesh; in another, 'tis reputed a pious
office for a man to kill his father at a certain age; elsewhere, the
fathers dispose of their children, whilst yet in their mothers' wombs,
some to be preserved and carefully brought up, and others to be abandoned
or made away. Elsewhere the old husbands lend their wives to young men;
and in another place they are in common without offence; in one place
particularly, the women take it for a mark of honour to have as many gay
fringed tassels at the bottom of their garment, as they have lain with
several men. Moreover, has not custom made a republic of women separately
by themselves? has it not put arms into their hands, and made them raise
armies and fight battles? And does she not, by her own precept, instruct
the most ignorant vulgar, and make them perfect in things which all the
philosophy in the world could never beat into the heads of the wisest men?
For we know entire nations, where death was not only despised, but
entertained with the greatest triumph; where children of seven years old
suffered themselves to be whipped to death, without changing countenance;
where riches were in such contempt, that the meanest citizen would not
have deigned to stoop to take up a purse of crowns. And we know regions,
very fruitful in all manner of provisions, where, notwithstanding, the
most ordinary diet, and that they are most pleased with, is only bread,
cresses, and water. Did not custom, moreover, work that miracle in Chios
that, in seven hundred years, it was never known that ever maid or wife
committed any act to the prejudice of her honour?
To conclude; there is nothing, in my opinion, that she does not, or may
not do; and therefore, with very good reason it is that Pindar calls her
the ruler of the world. He that was seen to beat his father, and reproved
for so doing, made answer, that it was the custom of their family; that,
in like manner, his father had beaten his grandfather, his grandfather his
great-grandfather, "And this," says he, pointing to his son, "when he
comes to my age, shall beat me." And the father, whom the son dragged and
hauled along the streets, commanded him to stop at a certain door, for he
himself, he said, had dragged his father no farther, that being the utmost
limit of the hereditary outrage the sons used to practise upon the fathers
in their family. It is as much by custom as infirmity, says Aristotle,
that women tear their hair, bite their nails, and eat coals and earth, and
more by custom than nature that men abuse themselves with one another.
The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature,
proceed from custom; every one, having an inward veneration for the
opinions and manners approved and received amongst his own people, cannot,
without very great reluctance, depart from them, nor apply himself to them
without applause. In times past, when those of Crete would curse any one,
they prayed the gods to engage him in some ill custom. But the principal
effect of its power is, so to seize and ensnare us, that it is hardly in
us to disengage ourselves from its gripe, or so to come to ourselves, as
to consider of and to weigh the things it enjoins. To say the truth, by
reason that we suck it in with our milk, and that the face of the world
presents itself in this posture to our first sight, it seems as if we were
born upon condition to follow on this track; and the common fancies that
we find in repute everywhere about us, and infused into our minds with the
seed of our fathers, appear to be the most universal and genuine; from
whence it comes to pass, that whatever is off the hinges of custom, is
believed to be also off the hinges of reason; how unreasonably for the
most part, God knows.
If, as we who study ourselves have learned to do, every one who hears a
good sentence, would immediately consider how it does in any way touch his
own private concern, every one would find, that it was not so much a good
saying, as a severe lash to the ordinary stupidity of his own judgment:
but men receive the precepts and admonitions of truth, as directed to the
common sort, and never to themselves; and instead of applying them to
their own manners, do only very ignorantly and unprofitably commit them to
memory. But let us return to the empire of custom.
Such people as have been bred up to liberty, and subject to no other
dominion but the authority of their own will, look upon all other form of
government as monstrous and contrary to nature. Those who are inured to
monarchy do the same; and what opportunity soever fortune presents them
with to change, even then, when with the greatest difficulties they have
disengaged themselves from one master, that was troublesome and grievous
to them, they presently run, with the same difficulties, to create
another; being unable to take into hatred subjection itself.
'Tis by the mediation of custom, that every one is content with the place
where he is planted by nature; and the Highlanders of Scotland no more
pant after Touraine; than the Scythians after Thessaly. Darius asking
certain Greeks what they would take to assume the custom of the Indians,
of eating the dead bodies of their fathers (for that was their use,
believing they could not give them a better nor more noble sepulture than
to bury them in their own bodies), they made answer, that nothing in the
world should hire them to do it; but having also tried to persuade the
Indians to leave their custom, and, after the Greek manner, to burn the
bodies of their fathers, they conceived a still greater horror at the
motion.—[Herodotus, iii. 38.]—Every one does the same, for use
veils from us the true aspect of things.
"Nil adeo magnum, nec tam mirabile quidquam
Principio, quod non minuant mirarier omnes Paullatim."
["There is nothing at first so grand, so admirable, which by degrees
people do not regard with less admiration."—Lucretius, ii. 1027]
Taking upon me once to justify something in use amongst us, and that was
received with absolute authority for a great many leagues round about us,
and not content, as men commonly do, to establish it only by force of law
and example, but inquiring still further into its origin, I found the
foundation so weak, that I who made it my business to confirm others, was
very near being dissatisfied myself. 'Tis by this receipt that Plato
—[Laws, viii. 6.]—undertakes to cure the unnatural and
preposterous loves of his time, as one which he esteems of sovereign
virtue, namely, that the public opinion condemns them; that the poets, and
all other sorts of writers, relate horrible stories of them; a recipe, by
virtue of which the most beautiful daughters no more allure their fathers'
lust; nor brothers, of the finest shape and fashion, their sisters'
desire; the very fables of Thyestes, OEdipus, and Macareus, having with
the harmony of their song, infused this wholesome opinion and belief into
the tender brains of children. Chastity is, in truth, a great and shining
virtue, and of which the utility is sufficiently known; but to treat of
it, and to set it off in its true value, according to nature, is as hard
as 'tis easy to do so according to custom, laws, and precepts. The
fundamental and universal reasons are of very obscure and difficult
research, and our masters either lightly pass them over, or not daring so
much as to touch them, precipitate themselves into the liberty and
protection of custom, there puffing themselves out and triumphing to their
heart's content: such as will not suffer themselves to be withdrawn from
this original source, do yet commit a greater error, and subject
themselves to wild opinions; witness Chrysippus,—[Sextus Empiricus,
Pyyrhon. Hypotyp., i. 14.]—who, in so many of his writings, has
strewed the little account he made of incestuous conjunctions, committed
with how near relations soever.
Whoever would disengage himself from this violent prejudice of custom,
would find several things received with absolute and undoubting opinion,
that have no other support than the hoary head and rivelled face of
ancient usage. But the mask taken off, and things being referred to the
decision of truth and reason, he will find his judgment as it were
altogether overthrown, and yet restored to a much more sure estate. For
example, I shall ask him, what can be more strange than to see a people
obliged to obey laws they never understood; bound in all their domestic
affairs, as marriages, donations, wills, sales, and purchases, to rules
they cannot possibly know, being neither written nor published in their
own language, and of which they are of necessity to purchase both the
interpretation and the use? Not according to the ingenious opinion of
Isocrates,—[Discourse to Nicocles.]—who counselled his king to
make the traffics and negotiations of his subjects, free, frank, and of
profit to them, and their quarrels and disputes burdensome, and laden with
heavy impositions and penalties; but, by a prodigious opinion, to make
sale of reason itself, and to give to laws a course of merchandise. I
think myself obliged to fortune that, as our historians report, it was a
Gascon gentleman, a countryman of mine, who first opposed Charlemagne,
when he attempted to impose upon us Latin and imperial laws.
What can be more savage, than to see a nation where, by lawful custom, the
office of a judge is bought and sold, where judgments are paid for with
ready money, and where justice may legitimately be denied to him that has
not wherewithal to pay; a merchandise in so great repute, as in a
government to create a fourth estate of wrangling lawyers, to add to the
three ancient ones of the church, nobility, and people; which fourth
estate, having the laws in their own hands, and sovereign power over men's
lives and fortunes, makes another body separate from nobility: whence it
comes to pass, that there are double laws, those of honour and those of
justice, in many things altogether opposite one to another; the nobles as
rigorously condemning a lie taken, as the other do a lie revenged: by the
law of arms, he shall be degraded from all nobility and honour who puts up
with an affront; and by the civil law, he who vindicates his reputation by
revenge incurs a capital punishment: he who applies himself to the law for
reparation of an offence done to his honour, disgraces himself; and he who
does not, is censured and punished by the law. Yet of these two so
different things, both of them referring to one head, the one has the
charge of peace, the other of war; those have the profit, these the
honour; those the wisdom, these the virtue; those the word, these the
action; those justice, these valour; those reason, these force; those the
long robe, these the short;—divided betwixt them.
For what concerns indifferent things, as clothes, who is there seeking to
bring them back to their true use, which is the body's service and
convenience, and upon which their original grace and fitness depend; for
the most fantastic, in my opinion, that can be imagined, I will instance
amongst others, our flat caps, that long tail of velvet that hangs down
from our women's heads, with its party-coloured trappings; and that vain
and futile model of a member we cannot in modesty so much as name, which,
nevertheless, we make show and parade of in public. These considerations,
notwithstanding, will not prevail upon any understanding man to decline
the common mode; but, on the contrary, methinks, all singular and
particular fashions are rather marks of folly and vain affectation than of
sound reason, and that a wise man, within, ought to withdraw and retire
his soul from the crowd, and there keep it at liberty and in power to
judge freely of things; but as to externals, absolutely to follow and
conform himself to the fashion of the time. Public society has nothing to
do with our thoughts, but the rest, as our actions, our labours, our
fortunes, and our lives, we are to lend and abandon them to its service
and to the common opinion, as did that good and great Socrates who refused
to preserve his life by a disobedience to the magistrate, though a very
wicked and unjust one for it is the rule of rules, the general law of
laws, that every one observe those of the place wherein he lives.
["It is good to obey the laws of one's country."
—Excerpta ex Trag. Gyaecis, Grotio interp., 1626, p. 937.]
And now to another point. It is a very great doubt, whether any so
manifest benefit can accrue from the alteration of a law received, let it
be what it will, as there is danger and inconvenience in altering it;
forasmuch as government is a structure composed of divers parts and
members joined and united together, with so strict connection, that it is
impossible to stir so much as one brick or stone, but the whole body will
be sensible of it. The legislator of the Thurians—[Charondas; Diod.
Sic., xii. 24.]—ordained, that whosoever would go about either to
abolish an old law, or to establish a new, should present himself with a
halter about his neck to the people, to the end, that if the innovation he
would introduce should not be approved by every one, he might immediately
be hanged; and he of the Lacedaemonians employed his life to obtain from
his citizens a faithful promise that none of his laws should be violated.—[Lycurgus;
Plutarch, in Vita, c. 22.]—The Ephoros who so rudely cut the two
strings that Phrynis had added to music never stood to examine whether
that addition made better harmony, or that by its means the instrument was
more full and complete; it was enough for him to condemn the invention,
that it was a novelty, and an alteration of the old fashion. Which also is
the meaning of the old rusty sword carried before the magistracy of
Marseilles.
For my own part, I have a great aversion from a novelty, what face or what
pretence soever it may carry along with it, and have reason, having been
an eyewitness of the great evils it has produced. For those which for so
many years have lain so heavy upon us, it is not wholly accountable; but
one may say, with colour enough, that it has accidentally produced and
begotten the mischiefs and ruin that have since happened, both without and
against it; it, principally, we are to accuse for these disorders:
"Heu! patior telis vulnera facta meis."
["Alas! The wounds were made by my own weapons."
—Ovid, Ep. Phyll. Demophoonti, vers. 48.]
They who give the first shock to a state, are almost naturally the first
overwhelmed in its ruin the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed
by him who was the first motor; he beats and disturbs the water for
another's net. The unity and contexture of this monarchy, of this grand
edifice, having been ripped and torn in her old age, by this thing called
innovation, has since laid open a rent, and given sufficient admittance to
such injuries: the royal majesty with greater difficulty declines from the
summit to the middle, then it falls and tumbles headlong from the middle
to the bottom. But if the inventors do the greater mischief, the imitators
are more vicious to follow examples of which they have felt and punished
both the horror and the offence. And if there can be any degree of honour
in ill-doing, these last must yield to the others the glory of contriving,
and the courage of making the first attempt. All sorts of new disorders
easily draw, from this primitive and ever-flowing fountain, examples and
precedents to trouble and discompose our government: we read in our very
laws, made for the remedy of this first evil, the beginning and pretences
of all sorts of wicked enterprises; and that befalls us, which Thucydides
said of the civil wars of his time, that, in favour of public vices, they
gave them new and more plausible names for their excuse, sweetening and
disguising their true titles; which must be done, forsooth, to reform our
conscience and belief:
"Honesta oratio est;"
["Fine words truly."—Ter. And., i. I, 114.]
but the best pretence for innovation is of very dangerous consequence:
"Aden nihil motum ex antiquo probabile est."
["We are ever wrong in changing ancient ways."—Livy, xxxiv. 54]
And freely to speak my thoughts, it argues a strange self-love and great
presumption to be so fond of one's own opinions, that a public peace must
be overthrown to establish them, and to introduce so many inevitable
mischiefs, and so dreadful a corruption of manners, as a civil war and the
mutations of state consequent to it, always bring in their train, and to
introduce them, in a thing of so high concern, into the bowels of one's
own country. Can there be worse husbandry than to set up so many certain
and knowing vices against errors that are only contested and disputable?
And are there any worse sorts of vices than those committed against a
man's own conscience, and the natural light of his own reason? The Senate,
upon the dispute betwixt it and the people about the administration of
their religion, was bold enough to return this evasion for current pay:
"Ad deos id magis, quam ad se, pertinere: ipsos visuros,
ne sacra sua polluantur;"
["Those things belong to the gods to determine than to them; let the
gods, therefore, take care that their sacred mysteries were not
profaned."—Livy, x. 6.]
according to what the oracle answered to those of Delphos who, fearing to
be invaded by the Persians in the Median war, inquired of Apollo, how they
should dispose of the holy treasure of his temple; whether they should
hide, or remove it to some other place? He returned them answer, that they
should stir nothing from thence, and only take care of themselves, for he
was sufficient to look to what belonged to him. —[Herodotus, viii.
36.].—
The Christian religion has all the marks of the utmost utility and
justice: but none more manifest than the severe injunction it lays
indifferently upon all to yield absolute obedience to the civil
magistrate, and to maintain and defend the laws. Of which, what a
wonderful example has the divine wisdom left us, that, to establish the
salvation of mankind, and to conduct His glorious victory over death and
sin, would do it after no other way, but at the mercy of our ordinary
forms of justice subjecting the progress and issue of so high and so
salutiferous an effect, to the blindness and injustice of our customs and
observances; sacrificing the innocent blood of so many of His elect, and
so long a loss of so many years, to the maturing of this inestimable
fruit? There is a vast difference betwixt the case of one who follows the
forms and laws of his country, and of another who will undertake to
regulate and change them; of whom the first pleads simplicity, obedience,
and example for his excuse, who, whatever he shall do, it cannot be
imputed to malice; 'tis at the worst but misfortune:
"Quis est enim, quem non moveat clarissimis monumentis
testata consignataque antiquitas?"
["For who is there that antiquity, attested and confirmed by the
fairest monuments, cannot move?"—Cicero, De Divin., i. 40.]
besides what Isocrates says, that defect is nearer allied to moderation
than excess: the other is a much more ruffling gamester; for whosoever
shall take upon him to choose and alter, usurps the authority of judging,
and should look well about him, and make it his business to discern
clearly the defect of what he would abolish, and the virtue of what he is
about to introduce.
This so vulgar consideration is that which settled me in my station, and
kept even my most extravagant and ungoverned youth under the rein, so as
not to burden my shoulders with so great a weight, as to render myself
responsible for a science of that importance, and in this to dare, what in
my better and more mature judgment, I durst not do in the most easy and
indifferent things I had been instructed in, and wherein the temerity of
judging is of no consequence at all; it seeming to me very unjust to go
about to subject public and established customs and institutions, to the
weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy (for private
reason has but a private jurisdiction), and to attempt that upon the
divine, which no government will endure a man should do, upon the civil
laws; with which, though human reason has much more commerce than with the
other, yet are they sovereignly judged by their own proper judges, and the
extreme sufficiency serves only to expound and set forth the law and
custom received, and neither to wrest it, nor to introduce anything, of
innovation. If, sometimes, the divine providence has gone beyond the rules
to which it has necessarily bound and obliged us men, it is not to give us
any dispensation to do the same; those are masterstrokes of the divine
hand, which we are not to imitate, but to admire, and extraordinary
examples, marks of express and particular purposes, of the nature of
miracles, presented before us for manifestations of its almightiness,
equally above both our rules and force, which it would be folly and
impiety to attempt to represent and imitate; and that we ought not to
follow, but to contemplate with the greatest reverence: acts of His
personage, and not for us. Cotta very opportunely declares:
"Quum de religione agitur, Ti. Coruncanium, P. Scipionem,
P. Scaevolam, pontifices maximos, non Zenonem, aut Cleanthem,
aut Chrysippum, sequor."
["When matter of religion is in question, I follow the high priests
T. Coruncanius, P. Scipio, P. Scaevola, and not Zeno, Cleanthes, or
Chrysippus."—Cicero, De Natura Deor., iii. 2.]
God knows, in the present quarrel of our civil war, where there are a
hundred articles to dash out and to put in, great and very considerable,
how many there are who can truly boast, they have exactly and perfectly
weighed and understood the grounds and reasons of the one and the other
party; 'tis a number, if they make any number, that would be able to give
us very little disturbance. But what becomes of all the rest, under what
ensigns do they march, in what quarter do they lie? Theirs have the same
effect with other weak and ill-applied medicines; they have only set the
humours they would purge more violently in work, stirred and exasperated
by the conflict, and left them still behind. The potion was too weak to
purge, but strong enough to weaken us; so that it does not work, but we
keep it still in our bodies, and reap nothing from the operation but
intestine gripes and dolours.
So it is, nevertheless, that Fortune still reserving her authority in
defiance of whatever we are able to do or say, sometimes presents us with
a necessity so urgent, that 'tis requisite the laws should a little yield
and give way; and when one opposes the increase of an innovation that thus
intrudes itself by violence, to keep a man's self in so doing, in all
places and in all things within bounds and rules against those who have
the power, and to whom all things are lawful that may in any way serve to
advance their design, who have no other law nor rule but what serves best
to their own purpose, 'tis a dangerous obligation and an intolerable
inequality:
"Aditum nocendi perfido praestat fides,"
["Putting faith in a treacherous person, opens the door to
harm."—Seneca, OEdip., act iii., verse 686.]
forasmuch as the ordinary discipline of a healthful state does not provide
against these extraordinary accidents; it presupposes a body that supports
itself in its principal members and offices, and a common consent to its
obedience and observation. A legitimate proceeding is cold, heavy, and
constrained, and not fit to make head against a headstrong and unbridled
proceeding. 'Tis known to be to this day cast in the dish of those two
great men, Octavius and Cato, in the two civil wars of Sylla and Caesar,
that they would rather suffer their country to undergo the last
extremities, than relieve their fellow-citizens at the expense of its
laws, or be guilty of any innovation; for in truth, in these last
necessities, where there is no other remedy, it would, peradventure, be
more discreetly done, to stoop and yield a little to receive the blow,
than, by opposing without possibility of doing good, to give occasion to
violence to trample all under foot; and better to make the laws do what
they can, when they cannot do what they would. After this manner did he—[Agesilaus.]—who
suspended them for four-and-twenty hours, and he who, for once shifted a
day in the calendar, and that other—[Alexander the Great.]—who
of the month of June made a second of May. The Lacedaemonians themselves,
who were so religious observers of the laws of their country, being
straitened by one of their own edicts, by which it was expressly forbidden
to choose the same man twice to be admiral; and on the other side, their
affairs necessarily requiring, that Lysander should again take upon him
that command, they made one Aratus admiral; 'tis true, but withal,
Lysander went general of the navy; and, by the same subtlety, one of their
ambassadors being sent to the Athenians to obtain the revocation of some
decree, and Pericles remonstrating to him, that it was forbidden to take
away the tablet wherein a law had once been engrossed, he advised him to
turn it only, that being not forbidden; and Plutarch commends Philopoemen,
that being born to command, he knew how to do it, not only according to
the laws, but also to overrule even the laws themselves, when the public
necessity so required.
CHAPTER XXIII——VARIOUS EVENTS FROM THE SAME COUNSEL
Jacques Amiot, grand almoner of France, one day related to me this story,
much to the honour of a prince of ours (and ours he was upon several very
good accounts, though originally of foreign extraction),—[The Duc de
Guise, surnamed Le Balafre.]—that in the time of our first
commotions, at the siege of Rouen,—[In 1562]—this prince,
having been advertised by the queen-mother of a conspiracy against his
life, and in her letters particular notice being given him of the person
who was to execute the business (who was a gentleman of Anjou or of Maine,
and who to this effect ordinarily frequented this prince's house),
discovered not a syllable of this intelligence to any one whatever; but
going the next day to the St. Catherine's Mount,—[An eminence
outside Rouen overlooking the Seine. D.W.]—from which our battery
played against the town (for it was during the time of the siege), and
having in company with him the said lord almoner, and another bishop, he
saw this gentleman, who had been denoted to him, and presently sent for
him; to whom, being come before him, seeing him already pale and trembling
with the conscience of his guilt, he thus said, "Monsieur," such an one,
"you guess what I have to say to you; your countenance discovers it; 'tis
in vain to disguise your practice, for I am so well informed of your
business, that it will but make worse for you, to go about to conceal or
deny it: you know very well such and such passages" (which were the most
secret circumstances of his conspiracy), "and therefore be sure, as you
tender your own life, to confess to me the whole truth of the design." The
poor man seeing himself thus trapped and convicted (for the whole business
had been discovered to the queen by one of the accomplices), was in such a
taking, he knew not what to do; but, folding his hands, to beg and sue for
mercy, he threw himself at his prince's feet, who taking him up, proceeded
to say, "Come, sir; tell me, have I at any time done you offence? or have
I, through private hatred or malice, offended any kinsman or friend of
yours? It is not above three weeks that I have known you; what inducement,
then, could move you to attempt my death?" To which the gentleman with a
trembling voice replied, "That it was no particular grudge he had to his
person, but the general interest and concern of his party, and that he had
been put upon it by some who had persuaded him it would be a meritorious
act, by any means, to extirpate so great and so powerful an enemy of their
religion." "Well," said the prince, "I will now let you see, how much more
charitable the religion is that I maintain, than that which you profess:
yours has counselled you to kill me, without hearing me speak, and without
ever having given you any cause of offence; and mine commands me to
forgive you, convict as you are, by your own confession, of a design to
kill me without reason.—[Imitated by Voltaire. See Nodier,
Questions, p. 165.]—Get you gone; let me see you no more; and, if
you are wise, choose henceforward honester men for your counsellors in
your designs."—[Dampmartin, La Fortune de la Coup, liv. ii., p. 139]
The Emperor Augustus,—[This story is taken from Seneca, De
Clementia, i. 9.]—being in Gaul, had certain information of a
conspiracy L. Cinna was contriving against him; he therefore resolved to
make him an example; and, to that end, sent to summon his friends to meet
the next morning in counsel. But the night between he passed in great
unquietness of mind, considering that he was about to put to death a young
man, of an illustrious family, and nephew to the great Pompey, and this
made him break out into several passionate complainings. "What then," said
he, "is it possible that I am to live in perpetual anxiety and alarm, and
suffer my would-be assassin, meantime, to walk abroad at liberty? Shall he
go unpunished, after having conspired against my life, a life that I have
hitherto defended in so many civil wars, in so many battles by land and by
sea? And after having settled the universal peace of the whole world,
shall this man be pardoned, who has conspired not only to murder, but to
sacrifice me?"—for the conspiracy was to kill him at sacrifice.
After which, remaining for some time silent, he began again, in louder
tones, and exclaimed against himself, saying: "Why livest thou, if it be
for the good of so many that thou shouldst die? must there be no end of
thy revenges and cruelties? Is thy life of so great value, that so many
mischiefs must be done to preserve it?" His wife Livia, seeing him in this
perplexity: "Will you take a woman's counsel?" said she. "Do as the
physicians do, who, when the ordinary recipes will do no good, make trial
of the contrary. By severity you have hitherto prevailed nothing; Lepidus
has followed Salvidienus; Murena, Lepidus; Caepio, Murena; Egnatius,
Caepio. Begin now, and try how sweetness and clemency will succeed. Cinna
is convict; forgive him, he will never henceforth have the heart to hurt
thee, and it will be an act to thy glory." Augustus was well pleased that
he had met with an advocate of his own humour; wherefore, having thanked
his wife, and, in the morning, countermanded his friends he had before
summoned to council, he commanded Cinna all alone to be brought to him;
who being accordingly come, and a chair by his appointment set him, having
ordered all the rest out of the room, he spake to him after this manner:
"In the first place, Cinna, I demand of thee patient audience; do not
interrupt me in what I am about to say, and I will afterwards give thee
time and leisure to answer. Thou knowest, Cinna,—[This passage,
borrowed from Seneca, has been paraphrased in verse by Corneille. See
Nodier, Questions de la Literature llgale, 1828, pp. 7, 160. The monologue
of Augustus in this chapter is also from Seneca. Ibid., 164.]—that
having taken thee prisoner in the enemy's camp, and thou an enemy, not
only so become, but born so, I gave thee thy life, restored to thee all
thy goods, and, finally, put thee in so good a posture, by my bounty, of
living well and at thy ease, that the victorious envied the conquered. The
sacerdotal office which thou madest suit to me for, I conferred upon thee,
after having denied it to others, whose fathers have ever borne arms in my
service. After so many obligations, thou hast undertaken to kill me." At
which Cinna crying out that he was very far from entertaining any so
wicked a thought: "Thou dost not keep thy promise, Cinna," continued
Augustus, "that thou wouldst not interrupt me. Yes, thou hast undertaken
to murder me in such a place, on such a day, in such and such company, and
in such a manner." At which words, seeing Cinna astounded and silent, not
upon the account of his promise so to be, but interdict with the weight of
his conscience: "Why," proceeded Augustus, "to what end wouldst thou do
it? Is it to be emperor? Believe me, the Republic is in very ill
condition, if I am the only man betwixt thee and the empire. Thou art not
able so much as to defend thy own house, and but t'other day was baffled
in a suit, by the opposed interest of a mere manumitted slave. What, hast
thou neither means nor power in any other thing, but only to undertake
Caesar? I quit the throne, if there be no other than I to obstruct thy
hopes. Canst thou believe that Paulus, that Fabius, that the Cossii and
the Servilii, and so many noble Romans, not only so in title, but who by
their virtue honour their nobility, would suffer or endure thee?" After
this, and a great deal more that he said to him (for he was two long hours
in speaking), "Now go, Cinna, go thy way: I give thee that life as traitor
and parricide, which I before gave thee in the quality of an enemy. Let
friendship from this time forward begin betwixt us, and let us show
whether I have given, or thou hast received thy life with the better
faith"; and so departed from him. Some time after, he preferred him to the
consular dignity, complaining that he had not the confidence to demand it;
had him ever after for his very great friend, and was, at last, made by
him sole heir to all his estate. Now, from the time of this accident which
befell Augustus in the fortieth year of his age, he never had any
conspiracy or attempt against him, and so reaped the due reward of this
his so generous clemency. But it did not so happen with our prince, his
moderation and mercy not so securing him, but that he afterwards fell into
the toils of the like treason,—[The Duc de Guise was assassinated in
1563 by Poltrot.]—so vain and futile a thing is human prudence;
throughout all our projects, counsels and precautions, Fortune will still
be mistress of events.
We repute physicians fortunate when they hit upon a lucky cure, as if
there was no other art but theirs that could not stand upon its own legs,
and whose foundations are too weak to support itself upon its own basis;
as if no other art stood in need of Fortune's hand to help it. For my
part, I think of physic as much good or ill as any one would have me: for,
thanks be to God, we have no traffic together. I am of a quite contrary
humour to other men, for I always despise it; but when I am sick, instead
of recanting, or entering into composition with it, I begin, moreover, to
hate and fear it, telling them who importune me to take physic, that at
all events they must give me time to recover my strength and health, that
I may be the better able to support and encounter the violence and danger
of their potions. I let nature work, supposing her to be sufficiently
armed with teeth and claws to defend herself from the assaults of
infirmity, and to uphold that contexture, the dissolution of which she
flies and abhors. I am afraid, lest, instead of assisting her when close
grappled and struggling with disease, I should assist her adversary, and
burden her still more with work to do.
Now, I say, that not in physic only, but in other more certain arts,
fortune has a very great part.
The poetic raptures, the flights of fancy, that ravish and transport the
author out of himself, why should we not attribute them to his good
fortune, since he himself confesses that they exceed his sufficiency and
force, and acknowledges them to proceed from something else than himself,
and that he has them no more in his power than the orators say they have
those extraordinary motions and agitations that sometimes push them beyond
their design. It is the same in painting, where touches shall sometimes
slip from the hand of the painter, so surpassing both his conception and
his art, as to beget his own admiration and astonishment. But Fortune does
yet more evidently manifest the share she has in all things of this kind,
by the graces and elegances we find in them, not only beyond the
intention, but even without the knowledge of the workman: a competent
reader often discovers in other men's writings other perfections than the
author himself either intended or perceived, a richer sense and more
quaint expression.
As to military enterprises, every one sees how great a hand Fortune has in
them. Even in our counsels and deliberations there must, certainly, be
something of chance and good-luck mixed with human prudence; for all that
our wisdom can do alone is no great matter; the more piercing, quick, and
apprehensive it is, the weaker it finds itself, and is by so much more apt
to mistrust itself. I am of Sylla's opinion;—["Who freed his great
deeds from envy by ever attributing them to his good fortune, and finally
by surnaming himself Faustus, the Lucky."—Plutarch, How far a Man
may praise Himself, c. 9.]—and when I closely examine the most
glorious exploits of war, I perceive, methinks, that those who carry them
on make use of counsel and debate only for custom's sake, and leave the
best part of the enterprise to Fortune, and relying upon her aid,
transgress, at every turn, the bounds of military conduct and the rules of
war. There happen, sometimes, fortuitous alacrities and strange furies in
their deliberations, that for the most part prompt them to follow the
worst grounded counsels, and swell their courage beyond the limits of
reason. Whence it happened that several of the great captains of old, to
justify those rash resolutions, have been fain to tell their soldiers that
they were invited to such attempts by some inspiration, some sign and
prognostic.
Wherefore, in this doubt and uncertainty, that the shortsightedness of
human wisdom to see and choose the best (by reason of the difficulties
that the various accidents and circumstances of things bring along with
them) perplexes us withal, the surest way, in my opinion, did no other
consideration invite us to it, is to pitch upon that wherein is the
greatest appearance of honesty and justice; and not, being certain of the
shortest, to keep the straightest and most direct way; as in the two
examples I have just given, there is no question but it was more noble and
generous in him who had received the offence, to pardon it, than to do
otherwise. If the former—[The Duc de Guise.]—miscarried in it,
he is not, nevertheless, to be blamed for his good intention; neither does
any one know if he had proceeded otherwise, whether by that means he had
avoided the end his destiny had appointed for him; and he had, moreover,
lost the glory of so humane an act.
You will read in history, of many who have been in such apprehension, that
the most part have taken the course to meet and anticipate conspiracies
against them by punishment and revenge; but I find very few who have
reaped any advantage by this proceeding; witness so many Roman emperors.
Whoever finds himself in this danger, ought not to expect much either from
his vigilance or power; for how hard a thing is it for a man to secure
himself from an enemy, who lies concealed under the countenance of the
most assiduous friend we have, and to discover and know the wills and
inward thoughts of those who are in our personal service. 'Tis to much
purpose to have a guard of foreigners about one, and to be always fenced
about with a pale of armed men; whosoever despises his own life, is always
master of that of another man.—[Seneca, Ep., 4.]—And moreover,
this continual suspicion, that makes a prince jealous of all the world,
must of necessity be a strange torment to him. Therefore it was, that
Dion, being advertised that Callippus watched all opportunities to take
away his life, had never the heart to inquire more particularly into it,
saying, that he had rather die than live in that misery, that he must
continually stand upon his guard, not only against his enemies, but his
friends also;—[Plutarch, Apothegms.]—which Alexander much more
vividly and more roundly manifested in effect, when, having notice by a
letter from Parmenio, that Philip, his most beloved physician, was by
Darius' money corrupted to poison him, at the same time he gave the letter
to Philip to read, drank off the potion he had brought him. Was not this
to express a resolution, that if his friends had a mind to despatch him
out of the world, he was willing to give them opportunity to do it? This
prince is, indeed, the sovereign pattern of hazardous actions; but I do
not know whether there be another passage in his life wherein there is so
much firm courage as in this, nor so illustrious an image of the beauty
and greatness of his mind.
Those who preach to princes so circumspect and vigilant a jealousy and
distrust, under colour of security, preach to them ruin and dishonour:
nothing noble can be performed without danger. I know a person, naturally
of a very great daring and enterprising courage, whose good fortune is
continually marred by such persuasions, that he keep himself close
surrounded by his friends, that he must not hearken to any reconciliation
with his ancient enemies, that he must stand aloof, and not trust his
person in hands stronger than his own, what promises or offers soever they
may make him, or what advantages soever he may see before him. And I know
another, who has unexpectedly advanced his fortunes by following a clear
contrary advice.
Courage, the reputation and glory of which men seek with so greedy an
appetite, presents itself, when need requires, as magnificently in cuerpo,
as in full armour; in a closet, as in a camp; with arms pendant, as with
arms raised.
This over-circumspect and wary prudence is a mortal enemy to all high and
generous exploits. Scipio, to sound Syphax's intention, leaving his army,
abandoning Spain, not yet secure nor well settled in his new conquest,
could pass over into Africa in two small ships, to commit himself, in an
enemy's country, to the power of a barbarian king, to a faith untried and
unknown, without obligation, without hostage, under the sole security of
the grandeur of his own courage, his good fortune, and the promise of his
high hopes.—[ Livy, xxviii. 17.]
"Habita fides ipsam plerumque fidem obligat."
["Trust often obliges fidelity."—Livy, xxii. 22.]
In a life of ambition and glory, it is necessary to hold a stiff rein upon
suspicion: fear and distrust invite and draw on offence. The most
mistrustful of our kings—[ Louis XI.]—established his affairs
principally by voluntarily committing his life and liberty into his
enemies' hands, by that action manifesting that he had absolute confidence
in them, to the end they might repose as great an assurance in him. Caesar
only opposed the authority of his countenance and the haughty sharpness of
his rebukes to his mutinous legions in arms against him:
"Stetit aggere fulti
Cespitis, intrepidus vultu: meruitque timeri,
Nil metuens."
["He stood on a mound, his countenance intrepid, and merited to be
feared, he fearing nothing."—Lucan, v. 316.]
But it is true, withal, that this undaunted assurance is not to be
represented in its simple and entire form, but by such whom the
apprehension of death, and the worst that can happen, does not terrify and
affright; for to represent a pretended resolution with a pale and doubtful
countenance and trembling limbs, for the service of an important
reconciliation, will effect nothing to purpose. 'Tis an excellent way to
gain the heart and will of another, to submit and intrust one's self to
him, provided it appear to be freely done, and without the constraint of
necessity, and in such a condition, that a man manifestly does it out of a
pure and entire confidence in the party, at least, with a countenance
clear from any cloud of suspicion. I saw, when I was a boy, a gentleman,
who was governor of a great city, upon occasion of a popular commotion and
fury, not knowing what other course to take, go out of a place of very
great strength and security, and commit himself to the mercy of the
seditious rabble, in hopes by that means to appease the tumult before it
grew to a more formidable head; but it was ill for him that he did so, for
he was there miserably slain. But I am not, nevertheless, of opinion, that
he committed so great an error in going out, as men commonly reproach his
memory withal, as he did in choosing a gentle and submissive way for the
effecting his purpose, and in endeavouring to quiet this storm, rather by
obeying than commanding, and by entreaty rather than remonstrance; and I
am inclined to believe, that a gracious severity, with a soldierlike way
of commanding, full of security and confidence, suitable to the quality of
his person, and the dignity of his command, would have succeeded better
with him; at least, he had perished with greater decency and, reputation.
There is nothing so little to be expected or hoped for from this
many-headed monster, in its fury, as humanity and good nature; it is much
more capable of reverence and fear. I should also reproach him, that
having taken a resolution (in my judgment rather brave than rash) to
expose himself, weak and naked, in this tempestuous sea of enraged madmen,
he ought to have stuck to his text, and not for an instant to have
abandoned the high part he had undertaken; whereas, coming to discover his
danger nearer hand, and his nose happening to bleed, he again changed that
demiss and fawning countenance he had at first put on, into another of
fear and amazement, filling his voice with entreaties and his eyes with
tears, and, endeavouring so to withdraw and secure his person, that
carriage more inflamed their fury, and soon brought the effects of it upon
him.
It was upon a time intended that there should be a general muster of
several troops in arms (and that is the most proper occasion of secret
revenges, and there is no place where they can be executed with greater
safety), and there were public and manifest appearances, that there was no
safe coming for some, whose principal and necessary office it was to
review them. Whereupon a consultation was held, and several counsels were
proposed, as in a case that was very nice and of great difficulty; and
moreover of grave consequence. Mine, amongst the rest, was, that they
should by all means avoid giving any sign of suspicion, but that the
officers who were most in danger should boldly go, and with cheerful and
erect countenances ride boldly and confidently through the ranks, and that
instead of sparing fire (which the counsels of the major part tended to)
they should entreat the captains to command the soldiers to give round and
full volleys in honour of the spectators, and not to spare their powder.
This was accordingly done, and served so good use, as to please and
gratify the suspected troops, and thenceforward to beget a mutual and
wholesome confidence and intelligence amongst them.
I look upon Julius Caesar's way of winning men to him as the best and
finest that can be put in practice. First, he tried by clemency to make
himself beloved even by his very enemies, contenting himself, in detected
conspiracies, only publicly to declare, that he was pre-acquainted with
them; which being done, he took a noble resolution to await without
solicitude or fear, whatever might be the event, wholly resigning himself
to the protection of the gods and fortune: for, questionless, in this
state he was at the time when he was killed.
A stranger having publicly said, that he could teach Dionysius, the tyrant
of Syracuse, an infallible way to find out and discover all the
conspiracies his subjects could contrive against him, if he would give him
a good sum of money for his pains, Dionysius hearing of it, caused the man
to be brought to him, that he might learn an art so necessary to his
preservation. The man made answer, that all the art he knew, was, that he
should give him a talent, and afterwards boast that he had obtained a
singular secret from him. Dionysius liked the invention, and accordingly
caused six hundred crowns to be counted out to him. —[Plutarch,
Apothegms.]—It was not likely he should give so great a sum to a
person unknown, but upon the account of some extraordinary discovery, and
the belief of this served to keep his enemies in awe. Princes, however, do
wisely to publish the informations they receive of all the practices
against their lives, to possess men with an opinion they have so good
intelligence that nothing can be plotted against them, but they have
present notice of it. The Duke of Athens did a great many foolish things
in the establishment of his new tyranny over Florence: but this especially
was most notable, that having received the first intimation of the
conspiracies the people were hatching against him, from Matteo di Morozzo,
one of the conspirators, he presently put him to death, to suppress that
rumour, that it might not be thought any of the city disliked his
government.
I remember I have formerly read a story—[In Appian's Civil Wars,
book iv..]—of some Roman of great quality who, flying the tyranny of
the Triumvirate, had a thousand times by the subtlety of as many
inventions escaped from falling into the hands of those that pursued him.
It happened one day that a troop of horse, which was sent out to take him,
passed close by a brake where he was squat, and missed very narrowly of
spying him: but he considering, at this point, the pains and difficulties
wherein he had so long continued to evade the strict and incessant
searches that were every day made for him, the little pleasure he could
hope for in such a kind of life, and how much better it was for him to die
once for all, than to be perpetually at this pass, he started from his
seat, called them back, showed them his form,—[as of a squatting
hare.]—and voluntarily delivered himself up to their cruelty, by
that means to free both himself and them from further trouble. To invite a
man's enemies to come and cut his throat, seems a resolution a little
extravagant and odd; and yet I think he did better to take that course,
than to live in continual feverish fear of an accident for which there was
no cure. But seeing all the remedies a man can apply to such a disease,
are full of unquietness and uncertainty, 'tis better with a manly courage
to prepare one's self for the worst that can happen, and to extract some
consolation from this, that we are not certain the thing we fear will ever
come to pass.
CHAPTER XXIV——OF PEDANTRY
I was often, when a boy, wonderfully concerned to see, in the Italian
farces, a pedant always brought in for the fool of the play, and that the
title of Magister was in no greater reverence amongst us: for being
delivered up to their tuition, what could I do less than be jealous of
their honour and reputation? I sought indeed to excuse them by the natural
incompatibility betwixt the vulgar sort and men of a finer thread, both in
judgment and knowledge, forasmuch as they go a quite contrary way to one
another: but in this, the thing I most stumbled at was, that the finest
gentlemen were those who most despised them; witness our famous poet Du
Bellay—
"Mais je hay par sur tout un scavoir pedantesque."
["Of all things I hate pedantic learning."—Du Bellay]
And 'twas so in former times; for Plutarch says that Greek and Scholar
were terms of reproach and contempt amongst the Romans. But since, with
the better experience of age, I find they had very great reason so to do,
and that—
"Magis magnos clericos non sunt magis magnos sapientes."
["The greatest clerks are not the wisest men." A proverb given in
Rabelais' Gargantua, i. 39.]
But whence it should come to pass, that a mind enriched with the knowledge
of so many things should not become more quick and sprightly, and that a
gross and vulgar understanding should lodge within it, without correcting
and improving itself, all the discourses and judgments of the greatest
minds the world ever had, I am yet to seek. To admit so many foreign
conceptions, so great, and so high fancies, it is necessary (as a young
lady, one of the greatest princesses of the kingdom, said to me once,
speaking of a certain person) that a man's own brain must be crowded and
squeezed together into a less compass, to make room for the others; I
should be apt to conclude, that as plants are suffocated and drowned with
too much nourishment, and lamps with too much oil, so with too much study
and matter is the active part of the understanding which, being
embarrassed, and confounded with a great diversity of things, loses the
force and power to disengage itself, and by the pressure of this weight,
is bowed, subjected, and doubled up. But it is quite otherwise; for our
soul stretches and dilates itself proportionably as it fills; and in the
examples of elder times, we see, quite contrary, men very proper for
public business, great captains, and great statesmen very learned withal.
And, as to the philosophers, a sort of men remote from all public affairs,
they have been sometimes also despised by the comic liberty of their
times; their opinions and manners making them appear, to men of another
sort, ridiculous. Would you make them judges of a lawsuit, of the actions
of men? they are ready to take it upon them, and straight begin to examine
if there be life, if there be motion, if man be any other than an ox;—["If
Montaigne has copied all this from Plato's Theatetes, p.127, F. as it is
plain by all which he has added immediately after, that he has taken it
from that dialogue, he has grossly mistaken Plato's sentiment, who says
here no more than this, that the philosopher is so ignorant of what his
neighbour does, that he scarce knows whether he is a man, or some other
animal:—Coste."]—what it is to do and to suffer? what animals
law and justice are? Do they speak of the magistrates, or to him, 'tis
with a rude, irreverent, and indecent liberty. Do they hear their prince,
or a king commended? they make no more of him, than of a shepherd,
goatherd, or neatherd: a lazy Coridon, occupied in milking and shearing
his herds and flocks, but more rudely and harshly than the herd or
shepherd himself. Do you repute any man the greater for being lord of two
thousand acres of land? they laugh at such a pitiful pittance, as laying
claim themselves to the whole world for their possession. Do you boast of
your nobility, as being descended from seven rich successive ancestors?
they look upon you with an eye of contempt, as men who have not a right
idea of the universal image of nature, and that do not consider how many
predecessors every one of us has had, rich, poor, kings, slaves, Greeks,
and barbarians; and though you were the fiftieth descendant from Hercules,
they look upon it as a great vanity, so highly to value this, which is
only a gift of fortune. And 'twas so the vulgar sort contemned them, as
men ignorant of the most elementary and ordinary things; as presumptuous
and insolent.
But this Platonic picture is far different from that these pedants are
presented by. Those were envied for raising themselves above the common
sort, for despising the ordinary actions and offices of life, for having
assumed a particular and inimitable way of living, and for using a certain
method of high-flight and obsolete language, quite different from the
ordinary way of speaking: but these are contemned as being as much below
the usual form, as incapable of public employment, as leading a life and
conforming themselves to the mean and vile manners of the vulgar:
"Odi ignava opera, philosopha sententia."
["I hate men who jabber about philosophy, but do nothing."
—Pacuvius, ap Gellium, xiii. 8.]
For what concerns the philosophers, as I have said, if they were in
science, they were yet much greater in action. And, as it is said of the
geometrician of Syracuse,—[Archimedes.]—who having been
disturbed from his contemplation, to put some of his skill in practice for
the defence of his country, that he suddenly set on foot dreadful and
prodigious engines, that wrought effects beyond all human expectation;
himself, notwithstanding, disdaining all his handiwork, and thinking in
this he had played the mere mechanic, and violated the dignity of his art,
of which these performances of his he accounted but trivial experiments
and playthings so they, whenever they have been put upon the proof of
action, have been seen to fly to so high a pitch, as made it very well
appear, their souls were marvellously elevated, and enriched by the
knowledge of things. But some of them, seeing the reins of government in
the hands of incapable men, have avoided all management of political
affairs; and he who demanded of Crates, how long it was necessary to
philosophise, received this answer: "Till our armies are no more commanded
by fools." —[Diogenes Laertius, vi. 92.]—Heraclitus resigned
the royalty to his brother; and, to the Ephesians, who reproached him that
he spent his time in playing with children before the temple: "Is it not
better," said he, "to do so, than to sit at the helm of affairs in your
company?" Others having their imagination advanced above the world and
fortune, have looked upon the tribunals of justice, and even the thrones
of kings, as paltry and contemptible; insomuch, that Empedocles refused
the royalty that the Agrigentines offered to him. Thales, once inveighing
in discourse against the pains and care men put themselves to to become
rich, was answered by one in the company, that he did like the fox, who
found fault with what he could not obtain. Whereupon, he had a mind, for
the jest's sake, to show them to the contrary; and having, for this
occasion, made a muster of all his wits, wholly to employ them in the
service of profit and gain, he set a traffic on foot, which in one year
brought him in so great riches, that the most experienced in that trade
could hardly in their whole lives, with all their industry, have raked so
much together.—[Diogenes Laertius, Life of Thales, i. 26; Cicero, De
Divin., i. 49.]—That which Aristotle reports of some who called both
him and Anaxagoras, and others of their profession, wise but not prudent,
in not applying their study to more profitable things—though I do
not well digest this verbal distinction—that will not, however,
serve to excuse my pedants, for to see the low and necessitous fortune
wherewith they are content, we have rather reason to pronounce that they
are neither wise nor prudent.
But letting this first reason alone, I think it better to say, that this
evil proceeds from their applying themselves the wrong way to the study of
the sciences; and that, after the manner we are instructed, it is no
wonder if neither the scholars nor the masters become, though more
learned, ever the wiser, or more able. In plain truth, the cares and
expense our parents are at in our education, point at nothing, but to
furnish our heads with knowledge; but not a word of judgment and virtue.
Cry out, of one that passes by, to the people: "O, what a learned man!"
and of another, "O, what a good man!"—[Translated from Seneca, Ep.,
88.]—they will not fail to turn their eyes, and address their
respect to the former. There should then be a third crier, "O, the
blockheads!" Men are apt presently to inquire, does such a one understand
Greek or Latin? Is he a poet? or does he write in prose? But whether he be
grown better or more discreet, which are qualities of principal concern,
these are never thought of. We should rather examine, who is better
learned, than who is more learned.
We only labour to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the
understanding unfurnished and void. Like birds who fly abroad to forage
for grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves,
to feed their young; so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there,
out of books, and hold it at the tongue's end, only to spit it out and
distribute it abroad. And here I cannot but smile to think how I have paid
myself in showing the foppery of this kind of learning, who myself am so
manifest an example; for, do I not the same thing throughout almost this
whole composition? I go here and there, culling out of several books the
sentences that best please me, not to keep them (for I have no memory to
retain them in), but to transplant them into this; where, to say the
truth, they are no more mine than in their first places. We are, I
conceive, knowing only in present knowledge, and not at all in what is
past, or more than is that which is to come. But the worst on't is, their
scholars and pupils are no better nourished by this kind of inspiration;
and it makes no deeper impression upon them, but passes from hand to hand,
only to make a show to be tolerable company, and to tell pretty stories,
like a counterfeit coin in counters, of no other use or value, but to
reckon with, or to set up at cards:
"Apud alios loqui didicerunt non ipsi secum."
["They have learned to speak from others, not from themselves."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes, v. 36.]
"Non est loquendum, sed gubernandum."
["Speaking is not so necessary as governing."—Seneca, Ep., 108.]
Nature, to shew that there is nothing barbarous where she has the sole
conduct, oftentimes, in nations where art has the least to do, causes
productions of wit, such as may rival the greatest effect of art whatever.
In relation to what I am now speaking of, the Gascon proverb, derived from
a cornpipe, is very quaint and subtle:
"Bouha prou bouha, mas a remuda lous dits quem."
["You may blow till your eyes start out; but if once you offer to
stir your fingers, it is all over."]
We can say, Cicero says thus; these were the manners of Plato; these are
the very words of Aristotle: but what do we say ourselves? What do we
judge? A parrot would say as much as that.
And this puts me in mind of that rich gentleman of Rome,—[Calvisius
Sabinus. Seneca, Ep., 27.]—who had been solicitous, with very great
expense, to procure men that were excellent in all sorts of science, whom
he had always attending his person, to the end, that when amongst his
friends any occasion fell out of speaking of any subject whatsoever, they
might supply his place, and be ready to prompt him, one with a sentence of
Seneca, another with a verse of Homer, and so forth, every one according
to his talent; and he fancied this knowledge to be his own, because it was
in the heads of those who lived upon his bounty; as they also do, whose
learning consists in having noble libraries. I know one, who, when I
question him what he knows, he presently calls for a book to shew me, and
dares not venture to tell me so much, as that he has piles in his
posteriors, till first he has consulted his dictionary, what piles and
what posteriors are.
We take other men's knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idle
and superficial learning. We must make it our own. We are in this very
like him, who having need of fire, went to a neighbour's house to fetch
it, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself without
remembering to carry any with him home.—[Plutarch, How a Man should
Listen.]—What good does it do us to have the stomach full of meat,
if it do not digest, if it be not incorporated with us, if it does not
nourish and support us? Can we imagine that Lucullus, whom letters,
without any manner of experience, made so great a captain, learned to be
so after this perfunctory manner?—[Cicero, Acad., ii. I.]—We
suffer ourselves to lean and rely so strongly upon the arm of another,
that we destroy our own strength and vigour. Would I fortify myself
against the fear of death, it must be at the expense of Seneca: would I
extract consolation for myself or my friend, I borrow it from Cicero. I
might have found it in myself, had I been trained to make use of my own
reason. I do not like this relative and mendicant understanding; for
though we could become learned by other men's learning, a man can never be
wise but by his own wisdom:
["I hate the wise man, who in his own concern is not wise."
—Euripides, ap. Cicero, Ep. Fam., xiii. 15.]
Whence Ennius:
"Nequidquam sapere sapientem, qui ipse sibi prodesse non quiret."
["That wise man knows nothing, who cannot profit himself by his
wisdom."—Cicero, De Offic., iii. 15.]
"Si cupidus, si
Vanus, et Euganea quantumvis mollior agna."
["If he be grasping, or a boaster, and something softer than an
Euganean lamb."—Juvenal, Sat., viii. 14.]
"Non enim paranda nobis solum, sed fruenda sapientia est."
["For wisdom is not only to be acquired, but to be utilised."
—Cicero, De Finib., i. I.]
Dionysius—[It was not Dionysius, but Diogenes the cynic. Diogenes
Laertius, vi. 27.]—laughed at the grammarians, who set themselves to
inquire into the miseries of Ulysses, and were ignorant of their own; at
musicians, who were so exact in tuning their instruments, and never tuned
their manners; at orators, who made it a study to declare what is justice,
but never took care to do it. If the mind be not better disposed, if the
judgment be no better settled, I had much rather my scholar had spent his
time at tennis, for, at least, his body would by that means be in better
exercise and breath. Do but observe him when he comes back from school,
after fifteen or sixteen years that he has been there; there is nothing so
unfit for employment; all you shall find he has got, is, that his Latin
and Greek have only made him a greater coxcomb than when he went from
home. He should bring back his soul replete with good literature, and he
brings it only swelled and puffed up with vain and empty shreds and
patches of learning; and has really nothing more in him than he had
before.—[Plato's Dialogues: Protagoras.]
These pedants of ours, as Plato says of the Sophists, their
cousin-germans, are, of all men, they who most pretend to be useful to
mankind, and who alone, of all men, not only do not better and improve
that which is committed to them, as a carpenter or a mason would do, but
make them much worse, and make us pay them for making them worse, to boot.
If the rule which Protagoras proposed to his pupils were followed —either
that they should give him his own demand, or make affidavit upon oath in
the temple how much they valued the profit they had received under his
tuition, and satisfy him accordingly—my pedagogues would find
themselves sorely gravelled, if they were to be judged by the affidavits
of my experience. My Perigordin patois very pleasantly calls these
pretenders to learning, 'lettre-ferits', as a man should say,
letter-marked—men on whom letters have been stamped by the blow of a
mallet. And, in truth, for the most part, they appear to be deprived even
of common sense; for you see the husbandman and the cobbler go simply and
fairly about their business, speaking only of what they know and
understand; whereas these fellows, to make parade and to get opinion,
mustering this ridiculous knowledge of theirs, that floats on the
superficies of the brain, are perpetually perplexing, and entangling
themselves in their own nonsense. They speak fine words sometimes, 'tis
true, but let somebody that is wiser apply them. They are wonderfully well
acquainted with Galen, but not at all with the disease of the patient;
they have already deafened you with a long ribble-row of laws, but
understand nothing of the case in hand; they have the theory of all
things, let who will put it in practice.
I have sat by, when a friend of mine, in my own house, for sport-sake, has
with one of these fellows counterfeited a jargon of Galimatias, patched up
of phrases without head or tail, saving that he interlarded here and there
some terms that had relation to their dispute, and held the coxcomb in
play a whole afternoon together, who all the while thought he had answered
pertinently and learnedly to all his objections; and yet this was a man of
letters, and reputation, and a fine gentleman of the long robe:
"Vos, O patricius sanguis, quos vivere par est
Occipiti caeco, posticae occurrite sannae."
["O you, of patrician blood, to whom it is permitted to live
with(out) eyes in the back of your head, beware of grimaces at you
from behind."—Persius, Sat., i. 61.]
Whosoever shall narrowly pry into and thoroughly sift this sort of people,
wherewith the world is so pestered, will, as I have done, find, that for
the most part, they neither understand others, nor themselves; and that
their memories are full enough, but the judgment totally void and empty;
some excepted, whose own nature has of itself formed them into better
fashion. As I have observed, for example, in Adrian Turnebus, who having
never made other profession than that of mere learning only, and in that,
in my opinion, he was the greatest man that has been these thousand years,
had nothing at all in him of the pedant, but the wearing of his gown, and
a little exterior fashion, that could not be civilised to courtier ways,
which in themselves are nothing. I hate our people, who can worse endure
an ill-contrived robe than an ill-contrived mind, and take their measure
by the leg a man makes, by his behaviour, and so much as the very fashion
of his boots, what kind of man he is. For within there was not a more
polished soul upon earth. I have often purposely put him upon arguments
quite wide of his profession, wherein I found he had so clear an insight,
so quick an apprehension, so solid a judgment, that a man would have
thought he had never practised any other thing but arms, and been all his
life employed in affairs of State. These are great and vigorous natures,
"Queis arte benigna
Et meliore luto finxit praecordia Titan."
["Whom benign Titan (Prometheus) has framed of better clay."
—Juvenal, xiv. 34.]
that can keep themselves upright in despite of a pedantic education. But
it is not enough that our education does not spoil us; it must, moreover,
alter us for the better.
Some of our Parliaments, when they are to admit officers, examine only
their learning; to which some of the others also add the trial of
understanding, by asking their judgment of some case in law; of these the
latter, methinks, proceed with the better method; for although both are
necessary, and that it is very requisite they should be defective in
neither, yet, in truth, knowledge is not so absolutely necessary as
judgment; the last may make shift without the other, but the other never
without this. For as the Greek verse says—
["To what use serves learning, if understanding be away."
—Apud Stobaeus, tit. iii., p. 37 (1609).]
Would to God that, for the good of our judicature, these societies were as
well furnished with understanding and conscience as they are with
knowledge.
"Non vita, sed scolae discimus."
["We do not study for life, but only for the school."
—Seneca, Ep., 106.]
We are not to tie learning to the soul, but to work and incorporate them
together: not to tincture it only, but to give it a thorough and perfect
dye; which, if it will not take colour, and meliorate its imperfect state,
it were without question better to let it alone. 'Tis a dangerous weapon,
that will hinder and wound its master, if put into an awkward and
unskilful hand:
"Ut fuerit melius non didicisse."
["So that it were better not to have learned."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 4.]
And this, peradventure, is the reason why neither we nor theology require
much learning in women; and that Francis, Duke of Brittany, son of John
V., one talking with him about his marriage with Isabella the daughter of
Scotland, and adding that she was homely bred, and without any manner of
learning, made answer, that he liked her the better, and that a woman was
wise enough, if she could distinguish her husband's shirt from his
doublet. So that it is no so great wonder, as they make of it, that our
ancestors had letters in no greater esteem, and that even to this day they
are but rarely met with in the principal councils of princes; and if the
end and design of acquiring riches, which is the only thing we propose to
ourselves, by the means of law, physic, pedantry, and even divinity
itself, did not uphold and keep them in credit, you would, with doubt, see
them in as pitiful a condition as ever. And what loss would this be, if
they neither instruct us to think well nor to do well?
"Postquam docti prodierunt, boni desunt."
[Seneca, Ep., 95. "Since the 'savans' have made their appearance
among us, the good people have become eclipsed."
—Rousseau, Discours sur les Lettres.]
All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of goodness.
But the reason I glanced upon but now, may it not also hence proceed,
that, our studies in France having almost no other aim but profit, except
as to those who, by nature born to offices and employments rather of glory
than gain, addict themselves to letters, if at all, only for so short a
time (being taken from their studies before they can come to have any
taste of them, to a profession that has nothing to do with books), there
ordinarily remain no others to apply themselves wholly to learning, but
people of mean condition, who in that only seek the means to live; and by
such people, whose souls are, both by nature and by domestic education and
example, of the basest alloy the fruits of knowledge are immaturely
gathered and ill digested, and delivered to their recipients quite another
thing. For it is not for knowledge to enlighten a soul that is dark of
itself, nor to make a blind man see. Her business is not to find a man's
eyes, but to guide, govern, and direct them, provided he have sound feet
and straight legs to go upon. Knowledge is an excellent drug, but no drug
has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the
vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep. Such a one may
have a sight clear enough who looks asquint, and consequently sees what is
good, but does not follow it, and sees knowledge, but makes no use of it.
Plato's principal institution in his Republic is to fit his citizens with
employments suitable to their nature. Nature can do all, and does all.
Cripples are very unfit for exercises of the body, and lame souls for
exercises of the mind. Degenerate and vulgar souls are unworthy of
philosophy. If we see a shoemaker with his shoes out at the toes, we say,
'tis no wonder; for, commonly, none go worse shod than they. In like
manner, experience often presents us a physician worse physicked, a divine
less reformed, and (constantly) a scholar of less sufficiency, than other
people.
Old Aristo of Chios had reason to say that philosophers did their auditors
harm, forasmuch as most of the souls of those that heard them were not
capable of deriving benefit from instruction, which, if not applied to
good, would certainly be applied to ill:
["They proceeded effeminate debauchees from the school of
Aristippus, cynics from that of Zeno."
—Cicero, De Natura Deor., iii., 31.]
In that excellent institution that Xenophon attributes to the Persians, we
find that they taught their children virtue, as other nations do letters.
Plato tells us that the eldest son in their royal succession was thus
brought up; after his birth he was delivered, not to women, but to eunuchs
of the greatest authority about their kings for their virtue, whose charge
it was to keep his body healthful and in good plight; and after he came to
seven years of age, to teach him to ride and to go a-hunting. When he
arrived at fourteen he was transferred into the hands of four, the wisest,
the most just, the most temperate, and most valiant of the nation; of whom
the first was to instruct him in religion, the second to be always upright
and sincere, the third to conquer his appetites and desires, and the
fourth to despise all danger.
It is a thing worthy of very great consideration, that in that excellent,
and, in truth, for its perfection, prodigious form of civil regimen set
down by Lycurgus, though so solicitous of the education of children, as a
thing of the greatest concern, and even in the very seat of the Muses, he
should make so little mention of learning; as if that generous youth,
disdaining all other subjection but that of virtue, ought to be supplied,
instead of tutors to read to them arts and sciences, with such masters as
should only instruct them in valour, prudence, and justice; an example
that Plato has followed in his laws. The manner of their discipline was to
propound to them questions in judgment upon men and their actions; and if
they commended or condemned this or that person or fact, they were to give
a reason for so doing; by which means they at once sharpened their
understanding, and learned what was right. Astyages, in Xenophon, asks
Cyrus to give an account of his last lesson; and thus it was, "A great boy
in our school, having a little short cassock, by force took a longer from
another that was not so tall as he, and gave him his own in exchange:
whereupon I, being appointed judge of the controversy, gave judgment, that
I thought it best each should keep the coat he had, for that they both of
them were better fitted with that of one another than with their own: upon
which my master told me, I had done ill, in that I had only considered the
fitness of the garments, whereas I ought to have considered the justice of
the thing, which required that no one should have anything forcibly taken
from him that is his own." And Cyrus adds that he was whipped for his
pains, as we are in our villages for forgetting the first aorist of———.
[Cotton's version of this story commences differently, and includes
a passage which is not in any of the editions of the original before
me:
"Mandane, in Xenophon, asking Cyrus how he would do to learn
justice, and the other virtues amongst the Medes, having left all
his masters behind him in Persia? He made answer, that he had
learned those things long since; that his master had often made him
a judge of the differences amongst his schoolfellows, and had one
day whipped him for giving a wrong sentence."—W.C.H.]
My pedant must make me a very learned oration, 'in genere demonstrativo',
before he can persuade me that his school is like unto that. They knew how
to go the readiest way to work; and seeing that science, when most rightly
applied and best understood, can do no more but teach us prudence, moral
honesty, and resolution, they thought fit, at first hand, to initiate
their children with the knowledge of effects, and to instruct them, not by
hearsay and rote, but by the experiment of action, in lively forming and
moulding them; not only by words and precepts, but chiefly by works and
examples; to the end it might not be a knowledge in the mind only, but its
complexion and habit: not an acquisition, but a natural possession. One
asking to this purpose, Agesilaus, what he thought most proper for boys to
learn? "What they ought to do when they come to be men," said he.—[Plutarch,
Apothegms of the Lacedamonians. Rousseau adopts the expression in his
Diswuys sur tes Lettres.]—It is no wonder, if such an institution
produced so admirable effects.
They used to go, it is said, to the other cities of Greece, to inquire out
rhetoricians, painters, and musicians; but to Lacedaemon for legislators,
magistrates, and generals of armies; at Athens they learned to speak well:
here to do well; there to disengage themselves from a sophistical
argument, and to unravel the imposture of captious syllogisms; here to
evade the baits and allurements of pleasure, and with a noble courage and
resolution to conquer the menaces of fortune and death; those cudgelled
their brains about words, these made it their business to inquire into
things; there was an eternal babble of the tongue, here a continual
exercise of the soul. And therefore it is nothing strange if, when
Antipater demanded of them fifty children for hostages, they made answer,
quite contrary to what we should do, that they would rather give him twice
as many full-grown men, so much did they value the loss of their country's
education. When Agesilaus courted Xenophon to send his children to Sparta
to be bred, "it is not," said he, "there to learn logic or rhetoric, but
to be instructed in the noblest of all sciences, namely, the science to
obey and to command."—[Plutarch, Life of Agesilaus, c. 7.]
It is very pleasant to see Socrates, after his manner, rallying Hippias,
—[Plato's Dialogues: Hippias Major.]—who recounts to him what
a world of money he has got, especially in certain little villages of
Sicily, by teaching school, and that he made never a penny at Sparta:
"What a sottish and stupid people," said Socrates, "are they, without
sense or understanding, that make no account either of grammar or poetry,
and only busy themselves in studying the genealogies and successions of
their kings, the foundations, rises, and declensions of states, and such
tales of a tub!" After which, having made Hippias from one step to another
acknowledge the excellency of their form of public administration, and the
felicity and virtue of their private life, he leaves him to guess at the
conclusion he makes of the inutilities of his pedantic arts.
Examples have demonstrated to us that in military affairs, and all others
of the like active nature, the study of sciences more softens and
untempers the courages of men than it in any way fortifies and excites
them. The most potent empire that at this day appears to be in the whole
world is that of the Turks, a people equally inured to the estimation of
arms and the contempt of letters. I find Rome was more valiant before she
grew so learned. The most warlike nations at this time in being are the
most rude and ignorant: the Scythians, the Parthians, Tamerlane, serve for
sufficient proof of this. When the Goths overran Greece, the only thing
that preserved all the libraries from the fire was, that some one
possessed them with an opinion that they were to leave this kind of
furniture entire to the enemy, as being most proper to divert them from
the exercise of arms, and to fix them to a lazy and sedentary life. When
our King Charles VIII., almost without striking a blow, saw himself
possessed of the kingdom of Naples and a considerable part of Tuscany, the
nobles about him attributed this unexpected facility of conquest to this,
that the princes and nobles of Italy, more studied to render themselves
ingenious and learned, than vigorous and warlike.
CHAPTER XXV——OF THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN
TO MADAME DIANE DE FOIX, Comtesse de Gurson
I never yet saw that father, but let his son be never so decrepit or
deformed, would not, notwithstanding, own him: not, nevertheless, if he
were not totally besotted, and blinded with his paternal affection, that
he did not well enough discern his defects; but that with all defaults he
was still his. Just so, I see better than any other, that all I write here
are but the idle reveries of a man that has only nibbled upon the outward
crust of sciences in his nonage, and only retained a general and formless
image of them; who has got a little snatch of everything and nothing of
the whole, 'a la Francoise'. For I know, in general, that there is such a
thing as physic, as jurisprudence: four parts in mathematics, and,
roughly, what all these aim and point at; and, peradventure, I yet know
farther, what sciences in general pretend unto, in order to the service of
our life: but to dive farther than that, and to have cudgelled my brains
in the study of Aristotle, the monarch of all modern learning, or
particularly addicted myself to any one science, I have never done it;
neither is there any one art of which I am able to draw the first
lineaments and dead colour; insomuch that there is not a boy of the lowest
form in a school, that may not pretend to be wiser than I, who am not able
to examine him in his first lesson, which, if I am at any time forced
upon, I am necessitated in my own defence, to ask him, unaptly enough,
some universal questions, such as may serve to try his natural
understanding; a lesson as strange and unknown to him, as his is to me.
I never seriously settled myself to the reading any book of solid learning
but Plutarch and Seneca; and there, like the Danaides, I eternally fill,
and it as constantly runs out; something of which drops upon this paper,
but little or nothing stays with me. History is my particular game as to
matter of reading, or else poetry, for which I have particular kindness
and esteem: for, as Cleanthes said, as the voice, forced through the
narrow passage of a trumpet, comes out more forcible and shrill: so,
methinks, a sentence pressed within the harmony of verse darts out more
briskly upon the understanding, and strikes my ear and apprehension with a
smarter and more pleasing effect. As to the natural parts I have, of which
this is the essay, I find them to bow under the burden; my fancy and
judgment do but grope in the dark, tripping and stumbling in the way; and
when I have gone as far as I can, I am in no degree satisfied; I discover
still a new and greater extent of land before me, with a troubled and
imperfect sight and wrapped up in clouds, that I am not able to penetrate.
And taking upon me to write indifferently of whatever comes into my head,
and therein making use of nothing but my own proper and natural means, if
it befall me, as oft-times it does, accidentally to meet in any good
author, the same heads and commonplaces upon which I have attempted to
write (as I did but just now in Plutarch's "Discourse of the Force of
Imagination"), to see myself so weak and so forlorn, so heavy and so flat,
in comparison of those better writers, I at once pity or despise myself.
Yet do I please myself with this, that my opinions have often the honour
and good fortune to jump with theirs, and that I go in the same path,
though at a very great distance, and can say, "Ah, that is so." I am
farther satisfied to find that I have a quality, which every one is not
blessed withal, which is, to discern the vast difference between them and
me; and notwithstanding all that, suffer my own inventions, low and feeble
as they are, to run on in their career, without mending or plastering up
the defects that this comparison has laid open to my own view. And, in
plain truth, a man had need of a good strong back to keep pace with these
people. The indiscreet scribblers of our times, who, amongst their
laborious nothings, insert whole sections and pages out of ancient
authors, with a design, by that means, to illustrate their own writings,
do quite contrary; for this infinite dissimilitude of ornaments renders
the complexion of their own compositions so sallow and deformed, that they
lose much more than they get.
The philosophers, Chrysippus and Epicurus, were in this of two quite
contrary humours: the first not only in his books mixed passages and
sayings of other authors, but entire pieces, and, in one, the whole Medea
of Euripides; which gave Apollodorus occasion to say, that should a man
pick out of his writings all that was none of his, he would leave him
nothing but blank paper: whereas the latter, quite on the contrary, in
three hundred volumes that he left behind him, has not so much as one
quotation.—[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Chyysippus, vii. 181, and
Epicurus, x. 26.]
I happened the other day upon this piece of fortune; I was reading a
French book, where after I had a long time run dreaming over a great many
words, so dull, so insipid, so void of all wit or common sense, that
indeed they were only French words: after a long and tedious travel, I
came at last to meet with a piece that was lofty, rich, and elevated to
the very clouds; of which, had I found either the declivity easy or the
ascent gradual, there had been some excuse; but it was so perpendicular a
precipice, and so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by the
first six words, I found myself flying into the other world, and thence
discovered the vale whence I came so deep and low, that I have never had
since the heart to descend into it any more. If I should set out one of my
discourses with such rich spoils as these, it would but too evidently
manifest the imperfection of my own writing. To reprehend the fault in
others that I am guilty of myself, appears to me no more unreasonable,
than to condemn, as I often do, those of others in myself: they are to be
everywhere reproved, and ought to have no sanctuary allowed them. I know
very well how audaciously I myself, at every turn, attempt to equal myself
to my thefts, and to make my style go hand in hand with them, not without
a temerarious hope of deceiving the eyes of my reader from discerning the
difference; but withal it is as much by the benefit of my application,
that I hope to do it, as by that of my invention or any force of my own.
Besides, I do not offer to contend with the whole body of these champions,
nor hand to hand with anyone of them: 'tis only by flights and little
light attempts that I engage them; I do not grapple with them, but try
their strength only, and never engage so far as I make a show to do. If I
could hold them in play, I were a brave fellow; for I never attack them;
but where they are most sinewy and strong. To cover a man's self (as I
have seen some do) with another man's armour, so as not to discover so
much as his fingers' ends; to carry on a design (as it is not hard for a
man that has anything of a scholar in him, in an ordinary subject to do)
under old inventions patched up here and there with his own trumpery, and
then to endeavour to conceal the theft, and to make it pass for his own,
is first injustice and meanness of spirit in those who do it, who having
nothing in them of their own fit to procure them a reputation, endeavour
to do it by attempting to impose things upon the world in their own name,
which they have no manner of title to; and next, a ridiculous folly to
content themselves with acquiring the ignorant approbation of the vulgar
by such a pitiful cheat, at the price at the same time of degrading
themselves in the eyes of men of understanding, who turn up their noses at
all this borrowed incrustation, yet whose praise alone is worth the
having. For my own part, there is nothing I would not sooner do than that,
neither have I said so much of others, but to get a better opportunity to
explain myself. Nor in this do I glance at the composers of centos, who
declare themselves for such; of which sort of writers I have in my time
known many very ingenious, and particularly one under the name of
Capilupus, besides the ancients. These are really men of wit, and that
make it appear they are so, both by that and other ways of writing; as for
example, Lipsius, in that learned and laborious contexture of his
Politics.
But, be it how it will, and how inconsiderable soever these ineptitudes
may be, I will say I never intended to conceal them, no more than my old
bald grizzled likeness before them, where the painter has presented you
not with a perfect face, but with mine. For these are my own particular
opinions and fancies, and I deliver them as only what I myself believe,
and not for what is to be believed by others. I have no other end in this
writing, but only to discover myself, who, also shall, peradventure, be
another thing to-morrow, if I chance to meet any new instruction to change
me. I have no authority to be believed, neither do I desire it, being too
conscious of my own inerudition to be able to instruct others.
Some one, then, having seen the preceding chapter, the other day told me
at my house, that I should a little farther have extended my discourse on
the education of children.—["Which, how fit I am to do, let my
friends flatter me if they please, I have in the meantime no such opinion
of my own talent, as to promise myself any very good success from my
endeavour." This passage would appear to be an interpolation by Cotton. At
all events, I do not find it in the original editions before me, or in
Coste.]—
Now, madam, if I had any sufficiency in this subject, I could not possibly
better employ it, than to present my best instructions to the little man
that threatens you shortly with a happy birth (for you are too generous to
begin otherwise than with a male); for, having had so great a hand in the
treaty of your marriage, I have a certain particular right and interest in
the greatness and prosperity of the issue that shall spring from it;
beside that, your having had the best of my services so long in
possession, sufficiently obliges me to desire the honour and advantage of
all wherein you shall be concerned. But, in truth, all I understand as to
that particular is only this, that the greatest and most important
difficulty of human science is the education of children. For as in
agriculture, the husbandry that is to precede planting, as also planting
itself, is certain, plain, and well known; but after that which is planted
comes to life, there is a great deal more to be done, more art to be used,
more care to be taken, and much more difficulty to cultivate and bring it
to perfection so it is with men; it is no hard matter to get children; but
after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly
to train, principle, and bring them up. The symptoms of their inclinations
in that tender age are so obscure, and the promises so uncertain and
fallacious, that it is very hard to establish any solid judgment or
conjecture upon them. Look at Cimon, for example, and Themistocles, and a
thousand others, who very much deceived the expectation men had of them.
Cubs of bears and puppies readily discover their natural inclination; but
men, so soon as ever they are grownup, applying themselves to certain
habits, engaging themselves in certain opinions, and conforming themselves
to particular laws and customs, easily alter, or at least disguise, their
true and real disposition; and yet it is hard to force the propension of
nature. Whence it comes to pass, that for not having chosen the right
course, we often take very great pains, and consume a good part of our
time in training up children to things, for which, by their natural
constitution, they are totally unfit. In this difficulty, nevertheless, I
am clearly of opinion, that they ought to be elemented in the best and
most advantageous studies, without taking too much notice of, or being too
superstitious in those light prognostics they give of themselves in their
tender years, and to which Plato, in his Republic, gives, methinks, too
much authority.
Madam, science is a very great ornament, and a thing of marvellous use,
especially in persons raised to that degree of fortune in which you are.
And, in truth, in persons of mean and low condition, it cannot perform its
true and genuine office, being naturally more prompt to assist in the
conduct of war, in the government of peoples, in negotiating the leagues
and friendships of princes and foreign nations, than in forming a
syllogism in logic, in pleading a process in law, or in prescribing a dose
of pills in physic. Wherefore, madam, believing you will not omit this so
necessary feature in the education of your children, who yourself have
tasted its sweetness, and are of a learned extraction (for we yet have the
writings of the ancient Counts of Foix, from whom my lord, your husband,
and yourself, are both of you descended, and Monsieur de Candale, your
uncle, every day obliges the world with others, which will extend the
knowledge of this quality in your family for so many succeeding ages), I
will, upon this occasion, presume to acquaint your ladyship with one
particular fancy of my own, contrary to the common method, which is all I
am able to contribute to your service in this affair.
The charge of the tutor you shall provide for your son, upon the choice of
whom depends the whole success of his education, has several other great
and considerable parts and duties required in so important a trust,
besides that of which I am about to speak: these, however, I shall not
mention, as being unable to add anything of moment to the common rules:
and in this, wherein I take upon me to advise, he may follow it so far
only as it shall appear advisable.
For a, boy of quality then, who pretends to letters not upon the account
of profit (for so mean an object is unworthy of the grace and favour of
the Muses, and moreover, in it a man directs his service to and depends
upon others), nor so much for outward ornament, as for his own proper and
peculiar use, and to furnish and enrich himself within, having rather a
desire to come out an accomplished cavalier than a mere scholar or learned
man; for such a one, I say, I would, also, have his friends solicitous to
find him out a tutor, who has rather a well-made than a well-filled head;—["'Tete
bien faite', an expression created by Montaigne, and which has remained a
part of our language."—Servan.]— seeking, indeed, both the one
and the other, but rather of the two to prefer manners and judgment to
mere learning, and that this man should exercise his charge after a new
method.
'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupil's
ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business of the pupil
is only to repeat what the others have said: now I would have a tutor to
correct this error, and, that at the very first, he should according to
the capacity he has to deal with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil
himself to taste things, and of himself to discern and choose them,
sometimes opening the way to him, and sometimes leaving him to open it for
himself; that is, I would not have him alone to invent and speak, but that
he should also hear his pupil speak in turn. Socrates, and since him
Arcesilaus, made first their scholars speak, and then they spoke to them—[Diogenes
Laertius, iv. 36.]
"Obest plerumque iis, qui discere volunt,
auctoritas eorum, qui docent."
["The authority of those who teach, is very often an impediment to
those who desire to learn."—Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 5.]
It is good to make him, like a young horse, trot before him, that he may
judge of his going, and how much he is to abate of his own speed, to
accommodate himself to the vigour and capacity of the other. For want of
which due proportion we spoil all; which also to know how to adjust, and
to keep within an exact and due measure, is one of the hardest things I
know, and 'tis the effect of a high and well-tempered soul, to know how to
condescend to such puerile motions and to govern and direct them. I walk
firmer and more secure up hill than down.
Such as, according to our common way of teaching, undertake, with one and
the same lesson, and the same measure of direction, to instruct several
boys of differing and unequal capacities, are infinitely mistaken; and
'tis no wonder, if in a whole multitude of scholars, there are not found
above two or three who bring away any good account of their time and
discipline. Let the master not only examine him about the grammatical
construction of the bare words of his lesson, but about the sense and let
him judge of the profit he has made, not by the testimony of his memory,
but by that of his life. Let him make him put what he has learned into a
hundred several forms, and accommodate it to so many several subjects, to
see if he yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his own, taking
instruction of his progress by the pedagogic institutions of Plato. 'Tis a
sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the same
condition it was swallowed; the stomach has not performed its office
unless it have altered the form and condition of what was committed to it
to concoct. Our minds work only upon trust, when bound and compelled to
follow the appetite of another's fancy, enslaved and captivated under the
authority of another's instruction; we have been so subjected to the
trammel, that we have no free, nor natural pace of our own; our own vigour
and liberty are extinct and gone:
"Nunquam tutelae suae fiunt."
["They are ever in wardship."—Seneca, Ep., 33.]
I was privately carried at Pisa to see a very honest man, but so great an
Aristotelian, that his most usual thesis was: "That the touchstone and
square of all solid imagination, and of all truth, was an absolute
conformity to Aristotle's doctrine; and that all besides was nothing but
inanity and chimera; for that he had seen all, and said all." A position,
that for having been a little too injuriously and broadly interpreted,
brought him once and long kept him in great danger of the Inquisition at
Rome.
Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift everything he reads, and
lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon trust.
Aristotle's principles will then be no more principles to him, than those
of Epicurus and the Stoics: let this diversity of opinions be propounded
to, and laid before him; he will himself choose, if he be able; if not, he
will remain in doubt.
"Che non men the saver, dubbiar m' aggrata."
["I love to doubt, as well as to know."—Dante, Inferno, xi. 93]
for, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by his own reason,
they will no more be theirs, but become his own. Who follows another,
follows nothing, finds nothing, nay, is inquisitive after nothing.
"Non sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se vindicet."
["We are under no king; let each vindicate himself."
—Seneca, Ep.,33]
Let him, at least, know that he knows. It will be necessary that he imbibe
their knowledge, not that he be corrupted with their precepts; and no
matter if he forget where he had his learning, provided he know how to
apply it to his own use. Truth and reason are common to every one, and are
no more his who spake them first, than his who speaks them after: 'tis no
more according to Plato, than according to me, since both he and I equally
see and understand them. Bees cull their several sweets from this flower
and that blossom, here and there where they find them, but themselves
afterwards make the honey, which is all and purely their own, and no more
thyme and marjoram: so the several fragments he borrows from others, he
will transform and shuffle together to compile a work that shall be
absolutely his own; that is to say, his judgment: his instruction, labour
and study, tend to nothing else but to form that. He is not obliged to
discover whence he got the materials that have assisted him, but only to
produce what he has himself done with them. Men that live upon pillage and
borrowing, expose their purchases and buildings to every one's view: but
do not proclaim how they came by the money. We do not see the fees and
perquisites of a gentleman of the long robe; but we see the alliances
wherewith he fortifies himself and his family, and the titles and honours
he has obtained for him and his. No man divulges his revenue; or, at
least, which way it comes in but every one publishes his acquisitions. The
advantages of our study are to become better and more wise. 'Tis, says
Epicharmus, the understanding that sees and hears, 'tis the understanding
that improves everything, that orders everything, and that acts, rules,
and reigns: all other faculties are blind, and deaf, and without soul. And
certainly we render it timorous and servile, in not allowing it the
liberty and privilege to do anything of itself. Whoever asked his pupil
what he thought of grammar and rhetoric, or of such and such a sentence of
Cicero? Our masters stick them, full feathered, in our memories, and there
establish them like oracles, of which the letters and syllables are of the
substance of the thing. To know by rote, is no knowledge, and signifies no
more but only to retain what one has intrusted to our memory. That which a
man rightly knows and understands, he is the free disposer of at his own
full liberty, without any regard to the author from whence he had it, or
fumbling over the leaves of his book. A mere bookish learning is a poor,
paltry learning; it may serve for ornament, but there is yet no foundation
for any superstructure to be built upon it, according to the opinion of
Plato, who says, that constancy, faith, and sincerity, are the true
philosophy, and the other sciences, that are directed to other ends; mere
adulterate paint. I could wish that Paluel or Pompey, those two noted
dancers of my time, could have taught us to cut capers, by only seeing
them do it, without stirring from our places, as these men pretend to
inform the understanding without ever setting it to work, or that we could
learn to ride, handle a pike, touch a lute, or sing without the trouble of
practice, as these attempt to make us judge and speak well, without
exercising us in judging or speaking. Now in this initiation of our
studies in their progress, whatsoever presents itself before us is book
sufficient; a roguish trick of a page, a sottish mistake of a servant, a
jest at the table, are so many new subjects.
And for this reason, conversation with men is of very great use and travel
into foreign countries; not to bring back (as most of our young monsieurs
do) an account only of how many paces Santa Rotonda—[The Pantheon of
Agrippa.]—is in circuit; or of the richness of Signora Livia's
petticoats; or, as some others, how much Nero's face, in a statue in such
an old ruin, is longer and broader than that made for him on some medal;
but to be able chiefly to give an account of the humours, manners,
customs, and laws of those nations where he has been, and that we may whet
and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those of others. I would that
a boy should be sent abroad very young, and first, so as to kill two birds
with one stone, into those neighbouring nations whose language is most
differing from our own, and to which, if it be not formed betimes, the
tongue will grow too stiff to bend.
And also 'tis the general opinion of all, that a child should not be
brought up in his mother's lap. Mothers are too tender, and their natural
affection is apt to make the most discreet of them all so overfond, that
they can neither find in their hearts to give them due correction for the
faults they may commit, nor suffer them to be inured to hardships and
hazards, as they ought to be. They will not endure to see them return all
dust and sweat from their exercise, to drink cold drink when they are hot,
nor see them mount an unruly horse, nor take a foil in hand against a rude
fencer, or so much as to discharge a carbine. And yet there is no remedy;
whoever will breed a boy to be good for anything when he comes to be a
man, must by no means spare him when young, and must very often transgress
the rules of physic:
"Vitamque sub dio, et trepidis agat
In rebus."
["Let him live in open air, and ever in movement about something."
—Horace, Od. ii., 3, 5.]
It is not enough to fortify his soul; you are also to make his sinews
strong; for the soul will be oppressed if not assisted by the members, and
would have too hard a task to discharge two offices alone. I know very
well to my cost, how much mine groans under the burden, from being
accommodated with a body so tender and indisposed, as eternally leans and
presses upon her; and often in my reading perceive that our masters, in
their writings, make examples pass for magnanimity and fortitude of mind,
which really are rather toughness of skin and hardness of bones; for I
have seen men, women, and children, naturally born of so hard and
insensible a constitution of body, that a sound cudgelling has been less
to them than a flirt with a finger would have been to me, and that would
neither cry out, wince, nor shrink, for a good swinging beating; and when
wrestlers counterfeit the philosophers in patience, 'tis rather strength
of nerves than stoutness of heart. Now to be inured to undergo labour, is
to be accustomed to endure pain:
"Labor callum obducit dolori."
["Labour hardens us against pain."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 15.]
A boy is to be broken in to the toil and roughness of exercise, so as to
be trained up to the pain and suffering of dislocations, cholics,
cauteries, and even imprisonment and the rack itself; for he may come by
misfortune to be reduced to the worst of these, which (as this world goes)
is sometimes inflicted on the good as well as the bad. As for proof, in
our present civil war whoever draws his sword against the laws, threatens
the honestest men with the whip and the halter.
And, moreover, by living at home, the authority of this governor, which
ought to be sovereign over the boy he has received into his charge, is
often checked and hindered by the presence of parents; to which may also
be added, that the respect the whole family pay him, as their master's
son, and the knowledge he has of the estate and greatness he is heir to,
are, in my opinion, no small inconveniences in these tender years.
And yet, even in this conversing with men I spoke of but now, I have
observed this vice, that instead of gathering observations from others, we
make it our whole business to lay ourselves open to them, and are more
concerned how to expose and set out our own commodities, than how to
increase our stock by acquiring new. Silence, therefore, and modesty are
very advantageous qualities in conversation. One should, therefore, train
up this boy to be sparing and an husband of his knowledge when he has
acquired it; and to forbear taking exceptions at or reproving every idle
saying or ridiculous story that is said or told in his presence; for it is
a very unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything that is not agreeable to
our own palate. Let him be satisfied with correcting himself, and not seem
to condemn everything in another he would not do himself, nor dispute it
as against common customs.
"Licet sapere sine pompa, sine invidia."
["Let us be wise without ostentation, without envy."
—Seneca, Ep., 103.]
Let him avoid these vain and uncivil images of authority, this childish
ambition of coveting to appear better bred and more accomplished, than he
really will, by such carriage, discover himself to be. And, as if
opportunities of interrupting and reprehending were not to be omitted, to
desire thence to derive the reputation of something more than ordinary.
For as it becomes none but great poets to make use of the poetical
licence, so it is intolerable for any but men of great and illustrious
souls to assume privilege above the authority of custom:
"Si quid Socrates ant Aristippus contra morem et consuetudinem
fecerunt, idem sibi ne arbitretur licere: magnis enim illi et
divinis bonis hanc licentiam assequebantur."
["If Socrates and Aristippus have committed any act against manners
and custom, let him not think that he is allowed to do the same; for
it was by great and divine benefits that they obtained this
privilege."—Cicero, De Offic., i. 41.]
Let him be instructed not to engage in discourse or dispute but with a
champion worthy of him, and, even there, not to make use of all the little
subtleties that may seem pat for his purpose, but only such arguments as
may best serve him. Let him be taught to be curious in the election and
choice of his reasons, to abominate impertinence, and consequently, to
affect brevity; but, above all, let him be lessoned to acquiesce and
submit to truth so soon as ever he shall discover it, whether in his
opponent's argument, or upon better consideration of his own; for he shall
never be preferred to the chair for a mere clatter of words and
syllogisms, and is no further engaged to any argument whatever, than as he
shall in his own judgment approve it: nor yet is arguing a trade, where
the liberty of recantation and getting off upon better thoughts, are to be
sold for ready money:
"Neque, ut omnia, qux praescripta et imperata sint,
defendat, necessitate ulla cogitur."
["Neither is their any necessity upon him, that he should defend
all things that are prescribed and enjoined him."
—Cicero, Acad., ii. 3.]
If his governor be of my humour, he will form his will to be a very good
and loyal subject to his prince, very affectionate to his person, and very
stout in his quarrel; but withal he will cool in him the desire of having
any other tie to his service than public duty. Besides several other
inconveniences that are inconsistent with the liberty every honest man
ought to have, a man's judgment, being bribed and prepossessed by these
particular obligations, is either blinded and less free to exercise its
function, or is blemished with ingratitude and indiscretion. A man that is
purely a courtier, can neither have power nor will to speak or think
otherwise than favourably and well of a master, who, amongst so many
millions of other subjects, has picked out him with his own hand to
nourish and advance; this favour, and the profit flowing from it, must
needs, and not without some show of reason, corrupt his freedom and dazzle
him; and we commonly see these people speak in another kind of phrase than
is ordinarily spoken by others of the same nation, though what they say in
that courtly language is not much to be believed.
Let his conscience and virtue be eminently manifest in his speaking, and
have only reason for their guide. Make him understand, that to acknowledge
the error he shall discover in his own argument, though only found out by
himself, is an effect of judgment and sincerity, which are the principal
things he is to seek after; that obstinacy and contention are common
qualities, most appearing in mean souls; that to revise and correct
himself, to forsake an unjust argument in the height and heat of dispute,
are rare, great, and philosophical qualities.
Let him be advised, being in company, to have his eye and ear in every
corner; for I find that the places of greatest honour are commonly seized
upon by men that have least in them, and that the greatest fortunes are
seldom accompanied with the ablest parts. I have been present when, whilst
they at the upper end of the chamber have been only commenting the beauty
of the arras, or the flavour of the wine, many things that have been very
finely said at the lower end of the table have been lost and thrown away.
Let him examine every man's talent; a peasant, a bricklayer, a passenger:
one may learn something from every one of these in their several
capacities, and something will be picked out of their discourse whereof
some use may be made at one time or another; nay, even the folly and
impertinence of others will contribute to his instruction. By observing
the graces and manners of all he sees, he will create to himself an
emulation of the good, and a contempt of the bad.
Let an honest curiosity be suggested to his fancy of being inquisitive
after everything; whatever there is singular and rare near the place where
he is, let him go and see it; a fine house, a noble fountain, an eminent
man, the place where a battle has been anciently fought, the passages of
Caesar and Charlemagne:
"Qux tellus sit lenta gelu, quae putris ab aestu,
Ventus in Italiam quis bene vela ferat."
["What country is bound in frost, what land is friable with heat,
what wind serves fairest for Italy."—Propertius, iv. 3, 39.]
Let him inquire into the manners, revenues, and alliances of princes,
things in themselves very pleasant to learn, and very useful to know.
In this conversing with men, I mean also, and principally, those who only
live in the records of history; he shall, by reading those books, converse
with the great and heroic souls of the best ages. 'Tis an idle and vain
study to those who make it so by doing it after a negligent manner, but to
those who do it with care and observation, 'tis a study of inestimable
fruit and value; and the only study, as Plato reports, that the
Lacedaemonians reserved to themselves. What profit shall he not reap as to
the business of men, by reading the Lives of Plutarch? But, withal, let my
governor remember to what end his instructions are principally directed,
and that he do not so much imprint in his pupil's memory the date of the
ruin of Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal and Scipio; nor so much where
Marcellus died, as why it was unworthy of his duty that he died there. Let
him not teach him so much the narrative parts of history as to judge them;
the reading of them, in my opinion, is a thing that of all others we apply
ourselves unto with the most differing measure. I have read a hundred
things in Livy that another has not, or not taken notice of at least; and
Plutarch has read a hundred more there than ever I could find, or than,
peradventure, that author ever wrote; to some it is merely a grammar
study, to others the very anatomy of philosophy, by which the most
abstruse parts of our human nature penetrate. There are in Plutarch many
long discourses very worthy to be carefully read and observed, for he is,
in my opinion, of all others the greatest master in that kind of writing;
but there are a thousand others which he has only touched and glanced
upon, where he only points with his finger to direct us which way we may
go if we will, and contents himself sometimes with giving only one brisk
hit in the nicest article of the question, whence we are to grope out the
rest. As, for example, where he says'—[In the Essay on False Shame.]—that
the inhabitants of Asia came to be vassals to one only, for not having
been able to pronounce one syllable, which is No. Which saying of his gave
perhaps matter and occasion to La Boetie to write his "Voluntary
Servitude." Only to see him pick out a light action in a man's life, or a
mere word that does not seem to amount even to that, is itself a whole
discourse. 'Tis to our prejudice that men of understanding should so
immoderately affect brevity; no doubt their reputation is the better by
it, but in the meantime we are the worse. Plutarch had rather we should
applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather leave us
with an appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have already
read. He knew very well, that a man may say too much even upon the best
subjects, and that Alexandridas justly reproached him who made very good.
but too long speeches to the Ephori, when he said: "O stranger! thou
speakest the things thou shouldst speak, but not as thou shouldst speak
them."—[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedamonians.]—Such as
have lean and spare bodies stuff themselves out with clothes; so they who
are defective in matter endeavour to make amends with words.
Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversation with
men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and
have our sight limited to the length of our own noses. One asking Socrates
of what country he was, he did not make answer, of Athens, but of the
world;—[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 37; Plutarch, On Exile, c. 4.]—
he whose imagination was fuller and wider, embraced the whole world for
his country, and extended his society and friendship to all mankind; not
as we do, who look no further than our feet. When the vines of my village
are nipped with the frost, my parish priest presently concludes, that the
indignation of God has gone out against all the human race, and that the
cannibals have already got the pip. Who is it that, seeing the havoc of
these civil wars of ours, does not cry out, that the machine of the world
is near dissolution, and that the day of judgment is at hand; without
considering, that many worse things have been seen, and that in the
meantime, people are very merry in a thousand other parts of the earth for
all this? For my part, considering the licence and impunity that always
attend such commotions, I wonder they are so moderate, and that there is
no more mischief done. To him who feels the hailstones patter about his
ears, the whole hemisphere appears to be in storm and tempest; like the
ridiculous Savoyard, who said very gravely, that if that simple king of
France could have managed his fortune as he should have done, he might in
time have come to have been steward of the household to the duke his
master: the fellow could not, in his shallow imagination, conceive that
there could be anything greater than a Duke of Savoy. And, in truth, we
are all of us, insensibly, in this error, an error of a very great weight
and very pernicious consequence. But whoever shall represent to his fancy,
as in a picture, that great image of our mother nature, in her full
majesty and lustre, whoever in her face shall read so general and so
constant a variety, whoever shall observe himself in that figure, and not
himself but a whole kingdom, no bigger than the least touch or prick of a
pencil in comparison of the whole, that man alone is able to value things
according to their true estimate and grandeur.
This great world which some do yet multiply as several species under one
genus, is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves, to be able to
know ourselves as we ought to do in the true bias. In short, I would have
this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the most
attention. So many humours, so many sects, so many judgments, opinions,
laws, and customs, teach us to judge aright of our own, and inform our
understanding to discover its imperfection and natural infirmity, which is
no trivial speculation. So many mutations of states and kingdoms, and so
many turns and revolutions of public fortune, will make us wise enough to
make no great wonder of our own. So many great names, so many famous
victories and conquests drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render our
hopes ridiculous of eternising our names by the taking of half-a-score of
light horse, or a henroost, which only derives its memory from its ruin.
The pride and arrogance of so many foreign pomps, the inflated majesty of
so many courts and grandeurs, accustom and fortify our sight without
closing our eyes to behold the lustre of our own; so many trillions of
men, buried before us, encourage us not to fear to go seek such good
company in the other world: and so of the rest Pythagoras was want to say,—[Cicero,
Tusc. Quaes., v. 3.]—that our life resembles the great and populous
assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some exercise the body, that they
may carry away the glory of the prize: others bring merchandise to sell
for profit: there are also some (and those none of the worst sort) who
pursue no other advantage than only to look on, and consider how and why
everything is done, and to be spectators of the lives of other men,
thereby the better to judge of and regulate their own.
To examples may fitly be applied all the profitable discourses of
philosophy, to which all human actions, as to their best rule, ought to be
especially directed: a scholar shall be taught to know—
"Quid fas optare: quid asper
Utile nummus habet: patrix carisque propinquis
Quantum elargiri deceat: quern te Deus esse
Jussit, et humana qua parte locatus es in re;
Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur."
["Learn what it is right to wish; what is the true use of coined
money; how much it becomes us to give in liberality to our country
and our dear relations; whom and what the Deity commanded thee to
be; and in what part of the human system thou art placed; what we
are ant to what purpose engendered."—Persius, iii. 69]
what it is to know, and what to be ignorant; what ought to be the end and
design of study; what valour, temperance, and justice are; the difference
betwixt ambition and avarice, servitude and subjection, licence and
liberty; by what token a man may know true and solid contentment; how far
death, affliction, and disgrace are to be apprehended;
"Et quo quemque modo fugiatque feratque laborem."
["And how you may shun or sustain every hardship."
—Virgil, AEneid, iii. 459.]
by what secret springs we move, and the reason of our various agitations
and irresolutions: for, methinks the first doctrine with which one should
season his understanding, ought to be that which regulates his manners and
his sense; that teaches him to know himself, and how both well to dig and
well to live. Amongst the liberal sciences, let us begin with that which
makes us free; not that they do not all serve in some measure to the
instruction and use of life, as all other things in some sort also do; but
let us make choice of that which directly and professedly serves to that
end. If we are once able to restrain the offices of human life within
their just and natural limits, we shall find that most of the sciences in
use are of no great use to us, and even in those that are, that there are
many very unnecessary cavities and dilatations which we had better let
alone, and, following Socrates' direction, limit the course of our studies
to those things only where is a true and real utility:
"Sapere aude;
Incipe; Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam,
Rusticus exspectat, dum defluat amnis; at ille
Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis oevum."
["Dare to be wise; begin! he who defers the hour of living well is
like the clown, waiting till the river shall have flowed out: but
the river still flows, and will run on, with constant course, to
ages without end."—Horace, Ep., i. 2.]
'Tis a great foolery to teach our children:
"Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis,
Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua,"
["What influence Pisces have, or the sign of angry Leo, or
Capricorn, washed by the Hesperian wave."—Propertius, iv. I, 89.]
the knowledge of the stars and the motion of the eighth sphere before
their own:
["What care I about the Pleiades or the stars of Taurus?"
—Anacreon, Ode, xvii. 10.]
Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, "To what purpose," said he, "should I
trouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death or
slavery continually before my eyes?" for the kings of Persia were at that
time preparing to invade his country. Every one ought to say thus, "Being
assaulted, as I am by ambition, avarice, temerity, superstition, and
having within so many other enemies of life, shall I go ponder over the
world's changes?"
After having taught him what will make him more wise and good, you may
then entertain him with the elements of logic, physics, geometry,
rhetoric, and the science which he shall then himself most incline to, his
judgment being beforehand formed and fit to choose, he will quickly make
his own. The way of instructing him ought to be sometimes by discourse,
and sometimes by reading; sometimes his governor shall put the author
himself, which he shall think most proper for him, into his hands, and
sometimes only the marrow and substance of it; and if himself be not
conversant enough in books to turn to all the fine discourses the books
contain for his purpose, there may some man of learning be joined to him,
that upon every occasion shall supply him with what he stands in need of,
to furnish it to his pupil. And who can doubt but that this way of
teaching is much more easy and natural than that of Gaza,—[Theodore
Gaza, rector of the Academy of Ferrara.]—in which the precepts are
so intricate, and so harsh, and the words so vain, lean; and
insignificant, that there is no hold to be taken of them, nothing that
quickens and elevates the wit and fancy, whereas here the mind has what to
feed upon and to digest. This fruit, therefore, is not only without
comparison, much more fair and beautiful; but will also be much more early
ripe.
'Tis a thousand pities that matters should be at such a pass in this age
of ours, that philosophy, even with men of understanding, should be,
looked upon as a vain and fantastic name, a thing of no use, no value,
either in opinion or effect, of which I think those ergotisms and petty
sophistries, by prepossessing the avenues to it, are the cause. And people
are much to blame to represent it to children for a thing of so difficult
access, and with such a frowning, grim, and formidable aspect. Who is it
that has disguised it thus, with this false, pale, and ghostly
countenance? There is nothing more airy, more gay, more frolic, and I had
like to have said, more wanton. She preaches nothing but feasting and
jollity; a melancholic anxious look shows that she does not inhabit there.
Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knot of
philosophers set chatting together, said to them,—[Plutarch,
Treatise on Oracles which have ceased]—"Either I am much deceived,
or by your cheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no, very
deep discourse." To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied:
"Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense of
the verb ——— is spelt with a double A, or that hunt
after the derivation of the comparatives ——- and ——-,
and the superlatives —— and ———, to knit
their brows whilst discoursing of their science: but as to philosophical
discourses, they always divert and cheer up those that entertain them, and
never deject them or make them sad."
"Deprendas animi tormenta latentis in aegro
Corpore; deprendas et gaudia; sumit utrumque
Inde habitum facies."
["You may discern the torments of mind lurking in a sick body; you
may discern its joys: either expression the face assumes from the
mind."—Juvenal, ix. 18]
The soul that lodges philosophy, ought to be of such a constitution of
health, as to render the body in like manner healthful too; she ought to
make her tranquillity and satisfaction shine so as to appear without, and
her contentment ought to fashion the outward behaviour to her own mould,
and consequently to fortify it with a graceful confidence, an active and
joyous carriage, and a serene and contented countenance. The most manifest
sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of
things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene. 'Tis Baroco
and Baralipton—[Two terms of the ancient scholastic logic.]—that
render their disciples so dirty and ill-favoured, and not she; they do not
so much as know her but by hearsay. What! It is she that calms and
appeases the storms and tempests of the soul, and who teaches famine and
fevers to laugh and sing; and that, not by certain imaginary epicycles,
but by natural and manifest reasons. She has virtue for her end, which is
not, as the schoolmen say, situate upon the summit of a perpendicular,
rugged, inaccessible precipice: such as have approached her find her,
quite on the contrary, to be seated in a fair, fruitful, and flourishing
plain, whence she easily discovers all things below; to which place any
one may, however, arrive, if he know but the way, through shady, green,
and sweetly-flourishing avenues, by a pleasant, easy, and smooth descent,
like that of the celestial vault. 'Tis for not having frequented this
supreme, this beautiful, triumphant, and amiable, this equally delicious
and courageous virtue, this so professed and implacable enemy to anxiety,
sorrow, fear, and constraint, who, having nature for her guide, has
fortune and pleasure for her companions, that they have gone, according to
their own weak imagination, and created this ridiculous, this sorrowful,
querulous, despiteful, threatening, terrible image of it to themselves and
others, and placed it upon a rock apart, amongst thorns and brambles, and
made of it a hobgoblin to affright people.
But the governor that I would have, that is such a one as knows it to be
his duty to possess his pupil with as much or more affection than
reverence to virtue, will be able to inform him, that the poets have
evermore accommodated themselves to the public humour, and make him
sensible, that the gods have planted more toil and sweat in the avenues of
the cabinets of Venus than in those of Minerva. And when he shall once
find him begin to apprehend, and shall represent to him a Bradamante or an
Angelica—[Heroines of Ariosto.]—for a mistress, a natural,
active, generous, and not a viragoish, but a manly beauty, in comparison
of a soft, delicate, artificial simpering, and affected form; the one in
the habit of a heroic youth, wearing a glittering helmet, the other
tricked up in curls and ribbons like a wanton minx; he will then look upon
his own affection as brave and masculine, when he shall choose quite
contrary to that effeminate shepherd of Phrygia.
Such a tutor will make a pupil digest this new lesson, that the height and
value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasure of
its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, and the
innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; it is by order, and
not by force, that it is to be acquired. Socrates, her first minion, is so
averse to all manner of violence, as totally to throw it aside, to slip
into the more natural facility of her own progress; 'tis the nursing
mother of all human pleasures, who in rendering them just, renders them
also pure and permanent; in moderating them, keeps them in breath and
appetite; in interdicting those which she herself refuses, whets our
desire to those that she allows; and, like a kind and liberal mother,
abundantly allows all that nature requires, even to satiety, if not to
lassitude: unless we mean to say that the regimen which stops the toper
before he has drunk himself drunk, the glutton before he has eaten to a
surfeit, and the lecher before he has got the pox, is an enemy to
pleasure. If the ordinary fortune fail, she does without it, and forms
another, wholly her own, not so fickle and unsteady as the other. She can
be rich, be potent and wise, and knows how to lie upon soft perfumed beds:
she loves life, beauty, glory, and health; but her proper and peculiar
office is to know how to regulate the use of all these good things, and
how to lose them without concern: an office much more noble than
troublesome, and without which the whole course of life is unnatural,
turbulent, and deformed, and there it is indeed, that men may justly
represent those monsters upon rocks and precipices.
If this pupil shall happen to be of so contrary a disposition, that he had
rather hear a tale of a tub than the true narrative of some noble
expedition or some wise and learned discourse; who at the beat of drum,
that excites the youthful ardour of his companions, leaves that to follow
another that calls to a morris or the bears; who would not wish, and find
it more delightful and more excellent, to return all dust and sweat
victorious from a battle, than from tennis or from a ball, with the prize
of those exercises; I see no other remedy, but that he be bound prentice
in some good town to learn to make minced pies, though he were the son of
a duke; according to Plato's precept, that children are to be placed out
and disposed of, not according to the wealth, qualities, or condition of
the father, but according to the faculties and the capacity of their own
souls.
Since philosophy is that which instructs us to live, and that infancy has
there its lessons as well as other ages, why is it not communicated to
children betimes?
"Udum et molle lutum est; nunc, nunc properandus, et acri
Fingendus sine fine rota."
["The clay is moist and soft: now, now make haste, and form the
pitcher on the rapid wheel."—Persius, iii. 23.]
They begin to teach us to live when we have almost done living. A hundred
students have got the pox before they have come to read Aristotle's
lecture on temperance. Cicero said, that though he should live two men's
ages, he should never find leisure to study the lyric poets; and I find
these sophisters yet more deplorably unprofitable. The boy we would breed
has a great deal less time to spare; he owes but the first fifteen or
sixteen years of his life to education; the remainder is due to action.
Let us, therefore, employ that short time in necessary instruction. Away
with the thorny subtleties of dialectics; they are abuses, things by which
our lives can never be amended: take the plain philosophical discourses,
learn how rightly to choose, and then rightly to apply them; they are more
easy to be understood than one of Boccaccio's novels; a child from nurse
is much more capable of them, than of learning to read or to write.
Philosophy has discourses proper for childhood, as well as for the
decrepit age of men.
I am of Plutarch's mind, that Aristotle did not so much trouble his great
disciple with the knack of forming syllogisms, or with the elements of
geometry; as with infusing into him good precepts concerning valour,
prowess, magnanimity, temperance, and the contempt of fear; and with this
ammunition, sent him, whilst yet a boy, with no more than thirty thousand
foot, four thousand horse, and but forty-two thousand crowns, to subjugate
the empire of the whole earth. For the other acts and sciences, he says,
Alexander highly indeed commended their excellence and charm, and had them
in very great honour and esteem, but not ravished with them to that degree
as to be tempted to affect the practice of them In his own person:
"Petite hinc, juvenesque senesque,
Finem ammo certum, miserisque viatica canis."
["Young men and old men, derive hence a certain end to the mind,
and stores for miserable grey hairs."—Persius, v. 64.]
Epicurus, in the beginning of his letter to Meniceus,—[Diogenes
Laertius, x. 122.]—says, "That neither the youngest should refuse to
philosophise, nor the oldest grow weary of it." Who does otherwise, seems
tacitly to imply, that either the time of living happily is not yet come,
or that it is already past. And yet, a for all that, I would not have this
pupil of ours imprisoned and made a slave to his book; nor would I have
him given up to the morosity and melancholic humour of a sour ill-natured
pedant.
I would not have his spirit cowed and subdued, by applying him to the
rack, and tormenting him, as some do, fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and
so make a pack-horse of him. Neither should I think it good, when, by
reason of a solitary and melancholic complexion, he is discovered to be
overmuch addicted to his book, to nourish that humour in him; for that
renders him unfit for civil conversation, and diverts him from better
employments. And how many have I seen in my time totally brutified by an
immoderate thirst after knowledge? Carneades was so besotted with it, that
he would not find time so much as to comb his head or to pare his nails.
Neither would I have his generous manners spoiled and corrupted by the
incivility and barbarism of those of another. The French wisdom was
anciently turned into proverb: "Early, but of no continuance." And, in
truth, we yet see, that nothing can be more ingenious and pleasing than
the children of France; but they ordinarily deceive the hope and
expectation that have been conceived of them; and grown up to be men, have
nothing extraordinary or worth taking notice of: I have heard men of good
understanding say, these colleges of ours to which we send our young
people (and of which we have but too many) make them such animals as they
are.—[Hobbes said that if he Had been at college as long as other
people he should have been as great a blockhead as they. W.C.H.] [And
Bacon before Hobbe's time had discussed the "futility" of university
teaching. D.W.]
But to our little monsieur, a closet, a garden, the table, his bed,
solitude, and company, morning and evening, all hours shall be the same,
and all places to him a study; for philosophy, who, as the formatrix of
judgment and manners, shall be his principal lesson, has that privilege to
have a hand in everything. The orator Isocrates, being at a feast
entreated to speak of his art, all the company were satisfied with and
commended his answer: "It is not now a time," said he, "to do what I can
do; and that which it is now time to do, I cannot do."—[Plutarch,
Symp., i. I.]—For to make orations and rhetorical disputes in a
company met together to laugh and make good cheer, had been very
unreasonable and improper, and as much might have been said of all the
other sciences. But as to what concerns philosophy, that part of it at
least that treats of man, and of his offices and duties, it has been the
common opinion of all wise men, that, out of respect to the sweetness of
her conversation, she is ever to be admitted in all sports and
entertainments. And Plato, having invited her to his feast, we see after
how gentle and obliging a manner, accommodated both to time and place, she
entertained the company, though in a discourse of the highest and most
important nature:
"Aeque pauperibus prodest, locupletibus aeque;
Et, neglecta, aeque pueris senibusque nocebit."
["It profits poor and rich alike, but, neglected, equally hurts old
and young."—Horace, Ep., i. 25.]
By this method of instruction, my young pupil will be much more and better
employed than his fellows of the college are. But as the steps we take in
walking to and fro in a gallery, though three times as many, do not tire a
man so much as those we employ in a formal journey, so our lesson, as it
were accidentally occurring, without any set obligation of time or place,
and falling naturally into every action, will insensibly insinuate itself.
By which means our very exercises and recreations, running, wrestling,
music, dancing, hunting, riding, and fencing, will prove to be a good part
of our study. I would have his outward fashion and mien, and the
disposition of his limbs, formed at the same time with his mind. 'Tis not
a soul, 'tis not a body that we are training up, but a man, and we ought
not to divide him. And, as Plato says, we are not to fashion one without
the other, but make them draw together like two horses harnessed to a
coach. By which saying of his, does he not seem to allow more time for,
and to take more care of exercises for the body, and to hold that the
mind, in a good proportion, does her business at the same time too?
As to the rest, this method of education ought to be carried on with a
severe sweetness, quite contrary to the practice of our pedants, who,
instead of tempting and alluring children to letters by apt and gentle
ways, do in truth present nothing before them but rods and ferules, horror
and cruelty. Away with this violence! away with this compulsion! than
which, I certainly believe nothing more dulls and degenerates a
well-descended nature. If you would have him apprehend shame and
chastisement, do not harden him to them: inure him to heat and cold, to
wind and sun, and to dangers that he ought to despise; wean him from all
effeminacy and delicacy in clothes and lodging, eating and drinking;
accustom him to everything, that he may not be a Sir Paris, a
carpet-knight, but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young man. I have ever
from a child to the age wherein I now am, been of this opinion, and am
still constant to it. But amongst other things, the strict government of
most of our colleges has evermore displeased me; peradventure, they might
have erred less perniciously on the indulgent side. 'Tis a real house of
correction of imprisoned youth. They are made debauched by being punished
before they are so. Do but come in when they are about their lesson, and
you shall hear nothing but the outcries of boys under execution, with the
thundering noise of their pedagogues drunk with fury. A very pretty way
this, to tempt these tender and timorous souls to love their book, with a
furious countenance, and a rod in hand! A cursed and pernicious way of
proceeding! Besides what Quintilian has very well observed, that this
imperious authority is often attended by very dangerous consequences, and
particularly our way of chastising. How much more decent would it be to
see their classes strewed with green leaves and fine flowers, than with
the bloody stumps of birch and willows? Were it left to my ordering. I
should paint the school with the pictures of joy and gladness; Flora and
the Graces, as the philosopher Speusippus did his. Where their profit is,
let them there have their pleasure too. Such viands as are proper and
wholesome for children, should be sweetened with sugar, and such as are
dangerous to them, embittered with gall. 'Tis marvellous to see how
solicitous Plato is in his Laws concerning the gaiety and diversion of the
youth of his city, and how much and often he enlarges upon the races,
sports, songs, leaps, and dances: of which, he says, that antiquity has
given the ordering and patronage particularly to the gods themselves, to
Apollo, Minerva, and the Muses. He insists long upon, and is very
particular in, giving innumerable precepts for exercises; but as to the
lettered sciences, says very little, and only seems particularly to
recommend poetry upon the account of music.
All singularity in our manners and conditions is to be avoided, as
inconsistent with civil society. Who would not be astonished at so strange
a constitution as that of Demophoon, steward to Alexander the Great, who
sweated in the shade and shivered in the sun? I have seen those who have
run from the smell of a mellow apple with greater precipitation than from
a harquebuss-shot; others afraid of a mouse; others vomit at the sight of
cream; others ready to swoon at the making of a feather bed; Germanicus
could neither endure the sight nor the crowing of a cock. I will not deny,
but that there may, peradventure, be some occult cause and natural
aversion in these cases; but, in my opinion, a man might conquer it, if he
took it in time. Precept has in this wrought so effectually upon me,
though not without some pains on my part, I confess, that beer excepted,
my appetite accommodates itself indifferently to all sorts of diet. Young
bodies are supple; one should, therefore, in that age bend and ply them to
all fashions and customs: and provided a man can contain the appetite and
the will within their due limits, let a young man, in God's name, be
rendered fit for all nations and all companies, even to debauchery and
excess, if need be; that is, where he shall do it out of complacency to
the customs of the place. Let him be able to do everything, but love to do
nothing but what is good. The philosophers themselves do not justify
Callisthenes for forfeiting the favour of his master Alexander the Great,
by refusing to pledge him a cup of wine. Let him laugh, play, wench with
his prince: nay, I would have him, even in his debauches, too hard for the
rest of the company, and to excel his companions in ability and vigour,
and that he may not give over doing it, either through defect of power or
knowledge how to do it, but for want of will.
"Multum interest, utrum peccare ali quis nolit, an nesciat."
["There is a vast difference betwixt forbearing to sin, and not
knowing how to sin."—Seneca, Ep., 90]
I thought I passed a compliment upon a lord, as free from those excesses
as any man in France, by asking him before a great deal of very good
company, how many times in his life he had been drunk in Germany, in the
time of his being there about his Majesty's affairs; which he also took as
it was intended, and made answer, "Three times"; and withal told us the
whole story of his debauches. I know some who, for want of this faculty,
have found a great inconvenience in negotiating with that nation. I have
often with great admiration reflected upon the wonderful constitution of
Alcibiades, who so easily could transform himself to so various fashions
without any prejudice to his health; one while outdoing the Persian pomp
and luxury, and another, the Lacedaemonian austerity and frugality; as
reformed in Sparta, as voluptuous in Ionia:
"Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res."
["Every complexion of life, and station, and circumstance became
Aristippus."—Horace, Ep., xvii. 23.]
I would have my pupil to be such an one,
"Quem duplici panno patentia velat,
Mirabor, vitae via si conversa decebit,
Personamque feret non inconcinnus utramque."
["I should admire him who with patience bearing a patched garment,
bears well a changed fortune, acting both parts equally well."
—Horace Ep., xvii. 25.]
These are my lessons, and he who puts them in practice shall reap more
advantage than he who has had them read to him only, and so only knows
them. If you see him, you hear him; if you hear him, you see him. God
forbid, says one in Plato, that to philosophise were only to read a great
many books, and to learn the arts.
"Hanc amplissimam omnium artium bene vivendi disciplinam,
vita magis quam literis, persequuti sunt."
["They have proceeded to this discipline of living well, which of
all arts is the greatest, by their lives, rather than by their
reading."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 3.]
Leo, prince of the Phliasians, asking Heraclides Ponticus—[It was
not Heraclides of Pontus who made this answer, but Pythagoras.]—of
what art or science he made profession: "I know," said he, "neither art
nor science, but I am a philosopher." One reproaching Diogenes that, being
ignorant, he should pretend to philosophy; "I therefore," answered he,
"pretend to it with so much the more reason." Hegesias entreated that he
would read a certain book to him: "You are pleasant," said he; "you choose
those figs that are true and natural, and not those that are painted; why
do you not also choose exercises which are naturally true, rather than
those written?"
The lad will not so much get his lesson by heart as he will practise it:
he will repeat it in his actions. We shall discover if there be prudence
in his exercises, if there be sincerity and justice in his deportment, if
there be grace and judgment in his speaking; if there be constancy in his
sickness; if there be modesty in his mirth, temperance in his pleasures,
order in his domestic economy, indifference in palate, whether what he
eats or drinks be flesh or fish, wine or water:
"Qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem vitae
putet: quique obtemperet ipse sibi, et decretis pareat."
["Who considers his own discipline, not as a vain ostentation of
science, but as a law and rule of life; and who obeys his own
decrees, and the laws he has prescribed for himself."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 4.]
The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine. Zeuxidamus,
to one who asked him, why the Lacedaemonians did not commit their
constitutions of chivalry to writing, and deliver them to their young men
to read, made answer, that it was because they would inure them to action,
and not amuse them with words. With such a one, after fifteen or sixteen
years' study, compare one of our college Latinists, who has thrown away so
much time in nothing but learning to speak. The world is nothing but
babble; and I hardly ever yet saw that man who did not rather prate too
much, than speak too little. And yet half of our age is embezzled this
way: we are kept four or five years to learn words only, and to tack them
together into clauses; as many more to form them into a long discourse,
divided into four or five parts; and other five years, at least, to learn
succinctly to mix and interweave them after a subtle and intricate manner
let us leave all this to those who make a profession of it.
Going one day to Orleans, I met in that plain on this side Clery, two
pedants who were travelling towards Bordeaux, about fifty paces distant
from one another; and, a good way further behind them, I discovered a
troop of horse, with a gentleman at the head of them, who was the late
Monsieur le Comte de la Rochefoucauld. One of my people inquired of the
foremost of these masters of arts, who that gentleman was that came after
him; he, having not seen the train that followed after, and thinking his
companion was meant, pleasantly answered, "He is not a gentleman; he is a
grammarian; and I am a logician." Now we who, quite contrary, do not here
pretend to breed a grammarian or a logician, but a gentleman, let us leave
them to abuse their leisure; our business lies elsewhere. Let but our
pupil be well furnished with things, words will follow but too fast; he
will pull them after him if they do not voluntarily follow. I have
observed some to make excuses, that they cannot express themselves, and
pretend to have their fancies full of a great many very fine things, which
yet, for want of eloquence, they cannot utter; 'tis a mere shift, and
nothing else. Will you know what I think of it? I think they are nothing
but shadows of some imperfect images and conceptions that they know not
what to make of within, nor consequently bring out; they do not yet
themselves understand what they would be at, and if you but observe how
they haggle and stammer upon the point of parturition, you will soon
conclude, that their labour is not to delivery, but about conception, and
that they are but licking their formless embryo. For my part, I hold, and
Socrates commands it, that whoever has in his mind a sprightly and clear
imagination, he will express it well enough in one kind of tongue or
another, and, if he be dumb, by signs—
"Verbaque praevisam rem non invita sequentur;"
["Once a thing is conceived in the mind, the words to express it
soon present themselves." ("The words will not reluctantly follow the
thing preconceived.")—Horace, De Arte Poetica. v. 311]
And as another as poetically says in his prose:
"Quum res animum occupavere, verbs ambiunt,"
["When things are once in the mind, the words offer themselves
readily." ("When things have taken possession of the mind, the
words trip.")—Seneca, Controvers., iii. proem.]
and this other.
"Ipsae res verbs rapiunt."
["The things themselves force the words to express them."
—Cicero, De Finib., iii. 5.]
He knows nothing of ablative, conjunctive, substantive, or grammar, no
more than his lackey, or a fishwife of the Petit Pont; and yet these will
give you a bellyful of talk, if you will hear them, and peradventure shall
trip as little in their language as the best masters of art in France. He
knows no rhetoric, nor how in a preface to bribe the benevolence of the
courteous reader; neither does he care to know it. Indeed all this fine
decoration of painting is easily effaced by the lustre of a simple and
blunt truth; these fine flourishes serve only to amuse the vulgar, of
themselves incapable of more solid and nutritive diet, as Aper very
evidently demonstrates in Tacitus. The ambassadors of Samos, prepared with
a long and elegant oration, came to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, to incite
him to a war against the tyrant Polycrates; who, after he had heard their
harangue with great gravity and patience, gave them this answer: "As to
the exordium, I remember it not, nor consequently the middle of your
speech; and for what concerns your conclusion, I will not do what you
desire:"—[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedaemonians.]—a very
pretty answer this, methinks, and a pack of learned orators most sweetly
gravelled. And what did the other man say? The Athenians were to choose
one of two architects for a very great building they had designed; of
these, the first, a pert affected fellow, offered his service in a long
premeditated discourse upon the subject of the work in hand, and by his
oratory inclined the voices of the people in his favour; but the other in
three words: "O Athenians, what this man says, I will do."—[Plutarch,
Instructions to Statesmen, c. 4.]— When Cicero was in the height and
heat of an eloquent harangue, many were struck with admiration; but Cato
only laughed, saying, "We have a pleasant (mirth-making) consul." Let it
go before, or come after, a good sentence or a thing well said, is always
in season; if it neither suit well with what went before, nor has much
coherence with what follows after, it is good in itself. I am none of
those who think that good rhyme makes a good poem. Let him make short
long, and long short if he will, 'tis no great matter; if there be
invention, and that the wit and judgment have well performed their
offices, I will say, here's a good poet, but an ill rhymer.
"Emunctae naris, durus componere versus."
["Of delicate humour, but of rugged versification."
—Horace, Sat, iv. 8.]
Let a man, says Horace, divest his work of all method and measure,
"Tempora certa modosque, et, quod prius ordine verbum est,
Posterius facias, praeponens ultima primis
Invenias etiam disjecti membra poetae."
["Take away certain rhythms and measures, and make the word which
was first in order come later, putting that which should be last
first, you will still find the scattered remains of the poet."
—Horace, Sat., i. 4, 58.]
he will never the more lose himself for that; the very pieces will be fine
by themselves. Menander's answer had this meaning, who being reproved by a
friend, the time drawing on at which he had promised a comedy, that he had
not yet fallen in hand with it; "It is made, and ready," said he, "all but
the verses."—[Plutarch, Whether the Athenians more excelled in Arms
or in Letters.]—Having contrived the subject, and disposed the
scenes in his fancy, he took little care for the rest. Since Ronsard and
Du Bellay have given reputation to our French poesy, every little dabbler,
for aught I see, swells his words as high, and makes his cadences very
near as harmonious as they:
"Plus sonat, quam valet."
["More sound than sense"—Seneca, Ep., 40.]
For the vulgar, there were never so many poetasters as now; but though
they find it no hard matter to imitate their rhyme, they yet fall
infinitely short of imitating the rich descriptions of the one, and the
delicate invention of the other of these masters.
But what will become of our young gentleman, if he be attacked with the
sophistic subtlety of some syllogism? "A Westfalia ham makes a man drink;
drink quenches thirst: ergo a Westfalia ham quenches thirst." Why, let him
laugh at it; it will be more discretion to do so, than to go about to
answer it; or let him borrow this pleasant evasion from Aristippus: "Why
should I trouble myself to untie that, which bound as it is, gives me so
much trouble?"—[Diogenes Laertius, ii. 70.]— One offering at
this dialectic juggling against Cleanthes, Chrysippus took him short,
saying, "Reserve these baubles to play with children, and do not by such
fooleries divert the serious thoughts of a man of years." If these
ridiculous subtleties,
"Contorta et aculeata sophismata,"
as Cicero calls them, are designed to possess him with an untruth, they
are dangerous; but if they signify no more than only to make him laugh, I
do not see why a man need to be fortified against them. There are some so
ridiculous, as to go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word:
"Aut qui non verba rebus aptant, sed res extrinsecus
arcessunt, quibus verba conveniant."
["Who do not fit words to the subject, but seek out for things
quite from the purpose to fit the words."—Quintilian, viii. 3.]
And as another says,
"Qui, alicujus verbi decore placentis, vocentur ad id,
quod non proposuerant scribere."
["Who by their fondness of some fine sounding word, are tempted to
something they had no intention to treat of."—Seneca, Ep., 59.]
I for my part rather bring in a fine sentence by head and shoulders to fit
my purpose, than divert my designs to hunt after a sentence. On the
contrary, words are to serve, and to follow a man's purpose; and let
Gascon come in play where French will not do. I would have things so
excelling, and so wholly possessing the imagination of him that hears,
that he should have something else to do, than to think of words. The way
of speaking that I love, is natural and plain, the same in writing as in
speaking, and a sinewy and muscular way of expressing a man's self, short
and pithy, not so elegant and artificial as prompt and vehement;
"Haec demum sapiet dictio, qux feriet;"
["That has most weight and wisdom which pierces the ear." ("That
utterance indeed will have a taste which shall strike the ear.")
—Epitaph on Lucan, in Fabricius, Biblioth. Lat., ii. 10.]
rather hard than wearisome; free from affectation; irregular,
incontinuous, and bold; where every piece makes up an entire body; not
like a pedant, a preacher, or a pleader, but rather a soldier-like style,
as Suetonius calls that of Julius Caesar; and yet I see no reason why he
should call it so. I have ever been ready to imitate the negligent garb,
which is yet observable amongst the young men of our time, to wear my
cloak on one shoulder, my cap on one side, a stocking in disorder, which
seems to express a kind of haughty disdain of these exotic ornaments, and
a contempt of the artificial; but I find this negligence of much better
use in the form of speaking. All affectation, particularly in the French
gaiety and freedom, is ungraceful in a courtier, and in a monarchy every
gentleman ought to be fashioned according to the court model; for which
reason, an easy and natural negligence does well. I no more like a web
where the knots and seams are to be seen, than a fine figure, so delicate,
that a man may tell all the bones and veins:
"Quae veritati operam dat oratio, incomposita sit et simplex."
["Let the language that is dedicated to truth be plain and
unaffected.—Seneca, Ep. 40.]
"Quis accurat loquitur, nisi qui vult putide loqui?"
["For who studies to speak accurately, that does not at the same
time wish to perplex his auditory?"—Idem, Ep., 75.]
That eloquence prejudices the subject it would advance, that wholly
attracts us to itself. And as in our outward habit, 'tis a ridiculous
effeminacy to distinguish ourselves by a particular and unusual garb or
fashion; so in language, to study new phrases, and to affect words that
are not of current use, proceeds from a puerile and scholastic ambition.
May I be bound to speak no other language than what is spoken in the
market-places of Paris! Aristophanes the grammarian was quite out, when he
reprehended Epicurus for his plain way of delivering himself, and the
design of his oratory, which was only perspicuity of speech. The imitation
of words, by its own facility, immediately disperses itself through a
whole people; but the imitation of inventing and fitly applying those
words is of a slower progress. The generality of readers, for having found
a like robe, very mistakingly imagine they have the same body and inside
too, whereas force and sinews are never to be borrowed; the gloss, and
outward ornament, that is, words and elocution, may. Most of those I
converse with, speak the same language I here write; but whether they
think the same thoughts I cannot say. The Athenians, says Plato, study
fulness and elegancy of speaking; the Lacedaemonians affect brevity, and
those of Crete to aim more at the fecundity of conception than the
fertility of speech; and these are the best. Zeno used to say that he had
two sorts of disciples, one that he called cy——-ous, curious
to learn things, and these were his favourites; the other, aoy—-ous,
that cared for nothing but words. Not that fine speaking is not a very
good and commendable quality; but not so excellent and so necessary as
some would make it; and I am scandalised that our whole life should be
spent in nothing else. I would first understand my own language, and that
of my neighbours, with whom most of my business and conversation lies.
No doubt but Greek and Latin are very great ornaments, and of very great
use, but we buy them too dear. I will here discover one way, which has
been experimented in my own person, by which they are to be had better
cheap, and such may make use of it as will. My late father having made the
most precise inquiry that any man could possibly make amongst men of the
greatest learning and judgment, of an exact method of education, was by
them cautioned of this inconvenience then in use, and made to believe,
that the tedious time we applied to the learning of the tongues of them
who had them for nothing, was the sole cause we could not arrive to the
grandeur of soul and perfection of knowledge, of the ancient Greeks and
Romans. I do not, however, believe that to be the only cause. So it is,
that the expedient my father found out for this was, that in my infancy,
and before I began to speak, he committed me to the care of a German, who
since died a famous physician in France, totally ignorant of our language,
and very fluent and a great critic in Latin. This man, whom he had fetched
out of his own country, and whom he entertained with a great salary for
this only one end, had me continually with him; he had with him also
joined two others, of inferior learning, to attend me, and to relieve him;
these spoke to me in no other language but Latin. As to the rest of his
household, it was an inviolable rule, that neither himself, nor my mother,
nor valet, nor chambermaid, should speak anything in my company, but such
Latin words as each one had learned to gabble with me. —[These
passages are, the basis of a small volume by the Abbe Mangin: "Education
de Montaigne; ou, L'Art d'enseigner le Latin a l'instar des meres
latines."]—It is not to be imagined how great an advantage this
proved to the whole family; my father and my mother by this means learned
Latin enough to understand it perfectly well, and to speak it to such a
degree as was sufficient for any necessary use; as also those of the
servants did who were most frequently with me. In short, we Latined it at
such a rate, that it overflowed to all the neighbouring villages, where
there yet remain, that have established themselves by custom, several
Latin appellations of artisans and their tools. As for what concerns
myself, I was above six years of age before I understood either French or
Perigordin, any more than Arabic; and without art, book, grammar, or
precept, whipping, or the expense of a tear, I had, by that time, learned
to speak as pure Latin as my master himself, for I had no means of mixing
it up with any other. If, for example, they were to give me a theme after
the college fashion, they gave it to others in French; but to me they were
to give it in bad Latin, to turn it into that which was good. And Nicolas
Grouchy, who wrote a book De Comitiis Romanorum; Guillaume Guerente, who
wrote a comment upon Aristotle: George Buchanan, that great Scottish poet:
and Marc Antoine Muret (whom both France and Italy have acknowledged for
the best orator of his time), my domestic tutors, have all of them often
told me that I had in my infancy that language so very fluent and ready,
that they were afraid to enter into discourse with me. And particularly
Buchanan, whom I since saw attending the late Mareschal de Brissac, then
told me, that he was about to write a treatise of education, the example
of which he intended to take from mine; for he was then tutor to that
Comte de Brissac who afterward proved so valiant and so brave a gentleman.
As to Greek, of which I have but a mere smattering, my father also
designed to have it taught me by a device, but a new one, and by way of
sport; tossing our declensions to and fro, after the manner of those who,
by certain games of tables, learn geometry and arithmetic. For he, amongst
other rules, had been advised to make me relish science and duty by an
unforced will, and of my own voluntary motion, and to educate my soul in
all liberty and delight, without any severity or constraint; which he was
an observer of to such a degree, even of superstition, if I may say so,
that some being of opinion that it troubles and disturbs the brains of
children suddenly to wake them in the morning, and to snatch them
violently—and over-hastily from sleep (wherein they are much more
profoundly involved than we), he caused me to be wakened by the sound of
some musical instrument, and was never unprovided of a musician for that
purpose. By this example you may judge of the rest, this alone being
sufficient to recommend both the prudence and the affection of so good a
father, who is not to be blamed if he did not reap fruits answerable to so
exquisite a culture. Of this, two things were the cause: first, a sterile
and improper soil; for, though I was of a strong and healthful
constitution, and of a disposition tolerably sweet and tractable, yet I
was, withal, so heavy, idle, and indisposed, that they could not rouse me
from my sloth, not even to get me out to play. What I saw, I saw clearly
enough, and under this heavy complexion nourished a bold imagination and
opinions above my age. I had a slow wit that would go no faster than it
was led; a tardy understanding, a languishing invention, and above all,
incredible defect of memory; so that, it is no wonder, if from all these
nothing considerable could be extracted. Secondly, like those who,
impatient of along and steady cure, submit to all sorts of prescriptions
and recipes, the good man being extremely timorous of any way failing in a
thing he had so wholly set his heart upon, suffered himself at last to be
overruled by the common opinions, which always follow their leader as a
flight of cranes, and complying with the method of the time, having no
more those persons he had brought out of Italy, and who had given him the
first model of education, about him, he sent me at six years of age to the
College of Guienne, at that time the best and most flourishing in France.
And there it was not possible to add anything to the care he had to
provide me the most able tutors, with all other circumstances of
education, reserving also several particular rules contrary to the college
practice; but so it was, that with all these precautions, it was a college
still. My Latin immediately grew corrupt, of which also by discontinuance
I have since lost all manner of use; so that this new way of education
served me to no other end, than only at my first coming to prefer me to
the first forms; for at thirteen years old, that I came out of the
college, I had run through my whole course (as they call it), and, in
truth, without any manner of advantage, that I can honestly brag of, in
all this time.
The first taste which I had for books came to me from the pleasure in
reading the fables of Ovid's Metamorphoses; for, being about seven or
eight years old, I gave up all other diversions to read them, both by
reason that this was my own natural language, the easiest book that I was
acquainted with, and for the subject, the most accommodated to the
capacity of my age: for as for the Lancelot of the Lake, the Amadis of
Gaul, the Huon of Bordeaux, and such farragos, by which children are most
delighted with, I had never so much as heard their names, no more than I
yet know what they contain; so exact was the discipline wherein I was
brought up. But this was enough to make me neglect the other lessons that
were prescribed me; and here it was infinitely to my advantage, to have to
do with an understanding tutor, who very well knew discreetly to connive
at this and other truantries of the same nature; for by this means I ran
through Virgil's AEneid, and then Terence, and then Plautus, and then some
Italian comedies, allured by the sweetness of the subject; whereas had he
been so foolish as to have taken me off this diversion, I do really
believe, I had brought away nothing from the college but a hatred of
books, as almost all our young gentlemen do. But he carried himself very
discreetly in that business, seeming to take no notice, and allowing me
only such time as I could steal from my other regular studies, which
whetted my appetite to devour those books. For the chief things my father
expected from their endeavours to whom he had delivered me for education,
were affability and good-humour; and, to say the truth, my manners had no
other vice but sloth and want of metal. The fear was not that I should do
ill, but that I should do nothing; nobody prognosticated that I should be
wicked, but only useless; they foresaw idleness, but no malice; and I find
it falls out accordingly: The complaints I hear of myself are these: "He
is idle, cold in the offices of friendship and relation, and in those of
the public, too particular, too disdainful." But the most injurious do not
say, "Why has he taken such a thing? Why has he not paid such an one?"
but, "Why does he part with nothing? Why does he not give?" And I should
take it for a favour that men would expect from me no greater effects of
supererogation than these. But they are unjust to exact from me what I do
not owe, far more rigorously than they require from others that which they
do owe. In condemning me to it, they efface the gratification of the
action, and deprive me of the gratitude that would be my due for it;
whereas the active well-doing ought to be of so much the greater value
from my hands, by how much I have never been passive that way at all. I
can the more freely dispose of my fortune the more it is mine, and of
myself the more I am my own. Nevertheless, if I were good at setting out
my own actions, I could, peradventure, very well repel these reproaches,
and could give some to understand, that they are not so much offended,
that I do not enough, as that I am able to do a great deal more than I do.
Yet for all this heavy disposition of mine, my mind, when retired into
itself, was not altogether without strong movements, solid and clear
judgments about those objects it could comprehend, and could also, without
any helps, digest them; but, amongst other things, I do really believe, it
had been totally impossible to have made it to submit by violence and
force. Shall I here acquaint you with one faculty of my youth? I had great
assurance of countenance, and flexibility of voice and gesture, in
applying myself to any part I undertook to act: for before—
"Alter ab undecimo tum me vix ceperat annus,"
["I had just entered my twelfth year."—Virgil, Bucol., 39.]
I played the chief parts in the Latin tragedies of Buchanan, Guerente, and
Muret, that were presented in our College of Guienne with great dignity:
now Andreas Goveanus, our principal, as in all other parts of his charge,
was, without comparison, the best of that employment in France; and I was
looked upon as one of the best actors. 'Tis an exercise that I do not
disapprove in young people of condition; and I have since seen our
princes, after the example of some of the ancients, in person handsomely
and commendably perform these exercises; it was even allowed to persons of
quality to make a profession of it in Greece.
"Aristoni tragico actori rem aperit: huic et genus et
fortuna honesta erant: nec ars, quia nihil tale apud
Graecos pudori est, ea deformabat."
["He imparted this matter to Aristo the tragedian; a man of good
family and fortune, which neither of them receive any blemish by
that profession; nothing of this kind being reputed a disparagement
in Greece."—Livy, xxiv. 24.]
Nay, I have always taxed those with impertinence who condemn these
entertainments, and with injustice those who refuse to admit such
comedians as are worth seeing into our good towns, and grudge the people
that public diversion. Well-governed corporations take care to assemble
their citizens, not only to the solemn duties of devotion, but also to
sports and spectacles. They find society and friendship augmented by it;
and besides, can there possibly be allowed a more orderly and regular
diversion than what is performed m the sight of every one, and very often
in the presence of the supreme magistrate himself? And I, for my part,
should think it reasonable, that the prince should sometimes gratify his
people at his own expense, out of paternal goodness and affection; and
that in populous cities there should be theatres erected for such
entertainments, if but to divert them from worse and private actions.
To return to my subject, there is nothing like alluring the appetite and
affections; otherwise you make nothing but so many asses laden with books;
by dint of the lash, you give them their pocketful of learning to keep;
whereas, to do well you should not only lodge it with them, but make them
espouse it.
CHAPTER XXVI——THAT IT IS FOLLY TO MEASURE TRUTH AND ERROR BY
OUR OWN CAPACITY
'Tis not, perhaps, without reason, that we attribute facility of belief
and easiness of persuasion to simplicity and ignorance: for I fancy I have
heard belief compared to the impression of a seal upon the soul, which by
how much softer and of less resistance it is, is the more easy to be
impressed upon.
"Ut necesse est, lancem in Libra, ponderibus impositis,
deprimi, sic animum perspicuis cedere."
["As the scale of the balance must give way to the weight that
presses it down, so the mind yields to demonstration."
—Cicero, Acad., ii. 12.]
By how much the soul is more empty and without counterpoise, with so much
greater facility it yields under the weight of the first persuasion. And
this is the reason that children, the common people, women, and sick
folks, are most apt to be led by the ears. But then, on the other hand,
'tis a foolish presumption to slight and condemn all things for false that
do not appear to us probable; which is the ordinary vice of such as fancy
themselves wiser than their neighbours. I was myself once one of those;
and if I heard talk of dead folks walking, of prophecies, enchantments,
witchcrafts, or any other story I had no mind to believe:
"Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala,"
["Dreams, magic terrors, marvels, sorceries, Thessalian prodigies."
—Horace. Ep. ii. 3, 208.]
I presently pitied the poor people that were abused by these follies.
Whereas I now find, that I myself was to be pitied as much, at least, as
they; not that experience has taught me anything to alter my former
opinions, though my curiosity has endeavoured that way; but reason has
instructed me, that thus resolutely to condemn anything for false and
impossible, is arrogantly and impiously to circumscribe and limit the will
of God, and the power of our mother nature, within the bounds of my own
capacity, than which no folly can be greater. If we give the names of
monster and miracle to everything our reason cannot comprehend, how many
are continually presented before our eyes? Let us but consider through
what clouds, and as it were groping in the dark, our teachers lead us to
the knowledge of most of the things about us; assuredly we shall find that
it is rather custom than knowledge that takes away their strangeness—
"Jam nemo, fessus saturusque videndi,
Suspicere in coeli dignatur lucida templa;"
["Weary of the sight, now no one deigns to look up to heaven's lucid
temples."—Lucretius, ii. 1037. The text has 'statiate videnai']
and that if those things were now newly presented to us, we should think
them as incredible, if not more, than any others.
"Si nunc primum mortalibus adsint
Ex improviso, si sint objecta repente,
Nil magis his rebus poterat mirabile dici,
Aute minus ante quod auderent fore credere gentes."
[Lucretius, ii. 1032. The sense of the passage is in the preceding
sentence.]
He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the
sea; and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge, we
conclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind.
"Scilicet et fluvius qui non est maximus, ei'st
Qui non ante aliquem majorem vidit; et ingens
Arbor, homoque videtur, et omnia de genere omni
Maxima quae vidit quisque, haec ingentia fingit."
["A little river seems to him, who has never seen a larger river, a
mighty stream; and so with other things—a tree, a man—anything
appears greatest to him that never knew a greater."—Idem, vi. 674.]
"Consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi, neque admirantur,
neque requirunt rationes earum rerum, quas semper vident."
["Things grow familiar to men's minds by being often seen; so that
they neither admire nor are they inquisitive about things they daily
see."—Cicero, De Natura Deor., lib. ii. 38.]
The novelty, rather than the greatness of things, tempts us to inquire
into their causes. We are to judge with more reverence, and with greater
acknowledgment of our own ignorance and infirmity, of the infinite power
of nature. How many unlikely things are there testified by people worthy
of faith, which, if we cannot persuade ourselves absolutely to believe, we
ought at least to leave them in suspense; for, to condemn them as
impossible, is by a temerarious presumption to pretend to know the utmost
bounds of possibility. Did we rightly understand the difference betwixt
the impossible and the unusual, and betwixt that which is contrary to the
order and course of nature and contrary to the common opinion of men, in
not believing rashly, and on the other hand, in not being too incredulous,
we should observe the rule of 'Ne quid nimis' enjoined by Chilo.
When we find in Froissart, that the Comte de Foix knew in Bearn the defeat
of John, king of Castile, at Jubera the next day after it happened, and
the means by which he tells us he came to do so, we may be allowed to be a
little merry at it, as also at what our annals report, that Pope Honorius,
the same day that King Philip Augustus died at Mantes, performed his
public obsequies at Rome, and commanded the like throughout Italy, the
testimony of these authors not being, perhaps, of authority enough to
restrain us. But what if Plutarch, besides several examples that he
produces out of antiquity, tells us, he knows of certain knowledge, that
in the time of Domitian, the news of the battle lost by Antony in Germany
was published at Rome, many days' journey from thence, and dispersed
throughout the whole world, the same day it was fought; and if Caesar was
of opinion, that it has often happened, that the report has preceded the
incident, shall we not say, that these simple people have suffered
themselves to be deceived with the vulgar, for not having been so
clear-sighted as we? Is there anything more delicate, more clear, more
sprightly; than Pliny's judgment, when he is pleased to set it to work?
Anything more remote from vanity? Setting aside his learning, of which I
make less account, in which of these excellences do any of us excel him?
And yet there is scarce a young schoolboy that does not convict him of
untruth, and that pretends not to instruct him in the progress of the
works of nature. When we read in Bouchet the miracles of St. Hilary's
relics, away with them: his authority is not sufficient to deprive us of
the liberty of contradicting him; but generally and offhand to condemn all
suchlike stories, seems to me a singular impudence. That great St.
Augustin' testifies to have seen a blind child recover sight upon the
relics of St. Gervasius and St. Protasius at Milan; a woman at Carthage
cured of a cancer, by the sign of the cross made upon her by a woman newly
baptized; Hesperius, a familiar friend of his, to have driven away the
spirits that haunted his house, with a little earth of the sepulchre of
our Lord; which earth, being also transported thence into the church, a
paralytic to have there been suddenly cured by it; a woman in a
procession, having touched St. Stephen's shrine with a nosegay, and
rubbing her eyes with it, to have recovered her sight, lost many years
before; with several other miracles of which he professes himself to have
been an eyewitness: of what shall we excuse him and the two holy bishops,
Aurelius and Maximinus, both of whom he attests to the truth of these
things? Shall it be of ignorance, simplicity, and facility; or of malice
and imposture? Is any man now living so impudent as to think himself
comparable to them in virtue, piety, learning, judgment, or any kind of
perfection?
"Qui, ut rationem nullam afferrent,
ipsa auctoritate me frangerent."
["Who, though they should adduce no reason, would convince me with
their authority alone."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes, i. 21.]
'Tis a presumption of great danger and consequence, besides the absurd
temerity it draws after it, to contemn what we do not comprehend. For
after, according to your fine understanding, you have established the
limits of truth and error, and that, afterwards, there appears a necessity
upon you of believing stranger things than those you have contradicted,
you are already obliged to quit your limits. Now, that which seems to me
so much to disorder our consciences in the commotions we are now in
concerning religion, is the Catholics dispensing so much with their
belief. They fancy they appear moderate, and wise, when they grant to
their opponents some of the articles in question; but, besides that they
do not discern what advantage it is to those with whom we contend, to
begin to give ground and to retire, and how much this animates our enemy
to follow his blow: these articles which they select as things
indifferent, are sometimes of very great importance. We are either wholly
and absolutely to submit ourselves to the authority of our ecclesiastical
polity, or totally throw off all obedience to it: 'tis not for us to
determine what and how much obedience we owe to it. And this I can say, as
having myself made trial of it, that having formerly taken the liberty of
my own swing and fancy, and omitted or neglected certain rules of the
discipline of our Church, which seemed to me vain and strange coming
afterwards to discourse of it with learned men, I have found those same
things to be built upon very good and solid ground and strong foundation;
and that nothing but stupidity and ignorance makes us receive them with
less reverence than the rest. Why do we not consider what contradictions
we find in our own judgments; how many things were yesterday articles of
our faith, that to-day appear no other than fables? Glory and curiosity
are the scourges of the soul; the last prompts us to thrust our noses into
everything, the other forbids us to leave anything doubtful and undecided.
CHAPTER XXVII——OF FRIENDSHIP
Having considered the proceedings of a painter that serves me, I had a
mind to imitate his way. He chooses the fairest place and middle of any
wall, or panel, wherein to draw a picture, which he finishes with his
utmost care and art, and the vacuity about it he fills with grotesques,
which are odd fantastic figures without any grace but what they derive
from their variety, and the extravagance of their shapes. And in truth,
what are these things I scribble, other than grotesques and monstrous
bodies, made of various parts, without any certain figure, or any other
than accidental order, coherence, or proportion?
"Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne."
["A fair woman in her upper form terminates in a fish."
—Horace, De Arte Poetica, v. 4.]
In this second part I go hand in hand with my painter; but fall very short
of him in the first and the better, my power of handling not being such,
that I dare to offer at a rich piece, finely polished, and set off
according to art. I have therefore thought fit to borrow one of Estienne
de la Boetie, and such a one as shall honour and adorn all the rest of my
work—namely, a discourse that he called 'Voluntary Servitude'; but,
since, those who did not know him have properly enough called it "Le contr
Un." He wrote in his youth,—["Not being as yet eighteen years old."—Edition
of 1588.] by way of essay, in honour of liberty against tyrants; and it
has since run through the hands of men of great learning and judgment, not
without singular and merited commendation; for it is finely written, and
as full as anything can possibly be. And yet one may confidently say it is
far short of what he was able to do; and if in that more mature age,
wherein I had the happiness to know him, he had taken a design like this
of mine, to commit his thoughts to writing, we should have seen a great
many rare things, and such as would have gone very near to have rivalled
the best writings of antiquity: for in natural parts especially, I know no
man comparable to him. But he has left nothing behind him, save this
treatise only (and that too by chance, for I believe he never saw it after
it first went out of his hands), and some observations upon that edict of
January—[1562, which granted to the Huguenots the public exercise of
their religion.]—made famous by our civil-wars, which also shall
elsewhere, peradventure, find a place. These were all I could recover of
his remains, I to whom with so affectionate a remembrance, upon his
death-bed, he by his last will bequeathed his library and papers, the
little book of his works only excepted, which I committed to the press.
And this particular obligation I have to this treatise of his, that it was
the occasion of my first coming acquainted with him; for it was showed to
me long before I had the good fortune to know him; and the first knowledge
of his name, proving the first cause and foundation of a friendship, which
we afterwards improved and maintained, so long as God was pleased to
continue us together, so perfect, inviolate, and entire, that certainly
the like is hardly to be found in story, and amongst the men of this age,
there is no sign nor trace of any such thing in use; so much concurrence
is required to the building of such a one, that 'tis much, if fortune
bring it but once to pass in three ages.
There is nothing to which nature seems so much to have inclined us, as to
society; and Aristotle , says that the good legislators had more respect
to friendship than to justice. Now the most supreme point of its
perfection is this: for, generally, all those that pleasure, profit,
public or private interest create and nourish, are so much the less
beautiful and generous, and so much the less friendships, by how much they
mix another cause, and design, and fruit in friendship, than itself.
Neither do the four ancient kinds, natural, social, hospitable, venereal,
either separately or jointly, make up a true and perfect friendship.
That of children to parents is rather respect: friendship is nourished by
communication, which cannot by reason of the great disparity, be betwixt
these, but would rather perhaps offend the duties of nature; for neither
are all the secret thoughts of fathers fit to be communicated to children,
lest it beget an indecent familiarity betwixt them; nor can the advices
and reproofs, which is one of the principal offices of friendship, be
properly performed by the son to the father. There are some countries
where 'twas the custom for children to kill their fathers; and others,
where the fathers killed their children, to avoid their being an
impediment one to another in life; and naturally the expectations of the
one depend upon the ruin of the other. There have been great philosophers
who have made nothing of this tie of nature, as Aristippus for one, who
being pressed home about the affection he owed to his children, as being
come out of him, presently fell to spit, saying, that this also came out
of him, and that we also breed worms and lice; and that other, that
Plutarch endeavoured to reconcile to his brother: "I make never the more
account of him," said he, "for coming out of the same hole." This name of
brother does indeed carry with it a fine and delectable sound, and for
that reason, he and I called one another brothers but the complication of
interests, the division of estates, and that the wealth of the one should
be the property of the other, strangely relax and weaken the fraternal
tie: brothers pursuing their fortune and advancement by the same path,
'tis hardly possible but they must of necessity often jostle and hinder
one another. Besides, why is it necessary that the correspondence of
manners, parts, and inclinations, which begets the true and perfect
friendships, should always meet in these relations? The father and the son
may be of quite contrary humours, and so of brothers: he is my son, he is
my brother; but he is passionate, ill-natured, or a fool. And moreover, by
how much these are friendships that the law and natural obligation impose
upon us, so much less is there of our own choice and voluntary freedom;
whereas that voluntary liberty of ours has no production more promptly
and; properly its own than affection and friendship. Not that I have not
in my own person experimented all that can possibly be expected of that
kind, having had the best and most indulgent father, even to his extreme
old age, that ever was, and who was himself descended from a family for
many generations famous and exemplary for brotherly concord:
"Et ipse
Notus in fratres animi paterni."
["And I myself, known for paternal love toward my brothers."
—Horace, Ode, ii. 2, 6.]
We are not here to bring the love we bear to women, though it be an act of
our own choice, into comparison, nor rank it with the others. The fire of
this, I confess,
"Neque enim est dea nescia nostri
Qux dulcem curis miscet amaritiem,"
["Nor is the goddess unknown to me who mixes a sweet bitterness
with my love."—-Catullus, lxviii. 17.]
is more active, more eager, and more sharp: but withal, 'tis more
precipitant, fickle, moving, and inconstant; a fever subject to
intermissions and paroxysms, that has seized but on one part of us.
Whereas in friendship, 'tis a general and universal fire, but temperate
and equal, a constant established heat, all gentle and smooth, without
poignancy or roughness. Moreover, in love, 'tis no other than frantic
desire for that which flies from us:
"Come segue la lepre il cacciatore
Al freddo, al caldo, alla montagna, al lito;
Ne piu l'estima poi the presa vede;
E sol dietro a chi fugge affretta il piede"
["As the hunter pursues the hare, in cold and heat, to the mountain,
to the shore, nor cares for it farther when he sees it taken, and
only delights in chasing that which flees from him."—Aristo, x. 7.]
so soon as it enters unto the terms of friendship, that is to say, into a
concurrence of desires, it vanishes and is gone, fruition destroys it, as
having only a fleshly end, and such a one as is subject to satiety.
Friendship, on the contrary, is enjoyed proportionably as it is desired;
and only grows up, is nourished and improved by enjoyment, as being of
itself spiritual, and the soul growing still more refined by practice.
Under this perfect friendship, the other fleeting affections have in my
younger years found some place in me, to say nothing of him, who himself
so confesses but too much in his verses; so that I had both these
passions, but always so, that I could myself well enough distinguish them,
and never in any degree of comparison with one another; the first
maintaining its flight in so lofty and so brave a place, as with disdain
to look down, and see the other flying at a far humbler pitch below.
As concerning marriage, besides that it is a covenant, the entrance into
which only is free, but the continuance in it forced and compulsory,
having another dependence than that of our own free will, and a bargain
commonly contracted to other ends, there almost always happens a thousand
intricacies in it to unravel, enough to break the thread and to divert the
current of a lively affection: whereas friendship has no manner of
business or traffic with aught but itself. Moreover, to say truth, the
ordinary talent of women is not such as is sufficient to maintain the
conference and communication required to the support of this sacred tie;
nor do they appear to be endued with constancy of mind, to sustain the
pinch of so hard and durable a knot. And doubtless, if without this, there
could be such a free and voluntary familiarity contracted, where not only
the souls might have this entire fruition, but the bodies also might share
in the alliance, and a man be engaged throughout, the friendship would
certainly be more full and perfect; but it is without example that this
sex has ever yet arrived at such perfection; and, by the common consent of
the ancient schools, it is wholly rejected from it.
That other Grecian licence is justly abhorred by our manners, which also,
from having, according to their practice, a so necessary disparity of age
and difference of offices betwixt the lovers, answered no more to the
perfect union and harmony that we here require than the other:
"Quis est enim iste amor amicitiae? cur neque deformem
adolescentem quisquam amat, neque formosum senem?"
["For what is that friendly love? why does no one love a deformed
youth or a comely old man?"—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 33.]
Neither will that very picture that the Academy presents of it, as I
conceive, contradict me, when I say, that this first fury inspired by the
son of Venus into the heart of the lover, upon sight of the flower and
prime of a springing and blossoming youth, to which they allow all the
insolent and passionate efforts that an immoderate ardour can produce, was
simply founded upon external beauty, the false image of corporal
generation; for it could not ground this love upon the soul, the sight of
which as yet lay concealed, was but now springing, and not of maturity to
blossom; that this fury, if it seized upon a low spirit, the means by
which it preferred its suit were rich presents, favour in advancement to
dignities, and such trumpery, which they by no means approve; if on a more
generous soul, the pursuit was suitably generous, by philosophical
instructions, precepts to revere religion, to obey the laws, to die for
the good of one's country; by examples of valour, prudence, and justice,
the lover studying to render himself acceptable by the grace and beauty of
the soul, that of his body being long since faded and decayed, hoping by
this mental society to establish a more firm and lasting contract. When
this courtship came to effect in due season (for that which they do not
require in the lover, namely, leisure and discretion in his pursuit, they
strictly require in the person loved, forasmuch as he is to judge of an
internal beauty, of difficult knowledge and abstruse discovery), then
there sprung in the person loved the desire of a spiritual conception; by
the mediation of a spiritual beauty. This was the principal; the
corporeal, an accidental and secondary matter; quite the contrary as to
the lover. For this reason they prefer the person beloved, maintaining
that the gods in like manner preferred him too, and very much blame the
poet AEschylus for having, in the loves of Achilles and Patroclus, given
the lover's part to Achilles, who was in the first and beardless flower of
his adolescence, and the handsomest of all the Greeks. After this general
community, the sovereign, and most worthy part presiding and governing,
and performing its proper offices, they say, that thence great utility was
derived, both by private and public concerns; that it constituted the
force and power of the countries where it prevailed, and the chiefest
security of liberty and justice. Of which the healthy loves of Harmodius
and Aristogiton are instances. And therefore it is that they called it
sacred and divine, and conceive that nothing but the violence of tyrants
and the baseness of the common people are inimical to it. Finally, all
that can be said in favour of the Academy is, that it was a love which
ended in friendship, which well enough agrees with the Stoical definition
of love:
"Amorem conatum esse amicitiae faciendae
ex pulchritudinis specie."
["Love is a desire of contracting friendship arising from the beauty
of the object."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., vi. 34.]
I return to my own more just and true description:
"Omnino amicitiae, corroboratis jam confirmatisque,
et ingeniis, et aetatibus, judicandae sunt."
["Those are only to be reputed friendships that are fortified and
confirmed by judgement and the length of time."
—Cicero, De Amicit., c. 20.]
For the rest, what we commonly call friends and friendships, are nothing
but acquaintance and familiarities, either occasionally contracted, or
upon some design, by means of which there happens some little intercourse
betwixt our souls. But in the friendship I speak of, they mix and work
themselves into one piece, with so universal a mixture, that there is no
more sign of the seam by which they were first conjoined. If a man should
importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no
otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because
it was I. There is, beyond all that I am able to say, I know not what
inexplicable and fated power that brought on this union. We sought one
another long before we met, and by the characters we heard of one another,
which wrought upon our affections more than, in reason, mere reports
should do; I think 'twas by some secret appointment of heaven. We embraced
in our names; and at our first meeting, which was accidentally at a great
city entertainment, we found ourselves so mutually taken with one another,
so acquainted, and so endeared betwixt ourselves, that from thenceforward
nothing was so near to us as one another. He wrote an excellent Latin
satire, since printed, wherein he excuses the precipitation of our
intelligence, so suddenly come to perfection, saying, that destined to
have so short a continuance, as begun so late (for we were both full-grown
men, and he some years the older), there was no time to lose, nor were we
tied to conform to the example of those slow and regular friendships, that
require so many precautions of long preliminary conversation: This has no
other idea than that of itself, and can only refer to itself: this is no
one special consideration, nor two, nor three, nor four, nor a thousand;
'tis I know not what quintessence of all this mixture, which, seizing my
whole will, carried it to plunge and lose itself in his, and that having
seized his whole will, brought it back with equal concurrence and appetite
to plunge and lose itself in mine. I may truly say lose, reserving nothing
to ourselves that was either his or mine.—[All this relates to
Estienne de la Boetie.]
When Laelius,—[Cicero, De Amicit., c. II.]—in the presence of
the Roman consuls, who after thay had sentenced Tiberius Gracchus,
prosecuted all those who had had any familiarity with him also; came to
ask Caius Blosius, who was his chiefest friend, how much he would have
done for him, and that he made answer: "All things."—"How! All
things!" said Laelius. "And what if he had commanded you to fire our
temples?"—"He would never have commanded me that," replied Blosius.—"But
what if he had?" said Laelius.—"I would have obeyed him," said the
other. If he was so perfect a friend to Gracchus as the histories report
him to have been, there was yet no necessity of offending the consuls by
such a bold confession, though he might still have retained the assurance
he had of Gracchus' disposition. However, those who accuse this answer as
seditious, do not well understand the mystery; nor presuppose, as it was
true, that he had Gracchus' will in his sleeve, both by the power of a
friend, and the perfect knowledge he had of the man: they were more
friends than citizens, more friends to one another than either enemies or
friends to their country, or than friends to ambition and innovation;
having absolutely given up themselves to one another, either held
absolutely the reins of the other's inclination; and suppose all this
guided by virtue, and all this by the conduct of reason, which also
without these it had not been possible to do, Blosius' answer was such as
it ought to be. If any of their actions flew out of the handle, they were
neither (according to my measure of friendship) friends to one another,
nor to themselves. As to the rest, this answer carries no worse sound,
than mine would do to one that should ask me: "If your will should command
you to kill your daughter, would you do it?" and that I should make
answer, that I would; for this expresses no consent to such an act,
forasmuch as I do not in the least suspect my own will, and as little that
of such a friend. 'Tis not in the power of all the eloquence in the world,
to dispossess me of the certainty I have of the intentions and resolutions
of my friend; nay, no one action of his, what face soever it might bear,
could be presented to me, of which I could not presently, and at first
sight, find out the moving cause. Our souls had drawn so unanimously
together, they had considered each other with so ardent an affection, and
with the like affection laid open the very bottom of our hearts to one
another's view, that I not only knew his as well as my own; but should
certainly in any concern of mine have trusted my interest much more
willingly with him, than with myself.
Let no one, therefore, rank other common friendships with such a one as
this. I have had as much experience of these as another, and of the most
perfect of their kind: but I do not advise that any should confound the
rules of the one and the other, for they would find themselves much
deceived. In those other ordinary friendships, you are to walk with bridle
in your hand, with prudence and circumspection, for in them the knot is
not so sure that a man may not half suspect it will slip. "Love him," said
Chilo,—[Aulus Gellius, i. 3.]—"so as if you were one day to
hate him; and hate him so as you were one day to love him." This precept,
though abominable in the sovereign and perfect friendship I speak of, is
nevertheless very sound as to the practice of the ordinary and customary
ones, and to which the saying that Aristotle had so frequent in his mouth,
"O my friends, there is no friend," may very fitly be applied. In this
noble commerce, good offices, presents, and benefits, by which other
friendships are supported and maintained, do not deserve so much as to be
mentioned; and the reason is the concurrence of our wills; for, as the
kindness I have for myself receives no increase, for anything I relieve
myself withal in time of need (whatever the Stoics say), and as I do not
find myself obliged to myself for any service I do myself: so the union of
such friends, being truly perfect, deprives them of all idea of such
duties, and makes them loathe and banish from their conversation these
words of division and distinction, benefits, obligation, acknowledgment,
entreaty, thanks, and the like. All things, wills, thoughts, opinions,
goods, wives, children, honours, and lives, being in effect common betwixt
them, and that absolute concurrence of affections being no other than one
soul in two bodies (according to that very proper definition of
Aristotle), they can neither lend nor give anything to one another. This
is the reason why the lawgivers, to honour marriage with some resemblance
of this divine alliance, interdict all gifts betwixt man and wife;
inferring by that, that all should belong to each of them, and that they
have nothing to divide or to give to each other.
If, in the friendship of which I speak, one could give to the other, the
receiver of the benefit would be the man that obliged his friend; for each
of them contending and above all things studying how to be useful to the
other, he that administers the occasion is the liberal man, in giving his
friend the satisfaction of doing that towards him which above all things
he most desires. When the philosopher Diogenes wanted money, he used to
say, that he redemanded it of his friends, not that he demanded it. And to
let you see the practical working of this, I will here produce an ancient
and singular example. Eudamidas, a Corinthian, had two friends, Charixenus
a Sicyonian and Areteus a Corinthian; this man coming to die, being poor,
and his two friends rich, he made his will after this manner. "I bequeath
to Areteus the maintenance of my mother, to support and provide for her in
her old age; and to Charixenus I bequeath the care of marrying my
daughter, and to give her as good a portion as he is able; and in case one
of these chance to die, I hereby substitute the survivor in his place."
They who first saw this will made themselves very merry at the contents:
but the legatees, being made acquainted with it, accepted it with very
great content; and one of them, Charixenus, dying within five days after,
and by that means the charge of both duties devolving solely on him,
Areteus nurtured the old woman with very great care and tenderness, and of
five talents he had in estate, he gave two and a half in marriage with an
only daughter he had of his own, and two and a half in marriage with the
daughter of Eudamidas, and on one and the same day solemnised both their
nuptials.
This example is very full, if one thing were not to be objected, namely
the multitude of friends for the perfect friendship I speak of is
indivisible; each one gives himself so entirely to his friend, that he has
nothing left to distribute to others: on the contrary, is sorry that he is
not double, treble, or quadruple, and that he has not many souls and many
wills, to confer them all upon this one object. Common friendships will
admit of division; one may love the beauty of this person, the good-humour
of that, the liberality of a third, the paternal affection of a fourth,
the fraternal love of a fifth, and so of the rest: but this friendship
that possesses the whole soul, and there rules and sways with an absolute
sovereignty, cannot possibly admit of a rival. If two at the same time
should call to you for succour, to which of them would you run? Should
they require of you contrary offices, how could you serve them both?
Should one commit a thing to your silence that it were of importance to
the other to know, how would you disengage yourself? A unique and
particular friendship dissolves all other obligations whatsoever: the
secret I have sworn not to reveal to any other, I may without perjury
communicate to him who is not another, but myself. 'Tis miracle enough
certainly, for a man to double himself, and those that talk of tripling,
talk they know not of what. Nothing is extreme, that has its like; and he
who shall suppose, that of two, I love one as much as the other, that they
mutually love one another too, and love me as much as I love them,
multiplies into a confraternity the most single of units, and whereof,
moreover, one alone is the hardest thing in the world to find. The rest of
this story suits very well with what I was saying; for Eudamidas, as a
bounty and favour, bequeaths to his friends a legacy of employing
themselves in his necessity; he leaves them heirs to this liberality of
his, which consists in giving them the opportunity of conferring a benefit
upon him; and doubtless, the force of friendship is more eminently
apparent in this act of his, than in that of Areteus. In short, these are
effects not to be imagined nor comprehended by such as have not experience
of them, and which make me infinitely honour and admire the answer of that
young soldier to Cyrus, by whom being asked how much he would take for a
horse, with which he had won the prize of a race, and whether he would
exchange him for a kingdom? —"No, truly, sir," said he, "but I would
give him with all my heart, to get thereby a true friend, could I find out
any man worthy of that alliance."—[Xenophon, Cyropadia, viii. 3.]—He
did not say ill in saying, "could I find": for though one may almost
everywhere meet with men sufficiently qualified for a superficial
acquaintance, yet in this, where a man is to deal from the very bottom of
his heart, without any manner of reservation, it will be requisite that
all the wards and springs be truly wrought and perfectly sure.
In confederations that hold but by one end, we are only to provide against
the imperfections that particularly concern that end. It can be of no
importance to me of what religion my physician or my lawyer is; this
consideration has nothing in common with the offices of friendship which
they owe me; and I am of the same indifference in the domestic
acquaintance my servants must necessarily contract with me. I never
inquire, when I am to take a footman, if he be chaste, but if he be
diligent; and am not solicitous if my muleteer be given to gaming, as if
he be strong and able; or if my cook be a swearer, if he be a good cook. I
do not take upon me to direct what other men should do in the government
of their families, there are plenty that meddle enough with that, but only
give an account of my method in my own:
"Mihi sic usus est: tibi, ut opus est facto, face."
["This has been my way; as for you, do as you find needful.
—"Terence, Heaut., i. I., 28.]
For table-talk, I prefer the pleasant and witty before the learned and the
grave; in bed, beauty before goodness; in common discourse the ablest
speaker, whether or no there be sincerity in the case. And, as he that was
found astride upon a hobby-horse, playing with his children, entreated the
person who had surprised him in that posture to say nothing of it till
himself came to be a father,—[Plutarch, Life of Agesilaus, c. 9.]—supposing
that the fondness that would then possess his own soul, would render him a
fairer judge of such an action; so I, also, could wish to speak to such as
have had experience of what I say: though, knowing how remote a thing such
a friendship is from the common practice, and how rarely it is to be
found, I despair of meeting with any such judge. For even these discourses
left us by antiquity upon this subject, seem to me flat and poor, in
comparison of the sense I have of it, and in this particular, the effects
surpass even the precepts of philosophy.
"Nil ego contulerim jucundo sanus amico."
["While I have sense left to me, there will never be anything more
acceptable to me than an agreeable friend."
—Horace, Sat., i. 5, 44.]
The ancient Menander declared him to be happy that had had the good
fortune to meet with but the shadow of a friend: and doubtless he had good
reason to say so, especially if he spoke by experience: for in good
earnest, if I compare all the rest of my life, though, thanks be to God, I
have passed my time pleasantly enough, and at my ease, and the loss of
such a friend excepted, free from any grievous affliction, and in great
tranquillity of mind, having been contented with my natural and original
commodities, without being solicitous after others; if I should compare it
all, I say, with the four years I had the happiness to enjoy the sweet
society of this excellent man, 'tis nothing but smoke, an obscure and
tedious night. From the day that I lost him:
"Quern semper acerbum,
Semper honoratum (sic, di, voluistis) habebo,"
["A day for me ever sad, for ever sacred, so have you willed ye
gods."—AEneid, v. 49.]
I have only led a languishing life; and the very pleasures that present
themselves to me, instead of administering anything of consolation, double
my affliction for his loss. We were halves throughout, and to that degree,
that methinks, by outliving him, I defraud him of his part.
"Nec fas esse ulla me voluptate hic frui
Decrevi, tantisper dum ille abest meus particeps."
["I have determined that it will never be right for me to enjoy any
pleasure, so long as he, with whom I shared all pleasures is away."
—Terence, Heaut., i. I. 97.]
I was so grown and accustomed to be always his double in all places and in
all things, that methinks I am no more than half of myself:
"Illam meae si partem anima tulit
Maturior vis, quid moror altera?
Nec carus aeque, nec superstes
Integer? Ille dies utramque
Duxit ruinam."
["If that half of my soul were snatch away from me by an untimely
stroke, why should the other stay? That which remains will not be
equally dear, will not be whole: the same day will involve the
destruction of both."]
or:
["If a superior force has taken that part of my soul, why do I, the
remaining one, linger behind? What is left is not so dear, nor an
entire thing: this day has wrought the destruction of both."
—Horace, Ode, ii. 17, 5.]
There is no action or imagination of mine wherein I do not miss him; as I
know that he would have missed me: for as he surpassed me by infinite
degrees in virtue and all other accomplishments, so he also did in the
duties of friendship:
"Quis desiderio sit pudor, aut modus
Tam cari capitis?"
["What shame can there, or measure, in lamenting so dear a friend?"
—Horace, Ode, i. 24, I.]
"O misero frater adempte mihi!
Omnia tecum una perierunt gaudia nostra,
Quae tuus in vita dulcis alebat amor.
Tu mea, tu moriens fregisti commoda, frater;
Tecum una tota est nostra sepulta anima
Cujus ego interitu tota de menthe fugavi
Haec studia, atque omnes delicias animi.
Alloquar? audiero nunquam tua verba loquentem?
Nunquam ego te, vita frater amabilior
Aspiciam posthac; at certe semper amabo;"
["O brother, taken from me miserable! with thee, all our joys have
vanished, those joys which, in thy life, thy dear love nourished.
Dying, thou, my brother, hast destroyed all my happiness. My whole
soul is buried with thee. Through whose death I have banished from
my mind these studies, and all the delights of the mind. Shall I
address thee? I shall never hear thy voice. Never shall I behold
thee hereafter. O brother, dearer to me than life. Nought remains,
but assuredly I shall ever love thee."—Catullus, lxviii. 20; lxv.]
But let us hear a boy of sixteen speak:
—[In Cotton's translation the work referred to is "those Memoirs
upon the famous edict of January," of which mention has already been
made in the present edition. The edition of 1580, however, and the
Variorum edition of 1872-1900, indicate no particular work; but the
edition of 1580 has it "this boy of eighteen years" (which was the
age at which La Boetie wrote his "Servitude Volontaire"), speaks of
"a boy of sixteen" as occurring only in the common editions, and it
would seem tolerably clear that this more important work was, in
fact, the production to which Montaigne refers, and that the proper
reading of the text should be "sixteen years." What "this boy
spoke" is not given by Montaigne, for the reason stated in the next
following paragraph.]
"Because I have found that that work has been since brought out, and with
a mischievous design, by those who aim at disturbing and changing the
condition of our government, without troubling themselves to think whether
they are likely to improve it: and because they have mixed up his work
with some of their own performance, I have refrained from inserting it
here. But that the memory of the author may not be injured, nor suffer
with such as could not come near-hand to be acquainted with his
principles, I here give them to understand, that it was written by him in
his boyhood, and that by way of exercise only, as a common theme that has
been hackneyed by a thousand writers. I make no question but that he
himself believed what he wrote, being so conscientious that he would not
so much as lie in jest: and I moreover know, that could it have been in
his own choice, he had rather have been born at Venice, than at Sarlac;
and with reason. But he had another maxim sovereignty imprinted in his
soul, very religiously to obey and submit to the laws under which he was
born. There never was a better citizen, more affectionate to his country;
nor a greater enemy to all the commotions and innovations of his time: so
that he would much rather have employed his talent to the extinguishing of
those civil flames, than have added any fuel to them; he had a mind
fashioned to the model of better ages. Now, in exchange of this serious
piece, I will present you with another of a more gay and frolic air, from
the same hand, and written at the same age."
CHAPTER XXVIII——NINE AND TWENTY SONNETS OF ESTIENNE DE LA
BOITIE
TO MADAME DE GRAMMONT, COMTESSE DE GUISSEN.
[They scarce contain anything but amorous complaints, expressed in a
very rough style, discovering the follies and outrages of a restless
passion, overgorged, as it were, with jealousies, fears and
suspicions.—Coste.]
[These....contained in the edition of 1588 nine-and-twenty sonnets
of La Boetie, accompanied by a dedicatory epistle to Madame de
Grammont. The former, which are referred to at the end of Chap.
XXVIL, do not really belong to the book, and are of very slight
interest at this time; the epistle is transferred to the
Correspondence. The sonnets, with the letter, were presumably sent
some time after Letters V. et seq. Montaigne seems to have had
several copies written out to forward to friends or acquaintances.]
CHAPTER XXIX——OF MODERATION
As if we had an infectious touch, we, by our manner of handling, corrupt
things that in themselves are laudable and good: we may grasp virtue so
that it becomes vicious, if we embrace it too stringently and with too
violent a desire. Those who say, there is never any excess in virtue,
forasmuch as it is not virtue when it once becomes excess, only play upon
words:
"Insani sapiens nomen ferat, aequus iniqui,
Ultra quam satis est, virtutem si petat ipsam."
["Let the wise man bear the name of a madman, the just one of an
unjust, if he seek wisdom more than is sufficient."
—Horace, Ep., i. 6, 15.]
["The wise man is no longer wise, the just man no longer just, if he
seek to carry his love for wisdom or virtue beyond that which is
necessary."]
This is a subtle consideration of philosophy. A man may both be too much
in love with virtue, and be excessive in a just action. Holy Writ agrees
with this, Be not wiser than you should, but be soberly wise.—[St.
Paul, Epistle to the Romans, xii. 3.]—I have known a great man,
—["It is likely that Montaigne meant Henry III., king of France.
The Cardinal d'Ossat, writing to Louise, the queen-dowager, told
her, in his frank manner, that he had lived as much or more like a
monk than a monarch (Letter XXIII.) And Pope Sextus V., speaking of
that prince one day to the Cardinal de Joyeuse, protector of the
affairs of France, said to him pleasantly, 'There is nothing that
your king hath not done, and does not do so still, to be a monk, nor
anything that I have not done, not to be a monk.'"—Coste.]
prejudice the opinion men had of his devotion, by pretending to be devout
beyond all examples of others of his condition. I love temperate and
moderate natures. An immoderate zeal, even to that which is good, even
though it does not offend, astonishes me, and puts me to study what name
to give it. Neither the mother of Pausanias,
—["Montaigne would here give us to understand, upon the authority of
Diodorus Siculus, that Pausanias' mother gave the first hint of the
punishment that was to be inflicted on her son. 'Pausanias,' says
this historian, 'perceiving that the ephori, and some other
Lacedoemonians, aimed at apprehending him, got the start of them,
and went and took sanctuary m Minerva's temple: and the
Lacedaemonians, being doubtful whether they ought to take him from
thence in violation of the franchise there, it is said that his own
mother came herself to the temple but spoke nothing nor did anything
more than lay a piece of brick, which she brought with her, on the
threshold of the temple, which, when she had done, she returned
home. The Lacedaemonians, taking the hint from the mother, caused
the gate of the temple to be walled up, and by this means starved
Pausanias, so that he died with hunger, &c. (lib. xi. cap. 10., of
Amyot's translation). The name of Pausanias' mother was Alcithea,
as we are informed by Thucydides' scholiast, who only says that it
was reported, that when they set about walling up the gates of the
chapel in which Pausanias had taken refuge, his mother Alcithea laid
the first stone."—Coste.]
who was the first instructor of her son's process, and threw the first
stone towards his death, nor Posthumius the dictator, who put his son to
death, whom the ardour of youth had successfully pushed upon the enemy a
little more advanced than the rest of his squadron, do appear to me so
much just as strange; and I should neither advise nor like to follow so
savage a virtue, and that costs so dear.
—["Opinions differ as to the truth of this fact. Livy thinks he
has good authority for rejecting it because it does not appear in
history that Posthumious was branded with it, as Titus Manlius was,
about 100 years after his time; for Manlius, having put his son to
death for the like cause, obtained the odious name of Imperiosus,
and since that time Manliana imperia has been used as a term to
signify orders that are too severe; Manliana Imperia, says Livy,
were not only horrible for the time present, but of a bad example to
posterity. And this historian makes no doubt but such commands
would have been actually styled Posthumiana Imperia, if Posthumius
had been the first who set so barbarous an example (Livy, lib. iv.
cap. 29, and lib. viii. cap. 7). But, however, Montaigne has Valer.
Maximus on his side, who says expressly, that Posthumius caused his
son to be put to death, and Diodorus of Sicily (lib. xii. cap.
19)."—Coste.]
The archer that shoots over, misses as much as he that falls short, and
'tis equally troublesome to my sight, to look up at a great light, and to
look down into a dark abyss. Callicles in Plato says, that the extremity
of philosophy is hurtful, and advises not to dive into it beyond the
limits of profit; that, taken moderately, it is pleasant and useful; but
that in the end it renders a man brutish and vicious, a contemner of
religion and the common laws, an enemy to civil conversation, and all
human pleasures, incapable of all public administration, unfit either to
assist others or to relieve himself, and a fit object for all sorts of
injuries and affronts. He says true; for in its excess, it enslaves our
natural freedom, and by an impertinent subtlety, leads us out of the fair
and beaten way that nature has traced for us.
The love we bear to our wives is very lawful, and yet theology thinks fit
to curb and restrain it. As I remember, I have read in one place of St.
Thomas Aquinas,—[Secunda Secundx, Quaest. 154, art. 9.]—where
he condemns marriages within any of the forbidden degrees, for this
reason, amongst others, that there is some danger, lest the friendship a
man bears to such a woman, should be immoderate; for if the conjugal
affection be full and perfect betwixt them, as it ought to be, and that it
be over and above surcharged with that of kindred too, there is no doubt,
but such an addition will carry the husband beyond the bounds of reason.
Those sciences that regulate the manners of men, divinity and philosophy,
will have their say in everything; there is no action so private and
secret that can escape their inspection and jurisdiction. They are best
taught who are best able to control and curb their own liberty; women
expose their nudities as much as you will upon the account of pleasure,
though in the necessities of physic they are altogether as shy. I will,
therefore, in their behalf:
—[Coste translates this: "on the part of philosophy and theology,"
observing that but few wives would think themselves obliged to
Montaigne for any such lesson to their husbands.]—
teach the husbands, that is, such as are too vehement in the exercise of
the matrimonial duty—if such there still be—this lesson, that
the very pleasures they enjoy in the society of their wives are
reproachable if immoderate, and that a licentious and riotous abuse of
them is a fault as reprovable here as in illicit connections. Those
immodest and debauched tricks and postures, that the first ardour suggests
to us in this affair, are not only indecently but detrimentally practised
upon our wives. Let them at least learn impudence from another hand; they
are ever ready enough for our business, and I for my part always went the
plain way to work.
Marriage is a solemn and religious tie, and therefore the pleasure we
extract from it should be a sober and serious delight, and mixed with a
certain kind of gravity; it should be a sort of discreet and conscientious
pleasure. And seeing that the chief end of it is generation, some make a
question, whether when men are out of hopes as when they are superannuated
or already with child, it be lawful to embrace our wives. 'Tis homicide,
according to Plato.—[Laws, 8.]— Certain nations (the
Mohammedan, amongst others) abominate all conjunction with women with
child, others also, with those who are in their courses. Zenobia would
never admit her husband for more than one encounter, after which she left
him to his own swing for the whole time of her conception, and not till
after that would again receive him:—[Trebellius Pollio, Triginta
Tyran., c. 30.]—a brave and generous example of conjugal continence.
It was doubtless from some lascivious poet,—[The lascivious poet is
Homer; see his Iliad, xiv. 294.]—and one that himself was in great
distress for a little of this sport, that Plato borrowed this story; that
Jupiter was one day so hot upon his wife, that not having so much patience
as till she could get to the couch, he threw her upon the floor, where the
vehemence of pleasure made him forget the great and important resolutions
he had but newly taken with the rest of the gods in his celestial council,
and to brag that he had had as good a bout, as when he got her maidenhead,
unknown to their parents.
The kings of Persia were wont to invite their wives to the beginning of
their festivals; but when the wine began to work in good earnest, and that
they were to give the reins to pleasure, they sent them back to their
private apartments, that they might not participate in their immoderate
lust, sending for other women in their stead, with whom they were not
obliged to so great a decorum of respect.—[Plutarch, Precepts of
Marriage, c. 14.]—All pleasures and all sorts of gratifications are
not properly and fitly conferred upon all sorts of persons. Epaminondas
had committed to prison a young man for certain debauches; for whom
Pelopidas mediated, that at his request he might be set at liberty, which
Epaminondas denied to him, but granted it at the first word to a wench of
his, that made the same intercession; saying, that it was a gratification
fit for such a one as she, but not for a captain. Sophocles being joint
praetor with Pericles, seeing accidentally a fine boy pass by: "O what a
charming boy is that!" said he. "That might be very well," answered
Pericles, "for any other than a praetor, who ought not only to have his
hands, but his eyes, too, chaste."—[Cicero, De Offic., i. 40.]
AElius Verus, the emperor, answered his wife, who reproached him with his
love to other women, that he did it upon a conscientious account,
forasmuch as marriage was a name of honour and dignity, not of wanton and
lascivious desire; and our ecclesiastical history preserves the memory of
that woman in great veneration, who parted from her husband because she
would not comply with his indecent and inordinate desires. In fine, there
is no pleasure so just and lawful, where intemperance and excess are not
to be condemned.
But, to speak the truth, is not man a most miserable creature the while?
It is scarce, by his natural condition, in his power to taste one pleasure
pure and entire; and yet must he be contriving doctrines and precepts to
curtail that little he has; he is not yet wretched enough, unless by art
and study he augment his own misery:
"Fortunae miseras auximus arte vias."
["We artificially augment the wretchedness of fortune."
—Properitius, lib. iii. 7, 44.]
Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent, when she exercises it in
rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are
naturally our due, as she employs it favourably and well in artificially
disguising and tricking out the ills of life, to alleviate the sense of
them. Had I ruled the roast, I should have taken another and more natural
course, which, to say the truth, is both commodious and holy, and should,
peradventure, have been able to have limited it too; notwithstanding that
both our spiritual and corporal physicians, as by compact betwixt
themselves, can find no other way to cure, nor other remedy for the
infirmities of the body and the soul, than by misery and pain. To this
end, watchings, fastings, hair-shirts, remote and solitary banishments,
perpetual imprisonments, whips and other afflictions, have been introduced
amongst men: but so, that they should carry a sting with them, and be real
afflictions indeed; and not fall out as it once did to one Gallio, who
having been sent an exile into the isle of Lesbos, news was not long after
brought to Rome, that he there lived as merry as the day was long; and
that what had been enjoined him for a penance, turned to his pleasure and
satisfaction: whereupon the Senate thought fit to recall him home to his
wife and family, and confine him to his own house, to accommodate their
punishment to his feeling and apprehension. For to him whom fasting would
make more healthful and more sprightly, and to him to whose palate fish
were more acceptable than flesh, the prescription of these would have no
curative effect; no more than in the other sort of physic, where drugs
have no effect upon him who swallows them with appetite and pleasure: the
bitterness of the potion and the abhorrence of the patient are necessary
circumstances to the operation. The nature that would eat rhubarb like
buttered turnips, would frustrate the use and virtue of it; it must be
something to trouble and disturb the stomach, that must purge and cure it;
and here the common rule, that things are cured by their contraries,
fails; for in this one ill is cured by another.
This belief a little resembles that other so ancient one, of thinking to
gratify the gods and nature by massacre and murder: an opinion universally
once received in all religions. And still, in these later times wherein
our fathers lived, Amurath at the taking of the Isthmus, immolated six
hundred young Greeks to his father's soul, in the nature of a propitiatory
sacrifice for his sins. And in those new countries discovered in this age
of ours, which are pure and virgin yet, in comparison of ours, this
practice is in some measure everywhere received: all their idols reek with
human blood, not without various examples of horrid cruelty: some they
burn alive, and take, half broiled, off the coals to tear out their hearts
and entrails; some, even women, they flay alive, and with their bloody
skins clothe and disguise others. Neither are we without great examples of
constancy and resolution in this affair the poor souls that are to be
sacrificed, old men, women, and children, themselves going about some days
before to beg alms for the offering of their sacrifice, presenting
themselves to the slaughter, singing and dancing with the spectators.
The ambassadors of the king of Mexico, setting out to Fernando Cortez the
power and greatness of their master, after having told him, that he had
thirty vassals, of whom each was able to raise an hundred thousand
fighting men, and that he kept his court in the fairest and best fortified
city under the sun, added at last, that he was obliged yearly to offer to
the gods fifty thousand men. And it is affirmed, that he maintained a
continual war, with some potent neighbouring nations, not only to keep the
young men in exercise, but principally to have wherewithal to furnish his
sacrifices with his prisoners of war. At a certain town in another place,
for the welcome of the said Cortez, they sacrificed fifty men at once. I
will tell you this one tale more, and I have done; some of these people
being beaten by him, sent to acknowledge him, and to treat with him of a
peace, whose messengers carried him three sorts of gifts, which they
presented in these terms: "Behold, lord, here are five slaves: if thou art
a furious god that feedeth upon flesh and blood, eat these, and we will
bring thee more; if thou art an affable god, behold here incense and
feathers; but if thou art a man, take these fowls and these fruits that we
have brought thee."
CHAPTER XXX——OF CANNIBALS
When King Pyrrhus invaded Italy, having viewed and considered the order of
the army the Romans sent out to meet him; "I know not," said he, "what
kind of barbarians" (for so the Greeks called all other nations) "these
may be; but the disposition of this army that I see has nothing of
barbarism in it."—[Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus, c. 8.]—As much
said the Greeks of that which Flaminius brought into their country; and
Philip, beholding from an eminence the order and distribution of the Roman
camp formed in his kingdom by Publius Sulpicius Galba, spake to the same
effect. By which it appears how cautious men ought to be of taking things
upon trust from vulgar opinion, and that we are to judge by the eye of
reason, and not from common report.
I long had a man in my house that lived ten or twelve years in the New
World, discovered in these latter days, and in that part of it where
Villegaignon landed,—[At Brazil, in 1557.]—which he called
Antarctic France. This discovery of so vast a country seems to be of very
great consideration. I cannot be sure, that hereafter there may not be
another, so many wiser men than we having been deceived in this. I am
afraid our eyes are bigger than our bellies, and that we have more
curiosity than capacity; for we grasp at all, but catch nothing but wind.
Plato brings in Solon,—[In Timaeus.]—telling a story that he
had heard from the priests of Sais in Egypt, that of old, and before the
Deluge, there was a great island called Atlantis, situate directly at the
mouth of the straits of Gibraltar, which contained more countries than
both Africa and Asia put together; and that the kings of that country, who
not only possessed that Isle, but extended their dominion so far into the
continent that they had a country of Africa as far as Egypt, and extending
in Europe to Tuscany, attempted to encroach even upon Asia, and to
subjugate all the nations that border upon the Mediterranean Sea, as far
as the Black Sea; and to that effect overran all Spain, the Gauls, and
Italy, so far as to penetrate into Greece, where the Athenians stopped
them: but that some time after, both the Athenians, and they and their
island, were swallowed by the Flood.
It is very likely that this extreme irruption and inundation of water made
wonderful changes and alterations in the habitations of the earth, as 'tis
said that the sea then divided Sicily from Italy—
"Haec loca, vi quondam et vasta convulsa ruina,
Dissiluisse ferunt, quum protenus utraque tellus
Una foret"
["These lands, they say, formerly with violence and vast desolation
convulsed, burst asunder, where erewhile were."—AEneid, iii. 414.]
Cyprus from Syria, the isle of Negropont from the continent of Beeotia,
and elsewhere united lands that were separate before, by filling up the
channel betwixt them with sand and mud:
"Sterilisque diu palus, aptaque remis,
Vicinas urbes alit, et grave sentit aratrum."
["That which was once a sterile marsh, and bore vessels on its
bosom, now feeds neighbouring cities, and admits the plough."
—Horace, De Arte Poetica, v. 65.]
But there is no great appearance that this isle was this New World so
lately discovered: for that almost touched upon Spain, and it were an
incredible effect of an inundation, to have tumbled back so prodigious a
mass, above twelve hundred leagues: besides that our modern navigators
have already almost discovered it to be no island, but terra firma, and
continent with the East Indies on the one side, and with the lands under
the two poles on the other side; or, if it be separate from them, it is by
so narrow a strait and channel, that it none the more deserves the name of
an island for that.
It should seem, that in this great body, there are two sorts of motions,
the one natural and the other febrific, as there are in ours. When I
consider the impression that our river of Dordogne has made in my time on
the right bank of its descent, and that in twenty years it has gained so
much, and undermined the foundations of so many houses, I perceive it to
be an extraordinary agitation: for had it always followed this course, or
were hereafter to do it, the aspect of the world would be totally changed.
But rivers alter their course, sometimes beating against the one side, and
sometimes the other, and some times quietly keeping the channel. I do not
speak of sudden inundations, the causes of which everybody understands. In
Medoc, by the seashore, the Sieur d'Arsac, my brother, sees an estate he
had there, buried under the sands which the sea vomits before it: where
the tops of some houses are yet to be seen, and where his rents and
domains are converted into pitiful barren pasturage. The inhabitants of
this place affirm, that of late years the sea has driven so vehemently
upon them, that they have lost above four leagues of land. These sands are
her harbingers: and we now see great heaps of moving sand, that march half
a league before her, and occupy the land.
The other testimony from antiquity, to which some would apply this
discovery of the New World, is in Aristotle; at least, if that little book
of Unheard of Miracles be his—[one of the spurious publications
brought out under his name—D.W.]. He there tells us, that certain
Carthaginians, having crossed the Atlantic Sea without the Straits of
Gibraltar, and sailed a very long time, discovered at last a great and
fruitful island, all covered over with wood, and watered with several
broad and deep rivers, far remote from all terra firma; and that they, and
others after them, allured by the goodness and fertility of the soil, went
thither with their wives and children, and began to plant a colony. But
the senate of Carthage perceiving their people by little and little to
diminish, issued out an express prohibition, that none, upon pain of
death, should transport themselves thither; and also drove out these new
inhabitants; fearing, 'tis said, lest' in process of time they should so
multiply as to supplant themselves and ruin their state. But this relation
of Aristotle no more agrees with our new-found lands than the other.
This man that I had was a plain ignorant fellow, and therefore the more
likely to tell truth: for your better-bred sort of men are much more
curious in their observation, 'tis true, and discover a great deal more;
but then they gloss upon it, and to give the greater weight to what they
deliver, and allure your belief, they cannot forbear a little to alter the
story; they never represent things to you simply as they are, but rather
as they appeared to them, or as they would have them appear to you, and to
gain the reputation of men of judgment, and the better to induce your
faith, are willing to help out the business with something more than is
really true, of their own invention. Now in this case, we should either
have a man of irreproachable veracity, or so simple that he has not
wherewithal to contrive, and to give a colour of truth to false relations,
and who can have no ends in forging an untruth. Such a one was mine; and
besides, he has at divers times brought to me several seamen and merchants
who at the same time went the same voyage. I shall therefore content
myself with his information, without inquiring what the cosmographers say
to the business. We should have topographers to trace out to us the
particular places where they have been; but for having had this advantage
over us, to have seen the Holy Land, they would have the privilege,
forsooth, to tell us stories of all the other parts of the world beside. I
would have every one write what he knows, and as much as he knows, but no
more; and that not in this only but in all other subjects; for such a
person may have some particular knowledge and experience of the nature of
such a river, or such a fountain, who, as to other things, knows no more
than what everybody does, and yet to give a currency to his little
pittance of learning, will undertake to write the whole body of physics: a
vice from which great inconveniences derive their original.
Now, to return to my subject, I find that there is nothing barbarous and
savage in this nation, by anything that I can gather, excepting, that
every one gives the title of barbarism to everything that is not in use in
his own country. As, indeed, we have no other level of truth and reason
than the example and idea of the opinions and customs of the place wherein
we live: there is always the perfect religion, there the perfect
government, there the most exact and accomplished usage of all things.
They are savages at the same rate that we say fruits are wild, which
nature produces of herself and by her own ordinary progress; whereas, in
truth, we ought rather to call those wild whose natures we have changed by
our artifice and diverted from the common order. In those, the genuine,
most useful, and natural virtues and properties are vigorous and
sprightly, which we have helped to degenerate in these, by accommodating
them to the pleasure of our own corrupted palate. And yet for all this,
our taste confesses a flavour and delicacy excellent even to emulation of
the best of ours, in several fruits wherein those countries abound without
art or culture. Neither is it reasonable that art should gain the
pre-eminence of our great and powerful mother nature. We have so
surcharged her with the additional ornaments and graces we have added to
the beauty and riches of her own works by our inventions, that we have
almost smothered her; yet in other places, where she shines in her own
purity and proper lustre, she marvellously baffles and disgraces all our
vain and frivolous attempts:
"Et veniunt hederae sponte sua melius;
Surgit et in solis formosior arbutus antris;
Et volucres nulls dulcius arte canunt."
["The ivy grows best spontaneously, the arbutus best in shady caves;
and the wild notes of birds are sweeter than art can teach.
—"Propertius, i. 2, 10.]
Our utmost endeavours cannot arrive at so much as to imitate the nest of
the least of birds, its contexture, beauty, and convenience: not so much
as the web of a poor spider.
All things, says Plato,—[Laws, 10.]—are produced either by
nature, by fortune, or by art; the greatest and most beautiful by the one
or the other of the former, the least and the most imperfect by the last.
These nations then seem to me to be so far barbarous, as having received
but very little form and fashion from art and human invention, and
consequently to be not much remote from their original simplicity. The
laws of nature, however, govern them still, not as yet much vitiated with
any mixture of ours: but 'tis in such purity, that I am sometimes troubled
we were not sooner acquainted with these people, and that they were not
discovered in those better times, when there were men much more able to
judge of them than we are. I am sorry that Lycurgus and Plato had no
knowledge of them; for to my apprehension, what we now see in those
nations, does not only surpass all the pictures with which the poets have
adorned the golden age, and all their inventions in feigning a happy state
of man, but, moreover, the fancy and even the wish and desire of
philosophy itself; so native and so pure a simplicity, as we by experience
see to be in them, could never enter into their imagination, nor could
they ever believe that human society could have been maintained with so
little artifice and human patchwork. I should tell Plato that it is a
nation wherein there is no manner of traffic, no knowledge of letters, no
science of numbers, no name of magistrate or political superiority; no use
of service, riches or poverty, no contracts, no successions, no dividends,
no properties, no employments, but those of leisure, no respect of
kindred, but common, no clothing, no agriculture, no metal, no use of corn
or wine; the very words that signify lying, treachery, dissimulation,
avarice, envy, detraction, pardon, never heard of.
—[This is the famous passage which Shakespeare, through Florio's
version, 1603, or ed. 1613, p. 102, has employed in the "Tempest,"
ii. 1.]
How much would he find his imaginary Republic short of his perfection?
"Viri a diis recentes."
["Men fresh from the gods."—Seneca, Ep., 90.]
"Hos natura modos primum dedit."
["These were the manners first taught by nature."
—Virgil, Georgics, ii. 20.]
As to the rest, they live in a country very pleasant and temperate, so
that, as my witnesses inform me, 'tis rare to hear of a sick person, and
they moreover assure me, that they never saw any of the natives, either
paralytic, bleareyed, toothless, or crooked with age. The situation of
their country is along the sea-shore, enclosed on the other side towards
the land, with great and high mountains, having about a hundred leagues in
breadth between. They have great store of fish and flesh, that have no
resemblance to those of ours: which they eat without any other cookery,
than plain boiling, roasting, and broiling. The first that rode a horse
thither, though in several other voyages he had contracted an acquaintance
and familiarity with them, put them into so terrible a fright, with his
centaur appearance, that they killed him with their arrows before they
could come to discover who he was. Their buildings are very long, and of
capacity to hold two or three hundred people, made of the barks of tall
trees, reared with one end upon the ground, and leaning to and supporting
one another at the top, like some of our barns, of which the covering
hangs down to the very ground, and serves for the side walls. They have
wood so hard, that they cut with it, and make their swords of it, and
their grills of it to broil their meat. Their beds are of cotton, hung
swinging from the roof, like our seamen's hammocks, every man his own, for
the wives lie apart from their husbands. They rise with the sun, and so
soon as they are up, eat for all day, for they have no more meals but
that; they do not then drink, as Suidas reports of some other people of
the East that never drank at their meals; but drink very often all day
after, and sometimes to a rousing pitch. Their drink is made of a certain
root, and is of the colour of our claret, and they never drink it but
lukewarm. It will not keep above two or three days; it has a somewhat
sharp, brisk taste, is nothing heady, but very comfortable to the stomach;
laxative to strangers, but a very pleasant beverage to such as are
accustomed to it. They make use, instead of bread, of a certain white
compound, like coriander seeds; I have tasted of it; the taste is sweet
and a little flat. The whole day is spent in dancing. Their young men go
a-hunting after wild beasts with bows and arrows; one part of their women
are employed in preparing their drink the while, which is their chief
employment. One of their old men, in the morning before they fall to
eating, preaches to the whole family, walking from the one end of the
house to the other, and several times repeating the same sentence, till he
has finished the round, for their houses are at least a hundred yards
long. Valour towards their enemies and love towards their wives, are the
two heads of his discourse, never failing in the close, to put them in
mind, that 'tis their wives who provide them their drink warm and well
seasoned. The fashion of their beds, ropes, swords, and of the wooden
bracelets they tie about their wrists, when they go to fight, and of the
great canes, bored hollow at one end, by the sound of which they keep the
cadence of their dances, are to be seen in several places, and amongst
others, at my house. They shave all over, and much more neatly than we,
without other razor than one of wood or stone. They believe in the
immortality of the soul, and that those who have merited well of the gods
are lodged in that part of heaven where the sun rises, and the accursed in
the west.
They have I know not what kind of priests and prophets, who very rarely
present themselves to the people, having their abode in the mountains. At
their arrival, there is a great feast, and solemn assembly of many
villages: each house, as I have described, makes a village, and they are
about a French league distant from one another. This prophet declaims to
them in public, exhorting them to virtue and their duty: but all their
ethics are comprised in these two articles, resolution in war, and
affection to their wives. He also prophesies to them events to come, and
the issues they are to expect from their enterprises, and prompts them to
or diverts them from war: but let him look to't; for if he fail in his
divination, and anything happen otherwise than he has foretold, he is cut
into a thousand pieces, if he be caught, and condemned for a false
prophet: for that reason, if any of them has been mistaken, he is no more
heard of.
Divination is a gift of God, and therefore to abuse it, ought to be a
punishable imposture. Amongst the Scythians, where their diviners failed
in the promised effect, they were laid, bound hand and foot, upon carts
loaded with firs and bavins, and drawn by oxen, on which they were burned
to death.—[Herodotus, iv. 69.]—Such as only meddle with things
subject to the conduct of human capacity, are excusable in doing the best
they can: but those other fellows that come to delude us with assurances
of an extraordinary faculty, beyond our understanding, ought they not to
be punished, when they do not make good the effect of their promise, and
for the temerity of their imposture?
They have continual war with the nations that live further within the
mainland, beyond their mountains, to which they go naked, and without
other arms than their bows and wooden swords, fashioned at one end like
the head of our javelins. The obstinacy of their battles is wonderful, and
they never end without great effusion of blood: for as to running away,
they know not what it is. Every one for a trophy brings home the head of
an enemy he has killed, which he fixes over the door of his house. After
having a long time treated their prisoners very well, and given them all
the regales they can think of, he to whom the prisoner belongs, invites a
great assembly of his friends. They being come, he ties a rope to one of
the arms of the prisoner, of which, at a distance, out of his reach, he
holds the one end himself, and gives to the friend he loves best the other
arm to hold after the same manner; which being. done, they two, in the
presence of all the assembly, despatch him with their swords. After that,
they roast him, eat him amongst them, and send some chops to their absent
friends. They do not do this, as some think, for nourishment, as the
Scythians anciently did, but as a representation of an extreme revenge; as
will appear by this: that having observed the Portuguese, who were in
league with their enemies, to inflict another sort of death upon any of
them they took prisoners, which was to set them up to the girdle in the
earth, to shoot at the remaining part till it was stuck full of arrows,
and then to hang them, they thought those people of the other world (as
being men who had sown the knowledge of a great many vices amongst their
neighbours, and who were much greater masters in all sorts of mischief
than they) did not exercise this sort of revenge without a meaning, and
that it must needs be more painful than theirs, they began to leave their
old way, and to follow this. I am not sorry that we should here take
notice of the barbarous horror of so cruel an action, but that, seeing so
clearly into their faults, we should be so blind to our own. I conceive
there is more barbarity in eating a man alive, than when he is dead; in
tearing a body limb from limb by racks and torments, that is yet in
perfect sense; in roasting it by degrees; in causing it to be bitten and
worried by dogs and swine (as we have not only read, but lately seen, not
amongst inveterate and mortal enemies, but among neighbours and
fellow-citizens, and, which is worse, under colour of piety and religion),
than to roast and eat him after he is dead.
Chrysippus and Zeno, the two heads of the Stoic sect, were of opinion that
there was no hurt in making use of our dead carcasses, in what way soever
for our necessity, and in feeding upon them too;—[Diogenes Laertius,
vii. 188.]—as our own ancestors, who being besieged by Caesar in the
city Alexia, resolved to sustain the famine of the siege with the bodies
of their old men, women, and other persons who were incapable of bearing
arms.
"Vascones, ut fama est, alimentis talibus usi
Produxere animas."
["'Tis said the Gascons with such meats appeased their hunger."
—Juvenal, Sat., xv. 93.]
And the physicians make no bones of employing it to all sorts of use,
either to apply it outwardly; or to give it inwardly for the health of the
patient. But there never was any opinion so irregular, as to excuse
treachery, disloyalty, tyranny, and cruelty, which are our familiar vices.
We may then call these people barbarous, in respect to the rules of
reason: but not in respect to ourselves, who in all sorts of barbarity
exceed them. Their wars are throughout noble and generous, and carry as
much excuse and fair pretence, as that human malady is capable of; having
with them no other foundation than the sole jealousy of valour. Their
disputes are not for the conquest of new lands, for these they already
possess are so fruitful by nature, as to supply them without labour or
concern, with all things necessary, in such abundance that they have no
need to enlarge their borders. And they are, moreover, happy in this, that
they only covet so much as their natural necessities require: all beyond
that is superfluous to them: men of the same age call one another
generally brothers, those who are younger, children; and the old men are
fathers to all. These leave to their heirs in common the full possession
of goods, without any manner of division, or other title than what nature
bestows upon her creatures, in bringing them into the world. If their
neighbours pass over the mountains to assault them, and obtain a victory,
all the victors gain by it is glory only, and the advantage of having
proved themselves the better in valour and virtue: for they never meddle
with the goods of the conquered, but presently return into their own
country, where they have no want of anything necessary, nor of this
greatest of all goods, to know happily how to enjoy their condition and to
be content. And those in turn do the same; they demand of their prisoners
no other ransom, than acknowledgment that they are overcome: but there is
not one found in an age, who will not rather choose to die than make such
a confession, or either by word or look recede from the entire grandeur of
an invincible courage. There is not a man amongst them who had not rather
be killed and eaten, than so much as to open his mouth to entreat he may
not. They use them with all liberality and freedom, to the end their lives
may be so much the dearer to them; but frequently entertain them with
menaces of their approaching death, of the torments they are to suffer, of
the preparations making in order to it, of the mangling their limbs, and
of the feast that is to be made, where their carcass is to be the only
dish. All which they do, to no other end, but only to extort some gentle
or submissive word from them, or to frighten them so as to make them run
away, to obtain this advantage that they were terrified, and that their
constancy was shaken; and indeed, if rightly taken, it is in this point
only that a true victory consists:
"Victoria nulla est,
Quam quae confessor animo quoque subjugat hostes."
["No victory is complete, which the conquered do not admit to be
so.—"Claudius, De Sexto Consulatu Honorii, v. 248.]
The Hungarians, a very warlike people, never pretend further than to
reduce the enemy to their discretion; for having forced this confession
from them, they let them go without injury or ransom, excepting, at the
most, to make them engage their word never to bear arms against them
again. We have sufficient advantages over our enemies that are borrowed
and not truly our own; it is the quality of a porter, and no effect of
virtue, to have stronger arms and legs; it is a dead and corporeal quality
to set in array; 'tis a turn of fortune to make our enemy stumble, or to
dazzle him with the light of the sun; 'tis a trick of science and art, and
that may happen in a mean base fellow, to be a good fencer. The estimate
and value of a man consist in the heart and in the will: there his true
honour lies. Valour is stability, not of legs and arms, but of the courage
and the soul; it does not lie in the goodness of our horse or our arms but
in our own. He that falls obstinate in his courage—
"Si succiderit, de genu pugnat"
["If his legs fail him, he fights on his knees."
—Seneca, De Providentia, c. 2.]
—he who, for any danger of imminent death, abates nothing of his
assurance; who, dying, yet darts at his enemy a fierce and disdainful
look, is overcome not by us, but by fortune; he is killed, not conquered;
the most valiant are sometimes the most unfortunate. There are defeats
more triumphant than victories. Never could those four sister victories,
the fairest the sun ever be held, of Salamis, Plataea, Mycale, and Sicily,
venture to oppose all their united glories, to the single glory of the
discomfiture of King Leonidas and his men, at the pass of Thermopylae. Who
ever ran with a more glorious desire and greater ambition, to the winning,
than Captain Iscolas to the certain loss of a battle?—[Diodorus
Siculus, xv. 64.]—Who could have found out a more subtle invention
to secure his safety, than he did to assure his destruction? He was set to
defend a certain pass of Peloponnesus against the Arcadians, which,
considering the nature of the place and the inequality of forces, finding
it utterly impossible for him to do, and seeing that all who were
presented to the enemy, must certainly be left upon the place; and on the
other side, reputing it unworthy of his own virtue and magnanimity and of
the Lacedaemonian name to fail in any part of his duty, he chose a mean
betwixt these two extremes after this manner; the youngest and most active
of his men, he preserved for the service and defence of their country, and
sent them back; and with the rest, whose loss would be of less
consideration, he resolved to make good the pass, and with the death of
them, to make the enemy buy their entry as dear as possibly he could; as
it fell out, for being presently environed on all sides by the Arcadians,
after having made a great slaughter of the enemy, he and his were all cut
in pieces. Is there any trophy dedicated to the conquerors which was not
much more due to these who were overcome? The part that true conquering is
to play, lies in the encounter, not in the coming off; and the honour of
valour consists in fighting, not in subduing.
But to return to my story: these prisoners are so far from discovering the
least weakness, for all the terrors that can be represented to them, that,
on the contrary, during the two or three months they are kept, they always
appear with a cheerful countenance; importune their masters to make haste
to bring them to the test, defy, rail at them, and reproach them with
cowardice, and the number of battles they have lost against those of their
country. I have a song made by one of these prisoners, wherein he bids
them "come all, and dine upon him, and welcome, for they shall withal eat
their own fathers and grandfathers, whose flesh has served to feed and
nourish him. These muscles," says he, "this flesh and these veins, are
your own: poor silly souls as you are, you little think that the substance
of your ancestors' limbs is here yet; notice what you eat, and you will
find in it the taste of your own flesh:" in which song there is to be
observed an invention that nothing relishes of the barbarian. Those that
paint these people dying after this manner, represent the prisoner
spitting in the faces of his executioners and making wry mouths at them.
And 'tis most certain, that to the very last gasp, they never cease to
brave and defy them both in word and gesture. In plain truth, these men
are very savage in comparison of us; of necessity, they must either be
absolutely so or else we are savages; for there is a vast difference
betwixt their manners and ours.
The men there have several wives, and so much the greater number, by how
much they have the greater reputation for valour. And it is one very
remarkable feature in their marriages, that the same jealousy our wives
have to hinder and divert us from the friendship and familiarity of other
women, those employ to promote their husbands' desires, and to procure
them many spouses; for being above all things solicitous of their
husbands' honour, 'tis their chiefest care to seek out, and to bring in
the most companions they can, forasmuch as it is a testimony of the
husband's virtue. Most of our ladies will cry out, that 'tis monstrous;
whereas in truth it is not so, but a truly matrimonial virtue, and of the
highest form. In the Bible, Sarah, with Leah and Rachel, the two wives of
Jacob, gave the most beautiful of their handmaids to their husbands; Livia
preferred the passions of Augustus to her own interest; —[Suetonius,
Life of Augustus, c. 71.]—and the wife of King Deiotarus,
Stratonice, did not only give up a fair young maid that served her to her
husband's embraces, but moreover carefully brought up the children he had
by her, and assisted them in the succession to their father's crown.
And that it may not be supposed, that all this is done by a simple and
servile obligation to their common practice, or by any authoritative
impression of their ancient custom, without judgment or reasoning, and
from having a soul so stupid that it cannot contrive what else to do, I
must here give you some touches of their sufficiency in point of
understanding. Besides what I repeated to you before, which was one of
their songs of war, I have another, a love-song, that begins thus:
"Stay, adder, stay, that by thy pattern my sister may draw the
fashion and work of a rich ribbon, that I may present to my beloved,
by which means thy beauty and the excellent order of thy scales
shall for ever be preferred before all other serpents."
Wherein the first couplet, "Stay, adder," &c., makes the burden of the
song. Now I have conversed enough with poetry to judge thus much that not
only there is nothing barbarous in this invention, but, moreover, that it
is perfectly Anacreontic. To which it may be added, that their language is
soft, of a pleasing accent, and something bordering upon the Greek
termination.
Three of these people, not foreseeing how dear their knowledge of the
corruptions of this part of the world will one day cost their happiness
and repose, and that the effect of this commerce will be their ruin, as I
presuppose it is in a very fair way (miserable men to suffer themselves to
be deluded with desire of novelty and to have left the serenity of their
own heaven to come so far to gaze at ours!), were at Rouen at the time
that the late King Charles IX. was there. The king himself talked to them
a good while, and they were made to see our fashions, our pomp, and the
form of a great city. After which, some one asked their opinion, and would
know of them, what of all the things they had seen, they found most to be
admired? To which they made answer, three things, of which I have
forgotten the third, and am troubled at it, but two I yet remember. They
said, that in the first place they thought it very strange that so many
tall men, wearing beards, strong, and well armed, who were about the king
('tis like they meant the Swiss of the guard), should submit to obey a
child, and that they did not rather choose out one amongst themselves to
command. Secondly (they have a way of speaking in their language to call
men the half of one another), that they had observed that there were
amongst us men full and crammed with all manner of commodities, whilst, in
the meantime, their halves were begging at their doors, lean and
half-starved with hunger and poverty; and they thought it strange that
these necessitous halves were able to suffer so great an inequality and
injustice, and that they did not take the others by the throats, or set
fire to their houses.
I talked to one of them a great while together, but I had so ill an
interpreter, and one who was so perplexed by his own ignorance to
apprehend my meaning, that I could get nothing out of him of any moment:
Asking him what advantage he reaped from the superiority he had amongst
his own people (for he was a captain, and our mariners called him king),
he told me, to march at the head of them to war. Demanding of him further
how many men he had to follow him, he showed me a space of ground, to
signify as many as could march in such a compass, which might be four or
five thousand men; and putting the question to him whether or no his
authority expired with the war, he told me this remained: that when he
went to visit the villages of his dependence, they planed him paths
through the thick of their woods, by which he might pass at his ease. All
this does not sound very ill, and the last was not at all amiss, for they
wear no breeches.
CHAPTER XXXI——THAT A MAN IS SOBERLY TO JUDGE OF THE DIVINE
ORDINANCES
The true field and subject of imposture are things unknown, forasmuch as,
in the first place, their very strangeness lends them credit, and
moreover, by not being subjected to our ordinary reasons, they deprive us
of the means to question and dispute them: For which reason, says Plato,
—[In Critias.]—it is much more easy to satisfy the hearers,
when speaking of the nature of the gods than of the nature of men, because
the ignorance of the auditory affords a fair and large career and all
manner of liberty in the handling of abstruse things. Thence it comes to
pass, that nothing is so firmly believed, as what we least know; nor any
people so confident, as those who entertain us with fables, such as your
alchemists, judicial astrologers, fortune-tellers, and physicians,
"Id genus omne."
["All that sort of people."—Horace, Sat., i. 2, 2.]
To which I would willingly, if I durst, join a pack of people that take
upon them to interpret and control the designs of God Himself, pretending
to find out the cause of every accident, and to pry into the secrets of
the divine will, there to discover the incomprehensible motive, of His
works; and although the variety, and the continual discordance of events,
throw them from corner to corner, and toss them from east to west, yet do
they still persist in their vain inquisition, and with the same pencil to
paint black and white.
In a nation of the Indies, there is this commendable custom, that when
anything befalls them amiss in any encounter or battle, they publicly ask
pardon of the sun, who is their god, as having committed an unjust action,
always imputing their good or evil fortune to the divine justice, and to
that submitting their own judgment and reason. 'Tis enough for a Christian
to believe that all things come from God, to receive them with
acknowledgment of His divine and inscrutable wisdom, and also thankfully
to accept and receive them, with what face soever they may present
themselves. But I do not approve of what I see in use, that is, to seek to
affirm and support our religion by the prosperity of our enterprises. Our
belief has other foundation enough, without going about to authorise it by
events: for the people being accustomed to such plausible arguments as
these and so proper to their taste, it is to be feared, lest when they
fail of success they should also stagger in their faith: as in the war
wherein we are now engaged upon the account of religion, those who had the
better in the business of Rochelabeille,—[May 1569.]—making
great brags of that success as an infallible approbation of their cause,
when they came afterwards to excuse their misfortunes of Moncontour and
Jarnac, by saying they were fatherly scourges and corrections that they
had not a people wholly at their mercy, they make it manifestly enough
appear, what it is to take two sorts of grist out of the same sack, and
with the same mouth to blow hot and cold. It were better to possess the
vulgar with the solid and real foundations of truth. 'Twas a fine naval
battle that was gained under the command of Don John of Austria a few
months since—[That of Lepanto, October 7, 1571.]—against the
Turks; but it has also pleased God at other times to let us see as great
victories at our own expense. In fine, 'tis a hard matter to reduce divine
things to our balance, without waste and losing a great deal of the
weight. And who would take upon him to give a reason that Arius and his
Pope Leo, the principal heads of the Arian heresy, should die, at several
times, of so like and strange deaths (for being withdrawn from the
disputation by a griping in the bowels, they both of them suddenly gave up
the ghost upon the stool), and would aggravate this divine vengeance by
the circumstances of the place, might as well add the death of
Heliogabalus, who was also slain in a house of office. And, indeed,
Irenaeus was involved in the same fortune. God, being pleased to show us,
that the good have something else to hope for and the wicked something
else to fear, than the fortunes or misfortunes of this world, manages and
applies these according to His own occult will and pleasure, and deprives
us of the means foolishly to make thereof our own profit. And those people
abuse themselves who will pretend to dive into these mysteries by the
strength of human reason. They never give one hit that they do not receive
two for it; of which St. Augustine makes out a great proof upon his
adversaries. 'Tis a conflict that is more decided by strength of memory
than by the force of reason. We are to content ourselves with the light it
pleases the sun to communicate to us, by virtue of his rays; and who will
lift up his eyes to take in a greater, let him not think it strange, if
for the reward of his presumption, he there lose his sight.
"Quis hominum potest scire consilium Dei?
Aut quis poterit cogitare quid velit Dominus?"
["Who of men can know the counsel of God? or who can think what the
will of the Lord is."—Book of Wisdom, ix. 13.]
CHAPTER XXXII——THAT WE ARE TO AVOID PLEASURES, EVEN AT THE
EXPENSE OF LIFE
I had long ago observed most of the opinions of the ancients to concur in
this, that it is high time to die when there is more ill than good in
living, and that to preserve life to our own torment and inconvenience is
contrary to the very rules of nature, as these old laws instruct us.
["Either tranquil life, or happy death. It is well to die when life
is wearisome. It is better to die than to live miserable."
—Stobaeus, Serm. xx.]
But to push this contempt of death so far as to employ it to the removing
our thoughts from the honours, riches, dignities, and other favours and
goods, as we call them, of fortune, as if reason were not sufficient to
persuade us to avoid them, without adding this new injunction, I had never
seen it either commanded or practised, till this passage of Seneca fell
into my hands; who advising Lucilius, a man of great power and authority
about the emperor, to alter his voluptuous and magnificent way of living,
and to retire himself from this worldly vanity and ambition, to some
solitary, quiet, and philosophical life, and the other alleging some
difficulties: "I am of opinion," says he, "either that thou leave that
life of thine, or life itself; I would, indeed, advise thee to the gentle
way, and to untie, rather than to break, the knot thou hast indiscreetly
knit, provided, that if it be not otherwise to be untied, thou resolutely
break it. There is no man so great a coward, that had not rather once fall
than to be always falling." I should have found this counsel conformable
enough to the Stoical roughness: but it appears the more strange, for
being borrowed from Epicurus, who writes the same thing upon the like
occasion to Idomeneus. And I think I have observed something like it, but
with Christian moderation, amongst our own people.
St. Hilary, Bishop of Poictiers, that famous enemy of the Arian heresy,
being in Syria, had intelligence thither sent him, that Abra, his only
daughter, whom he left at home under the eye and tuition of her mother,
was sought in marriage by the greatest noblemen of the country, as being a
virgin virtuously brought up, fair, rich, and in the flower of her age;
whereupon he wrote to her (as appears upon record), that she should remove
her affection from all the pleasures and advantages proposed to her; for
that he had in his travels found out a much greater and more worthy
fortune for her, a husband of much greater power and magnificence, who
would present her with robes and jewels of inestimable value; wherein his
design was to dispossess her of the appetite and use of worldly delights,
to join her wholly to God; but the nearest and most certain way to this,
being, as he conceived, the death of his daughter; he never ceased, by
vows, prayers, and orisons, to beg of the Almighty, that He would please
to call her out of this world, and to take her to Himself; as accordingly
it came to pass; for soon after his return, she died, at which he
expressed a singular joy. This seems to outdo the other, forasmuch as he
applies himself to this means at the outset, which they only take
subsidiarily; and, besides, it was towards his only daughter. But I will
not omit the latter end of this story, though it be for my purpose; St.
Hilary's wife, having understood from him how the death of their daughter
was brought about by his desire and design, and how much happier she was
to be removed out of this world than to have stayed in it, conceived so
vivid an apprehension of the eternal and heavenly beatitude, that she
begged of her husband, with the extremest importunity, to do as much for
her; and God, at their joint request, shortly after calling her to Him, it
was a death embraced with singular and mutual content.
CHAPTER XXXIII——THAT FORTUNE IS OFTEN-TIMES OBSERVED TO ACT BY
THE RULE OF REASON
The inconstancy and various motions of Fortune
[The term Fortune, so often employed by Montaigne, and in passages
where he might have used Providence, was censured by the doctors who
examined his Essays when he was at Rome in 1581. See his Travels,
i. 35 and 76.]
may reasonably make us expect she should present us with all sorts of
faces. Can there be a more express act of justice than this? The Duc de
Valentinois,—[Caesar Borgia.]—having resolved to poison
Adrian, Cardinal of Corneto, with whom Pope Alexander VI., his father and
himself, were to sup in the Vatican, he sent before a bottle of poisoned
wine, and withal, strict order to the butler to keep it very safe. The
Pope being come before his son, and calling for drink, the butler
supposing this wine had not been so strictly recommended to his care, but
only upon the account of its excellency, presented it forthwith to the
Pope, and the duke himself coming in presently after, and being confident
they had not meddled with his bottle, took also his cup; so that the
father died immediately upon the spot—[Other historians assign the
Pope several days of misery prior to death. D.W.]—, and the son,
after having been long tormented with sickness, was reserved to another
and a worse fortune.
Sometimes she seems to play upon us, just in the nick of an affair;
Monsieur d'Estrees, at that time ensign to Monsieur de Vendome, and
Monsieur de Licques, lieutenant in the company of the Duc d'Ascot, being
both pretenders to the Sieur de Fougueselles' sister, though of several
parties (as it oft falls out amongst frontier neighbours), the Sieur de
Licques carried her; but on the same day he was married, and which was
worse, before he went to bed to his wife, the bridegroom having a mind to
break a lance in honour of his new bride, went out to skirmish near St.
Omer, where the Sieur d'Estrees proving the stronger, took him prisoner,
and the more to illustrate his victory, the lady was fain—
"Conjugis ante coacta novi dimittere collum,
Quam veniens una atque altera rursus hyems
Noctibus in longis avidum saturasset amorem,"
["Compelled to abstain from embracing her new spouse in her arms
before two winters pass in succession, during their long nights had
satiated her eager love."—Catullus, lxviii. 81.]
—to request him of courtesy, to deliver up his prisoner to her, as
he accordingly did, the gentlemen of France never denying anything to
ladies.
Does she not seem to be an artist here? Constantine, son of Helena,
founded the empire of Constantinople, and so many ages after, Constantine,
the son of Helen, put an end to it. Sometimes she is pleased to emulate
our miracles we are told, that King Clovis besieging Angouleme, the walls
fell down of themselves by divine favour and Bouchet has it from some
author, that King Robert having sat down before a city, and being stolen
away from the siege to go keep the feast of St. Aignan at Orleans, as he
was in devotion at a certain part of the Mass, the walls of the
beleaguered city, without any manner of violence, fell down with a sudden
ruin. But she did quite contrary in our Milan wars; for, le Capitaine
Rense laying siege for us to the city Arona, and having carried a mine
under a great part of the wall, the mine being sprung, the wall was lifted
from its base, but dropped down again nevertheless, whole and entire, and
so exactly upon its foundation, that the besieged suffered no
inconvenience by that attempt.
Sometimes she plays the physician. Jason of Pheres being given over by the
physicians, by reason of an imposthume in his breast, having a mind to rid
himself of his pain, by death at least, threw himself in a battle
desperately into the thickest of the enemy, where he was so fortunately
wounded quite through the body, that the imposthume broke, and he was
perfectly cured. Did she not also excel the painter Protogenes in his art?
who having finished the picture of a dog quite tired and out of breath, in
all the other parts excellently well to his own liking, but not being able
to express, as he would, the slaver and foam that should come out of its
mouth, vexed and angry at his work, he took his sponge, which by cleaning
his pencils had imbibed several sorts of colours, and threw it in a rage
against the picture, with an intent utterly to deface it; when fortune
guiding the sponge to hit just upon the mouth of the dog, it there
performed what all his art was not able to do. Does she not sometimes
direct our counsels and correct them? Isabel, Queen of England, having to
sail from Zealand into her own kingdom,—[in 1326]— with an
army, in favour of her son against her husband, had been lost, had she
come into the port she intended, being there laid wait for by the enemy;
but fortune, against her will, threw her into another haven, where she
landed in safety. And that man of old who, throwing a stone at a dog, hit
and killed his mother-in-law, had he not reason to pronounce this verse:
["Fortune has more judgement than we."—Menander]
Icetes had contracted with two soldiers to kill Timoleon at Adrana in
Sicily.—[Plutarch, Life of Timoleon, c. 7.]—They took their
time to do it when he was assisting at a sacrifice, and thrusting into the
crowd, as they were making signs to one another, that now was a fit time
to do their business, in steps a third, who, with a sword takes one of
them full drive over the pate, lays him dead upon the place and runs away,
which the others see, and concluding himself discovered and lost, runs to
the altar and begs for mercy, promising to discover the whole truth, which
as he was doing, and laying open the full conspiracy, behold the third
man, who being apprehended, was, as a murderer, thrust and hauled by the
people through the press, towards Timoleon, and the other most eminent
persons of the assembly, before whom being brought, he cries out for
pardon, pleading that he had justly slain his father's murderer; which he,
also, proving upon the spot, by sufficient witnesses, whom his good
fortune very opportunely supplied him withal, that his father was really
killed in the city of Leontini, by that very man on whom he had taken his
revenge, he was presently awarded ten Attic minae, for having had the good
fortune, by designing to revenge the death of his father, to preserve the
life of the common father of Sicily. Fortune, truly, in her conduct
surpasses all the rules of human prudence.
But to conclude: is there not a direct application of her favour, bounty,
and piety manifestly discovered in this action? Ignatius the father and
Ignatius the son being proscribed by the triumvirs of Rome, resolved upon
this generous act of mutual kindness, to fall by the hands of one another,
and by that means to frustrate and defeat the cruelty of the tyrants; and
accordingly with their swords drawn, ran full drive upon one another,
where fortune so guided the points, that they made two equally mortal
wounds, affording withal so much honour to so brave a friendship, as to
leave them just strength enough to draw out their bloody swords, that they
might have liberty to embrace one another in this dying condition, with so
close and hearty an embrace, that the executioner cut off both their heads
at once, leaving the bodies still fast linked together in this noble bond,
and their wounds joined mouth to mouth, affectionately sucking in the last
blood and remainder of the lives of each other.
CHAPTER XXXIV——OF ONE DEFECT IN OUR GOVERNMENT
My late father, a man that had no other advantages than experience and his
own natural parts, was nevertheless of a very clear judgment, formerly
told me that he once had thoughts of endeavouring to introduce this
practice; that there might be in every city a certain place assigned to
which such as stood in need of anything might repair, and have their
business entered by an officer appointed for that purpose. As for example:
I want a chapman to buy my pearls; I want one that has pearls to sell;
such a one wants company to go to Paris; such a one seeks a servant of
such a quality; such a one a master; such a one such an artificer; some
inquiring for one thing, some for another, every one according to what he
wants. And doubtless, these mutual advertisements would be of no
contemptible advantage to the public correspondence and intelligence: for
there are evermore conditions that hunt after one another, and for want of
knowing one another's occasions leave men in very great necessity.
I have heard, to the great shame of the age we live in, that in our very
sight two most excellent men for learning died so poor that they had
scarce bread to put in their mouths: Lilius Gregorius Giraldus in Italy
and Sebastianus Castalio in Germany: and I believe there are a thousand
men would have invited them into their families, with very advantageous
conditions, or have relieved them where they were, had they known their
wants. The world is not so generally corrupted, but that I know a man that
would heartily wish the estate his ancestors have left him might be
employed, so long as it shall please fortune to give him leave to enjoy
it, to secure rare and remarkable persons of any kind, whom misfortune
sometimes persecutes to the last degree, from the dangers of necessity;
and at least place them in such a condition that they must be very hard to
please, if they are not contented.
My father in his domestic economy had this rule (which I know how to
commend, but by no means to imitate), namely, that besides the day-book or
memorial of household affairs, where the small accounts, payments, and
disbursements, which do not require a secretary's hand, were entered, and
which a steward always had in custody, he ordered him whom he employed to
write for him, to keep a journal, and in it to set down all the remarkable
occurrences, and daily memorials of the history of his house: very
pleasant to look over, when time begins to wear things out of memory, and
very useful sometimes to put us out of doubt when such a thing was begun,
when ended; what visitors came, and when they went; our travels, absences,
marriages, and deaths; the reception of good or ill news; the change of
principal servants, and the like. An ancient custom, which I think it
would not be amiss for every one to revive in his own house; and I find I
did very foolishly in neglecting it.
CHAPTER XXXV——OF THE CUSTOM OF WEARING CLOTHES
Whatever I shall say upon this subject, I am of necessity to invade some
of the bounds of custom, so careful has she been to shut up all the
avenues. I was disputing with myself in this shivering season, whether the
fashion of going naked in those nations lately discovered is imposed upon
them by the hot temperature of the air, as we say of the Indians and
Moors, or whether it be the original fashion of mankind. Men of
understanding, forasmuch as all things under the sun, as the Holy Writ
declares, are subject to the same laws, were wont in such considerations
as these, where we are to distinguish the natural laws from those which
have been imposed by man's invention, to have recourse to the general
polity of the world, where there can be nothing counterfeit. Now, all
other creatures being sufficiently furnished with all things necessary for
the support of their being—[Montaigne's expression is, "with needle
and thread."—W.C.H.]—it is not to be imagined that we only are
brought into the world in a defective and indigent condition, and in such
a state as cannot subsist without external aid. Therefore it is that I
believe, that as plants, trees, and animals, and all things that have
life, are seen to be by nature sufficiently clothed and covered, to defend
them from the injuries of weather:
"Proptereaque fere res omnes ant corio sunt,
Aut seta, ant conchis, ant callo, ant cortice tectae,"
["And that for this reason nearly all things are clothed with skin,
or hair, or shells, or bark, or some such thing."
—Lucretius, iv. 936.]
so were we: but as those who by artificial light put out that of day, so
we by borrowed forms and fashions have destroyed our own. And 'tis plain
enough to be seen, that 'tis custom only which renders that impossible
that otherwise is nothing so; for of those nations who have no manner of
knowledge of clothing, some are situated under the same temperature that
we are, and some in much colder climates. And besides, our most tender
parts are always exposed to the air, as the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears;
and our country labourers, like our ancestors in former times, go with
their breasts and bellies open. Had we been born with a necessity upon us
of wearing petticoats and breeches, there is no doubt but nature would
have fortified those parts she intended should be exposed to the fury of
the seasons with a thicker skin, as she has done the finger-ends and the
soles of the feet. And why should this seem hard to believe? I observe
much greater distance betwixt my habit and that of one of our country
boors, than betwixt his and that of a man who has no other covering but
his skin. How many men, especially in Turkey, go naked upon the account of
devotion? Some one asked a beggar, whom he saw in his shirt in the depth
of winter, as brisk and frolic as he who goes muffled up to the ears in
furs, how he was able to endure to go so? "Why, sir," he answered, "you go
with your face bare: I am all face." The Italians have a story of the Duke
of Florence's fool, whom his master asking how, being so thinly clad, he
was able to support the cold, when he himself, warmly wrapped up as he
was, was hardly able to do it? "Why," replied the fool, "use my receipt to
put on all your clothes you have at once, and you'll feel no more cold
than I." King Massinissa, to an extreme old age, could never be prevailed
upon to go with his head covered, how cold, stormy, or rainy soever the
weather might be; which also is reported of the Emperor Severus. Herodotus
tells us, that in the battles fought betwixt the Egyptians and the
Persians, it was observed both by himself and by others, that of those who
were left dead upon the field, the heads of the Egyptians were without
comparison harder than those of the Persians, by reason that the last had
gone with their heads always covered from their infancy, first with
biggins, and then with turbans, and the others always shaved and bare.
King Agesilaus continued to a decrepit age to wear always the same clothes
in winter that he did in summer. Caesar, says Suetonius, marched always at
the head of his army, for the most part on foot, with his head bare,
whether it was rain or sunshine, and as much is said of Hannibal:
"Tum vertice nudo,
Excipere insanos imbres, coelique ruinam."
["Bareheaded he marched in snow, exposed to pouring rain and the
utmost rigour of the weather."—Silius Italicus, i. 250.]
A Venetian who has long lived in Pegu, and has lately returned thence,
writes that the men and women of that kingdom, though they cover all their
other parts, go always barefoot and ride so too; and Plato very earnestly
advises for the health of the whole body, to give the head and the feet no
other clothing than what nature has bestowed. He whom the Poles have
elected for their king,—[Stephen Bathory]—since ours came
thence, who is, indeed, one of the greatest princes of this age, never
wears any gloves, and in winter or whatever weather can come, never wears
other cap abroad than that he wears at home. Whereas I cannot endure to go
unbuttoned or untied; my neighbouring labourers would think themselves in
chains, if they were so braced. Varro is of opinion, that when it was
ordained we should be bare in the presence of the gods and before the
magistrate, it was so ordered rather upon the score of health, and to
inure us to the injuries of weather, than upon the account of reverence;
and since we are now talking of cold, and Frenchmen used to wear variety
of colours (not I myself, for I seldom wear other than black or white, in
imitation of my father), let us add another story out of Le Capitaine
Martin du Bellay, who affirms, that in the march to Luxembourg he saw so
great frost, that the munition-wine was cut with hatchets and wedges, and
delivered out to the soldiers by weight, and that they carried it away in
baskets: and Ovid,
"Nudaque consistunt, formam servantia testae,
Vina; nec hausta meri, sed data frusta, bibunt."
["The wine when out of the cask retains the form of the cask;
and is given out not in cups, but in bits."
—Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 23.]
At the mouth of Lake Maeotis the frosts are so very sharp, that in the
very same place where Mithridates' lieutenant had fought the enemy dryfoot
and given them a notable defeat, the summer following he obtained over
them a naval victory. The Romans fought at a very great disadvantage, in
the engagement they had with the Carthaginians near Piacenza, by reason
that they went to the charge with their blood congealed and their limbs
numbed with cold, whereas Hannibal had caused great fires to be dispersed
quite through his camp to warm his soldiers, and oil to be distributed
amongst them, to the end that anointing themselves, they might render
their nerves more supple and active, and fortify the pores against the
violence of the air and freezing wind, which raged in that season.
The retreat the Greeks made from Babylon into their own country is famous
for the difficulties and calamities they had to overcome; of which this
was one, that being encountered in the mountains of Armenia with a
horrible storm of snow, they lost all knowledge of the country and of the
ways, and being driven up, were a day and a night without eating or
drinking; most of their cattle died, many of themselves were starved to
death, several struck blind with the force of the hail and the glare of
the snow, many of them maimed in their fingers and toes, and many stiff
and motionless with the extremity of the cold, who had yet their
understanding entire.
Alexander saw a nation, where they bury their fruit-trees in winter to
protect them from being destroyed by the frost, and we also may see the
same.
But, so far as clothes go, the King of Mexico changed four times a day his
apparel, and never put it on again, employing that he left off in his
continual liberalities and rewards; and neither pot, dish, nor other
utensil of his kitchen or table was ever served twice.
CHAPTER XXXVI——OF CATO THE YOUNGER
["I am not possessed with this common errour, to judge of others
according to what I am my selfe. I am easie to beleeve things
differing from my selfe. Though I be engaged to one forme, I do not
tie the world unto it, as every man doth. And I beleeve and
conceive a thousand manners of life, contrary to the common sorte."
—Florio, ed. 1613, p. 113.]
I am not guilty of the common error of judging another by myself. I easily
believe that in another's humour which is contrary to my own; and though I
find myself engaged to one certain form, I do not oblige others to it, as
many do; but believe and apprehend a thousand ways of living; and,
contrary to most men, more easily admit of difference than uniformity
amongst us. I as frankly as any one would have me, discharge a man from my
humours and principles, and consider him according to his own particular
model. Though I am not continent myself, I nevertheless sincerely approve
the continence of the Feuillans and Capuchins, and highly commend their
way of living. I insinuate myself by imagination into their place, and
love and honour them the more for being other than I am. I very much
desire that we may be judged every man by himself, and would not be drawn
into the consequence of common examples. My own weakness nothing alters
the esteem I ought to have for the force and vigour of those who deserve
it:
"Sunt qui nihil suadent, quam quod se imitari posse confidunt."
["There are who persuade nothing but what they believe they can
imitate themselves."—Cicero, De Orator., c. 7.]
Crawling upon the slime of the earth, I do not for all that cease to
observe up in the clouds the inimitable height of some heroic souls. 'Tis
a great deal for me to have my judgment regular and just, if the effects
cannot be so, and to maintain this sovereign part, at least, free from
corruption; 'tis something to have my will right and good where my legs
fail me. This age wherein we live, in our part of the world at least, is
grown so stupid, that not only the exercise, but the very imagination of
virtue is defective, and seems to be no other but college jargon:
"Virtutem verba putant, ut
Lucum ligna:"
["They think words virtue, as they think mere wood a sacred grove."
—Horace, Ep., i. 6, 31.]
"Quam vereri deberent, etiam si percipere non possent."
["Which they ought to reverence, though they cannot comprehend."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quas., v. 2.]
'Tis a gewgaw to hang in a cabinet or at the end of the tongue, as on the
tip of the ear, for ornament only. There are no longer virtuous actions
extant; those actions that carry a show of virtue have yet nothing of its
essence; by reason that profit, glory, fear, custom, and other suchlike
foreign causes, put us on the way to produce them. Our justice also,
valour, courtesy, may be called so too, in respect to others and according
to the face they appear with to the public; but in the doer it can by no
means be virtue, because there is another end proposed, another moving
cause. Now virtue owns nothing to be hers, but what is done by herself and
for herself alone.
In that great battle of Plataea, that the Greeks under the command of
Pausanias gained against Mardonius and the Persians, the conquerors,
according to their custom, coming to divide amongst them the glory of the
exploit, attributed to the Spartan nation the pre-eminence of valour in
the engagement. The Spartans, great judges of virtue, when they came to
determine to what particular man of their nation the honour was due of
having the best behaved himself upon this occasion, found that Aristodemus
had of all others hazarded his person with the greatest bravery; but did
not, however, allow him any prize, by reason that his virtue had been
incited by a desire to clear his reputation from the reproach of his
miscarriage at the business of Thermopylae, and to die bravely to wipe off
that former blemish.
Our judgments are yet sick, and obey the humour of our depraved manners. I
observe most of the wits of these times pretend to ingenuity, by
endeavouring to blemish and darken the glory of the bravest and most
generous actions of former ages, putting one vile interpretation or
another upon them, and forging and supposing vain causes and motives for
the noble things they did: a mighty subtlety indeed! Give me the greatest
and most unblemished action that ever the day beheld, and I will contrive
a hundred plausible drifts and ends to obscure it. God knows, whoever will
stretch them out to the full, what diversity of images our internal wills
suffer under. They do not so maliciously play the censurers, as they do it
ignorantly and rudely in all their detractions.
The same pains and licence that others take to blemish and bespatter these
illustrious names, I would willingly undergo to lend them a shoulder to
raise them higher. These rare forms, that are culled out by the consent of
the wisest men of all ages, for the world's example, I should not stick to
augment in honour, as far as my invention would permit, in all the
circumstances of favourable interpretation; and we may well believe that
the force of our invention is infinitely short of their merit. 'Tis the
duty of good men to portray virtue as beautiful as they can, and there
would be nothing wrong should our passion a little transport us in favour
of so sacred a form. What these people do, on the contrary, they either do
out of malice, or by the vice of confining their belief to their own
capacity; or, which I am more inclined to think, for not having their
sight strong, clear, and elevated enough to conceive the splendour of
virtue in her native purity: as Plutarch complains, that in his time some
attributed the cause of the younger Cato's death to his fear of Caesar, at
which he seems very angry, and with good reason; and by this a man may
guess how much more he would have been offended with those who have
attributed it to ambition. Senseless people! He would rather have
performed a noble, just, and generous action, and to have had ignominy for
his reward, than for glory. That man was in truth a pattern that nature
chose out to show to what height human virtue and constancy could arrive.
But I am not capable of handling so rich an argument, and shall therefore
only set five Latin poets together, contending in the praise of Cato; and,
incidentally, for their own too. Now, a well-educated child will judge the
two first, in comparison of the others, a little flat and languid; the
third more vigorous, but overthrown by the extravagance of his own force;
he will then think that there will be room for one or two gradations of
invention to come to the fourth, and, mounting to the pitch of that, he
will lift up his hands in admiration; coming to the last, the first by
some space' (but a space that he will swear is not to be filled up by any
human wit), he will be astounded, he will not know where he is.
And here is a wonder: we have far more poets than judges and interpreters
of poetry; it is easier to write it than to understand it. There is,
indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry, that a man may well
enough judge by certain rules of art; but the true, supreme, and divine
poesy is above all rules and reason. And whoever discerns the beauty of it
with the most assured and most steady sight, sees no more than the quick
reflection of a flash of lightning: it does not exercise, but ravishes and
overwhelms our judgment. The fury that possesses him who is able to
penetrate into it wounds yet a third man by hearing him repeat it; like a
loadstone that not only attracts the needle, but also infuses into it the
virtue to attract others. And it is more evidently manifest in our
theatres, that the sacred inspiration of the Muses, having first stirred
up the poet to anger, sorrow, hatred, and out of himself, to whatever they
will, does moreover by the poet possess the actor, and by the actor
consecutively all the spectators. So much do our passions hang and depend
upon one another.
Poetry has ever had that power over me from a child to transpierce and
transport me; but this vivid sentiment that is natural to me has been
variously handled by variety of forms, not so much higher or lower (for
they were ever the highest of every kind), as differing in colour. First,
a gay and sprightly fluency; afterwards, a lofty and penetrating subtlety;
and lastly, a mature and constant vigour. Their names will better express
them: Ovid, Lucan, Virgil.
But our poets are beginning their career:
"Sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Caesare major,"
["Let Cato, whilst he live, be greater than Caesar."
—Martial, vi. 32]
says one.
"Et invictum, devicta morte, Catonem,"
["And Cato invincible, death being overcome."
—Manilius, Astron., iv. 87.]
says the second. And the third, speaking of the civil wars betwixt Caesar
and Pompey,
"Victrix causa diis placuit, set victa Catoni."
["The victorious cause blessed the gods, the defeated one Cato.
—"Lucan, i. 128.]
And the fourth, upon the praises of Caesar:
"Et cuncta terrarum subacta,
Praeter atrocem animum Catonis."
["And conquered all but the indomitable mind of Cato."
—Horace, Od., ii. 1, 23.]
And the master of the choir, after having set forth all the great names of
the greatest Romans, ends thus:
"His dantem jura Catonem."
["Cato giving laws to all the rest."—AEneid, viii. 670.]
CHAPTER XXXVII——THAT WE LAUGH AND CRY FOR THE SAME THING
When we read in history that Antigonus was very much displeased with his
son for presenting him the head of King Pyrrhus his enemy, but newly slain
fighting against him, and that seeing it, he wept; and that Rene, Duke of
Lorraine, also lamented the death of Charles, Duke of Burgundy, whom he
had himself defeated, and appeared in mourning at his funeral; and that in
the battle of D'Auray (which Count Montfort obtained over Charles de
Blois, his competitor for the duchy of Brittany), the conqueror meeting
the dead body of his enemy, was very much afflicted at his death, we must
not presently cry out:
"E cosi avven, the l'animo ciascuna
Sua passion sotto 'l contrario manto,
Ricopre, con la vista or'chiara, or'bruna."
["And thus it happens that the mind of each veils its passion under
a different appearance, and beneath a smiling visage, gay beneath a
sombre air."—Petrarch.]
When Pompey's head was presented to Caesar, the histories tell us that he
turned away his face, as from a sad and unpleasing object. There had been
so long an intelligence and society betwixt them in the management of the
public affairs, so great a community of fortunes, so many mutual offices,
and so near an alliance, that this countenance of his ought not to suffer
under any misinterpretation, or to be suspected for either false or
counterfeit, as this other seems to believe:
"Tutumque putavit
Jam bonus esse socer; lacrymae non sponte cadentes,
Effudit, gemitusque expressit pectore laeto;"
["And now he thought it safe to play the kind father-in-law,
shedding forced tears, and from a joyful breast discharging sighs
and groans."—Lucan, ix. 1037.]
for though it be true that the greatest part of our actions are no other
than visor and disguise, and that it may sometimes be true that
"Haeredis fletus sub persona rises est,"
["The heir's tears behind the mask are smiles."
—Publius Syrus, apud Gellium, xvii. 14.]
yet, in judging of these accidents, we are to consider how much our souls
are oftentimes agitated with divers passions. And as they say that in our
bodies there is a congregation of divers humours, of which that is the
sovereign which, according to the complexion we are of, is commonly most
predominant in us: so, though the soul have in it divers motions to give
it agitation, yet must there of necessity be one to overrule all the rest,
though not with so necessary and absolute a dominion but that through the
flexibility and inconstancy of the soul, those of less authority may upon
occasion reassume their place and make a little sally in turn. Thence it
is, that we see not only children, who innocently obey and follow nature,
often laugh and cry at the same thing, but not one of us can boast, what
journey soever he may have in hand that he has the most set his heart
upon, but when he comes to part with his family and friends, he will find
something that troubles him within; and though he refrain his tears yet he
puts foot in the stirrup with a sad and cloudy countenance. And what
gentle flame soever may warm the heart of modest and wellborn virgins, yet
are they fain to be forced from about their mothers' necks to be put to
bed to their husbands, whatever this boon companion is pleased to say:
"Estne novis nuptis odio Venus? anne parentum
Frustrantur falsis gaudia lachrymulis,
Ubertim thalami quasi intra limina fundunt?
Non, ita me divi, vera gemunt, juverint."
["Is Venus really so alarming to the new-made bride, or does she
honestly oppose her parent's rejoicing the tears she so abundantly
sheds on entering the nuptial chamber? No, by the Gods, these are
no true tears."—Catullus, lxvi. 15.]
["Is Venus really so repugnant to newly-married maids? Do they meet
the smiles of parents with feigned tears? They weep copiously
within the very threshold of the nuptial chamber. No, so the gods
help me, they do not truly grieve."—Catullus, lxvi. 15.]—
[A more literal translation. D.W.]
Neither is it strange to lament a person dead whom a man would by no means
should be alive. When I rattle my man, I do it with all the mettle I have,
and load him with no feigned, but downright real curses; but the heat
being over, if he should stand in need of me, I should be very ready to do
him good: for I instantly turn the leaf. When I call him calf and coxcomb,
I do not pretend to entail those titles upon him for ever; neither do I
think I give myself the lie in calling him an honest fellow presently
after. No one quality engrosses us purely and universally. Were it not the
sign of a fool to talk to one's self, there would hardly be a day or hour
wherein I might not be heard to grumble and mutter to myself and against
myself, "Confound the fool!" and yet I do not think that to be my
definition. Who for seeing me one while cold and presently very fond
towards my wife, believes the one or the other to be counterfeited, is an
ass. Nero, taking leave of his mother whom he was sending to be drowned,
was nevertheless sensible of some emotion at this farewell, and was struck
with horror and pity. 'Tis said, that the light of the sun is not one
continuous thing, but that he darts new rays so thick one upon another
that we cannot perceive the intermission:
"Largus enim liquidi fons luminis, aetherius sol,
Irrigat assidue coelum candore recenti,
Suppeditatque novo confestim lumine lumen."
["So the wide fountain of liquid light, the ethereal sun, steadily
fertilises the heavens with new heat, and supplies a continuous
store of fresh light."—Lucretius, v. 282.]
Just so the soul variously and imperceptibly darts out her passions.
Artabanus coming by surprise once upon his nephew Xerxes, chid him for the
sudden alteration of his countenance. He was considering the immeasurable
greatness of his forces passing over the Hellespont for the Grecian
expedition: he was first seized with a palpitation of joy, to see so many
millions of men under his command, and this appeared in the gaiety of his
looks: but his thoughts at the same instant suggesting to him that of so
many lives, within a century at most, there would not be one left, he
presently knit his brows and grew sad, even to tears.
We have resolutely pursued the revenge of an injury received, and been
sensible of a singular contentment for the victory; but we shall weep
notwithstanding. 'Tis not for the victory, though, that we shall weep:
there is nothing altered in that but the soul looks upon things with
another eye and represents them to itself with another kind of face; for
everything has many faces and several aspects.
Relations, old acquaintances, and friendships, possess our imaginations
and make them tender for the time, according to their condition; but the
turn is so quick, that 'tis gone in a moment:
"Nil adeo fieri celeri ratione videtur,
Quam si mens fieri proponit, et inchoat ipsa,
Ocius ergo animus, quam res se perciet ulla,
Ante oculos quorum in promptu natura videtur;"
["Nothing therefore seems to be done in so swift a manner than if
the mind proposes it to be done, and itself begins. It is more
active than anything which we see in nature."—Lucretius, iii. 183.]
and therefore, if we would make one continued thing of all this succession
of passions, we deceive ourselves. When Timoleon laments the murder he had
committed upon so mature and generous deliberation, he does not lament the
liberty restored to his country, he does not lament the tyrant; but he
laments his brother: one part of his duty is performed; let us give him
leave to perform the other.
CHAPTER XXXVIII——OF SOLITUDE
Let us pretermit that long comparison betwixt the active and the solitary
life; and as for the fine sayings with which ambition and avarice palliate
their vices, that we are not born for ourselves but for the public,—[This
is the eulogium passed by Lucan on Cato of Utica, ii. 383.]—let us
boldly appeal to those who are in public affairs; let them lay their hands
upon their hearts, and then say whether, on the contrary, they do not
rather aspire to titles and offices and that tumult of the world to make
their private advantage at the public expense. The corrupt ways by which
in this our time they arrive at the height to which their ambitions
aspire, manifestly enough declares that their ends cannot be very good.
Let us tell ambition that it is she herself who gives us a taste of
solitude; for what does she so much avoid as society? What does she so
much seek as elbowroom? A man many do well or ill everywhere; but if what
Bias says be true, that the greatest part is the worse part, or what the
Preacher says: there is not one good of a thousand:
"Rari quippe boni: numero vix sunt totidem quot
Thebarum portae, vel divitis ostia Nili,"
["Good men forsooth are scarce: there are hardly as many as there
are gates of Thebes or mouths of the rich Nile."
—Juvenal, Sat., xiii. 26.]
the contagion is very dangerous in the crowd. A man must either imitate
the vicious or hate them both are dangerous things, either to resemble
them because they are many or to hate many because they are unresembling
to ourselves. Merchants who go to sea are in the right when they are
cautious that those who embark with them in the same bottom be neither
dissolute blasphemers nor vicious other ways, looking upon such society as
unfortunate. And therefore it was that Bias pleasantly said to some, who
being with him in a dangerous storm implored the assistance of the gods:
"Peace, speak softly," said he, "that they may not know you are here in my
company."—[Diogenes Laertius]—And of more pressing example,
Albuquerque, viceroy in the Indies for Emmanuel, king of Portugal, in an
extreme peril of shipwreck, took a young boy upon his shoulders, for this
only end that, in the society of their common danger his innocence might
serve to protect him, and to recommend him to the divine favour, that they
might get safe to shore. 'Tis not that a wise man may not live everywhere
content, and be alone in the very crowd of a palace; but if it be left to
his own choice, the schoolman will tell you that he should fly the very
sight of the crowd: he will endure it if need be; but if it be referred to
him, he will choose to be alone. He cannot think himself sufficiently rid
of vice, if he must yet contend with it in other men. Charondas punished
those as evil men who were convicted of keeping ill company. There is
nothing so unsociable and sociable as man, the one by his vice, the other
by his nature. And Antisthenes, in my opinion, did not give him a
satisfactory answer, who reproached him with frequenting ill company, by
saying that the physicians lived well enough amongst the sick, for if they
contribute to the health of the sick, no doubt but by the contagion,
continual sight of, and familiarity with diseases, they must of necessity
impair their own.
Now the end, I take it, is all one, to live at more leisure and at one's
ease: but men do not always take the right way. They often think they have
totally taken leave of all business, when they have only exchanged one
employment for another: there is little less trouble in governing a
private family than a whole kingdom. Wherever the mind is perplexed, it is
in an entire disorder, and domestic employments are not less troublesome
for being less important. Moreover, for having shaken off the court and
the exchange, we have not taken leave of the principal vexations of life:
"Ratio et prudentia curas,
Non locus effusi late maris arbiter, aufert;"
["Reason and prudence, not a place with a commanding view of the
great ocean, banish care."—Horace, Ep., i. 2.]
ambition, avarice, irresolution, fear, and inordinate desires, do not
leave us because we forsake our native country:
"Et
Post equitem sedet atra cura;"
["Black care sits behind the horse man."
—Horace, Od., iii. 1, 40].
they often follow us even to cloisters and philosophical schools; nor
deserts, nor caves, hair-shirts, nor fasts, can disengage us from them:
"Haeret lateri lethalis arundo."
["The fatal shaft adheres to the side."—AEneid, iv. 73.]
One telling Socrates that such a one was nothing improved by his travels:
"I very well believe it," said he, "for he took himself along with him"
"Quid terras alio calentes
Sole mutamus? patriae quis exsul
Se quoque fugit?"
["Why do we seek climates warmed by another sun? Who is the man
that by fleeing from his country, can also flee from himself?"
—Horace, Od., ii. 16, 18.]
If a man do not first discharge both himself and his mind of the burden
with which he finds himself oppressed, motion will but make it press the
harder and sit the heavier, as the lading of a ship is of less encumbrance
when fast and bestowed in a settled posture. You do a sick man more harm
than good in removing him from place to place; you fix and establish the
disease by motion, as stakes sink deeper and more firmly into the earth by
being moved up and down in the place where they are designed to stand.
Therefore, it is not enough to get remote from the public; 'tis not enough
to shift the soil only; a man must flee from the popular conditions that
have taken possession of his soul, he must sequester and come again to
himself:
"Rupi jam vincula, dicas
Nam luctata canis nodum arripit; attamen illi,
Quum fugit, a collo trahitur pars longa catenae."
["You say, perhaps, you have broken your chains: the dog who after
long efforts has broken his chain, still in his flight drags a heavy
portion of it after him."—Persius, Sat., v. 158.]
We still carry our fetters along with us. 'Tis not an absolute liberty; we
yet cast back a look upon what we have left behind us; the fancy is still
full of it:
"Nisi purgatum est pectus, quae praelia nobis
Atque pericula tunc ingratis insinuandum?
Quantae connscindunt hominem cupedinis acres
Sollicitum curae? quantique perinde timores?
Quidve superbia, spurcitia, ac petulantia, quantas
Efficiunt clades? quid luxus desidiesque?"
["But unless the mind is purified, what internal combats and dangers
must we incur in spite of all our efforts! How many bitter
anxieties, how many terrors, follow upon unregulated passion!
What destruction befalls us from pride, lust, petulant anger!
What evils arise from luxury and sloth!"—Lucretius, v. 4.]
Our disease lies in the mind, which cannot escape from itself;
"In culpa est animus, qui se non effugit unquam,"
—Horace, Ep., i. 14, 13.
and therefore is to be called home and confined within itself: that is the
true solitude, and that may be enjoyed even in populous cities and the
courts of kings, though more commodiously apart.
Now, since we will attempt to live alone, and to waive all manner of
conversation amongst them, let us so order it that our content may depend
wholly upon ourselves; let us dissolve all obligations that ally us to
others; let us obtain this from ourselves, that we may live alone in good
earnest, and live at our ease too.
Stilpo having escaped from the burning of his town, where he lost wife,
children, and goods, Demetrius Poliorcetes seeing him, in so great a ruin
of his country, appear with an undisturbed countenance, asked him if he
had received no loss? To which he made answer, No; and that, thank God,
nothing was lost of his.—[Seneca, Ep. 7.]—This also was the
meaning of the philosopher Antisthenes, when he pleasantly said, that "men
should furnish themselves with such things as would float, and might with
the owner escape the storm";—[Diogenes Laertius, vi. 6.] and
certainly a wise man never loses anything if he have himself. When the
city of Nola was ruined by the barbarians, Paulinus, who was bishop of
that place, having there lost all he had, himself a prisoner, prayed after
this manner: "O Lord, defend me from being sensible of this loss; for Thou
knowest they have yet touched nothing of that which is mine."—[St.
Augustin, De Civit. Dei, i. 10.]—The riches that made him rich and
the goods that made him good, were still kept entire. This it is to make
choice of treasures that can secure themselves from plunder and violence,
and to hide them in such a place into which no one can enter and that is
not to be betrayed by any but ourselves. Wives, children, and goods must
be had, and especially health, by him that can get it; but we are not so
to set our hearts upon them that our happiness must have its dependence
upon them; we must reserve a backshop, wholly our own and entirely free,
wherein to settle our true liberty, our principal solitude and retreat.
And in this we must for the most part entertain ourselves with ourselves,
and so privately that no exotic knowledge or communication be admitted
there; there to laugh and to talk, as if without wife, children, goods,
train, or attendance, to the end that when it shall so fall out that we
must lose any or all of these, it may be no new thing to be without them.
We have a mind pliable in itself, that will be company; that has
wherewithal to attack and to defend, to receive and to give: let us not
then fear in this solitude to languish under an uncomfortable vacuity.
"In solis sis tibi turba locis."
["In solitude, be company for thyself."—Tibullus, vi. 13. 12.]
Virtue is satisfied with herself, without discipline, without words,
without effects. In our ordinary actions there is not one of a thousand
that concerns ourselves. He that thou seest scrambling up the ruins of
that wall, furious and transported, against whom so many harquebuss-shots
are levelled; and that other all over scars, pale, and fainting with
hunger, and yet resolved rather to die than to open the gates to him; dost
thou think that these men are there upon their own account? No;
peradventure in the behalf of one whom they never saw and who never
concerns himself for their pains and danger, but lies wallowing the while
in sloth and pleasure: this other slavering, blear-eyed, slovenly fellow,
that thou seest come out of his study after midnight, dost thou think he
has been tumbling over books to learn how to become a better man, wiser,
and more content? No such matter; he will there end his days, but he will
teach posterity the measure of Plautus' verses and the true orthography of
a Latin word. Who is it that does not voluntarily exchange his health, his
repose, and his very life for reputation and glory, the most useless,
frivolous, and false coin that passes current amongst us? Our own death
does not sufficiently terrify and trouble us; let us, moreover, charge
ourselves with those of our wives, children, and family: our own affairs
do not afford us anxiety enough; let us undertake those of our neighbours
and friends, still more to break our brains and torment us:
"Vah! quemquamne hominem in animum instituere, aut
Parare, quod sit carius, quam ipse est sibi?"
["Ah! can any man conceive in his mind or realise what is dearer
than he is to himself?"—Terence, Adelph., i. I, 13.]
Solitude seems to me to wear the best favour in such as have already
employed their most active and flourishing age in the world's service,
after the example of Thales. We have lived enough for others; let us at
least live out the small remnant of life for ourselves; let us now call in
our thoughts and intentions to ourselves, and to our own ease and repose.
'Tis no light thing to make a sure retreat; it will be enough for us to do
without mixing other enterprises. Since God gives us leisure to order our
removal, let us make ready, truss our baggage, take leave betimes of the
company, and disentangle ourselves from those violent importunities that
engage us elsewhere and separate us from ourselves.
We must break the knot of our obligations, how strong soever, and
hereafter love this or that, but espouse nothing but ourselves: that is to
say, let the remainder be our own, but not so joined and so close as not
to be forced away without flaying us or tearing out part of our whole. The
greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own. 'Tis
time to wean ourselves from society when we can no longer add anything to
it; he who is not in a condition to lend must forbid himself to borrow.
Our forces begin to fail us; let us call them in and concentrate them in
and for ourselves. He that can cast off within himself and resolve the
offices of friendship and company, let him do it. In this decay of nature
which renders him useless, burdensome, and importunate to others, let him
take care not to be useless, burdensome, and importunate to himself. Let
him soothe and caress himself, and above all things be sure to govern
himself with reverence to his reason and conscience to that degree as to
be ashamed to make a false step in their presence:
"Rarum est enim, ut satis se quisque vereatur."
["For 'tis rarely seen that men have respect and reverence enough
for themselves."—Quintilian, x. 7.]
Socrates says that boys are to cause themselves to be instructed, men to
exercise themselves in well-doing, and old men to retire from all civil
and military employments, living at their own discretion, without the
obligation to any office. There are some complexions more proper for these
precepts of retirement than others. Such as are of a soft and dull
apprehension, and of a tender will and affection, not readily to be
subdued or employed, whereof I am one, both by natural condition and by
reflection, will sooner incline to this advice than active and busy souls,
which embrace: all, engage in all, are hot upon everything, which offer,
present, and give themselves up to every occasion. We are to use these
accidental and extraneous commodities, so far as they are pleasant to us,
but by no means to lay our principal foundation there; 'tis no true one;
neither nature nor reason allows it so to be. Why therefore should we,
contrary to their laws, enslave our own contentment to the power of
another? To anticipate also the accidents of fortune, to deprive ourselves
of the conveniences we have in our own power, as several have done upon
the account of devotion, and some philosophers by reasoning; to be one's
own servant, to lie hard, to put out our own eyes, to throw our wealth
into the river, to go in search of grief; these, by the misery of this
life, aiming at bliss in another; those by laying themselves low to avoid
the danger of falling: all such are acts of an excessive virtue. The
stoutest and most resolute natures render even their seclusion glorious
and exemplary:
"Tuta et parvula laudo,
Quum res deficiunt, satis inter vilia fortis
Verum, ubi quid melius contingit et unctius, idem
Hos sapere et solos aio bene vivere, quorum
Conspicitur nitidis fundata pecunia villis."
["When means are deficient, I laud a safe and humble condition,
content with little: but when things grow better and more easy, I
all the same say that you alone are wise and live well, whose
invested money is visible in beautiful villas."
—Horace, Ep., i. 15, 42.]
A great deal less would serve my turn well enough. 'Tis enough for me,
under fortune's favour, to prepare myself for her disgrace, and, being at
my ease, to represent to myself, as far as my imagination can stretch, the
ill to come; as we do at jousts and tiltings, where we counterfeit war in
the greatest calm of peace. I do not think Arcesilaus the philosopher the
less temperate and virtuous for knowing that he made use of gold and
silver vessels, when the condition of his fortune allowed him so to do; I
have indeed a better opinion of him than if he had denied himself what he
used with liberality and moderation. I see the utmost limits of natural
necessity: and considering a poor man begging at my door, ofttimes more
jocund and more healthy than I myself am, I put myself into his place, and
attempt to dress my mind after his mode; and running, in like manner, over
other examples, though I fancy death, poverty, contempt, and sickness
treading on my heels, I easily resolve not to be affrighted, forasmuch as
a less than I takes them with so much patience; and am not willing to
believe that a less understanding can do more than a greater, or that the
effects of precept cannot arrive to as great a height as those of custom.
And knowing of how uncertain duration these accidental conveniences are, I
never forget, in the height of all my enjoyments, to make it my chiefest
prayer to Almighty God, that He will please to render me content with
myself and the condition wherein I am. I see young men very gay and
frolic, who nevertheless keep a mass of pills in their trunk at home, to
take when they've got a cold, which they fear so much the less, because
they think they have remedy at hand. Every one should do in like manner,
and, moreover, if they find themselves subject to some more violent
disease, should furnish themselves with such medicines as may numb and
stupefy the part.
The employment a man should choose for such a life ought neither to be a
laborious nor an unpleasing one; otherwise 'tis to no purpose at all to be
retired. And this depends upon every one's liking and humour. Mine has no
manner of complacency for husbandry, and such as love it ought to apply
themselves to it with moderation:
["Endeavour to make circumstances subject to me,
and not me subject to circumstances."
—Horace, Ep., i. i, 19.]
Husbandry is otherwise a very servile employment, as Sallust calls it;
though some parts of it are more excusable than the rest, as the care of
gardens, which Xenophon attributes to Cyrus; and a mean may be found out
betwixt the sordid and low application, so full of perpetual solicitude,
which is seen in men who make it their entire business and study, and the
stupid and extreme negligence, letting all things go at random which we
see in others
"Democriti pecus edit agellos
Cultaque, dum peregre est animus sine corpore velox."
["Democritus' cattle eat his corn and spoil his fields, whilst his
soaring mind ranges abroad without the body."
—Horace, Ep., i, 12, 12.]
But let us hear what advice the younger Pliny gives his friend Caninius
Rufus upon the subject of solitude: "I advise thee, in the full and
plentiful retirement wherein thou art, to leave to thy hinds the care of
thy husbandry, and to addict thyself to the study of letters, to extract
from thence something that may be entirely and absolutely thine own." By
which he means reputation; like Cicero, who says that he would employ his
solitude and retirement from public affairs to acquire by his writings an
immortal life.
"Usque adeone
Scire tuum, nihil est, nisi to scire hoc, sciat alter?"
["Is all that thy learning nothing, unless another knows
that thou knowest?"—Persius, Sat., i. 23.]
It appears to be reason, when a man talks of retiring from the world, that
he should look quite out of [for] himself. These do it but by halves: they
design well enough for themselves when they shall be no more in it; but
still they pretend to extract the fruits of that design from the world,
when absent from it, by a ridiculous contradiction.
The imagination of those who seek solitude upon the account of devotion,
filling their hopes and courage with certainty of divine promises in the
other life, is much more rationally founded. They propose to themselves
God, an infinite object in goodness and power; the soul has there
wherewithal, at full liberty, to satiate her desires: afflictions and
sufferings turn to their advantage, being undergone for the acquisition of
eternal health and joy; death is to be wished and longed for, where it is
the passage to so perfect a condition; the asperity of the rules they
impose upon themselves is immediately softened by custom, and all their
carnal appetites baffled and subdued, by refusing to humour and feed them,
these being only supported by use and exercise. This sole end of another
happily immortal life is that which really merits that we should abandon
the pleasures and conveniences of this; and he who can really and
constantly inflame his soul with the ardour of this vivid faith and hope,
erects for himself in solitude a more voluptuous and delicious life than
any other sort of existence.
Neither the end, then, nor the means of this advice pleases me, for we
often fall out of the frying-pan into the fire.—[or: we always
relapse ill from fever into fever.]—This book-employment is as
painful as any other, and as great an enemy to health, which ought to be
the first thing considered; neither ought a man to be allured with the
pleasure of it, which is the same that destroys the frugal, the
avaricious, the voluptuous, and the ambitious man.
["This plodding occupation of bookes is as painfull as any other,
and as great an enemie vnto health, which ought principally to be
considered. And a man should not suffer him selfe to be inveagled
by the pleasure he takes in them."—Florio, edit. 1613, p. 122.]
The sages give us caution enough to beware the treachery of our desires,
and to distinguish true and entire pleasures from such as are mixed and
complicated with greater pain. For the most of our pleasures, say they,
wheedle and caress only to strangle us, like those thieves the Egyptians
called Philistae; if the headache should come before drunkenness, we
should have a care of drinking too much; but pleasure, to deceive us,
marches before and conceals her train. Books are pleasant, but if, by
being over-studious, we impair our health and spoil our goodhumour, the
best pieces we have, let us give it over; I, for my part, am one of those
who think, that no fruit derived from them can recompense so great a loss.
As men who have long felt themselves weakened by indisposition, give
themselves up at last to the mercy of medicine and submit to certain rules
of living, which they are for the future never to transgress; so he who
retires, weary of and disgusted with the common way of living, ought to
model this new one he enters into by the rules of reason, and to institute
and establish it by premeditation and reflection. He ought to have taken
leave of all sorts of labour, what advantage soever it may promise, and
generally to have shaken off all those passions which disturb the
tranquillity of body and soul, and then choose the way that best suits
with his own humour:
"Unusquisque sua noverit ire via."
In husbandry, study, hunting, and all other exercises, men are to proceed
to the utmost limits of pleasure, but must take heed of engaging further,
where trouble begins to mix with it. We are to reserve so much employment
only as is necessary to keep us in breath and to defend us from the
inconveniences that the other extreme of a dull and stupid laziness brings
along with it. There are sterile knotty sciences, chiefly hammered out for
the crowd; let such be left to them who are engaged in the world's
service. I for my part care for no other books, but either such as are
pleasant and easy, to amuse me, or those that comfort and instruct me how
to regulate my life and death:
"Tacitum sylvas inter reptare salubres,
Curantem, quidquid dignum sapienti bonoque est."
["Silently meditating in the healthy groves, whatever is worthy
of a wise and good man."—Horace, Ep., i. 4, 4.]
Wiser men, having great force and vigour of soul, may propose to
themselves a rest wholly spiritual but for me, who have a very ordinary
soul, it is very necessary to support myself with bodily conveniences; and
age having of late deprived me of those pleasures that were more
acceptable to me, I instruct and whet my appetite to those that remain,
more suitable to this other reason. We ought to hold with all our force,
both of hands and teeth, the use of the pleasures of life that our years,
one after another, snatch away from us:
"Carpamus dulcia; nostrum est,
Quod vivis; cinis, et manes, et fabula fies."
["Let us pluck life's sweets, 'tis for them we live: by and by we
shall be ashes, a ghost, a mere subject of talk."
—Persius, Sat., v. 151.]
Now, as to the end that Pliny and Cicero propose to us of glory, 'tis
infinitely wide of my account. Ambition is of all others the most contrary
humour to solitude; glory and repose are things that cannot possibly
inhabit in one and the same place. For so much as I understand, these have
only their arms and legs disengaged from the crowd; their soul and
intention remain confined behind more than ever:
"Tun', vetule, auriculis alienis colligis escas?"
["Dost thou, then, old man, collect food for others' ears?"
—Persius, Sat., i. 22.]
they have only retired to take a better leap, and by a stronger motion to
give a brisker charge into the crowd. Will you see how they shoot short?
Let us put into the counterpoise the advice of two philosophers, of two
very different sects, writing, the one to Idomeneus, the other to
Lucilius, their friends, to retire into solitude from worldly honours and
affairs. "You have," say they, "hitherto lived swimming and floating; come
now and die in the harbour: you have given the first part of your life to
the light, give what remains to the shade. It is impossible to give over
business, if you do not also quit the fruit; therefore disengage
yourselves from all concern of name and glory; 'tis to be feared the
lustre of your former actions will give you but too much light, and follow
you into your most private retreat. Quit with other pleasures that which
proceeds from the approbation of another man: and as to your knowledge and
parts, never concern yourselves; they will not lose their effect if
yourselves be the better for them. Remember him, who being asked why he
took so much pains in an art that could come to the knowledge of but few
persons? 'A few are enough for me,' replied he; 'I have enough with one; I
have enough with never an one.'—[Seneca, Ep., 7.]—He said
true; you and a companion are theatre enough to one another, or you to
yourself. Let the people be to you one, and be you one to the whole
people. 'Tis an unworthy ambition to think to derive glory from a man's
sloth and privacy: you are to do like the beasts of chase, who efface the
track at the entrance into their den. You are no more to concern yourself
how the world talks of you, but how you are to talk to yourself. Retire
yourself into yourself, but first prepare yourself there to receive
yourself: it were a folly to trust yourself in your own hands, if you
cannot govern yourself. A man may miscarry alone as well as in company.
Till you have rendered yourself one before whom you dare not trip, and
till you have a bashfulness and respect for yourself,
"Obversentur species honestae animo;"
["Let honest things be ever present to the mind"
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 22.]
present continually to your imagination Cato, Phocion, and Aristides, in
whose presence the fools themselves will hide their faults, and make them
controllers of all your intentions; should these deviate from virtue, your
respect to those will set you right; they will keep you in this way to be
contented with yourself; to borrow nothing of any other but yourself; to
stay and fix your soul in certain and limited thoughts, wherein she may
please herself, and having understood the true and real goods, which men
the more enjoy the more they understand, to rest satisfied, without desire
of prolongation of life or name." This is the precept of the true and
natural philosophy, not of a boasting and prating philosophy, such as that
of the two former.
CHAPTER XXXIX——A CONSIDERATION UPON CICERO
One word more by way of comparison betwixt these two. There are to be
gathered out of the writings of Cicero and the younger Pliny (but little,
in my opinion, resembling his uncle in his humours) infinite testimonies
of a beyond measure ambitious nature; and amongst others, this for one,
that they both, in the sight of all the world, solicit the historians of
their time not to forget them in their memoirs; and fortune, as if in
spite, has made the vanity of those requests live upon record down to this
age of ours, while she has long since consigned the histories themselves
to oblivion. But this exceeds all meanness of spirit in persons of such a
quality as they were, to think to derive any great renown from babbling
and prating; even to the publishing of their private letters to their
friends, and so withal, that though some of them were never sent, the
opportunity being lost, they nevertheless presented them to the light,
with this worthy excuse that they were unwilling to lose their labours and
lucubrations. Was it not very well becoming two consuls of Rome, sovereign
magistrates of the republic that commanded the world, to spend their
leisure in contriving quaint and elegant missives, thence to gain the
reputation of being versed in their own mother-tongues? What could a
pitiful schoolmaster have done worse, whose trade it was thereby to get
his living? If the acts of Xenophon and Caesar had not far transcended
their eloquence, I scarce believe they would ever have taken the pains to
have written them; they made it their business to recommend not their
speaking, but their doing. And could the perfection of eloquence have
added a lustre suitable to a great personage, certainly Scipio and Laelius
had never resigned the honour of their comedies, with all the luxuriances
and elegances of the Latin tongue, to an African slave; for that the work
was theirs, its beauty and excellence sufficiently declare; Terence
himself confesses as much, and I should take it ill from any one that
would dispossess me of that belief.
'Tis a kind of mockery and offence to extol a man for qualities
misbecoming his condition, though otherwise commendable in themselves, but
such as ought not, however, to be his chief talent; as if a man should
commend a king for being a good painter, a good architect, a good
marksman, or a good runner at the ring: commendations that add no honour,
unless mentioned altogether and in the train of those that are properly
applicable to him, namely, justice and the science of governing and
conducting his people both in peace and war. At this rate, agriculture was
an honour to Cyrus, and eloquence and the knowledge of letters to
Charlemagne. I have in my time known some, who by writing acquired both
their titles and fortune, disown their apprenticeship, corrupt their
style, and affect ignorance in so vulgar a quality (which also our nation
holds to be rarely seen in very learned hands), and to seek a reputation
by better qualities. Demosthenes' companions in the embassy to Philip,
extolling that prince as handsome, eloquent, and a stout drinker,
Demosthenes said that those were commendations more proper for a woman, an
advocate, or a sponge, than for a king':
"Imperet bellante prior, jacentem
Lenis in hostem."
["In the fight, overthrow your enemy, but be merciful to him when
fallen.—"Horace, Carm. Saec., v. 51.]
'Tis not his profession to know either how to hunt or to dance well;
"Orabunt causas alii, coelique meatus
Describent radio, et fulgentia sidera dicent;
Hic regere imperio populos sciat."
["Let others plead at the bar, or describe the spheres, and point
out the glittering stars; let this man learn to rule the nations."
—AEneid, vi. 849.]
Plutarch says, moreover, that to appear so excellent in these less
necessary qualities is to produce witness against a man's self, that he
has spent his time and applied his study ill, which ought to have been
employed in the acquisition of more necessary and more useful things. So
that Philip, king of Macedon, having heard that great Alexander his son
sing once at a feast to the wonder of the best musicians there: "Art thou
not ashamed," said he to him, "to sing so well?" And to the same Philip a
musician, with whom he was disputing about some things concerning his art:
"Heaven forbid, sir," said he, "that so great a misfortune should ever
befall you as to understand these things better than I." A king should be
able to answer as Iphicrates did the orator, who pressed upon him in his
invective after this manner: "And what art thou that thou bravest it at
this rate? art thou a man at arms, art thou an archer, art thou a
pikeman?"—"I am none of all this; but I know how to command all
these." And Antisthenes took it for an argument of little value in
Ismenias that he was commended for playing excellently well upon a flute.
I know very well, that when I hear any one dwell upon the language of my
essays, I had rather a great deal he would say nothing: 'tis not so much
to elevate the style as to depress the sense, and so much the more
offensively as they do it obliquely; and yet I am much deceived if many
other writers deliver more worth noting as to the matter, and, how well or
ill soever, if any other writer has sown things much more materials or at
all events more downright, upon his paper than myself. To bring the more
in, I only muster up the heads; should I annex the sequel, I should trebly
multiply the volume. And how many stories have I scattered up and down in
this book that I only touch upon, which, should any one more curiously
search into, they would find matter enough to produce infinite essays.
Neither those stories nor my quotations always serve simply for example,
authority, or ornament; I do not only regard them for the use I make of
them: they carry sometimes besides what I apply them to, the seed of a
more rich and a bolder matter, and sometimes, collaterally, a more
delicate sound both to myself who will say no more about it in this place,
and to others who shall be of my humour.
But returning to the speaking virtue: I find no great choice betwixt not
knowing to speak anything but ill, and not knowing to speak anything but
well.
"Non est ornamentum virile concimitas."
["A carefully arranged dress is no manly ornament."
—Seneca, Ep., 115.]
The sages tell us that, as to what concerns knowledge, 'tis nothing but
philosophy; and as to what concerns effects, nothing but virtue, which is
generally proper to all degrees and to all orders.
There is something like this in these two other philosophers, for they
also promise eternity to the letters they write to their friends; but 'tis
after another manner, and by accommodating themselves, for a good end, to
the vanity of another; for they write to them that if the concern of
making themselves known to future ages, and the thirst of glory, do yet
detain them in the management of public affairs, and make them fear the
solitude and retirement to which they would persuade them, let them never
trouble themselves more about it, forasmuch as they shall have credit
enough with posterity to ensure them that were there nothing else but the
letters thus written to them, those letters will render their names as
known and famous as their own public actions could do. And besides this
difference, these are not idle and empty letters, that contain nothing but
a fine jingle of well-chosen words and delicate couched phrases, but
rather replete and abounding with grand discourses of reason, by which a
man may render himself not more eloquent, but more wise, and that instruct
us not to speak, but to do well. Away with that eloquence that enchants us
with itself, and not with actual things! unless you will allow that of
Cicero to be of so supreme a perfection as to form a complete body of
itself.
I shall farther add one story we read of him to this purpose, wherein his
nature will much more manifestly be laid open to us. He was to make an
oration in public, and found himself a little straitened for time to make
himself ready at his ease; when Eros, one of his slaves, brought him word
that the audience was deferred till the next day, at which he was so
ravished with joy that he enfranchised him for the good news.
Upon this subject of letters, I will add this more to what has been
already said, that it is a kind of writing wherein my friends think I can
do something; and I am willing to confess I should rather have chosen to
publish my whimsies that way than any other, had I had to whom to write;
but I wanted such a settled intercourse, as I once had, to attract me to
it, to raise my fancy, and to support me. For to traffic with the wind, as
some others have done, and to forge vain names to direct my letters to, in
a serious subject, I could never do it but in a dream, being a sworn enemy
to all manner of falsification. I should have been more diligent and more
confident had I had a judicious and indulgent friend whom to address, than
thus to expose myself to the various judgments of a whole people, and I am
deceived if I had not succeeded better. I have naturally a humorous and
familiar style; but it is a style of my own, not proper for public
business, but, like the language I speak, too compact, irregular, abrupt,
and singular; and as to letters of ceremony that have no other substance
than a fine contexture of courteous words, I am wholly to seek. I have
neither faculty nor relish for those tedious tenders of service and
affection; I believe little in them from others, and I should not forgive
myself should I say to others more than I myself believe. 'Tis, doubtless,
very remote from the present practice; for there never was so abject and
servile prostitution of offers: life, soul, devotion, adoration, vassal,
slave, and I cannot tell what, as now; all which expressions are so
commonly and so indifferently posted to and fro by every one and to every
one, that when they would profess a greater and more respectful
inclination upon more just occasions, they have not wherewithal to express
it. I mortally hate all air of flattery, which is the cause that I
naturally fall into a shy, rough, and crude way of speaking, that, to such
as do not know me, may seem a little to relish of disdain. I honour those
most to whom I show the least honour, and where my soul moves with the
greatest cheerfulness, I easily forget the ceremonies of look and gesture,
and offer myself faintly and bluntly to them to whom I am the most
devoted: methinks they should read it in my heart, and that the expression
of my words does but injure the love I have conceived within. To welcome,
take leave, give thanks, accost, offer my service, and such verbal
formalities as the ceremonious laws of our modern civility enjoin, I know
no man so stupidly unprovided of language as myself; and I have never been
employed in writing letters of favour and recommendation, that he, in
whose behalf it was written, did not think my mediation cold and
imperfect. The Italians are great printers of letters; I do believe I have
at least an hundred several volumes of them; of all which those of
Annibale Caro seem to me to be the best. If all the paper I have scribbled
to the ladies at the time when my hand was really prompted by my passion,
were now in being, there might, peradventure, be found a page worthy to be
communicated to our young inamoratos, that are besotted with that fury. I
always write my letters post-haste—so precipitately, that though I
write intolerably ill, I rather choose to do it myself, than to employ
another; for I can find none able to follow me: and I never transcribe
any. I have accustomed the great ones who know me to endure my blots and
dashes, and upon paper without fold or margin. Those that cost me the most
pains, are the worst; when I once begin to draw it in by head and
shoulders, 'tis a sign that I am not there. I fall too without
premeditation or design; the first word begets the second, and so to the
end of the chapter. The letters of this age consist more in fine edges and
prefaces than in matter. Just as I had rather write two letters than close
and fold up one, and always assign that employment to some other, so, when
the real business of my letter is dispatched, I would with all my heart
transfer it to another hand to add those long harangues, offers, and
prayers, that we place at the bottom, and should be glad that some new
custom would discharge us of that trouble; as also of superscribing them
with a long legend of qualities and titles, which for fear of mistakes, I
have often not written at all, and especially to men of the long robe and
finance; there are so many new offices, such a dispensation and ordering
of titles of honour, that 'tis hard to set them forth aright yet, being so
dearly bought, they are neither to be altered nor forgotten without
offence. I find it equally in bad taste to encumber the fronts and
inscriptions of the books we commit to the press with such.
CHAPTER XL——THAT THE RELISH FOR GOOD AND EVIL DEPENDS IN GREAT
MEASURE UPON THE OPINION WE HAVE OF THEM
Men (says an ancient Greek sentence)—[Manual of Epictetus, c. 10.]—
are tormented with the opinions they have of things and not by the things
themselves. It were a great victory obtained for the relief of our
miserable human condition, could this proposition be established for
certain and true throughout. For if evils have no admission into us but by
the judgment we ourselves make of them, it should seem that it is, then,
in our own power to despise them or to turn them to good. If things
surrender themselves to our mercy, why do we not convert and accommodate
them to our advantage? If what we call evil and torment is neither evil
nor torment of itself, but only that our fancy gives it that quality, it
is in us to change it, and it being in our own choice, if there be no
constraint upon us, we must certainly be very strange fools to take arms
for that side which is most offensive to us, and to give sickness, want,
and contempt a bitter and nauseous taste, if it be in our power to give
them a pleasant relish, and if, fortune simply providing the matter, 'tis
for us to give it the form. Now, that what we call evil is not so of
itself, or at least to that degree that we make it, and that it depends
upon us to give it another taste and complexion (for all comes to one),
let us examine how that can be maintained.
If the original being of those things we fear had power to lodge itself in
us by its own authority, it would then lodge itself alike, and in like
manner, in all; for men are all of the same kind, and saving in greater
and less proportions, are all provided with the same utensils and
instruments to conceive and to judge; but the diversity of opinions we
have of those things clearly evidences that they only enter us by
composition; one person, peradventure, admits them in their true being,
but a thousand others give them a new and contrary being in them. We hold
death, poverty, and pain for our principal enemies; now, this death, which
some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know
that others call it the only secure harbour from the storms and tempests
of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and
the common and prompt remedy of all evils? And as the one expect it with
fear and trembling, the others support it with greater ease than life.
That one complains of its facility:
"Mors! utinam pavidos vitae subducere nolles.
Sed virtus to sola daret!"
["O death! wouldst that thou might spare the coward, but that
valour alone should pay thee tribute."—Lucan, iv. 580.]
Now, let us leave these boastful courages. Theodorus answered Lysimachus,
who threatened to kill him, "Thou wilt do a brave feat," said he, "to
attain the force of a cantharides." The majority of philosophers are
observed to have either purposely anticipated, or hastened and assisted
their own death. How many ordinary people do we see led to execution, and
that not to a simple death, but mixed with shame and sometimes with
grievous torments, appear with such assurance, whether through firm
courage or natural simplicity, that a man can discover no change from
their ordinary condition; settling their domestic affairs, commending
themselves to their friends, singing, preaching, and addressing the
people, nay, sometimes sallying into jests, and drinking to their
companions, quite as well as Socrates?
One that they were leading to the gallows told them they must not take him
through such a street, lest a merchant who lived there should arrest him
by the way for an old debt. Another told the hangman he must not touch his
neck for fear of making him laugh, he was so ticklish. Another answered
his confessor, who promised him he should that day sup with our Lord, "Do
you go then," said he, "in my room [place]; for I for my part keep fast
to-day." Another having called for drink, and the hangman having drunk
first, said he would not drink after him, for fear of catching some evil
disease. Everybody has heard the tale of the Picard, to whom, being upon
the ladder, they presented a common wench, telling him (as our law does
some times permit) that if he would marry her they would save his life;
he, having a while considered her and perceiving that she halted: "Come,
tie up, tie up," said he, "she limps." And they tell another story of the
same kind of a fellow in Denmark, who being condemned to lose his head,
and the like condition being proposed to him upon the scaffold, refused
it, by reason the girl they offered him had hollow cheeks and too sharp a
nose. A servant at Toulouse being accused of heresy, for the sum of his
belief referred himself to that of his master, a young student, prisoner
with him, choosing rather to die than suffer himself to be persuaded that
his master could err. We read that of the inhabitants of Arras, when Louis
XI. took that city, a great many let themselves be hanged rather than they
would say, "God save the King." And amongst that mean-souled race of men,
the buffoons, there have been some who would not leave their fooling at
the very moment of death. One that the hang man was turning off the ladder
cried: "Launch the galley," an ordinary saying of his. Another, whom at
the point of death his friends had laid upon a bed of straw before the
fire, the physician asking him where his pain lay: "Betwixt the bench and
the fire," said he, and the priest, to give him extreme unction, groping
for his feet which his pain had made him pull up to him: "You will find
them," said he, "at the end of my legs." To one who being present exhorted
him to recommend himself to God: "Why, who goes thither?" said he; and the
other replying: "It will presently be yourself, if it be His good
pleasure." "Shall I be sure to be there by to-morrow night?" said he. "Do,
but recommend yourself to Him," said the other, "and you will soon be
there." "I were best then," said he, "to carry my recommendations myself."
In the kingdom of Narsingah to this day the wives of their priests are
buried alive with the bodies of their husbands; all other wives are burnt
at their husbands' funerals, which they not only firmly but cheerfully
undergo. At the death of their king, his wives and concubines, his
favourites, all his officers, and domestic servants, who make up a whole
people, present themselves so gaily to the fire where his body is burnt,
that they seem to take it for a singular honour to accompany their master
in death. During our late wars of Milan, where there happened so many
takings and retakings of towns, the people, impatient of so many changes
of fortune, took such a resolution to die, that I have heard my father say
he there saw a list taken of five-and-twenty masters of families who made
themselves away in one week's time: an incident somewhat resembling that
of the Xanthians, who being besieged by Brutus, fell—men, women, and
children—into such a furious appetite of dying, that nothing can be
done to evade death which they did not to avoid life; insomuch that Brutus
had much difficulty in saving a very small number.—["Only fifty were
saved."—Plutarch, Life of Brutus, c. 8.]
Every opinion is of force enough to cause itself to be espoused at the
expense of life. The first article of that valiant oath that Greece took
and observed in the Median war, was that every one should sooner exchange
life for death, than their own laws for those of Persia. What a world of
people do we see in the wars betwixt the Turks and the Greeks, rather
embrace a cruel death than uncircumcise themselves to admit of baptism? An
example of which no sort of religion is incapable.
The kings of Castile having banished the Jews out of their dominions,
John, King of Portugal, in consideration of eight crowns a head, sold them
a retreat into his for a certain limited time, upon condition that the
time fixed coming to expire they should begone, and he to furnish them
with shipping to transport them into Africa. The day comes, which once
lapsed they were given to understand that such as were afterward found in
the kingdom should remain slaves; vessels were very slenderly provided;
and those who embarked in them were rudely and villainously used by the
passengers, who, besides other indignities, kept them cruising upon the
sea, one while forwards and another backwards, till they had spent all
their provisions, and were constrained to buy of them at so dear a rate
and so long withal, that they set them not on shore till they were all
stripped to the very shirts. The news of this inhuman usage being brought
to those who remained behind, the greater part of them resolved upon
slavery and some made a show of changing religion. Emmanuel, the successor
of John, being come to the crown, first set them at liberty, and
afterwards altering his mind, ordered them to depart his country,
assigning three ports for their passage. He hoped, says Bishop Osorius, no
contemptible Latin historian of these later times, that the favour of the
liberty he had given them having failed of converting them to
Christianity, yet the difficulty of committing themselves to the mercy of
the mariners and of abandoning a country they were now habituated to and
were grown very rich in, to go and expose themselves in strange and
unknown regions, would certainly do it. But finding himself deceived in
his expectation, and that they were all resolved upon the voyage, he cut
off two of the three ports he had promised them, to the end that the
length and incommodity of the passage might reduce some, or that he might
have opportunity, by crowding them all into one place, the more
conveniently to execute what he had designed, which was to force all the
children under fourteen years of age from the arms of their fathers and
mothers, to transport them from their sight and conversation, into a place
where they might be instructed and brought up in our religion. He says
that this produced a most horrid spectacle the natural affection betwixt
the parents and their children, and moreover their zeal to their ancient
belief, contending against this violent decree, fathers and mothers were
commonly seen making themselves away, and by a yet much more rigorous
example, precipitating out of love and compassion their young children
into wells and pits, to avoid the severity of this law. As to the
remainder of them, the time that had been prefixed being expired, for want
of means to transport them they again returned into slavery. Some also
turned Christians, upon whose faith, as also that of their posterity, even
to this day, which is a hundred years since, few Portuguese can yet rely;
though custom and length of time are much more powerful counsellors in
such changes than all other constraints whatever. In the town of
Castelnaudari, fifty heretic Albigeois at one time suffered themselves to
be burned alive in one fire rather than they would renounce their
opinions.
"Quoties non modo ductores nostri, sed universi etiam exercitus,
ad non dubiam mortem concurrerunt?"
["How often have not only our leaders, but whole armies, run to a
certain and manifest death."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 37.]
I have seen an intimate friend of mine run headlong upon death with a real
affection, and that was rooted in his heart by divers plausible arguments
which he would never permit me to dispossess him of, and upon the first
honourable occasion that offered itself to him, precipitate himself into
it, without any manner of visible reason, with an obstinate and ardent
desire of dying. We have several examples in our own times of persons,
even young children, who for fear of some little inconvenience have
despatched themselves. And what shall we not fear, says one of the
ancients—[Seneca, Ep., 70.]—to this purpose, if we dread that
which cowardice itself has chosen for its refuge?
Should I here produce a long catalogue of those, of all sexes and
conditions and sects, even in the most happy ages, who have either with
great constancy looked death in the face, or voluntarily sought it, and
sought it not only to avoid the evils of this life, but some purely to
avoid the satiety of living, and others for the hope of a better condition
elsewhere, I should never have done. Nay, the number is so infinite that
in truth I should have a better bargain on't to reckon up those who have
feared it. This one therefore shall serve for all: Pyrrho the philosopher
being one day in a boat in a very great tempest, shewed to those he saw
the most affrighted about him, and encouraged them, by the example of a
hog that was there, nothing at all concerned at the storm. Shall we then
dare to say that this advantage of reason, of which we so much boast, and
upon the account of which we think ourselves masters and emperors over the
rest of all creation, was given us for a torment? To what end serves the
knowledge of things if it renders us more unmanly? if we thereby lose the
tranquillity and repose we should enjoy without it? and if it put us into
a worse condition than Pyrrho's hog? Shall we employ the understanding
that was conferred upon us for our greatest good to our own ruin; setting
ourselves against the design of nature and the universal order of things,
which intend that every one should make use of the faculties, members, and
means he has to his own best advantage?
But it may, peradventure, be objected against me: Your rule is true enough
as to what concerns death; but what will you say of indigence? What will
you, moreover, say of pain, which Aristippus, Hieronimus, and most of the
sages have reputed the worst of evils; and those who have denied it by
word of mouth have, however, confessed it in effect? Posidonius being
extremely tormented with a sharp and painful disease, Pompeius came to
visit him, excusing himself that he had taken so unseasonable a time to
come to hear him discourse of philosophy. "The gods forbid," said
Posidonius to him, "that pain should ever have the power to hinder me from
talking," and thereupon fell immediately upon a discourse of the contempt
of pain: but, in the meantime, his own infirmity was playing his part, and
plagued him to purpose; to which he cried out, "Thou mayest work thy will,
pain, and torment me with all the power thou hast, but thou shalt never
make me say that thou art an evil." This story that they make such a
clutter withal, what has it to do, I fain would know, with the contempt of
pain? He only fights it with words, and in the meantime, if the shootings
and dolours he felt did not move him, why did he interrupt his discourse?
Why did he fancy he did so great a thing in forbearing to confess it an
evil? All does not here consist in the imagination; our fancies may work
upon other things: but here is the certain science that is playing its
part, of which our senses themselves are judges:
"Qui nisi sunt veri, ratio quoque falsa sit omnis."
["Which, if they be not true, all reasoning may also be false.
—"Lucretius, iv. 486.]
Shall we persuade our skins that the jerks of a whip agreeably tickle us,
or our taste that a potion of aloes is vin de Graves? Pyrrho's hog is here
in the same predicament with us; he is not afraid of death, 'tis true, but
if you beat him he will cry out to some purpose. Shall we force the
general law of nature, which in every living creature under heaven is seen
to tremble under pain? The very trees seem to groan under the blows they
receive. Death is only felt by reason, forasmuch as it is the motion of an
instant;
"Aut fuit, aut veniet; nihil est praesentis in illa."
["Death has been, or will come: there is nothing of the present in
it."—Estienne de la Boetie, Satires.]
"Morsque minus poenae, quam mora mortis, habet;"
["The delay of death is more painful than death itself."
—Ovid, Ep. Ariadne to Theseus, v. 42.]
a thousand beasts, a thousand men, are sooner dead than threatened. That
also which we principally pretend to fear in death is pain, its ordinary
forerunner: yet, if we may believe a holy father:
"Malam mortem non facit, nisi quod sequitur mortem."
["That which follows death makes death bad."
—St. Augustin, De Civit. Dei, i. ii.]
And I should yet say, more probably, that neither that which goes before
nor that which follows after is at all of the appurtenances of death.
We excuse ourselves falsely: and I find by experience that it is rather
the impatience of the imagination of death that makes us impatient of
pain, and that we find it doubly grievous as it threatens us with death.
But reason accusing our cowardice for fearing a thing so sudden, so
inevitable, and so insensible, we take the other as the more excusable
pretence. All ills that carry no other danger along with them but simply
the evils themselves, we treat as things of no danger: the toothache or
the gout, painful as they are, yet being not reputed mortal, who reckons
them in the catalogue of diseases?
But let us presuppose that in death we principally regard the pain; as
also there is nothing to be feared in poverty but the miseries it brings
along with it of thirst, hunger, cold, heat, watching, and the other
inconveniences it makes us suffer, still we have nothing to do with
anything but pain. I will grant, and very willingly, that it is the worst
incident of our being (for I am the man upon earth who the most hates and
avoids it, considering that hitherto, I thank God, I have had so little
traffic with it), but still it is in us, if not to annihilate, at least to
lessen it by patience; and though the body and the reason should mutiny,
to maintain the soul, nevertheless, in good condition. Were it not so, who
had ever given reputation to virtue; valour, force, magnanimity, and
resolution? where were their parts to be played if there were no pain to
be defied?
"Avida est periculi virtus."
["Courage is greedy of danger."—Seneca, De Providentia, c. 4]
Were there no lying upon the hard ground, no enduring, armed at all
points, the meridional heats, no feeding upon the flesh of horses and
asses, no seeing a man's self hacked and hewed to pieces, no suffering a
bullet to be pulled out from amongst the shattered bones, no sewing up,
cauterising and searching of wounds, by what means were the advantage we
covet to have over the vulgar to be acquired? 'Tis far from flying evil
and pain, what the sages say, that of actions equally good, a man should
most covet to perform that wherein there is greater labour and pain.
"Non est enim hilaritate, nec lascivia, nec risu, aut joco
comite levitatis, sed saepe etiam tristes firmitate et
constantia sunt beati."
["For men are not only happy by mirth and wantonness, by laughter
and jesting, the companion of levity, but ofttimes the serious sort
reap felicity from their firmness and constancy."
—Cicero, De Finib. ii. 10.]
And for this reason it has ever been impossible to persuade our
forefathers but that the victories obtained by dint of force and the
hazard of war were not more honourable than those performed in great
security by stratagem or practice:
"Laetius est, quoties magno sibi constat honestum."
["A good deed is all the more a satisfaction by how much the more
it has cost us"—Lucan, ix. 404.]
Besides, this ought to be our comfort, that naturally, if the pain be
violent, 'tis but short; and if long, nothing violent:
"Si gravis, brevis;
Si longus, levis."
Thou wilt not feel it long if thou feelest it too much; it will either put
an end to itself or to thee; it comes to the same thing; if thou canst not
support it, it will export thee:
["Remember that the greatest pains are terminated by death; that
slighter pains have long intermissions of repose, and that we are
masters of the more moderate sort: so that, if they be tolerable,
we bear them; if not, we can go out of life, as from a theatre, when
it does not please us"—Cicero, De Finib. i. 15.]
That which makes us suffer pain with so much impatience is the not being
accustomed to repose our chiefest contentment in the soul; that we do not
enough rely upon her who is the sole and sovereign mistress of our
condition. The body, saving in the greater or less proportion, has but one
and the same bent and bias; whereas the soul is variable into all sorts of
forms; and subject to herself and to her own empire, all things
whatsoever, both the senses of the body and all other accidents: and
therefore it is that we ought to study her, to inquire into her, and to
rouse up all her powerful faculties. There is neither reason, force, nor
prescription that can anything prevail against her inclination and choice.
Of so many thousands of biases that she has at her disposal, let us give
her one proper to our repose and conversation, and then we shall not only
be sheltered and secured from all manner of injury and offence, but
moreover gratified and obliged, if she will, with evils and offences. She
makes her profit indifferently of all things; error, dreams, serve her to
good use, as loyal matter to lodge us in safety and contentment. 'Tis
plain enough to be seen that 'tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the
edge to our pains and pleasures: beasts that have no such thing, leave to
their bodies their own free and natural sentiments, and consequently in
every kind very near the same, as appears by the resembling application of
their motions. If we would not disturb in our members the jurisdiction
that appertains to them in this, 'tis to be believed it would be the
better for us, and that nature has given them a just and moderate temper
both to pleasure and pain; neither can it fail of being just, being equal
and common. But seeing we have enfranchised ourselves from her rules to
give ourselves up to the rambling liberty of our own fancies, let us at
least help to incline them to the most agreeable side. Plato fears our too
vehemently engaging ourselves with pain and pleasure, forasmuch as these
too much knit and ally the soul to the body; whereas I rather, quite
contrary, by reason it too much separates and disunites them. As an enemy
is made more fierce by our flight, so pain grows proud to see us truckle
under her. She will surrender upon much better terms to them who make head
against her: a man must oppose and stoutly set himself against her. In
retiring and giving ground, we invite and pull upon ourselves the ruin
that threatens us. As the body is more firm in an encounter, the more
stiffly and obstinately it applies itself to it, so is it with the soul.
But let us come to examples, which are the proper game of folks of such
feeble force as myself; where we shall find that it is with pain as with
stones, that receive a brighter or a duller lustre according to the foil
they are set in, and that it has no more room in us than we are pleased to
allow it:
"Tantum doluerunt, quantum doloribus se inseruerunt."
["They suffered so much the more, by how much more they gave way to
suffering."—St. Augustin, De Civit. Dei, i. 10.]
We are more sensible of one little touch of a surgeon's lancet than of
twenty wounds with a sword in the heat of fight. The pains of
childbearing, said by the physicians and by God himself to be great, and
which we pass through with so many ceremonies—there are whole
nations that make nothing of them. I set aside the Lacedaemonian women,
but what else do you find in the Swiss among our foot-soldiers, if not
that, as they trot after their husbands, you see them to-day carry the
child at their necks that they carried yesterday in their bellies? The
counterfeit Egyptians we have amongst us go themselves to wash theirs, so
soon as they come into the world, and bathe in the first river they meet.
Besides so many wenches as daily drop their children by stealth, as they
conceived them, that fair and noble wife of Sabinus, a patrician of Rome,
for another's interest, endured alone, without help, without crying out,
or so much as a groan, the bearing of twins.—[Plutarch, On Love, c.
34.]—A poor simple boy of Lacedaemon having stolen a fox (for they
more fear the shame of stupidity in stealing than we do the punishment of
the knavery), and having got it under his coat, rather endured the tearing
out of his bowels than he would discover his theft. And another offering
incense at a sacrifice, suffered himself to be burned to the bone by a
coal that fell into his sleeve, rather than disturb the ceremony. And
there have been a great number, for a sole trial of virtue, following
their institutions, who have at seven years old endured to be whipped to
death without changing their countenance. And Cicero has seen them fight
in parties, with fists, feet, and teeth, till they have fainted and sunk
down, rather than confess themselves overcome:
["Custom could never conquer nature; she is ever invincible; but we
have infected the mind with shadows, delights, negligence, sloth;
we have grown effeminate through opinions and corrupt morality."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 27.]
Every one knows the story of Scaevola, that having slipped into the
enemy's camp to kill their general, and having missed his blow, to repair
his fault, by a more strange invention and to deliver his country, he
boldly confessed to Porsenna, who was the king he had a purpose to kill,
not only his design, but moreover added that there were then in the camp a
great number of Romans, his accomplices in the enterprise, as good men as
he; and to show what a one he himself was, having caused a pan of burning
coals to be brought, he saw and endured his arm to broil and roast, till
the king himself, conceiving horror at the sight, commanded the pan to be
taken away. What would you say of him that would not vouchsafe to respite
his reading in a book whilst he was under incision? And of the other that
persisted to mock and laugh in contempt of the pains inflicted upon him;
so that the provoked cruelty of the executioners that had him in handling,
and all the inventions of tortures redoubled upon him, one after another,
spent in vain, gave him the bucklers? But he was a philosopher. But what!
a gladiator of Caesar's endured, laughing all the while, his wounds to be
searched, lanced, and laid open:
["What ordinary gladiator ever groaned? Which of them ever changed
countenance? Which of them not only stood or fell indecorously?
Which, when he had fallen and was commanded to receive the stroke of
the sword, contracted his neck."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 17.]
Let us bring in the women too. Who has not heard at Paris of her that
caused her face to be flayed only for the fresher complexion of a new
skin? There are who have drawn good and sound teeth to make their voices
more soft and sweet, or to place the other teeth in better order. How many
examples of the contempt of pain have we in that sex? What can they not
do, what do they fear to do, for never so little hope of an addition to
their beauty?
"Vallere queis cura est albos a stirpe capillos,
Et faciem, dempta pelle, referre novam."
["Who carefully pluck out their grey hairs by the roots, and renew
their faces by peeling off the old skin."—Tibullus, i. 8, 45.]
I have seen some of them swallow sand, ashes, and do their utmost to
destroy their stomachs to get pale complexions. To make a fine Spanish
body, what racks will they not endure of girding and bracing, till they
have notches in their sides cut into the very quick, and sometimes to
death?
It is an ordinary thing with several nations at this day to wound
themselves in good earnest to gain credit to what they profess; of which
our king, relates notable examples of what he has seen in Poland and done
towards himself.—[Henry III.]—But besides this, which I know
to have been imitated by some in France, when I came from that famous
assembly of the Estates at Blois, I had a little before seen a maid in
Picardy, who to manifest the ardour of her promises, as also her
constancy, give herself, with a bodkin she wore in her hair, four or five
good lusty stabs in the arm, till the blood gushed out to some purpose.
The Turks give themselves great scars in honour of their mistresses, and
to the end they may the longer remain, they presently clap fire to the
wound, where they hold it an incredible time to stop the blood and form
the cicatrice; people that have been eyewitnesses of it have both written
and sworn it to me. But for ten aspers—[A Turkish coin worth about a
penny]—there are there every day fellows to be found that will give
themselves a good deep slash in the arms or thighs. I am willing, however,
to have the testimonies nearest to us when we have most need of them; for
Christendom furnishes us with enough. After the example of our blessed
Guide there have been many who have crucified themselves. We learn by
testimony very worthy of belief, that King St. Louis wore a hair-shirt
till in his old age his confessor gave him a dispensation to leave it off;
and that every Friday he caused his shoulders to be drubbed by his priest
with five small chains of iron which were always carried about amongst his
night accoutrements for that purpose.
William, our last Duke of Guienne, the father of that Eleanor who
transmitted that duchy to the houses of France and England, continually
for the last ten or twelve years of his life wore a suit of armour under a
religious habit by way of penance. Foulke, Count of Anjou, went as far as
Jerusalem, there to cause himself to be whipped by two of his servants,
with a rope about his neck, before the sepulchre of our Lord. But do we
not, moreover, every Good Friday, in various places, see great numbers of
men and women beat and whip themselves till they lacerate and cut the
flesh to the very bones? I have often seen it, and 'tis without any
enchantment; and it was said there were some amongst them (for they go
disguised) who for money undertook by this means to save harmless the
religion of others, by a contempt of pain, so much the greater, as the
incentives of devotion are more effectual than those of avarice. Q.
Maximus buried his son when he was a consul, and M. Cato his when praetor
elect, and L. Paulus both his, within a few days one after another, with
such a countenance as expressed no manner of grief. I said once merrily of
a certain person, that he had disappointed the divine justice; for the
violent death of three grown-up children of his being one day sent him,
for a severe scourge, as it is to be supposed, he was so far from being
afflicted at the accident, that he rather took it for a particular grace
and favour of heaven. I do not follow these monstrous humours, though I
lost two or three at nurse, if not without grief, at least without
repining, and yet there is hardly any accident that pierces nearer to the
quick. I see a great many other occasions of sorrow, that should they
happen to me I should hardly feel; and have despised some, when they have
befallen me, to which the world has given so terrible a figure that I
should blush to boast of my constancy:
"Ex quo intelligitur, non in natura, sed in opinione,
esse aegritudinem."
["By which one may understand that grief is not in nature, but in
opinion."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iii. 28.]
Opinion is a powerful party, bold, and without measure. Who ever so
greedily hunted after security and repose as Alexander and Caesar did
after disturbance and difficulties? Teres, the father of Sitalces, was
wont to say that "when he had no wars, he fancied there was no difference
betwixt him and his groom." Cato the consul, to secure some cities of
Spain from revolt, only interdicting the inhabitants from wearing arms, a
great many killed themselves:
"Ferox gens, nullam vitam rati sine armis esse."
["A fierce people, who thought there was no life without war."
—Livy, xxxiv. 17.]
How many do we know who have forsaken the calm and sweetness of a quiet
life at home amongst their acquaintance, to seek out the horror of
unhabitable deserts; and having precipitated themselves into so abject a
condition as to become the scorn and contempt of the world, have hugged
themselves with the conceit, even to affectation. Cardinal Borromeo, who
died lately at Milan, amidst all the jollity that the air of Italy, his
youth, birth, and great riches, invited him to, kept himself in so austere
a way of living, that the same robe he wore in summer served him for
winter too; he had only straw for his bed, and his hours of leisure from
affairs he continually spent in study upon his knees, having a little
bread and a glass of water set by his book, which was all the provision of
his repast, and all the time he spent in eating.
I know some who consentingly have acquired both profit and advancement
from cuckoldom, of which the bare name only affrights so many people.
If the sight be not the most necessary of all our senses, 'tis at least
the most pleasant; but the most pleasant and most useful of all our
members seem to be those of generation; and yet a great many have
conceived a mortal hatred against them only for this, that they were too
pleasant, and have deprived themselves of them only for their value: as
much thought he of his eyes that put them out. The generality and more
solid sort of men look upon abundance of children as a great blessing; I,
and some others, think it as great a benefit to be without them. And when
you ask Thales why he does not marry, he tells you, because he has no mind
to leave any posterity behind him.
That our opinion gives the value to things is very manifest in the great
number of those which we do, not so much prizing them, as ourselves, and
never considering either their virtues or their use, but only how dear
they cost us, as though that were a part of their substance; and we only
repute for value in them, not what they bring to us, but what we add to
them. By which I understand that we are great economisers of our expense:
as it weighs, it serves for so much as it weighs. Our opinion will never
suffer it to want of its value: the price gives value to the diamond;
difficulty to virtue; suffering to devotion; and griping to physic. A
certain person, to be poor, threw his crowns into the same sea to which so
many come, in all parts of the world, to fish for riches. Epicurus says
that to be rich is no relief, but only an alteration, of affairs. In
truth, it is not want, but rather abundance, that creates avarice. I will
deliver my own experience concerning this affair.
I have since my emergence from childhood lived in three sorts of
conditions. The first, which continued for some twenty years, I passed
over without any other means but what were casual and depending upon the
allowance and assistance of others, without stint, but without certain
revenue. I then spent my money so much the more cheerfully, and with so
much the less care how it went, as it wholly depended upon my
overconfidence of fortune. I never lived more at my ease; I never had the
repulse of finding the purse of any of my friends shut against me, having
enjoined myself this necessity above all other necessities whatever, by no
means to fail of payment at the appointed time, which also they have a
thousand times respited, seeing how careful I was to satisfy them; so that
I practised at once a thrifty, and withal a kind of alluring, honesty. I
naturally feel a kind of pleasure in paying, as if I eased my shoulders of
a troublesome weight and freed myself from an image of slavery; as also
that I find a ravishing kind of satisfaction in pleasing another and doing
a just action. I except payments where the trouble of bargaining and
reckoning is required; and in such cases; where I can meet with nobody to
ease me of that charge, I delay them, how scandalously and injuriously
soever, all I possibly can, for fear of the wranglings for which both my
humour and way of speaking are so totally improper and unfit. There is
nothing I hate so much as driving a bargain; 'tis a mere traffic of
cozenage and impudence, where, after an hour's cheapening and hesitating,
both parties abandon their word and oath for five sols' abatement. Yet I
always borrowed at great disadvantage; for, wanting the confidence to
speak to the person myself, I committed my request to the persuasion of a
letter, which usually is no very successful advocate, and is of very great
advantage to him who has a mind to deny. I, in those days, more jocundly
and freely referred the conduct of my affairs to the stars, than I have
since done to my own providence and judgment. Most good managers look upon
it as a horrible thing to live always thus in uncertainty, and do not
consider, in the first place, that the greatest part of the world live so:
how many worthy men have wholly abandoned their own certainties, and yet
daily do it, to the winds, to trust to the inconstant favour of princes
and of fortune? Caesar ran above a million of gold, more than he was
worth, in debt to become Caesar; and how many merchants have begun their
traffic by the sale of their farms, which they sent into the Indies,
"Tot per impotentia freta."
["Through so many ungovernable seas."—Catullus, iv. 18.]
In so great a siccity of devotion as we see in these days, we have a
thousand and a thousand colleges that pass it over commodiously enough,
expecting every day their dinner from the liberality of Heaven. Secondly,
they do not take notice that this certitude upon which they so much rely
is not much less uncertain and hazardous than hazard itself. I see misery
as near beyond two thousand crowns a year as if it stood close by me; for
besides that it is in the power of chance to make a hundred breaches to
poverty through the greatest strength of our riches —there being
very often no mean betwixt the highest and the lowest fortune:
"Fortuna vitrea est: turn, quum splendet, frangitur,"
["Fortune is glass: in its greatest brightness it breaks."
—Ex Mim. P. Syrus.]
and to turn all our barricadoes and bulwarks topsy-turvy, I find that, by
divers causes, indigence is as frequently seen to inhabit with those who
have estates as with those that have none; and that, peradventure, it is
then far less grievous when alone than when accompanied with riches. These
flow more from good management than from revenue;
"Faber est suae quisque fortunae"
["Every one is the maker of his own fortune."
—Sallust, De Repub. Ord., i. I.]
and an uneasy, necessitous, busy, rich man seems to me more miserable than
he that is simply poor.
"In divitiis mopes, quod genus egestatis gravissimum est."
["Poor in the midst of riches, which is the sorest kind of poverty."
—Seneca, Ep., 74.]
The greatest and most wealthy princes are by poverty and want driven to
the most extreme necessity; for can there be any more extreme than to
become tyrants and unjust usurpers of their subjects' goods and estates?
My second condition of life was to have money of my own, wherein I so
ordered the matter that I had soon laid up a very notable sum out of a
mean fortune, considering with myself that that only was to be reputed
having which a man reserves from his ordinary expense, and that a man
cannot absolutely rely upon revenue he hopes to receive, how clear soever
the hope may be. For what, said I, if I should be surprised by such or
such an accident? And after such-like vain and vicious imaginations, would
very learnedly, by this hoarding of money, provide against all
inconveniences; and could, moreover, answer such as objected to me that
the number of these was too infinite, that if I could not lay up for all,
I could, however, do it at least for some and for many. Yet was not this
done without a great deal of solicitude and anxiety of mind; I kept it
very close, and though I dare talk so boldly of myself, never spoke of my
money, but falsely, as others do, who being rich, pretend to be poor, and
being poor, pretend to be rich, dispensing their consciences from ever
telling sincerely what they have: a ridiculous and shameful prudence. Was
I going a journey? Methought I was never enough provided: and the more I
loaded myself with money, the more also was I loaded with fear, one while
of the danger of the roads, another of the fidelity of him who had the
charge of my baggage, of whom, as some others that I know, I was never
sufficiently secure if I had him not always in my eye. If I chanced to
leave my cash-box behind me, O, what strange suspicions and anxiety of
mind did I enter into, and, which was worse, without daring to acquaint
anybody with it. My mind was eternally taken up with such things as these,
so that, all things considered, there is more trouble in keeping money
than in getting it. And if I did not altogether so much as I say, or was
not really so scandalously solicitous of my money as I have made myself
out to be, yet it cost me something at least to restrain myself from being
so. I reaped little or no advantage by what I had, and my expenses seemed
nothing less to me for having the more to spend; for, as Bion said, the
hairy men are as angry as the bald to be pulled; and after you are once
accustomed to it and have once set your heart upon your heap, it is no
more at your service; you cannot find in your heart to break it: 'tis a
building that you will fancy must of necessity all tumble down to ruin if
you stir but the least pebble; necessity must first take you by the throat
before you can prevail upon yourself to touch it; and I would sooner have
pawned anything I had, or sold a horse, and with much less constraint upon
myself, than have made the least breach in that beloved purse I had so
carefully laid by. But the danger was that a man cannot easily prescribe
certain limits to this desire (they are hard to find in things that a man
conceives to be good), and to stint this good husbandry so that it may not
degenerate into avarice: men still are intent upon adding to the heap and
increasing the stock from sum to sum, till at last they vilely deprive
themselves of the enjoyment of their own proper goods, and throw all into
reserve, without making any use of them at all. According to this rule,
they are the richest people in the world who are set to guard the walls
and gates of a wealthy city. All moneyed men I conclude to be covetous.
Plato places corporal or human goods in this order: health, beauty,
strength, riches; and riches, says he, are not blind, but very
clear-sighted, when illuminated by prudence. Dionysius the son did a very
handsome act upon this subject; he was informed that one of the Syracusans
had hid a treasure in the earth, and thereupon sent to the man to bring it
to him, which he accordingly did, privately reserving a small part of it
only to himself, with which he went to another city, where being cured of
his appetite of hoarding, he began to live at a more liberal rate; which
Dionysius hearing, caused the rest of his treasure to be restored to him,
saying, that since he had learned to use it, he very willingly returned it
back to him.
I continued some years in this hoarding humour, when I know not what good
demon fortunately put me out of it, as he did the Syracusan, and made me
throw abroad all my reserve at random, the pleasure of a certain journey I
took at very great expense having made me spurn this fond love of money
underfoot; by which means I am now fallen into a third way of living (I
speak what I think of it), doubtless much more pleasant and regular, which
is, that I live at the height of my revenue; sometimes the one, sometimes
the other may perhaps exceed, but 'tis very little and but rarely that
they differ. I live from hand to mouth, and content myself in having
sufficient for my present and ordinary expense; for as to extraordinary
occasions, all the laying up in the world would never suffice. And 'tis
the greatest folly imaginable to expect that fortune should ever
sufficiently arm us against herself; 'tis with our own arms that we are to
fight her; accidental ones will betray us in the pinch of the business. If
I lay up, 'tis for some near and contemplated purpose; not to purchase
lands, of which I have no need, but to purchase pleasure:
"Non esse cupidum, pecunia est; non esse emacem, vertigal est."
["Not to be covetous, is money; not to be acquisitive, is revenue."
—Cicero, Paradox., vi. 3.]
I neither am in any great apprehension of wanting, nor in desire of any
more:
"Divinarum fructus est in copia; copiam declarat satietas."
["The fruit of riches is in abundance; satiety declares abundance."
—Idem, ibid., vi. 2.]
And I am very well pleased that this reformation in me has fallen out in
an age naturally inclined to avarice, and that I see myself cleared of a
folly so common to old men, and the most ridiculous of all human follies.
Feraulez, a man that had run through both fortunes, and found that the
increase of substance was no increase of appetite either to eating or
drinking, sleeping or the enjoyment of his wife, and who on the other side
felt the care of his economics lie heavy upon his shoulders, as it does on
mine, was resolved to please a poor young man, his faithful friend, who
panted after riches, and made him a gift of all his, which were
excessively great, and, moreover, of all he was in the daily way of
getting by the liberality of Cyrus, his good master, and by the war;
conditionally that he should take care handsomely to maintain and
plentifully to entertain him as his guest and friend; which being
accordingly done, they afterwards lived very happily together, both of
them equally content with the change of their condition. 'Tis an example
that I could imitate with all my heart; and I very much approve the
fortune of the aged prelate whom I see to have so absolutely stripped
himself of his purse, his revenue, and care of his expense, committing
them one while to one trusty servant, and another while to another, that
he has spun out a long succession of years, as ignorant, by this means, of
his domestic affairs as a mere stranger.
The confidence in another man's virtue is no light evidence of a man's
own, and God willingly favours such a confidence. As to what concerns him
of whom I am speaking, I see nowhere a better governed house, more nobly
and constantly maintained than his. Happy to have regulated his affairs to
so just a proportion that his estate is sufficient to do it without his
care or trouble, and without any hindrance, either in the spending or
laying it up, to his other more quiet employments, and more suitable both
to his place and liking.
Plenty, then, and indigence depend upon the opinion every one has of them;
and riches no more than glory or health have other beauty or pleasure than
he lends them by whom they are possessed.
Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he so finds himself; not he
whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content;
and in this alone belief gives itself being and reality. Fortune does us
neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter and the seed, which
our soul, more powerful than she, turns and applies as she best pleases;
the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy
condition. All external accessions receive taste and colour from the
internal constitution, as clothes warm us, not with their heat, but our
own, which they are fit to cover and nourish; he who would shield
therewith a cold body, would do the same service for the cold, for so snow
and ice are preserved. And, certes, after the same manner that study is a
torment to an idle man, abstinence from wine to a drunkard, frugality to
the spendthrift, and exercise to a lazy, tender-bred fellow, so it is of
all the rest. The things are not so painful and difficult of themselves,
but our weakness or cowardice makes them so. To judge of great, and high
matters requires a suitable soul; otherwise we attribute the vice to them
which is really our own. A straight oar seems crooked in the water it does
not only import that we see the thing, but how and after what manner we
see it.
After all this, why, amongst so many discourses that by so many arguments
persuade men to despise death and to endure pain, can we not find out one
that helps us? And of so many sorts of imaginations as have so prevailed
upon others as to persuade them to do so, why does not every one apply
some one to himself, the most suitable to his own humour? If he cannot
digest a strong-working decoction to eradicate the evil, let him at least
take a lenitive to ease it:
["It is an effeminate and flimsy opinion, nor more so in pain than
in pleasure, in which, while we are at our ease, we cannot bear
without a cry the sting of a bee. The whole business is to commend
thyself."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 22.]
As to the rest, a man does not transgress philosophy by permitting the
acrimony of pains and human frailty to prevail so much above measure; for
they constrain her to go back to her unanswerable replies: "If it be ill
to live in necessity, at least there is no necessity upon a man to live in
necessity": "No man continues ill long but by his own fault." He who has
neither the courage to die nor the heart to live, who will neither resist
nor fly, what can we do with him?
CHAPTER XLI——NOT TO COMMUNICATE A MAN'S HONOUR
Of all the follies of the world, that which is most universally received
is the solicitude of reputation and glory; which we are fond of to that
degree as to abandon riches, peace, life, and health, which are effectual
and substantial goods, to pursue this vain phantom and empty word, that
has neither body nor hold to be taken of it:
La fama, ch'invaghisce a un dolce suono
Gli superbi mortali, et par si bella,
E un eco, un sogno, anzi d'un sogno un'ombra,
Ch'ad ogni vento si dilegua a sgombra."
["Fame, which with alluring sound charms proud mortals, and appears
so fair, is but an echo, a dream, nay, the shadow of a dream, which
at every breath vanishes and dissolves."
—Tasso, Gerus., xiv. 63.]
And of all the irrational humours of men, it should seem that the
philosophers themselves are among the last and the most reluctant to
disengage themselves from this: 'tis the most restive and obstinate of
all:
"Quia etiam bene proficientes animos tentare non cessat."
["Because it ceases not to assail even well-directed minds"
—St. Augustin, De Civit. Dei, v. 14.]
There is not any one of which reason so clearly accuses the vanity; but it
is so deeply rooted in us that I dare not determine whether any one ever
clearly discharged himself from it or no. After you have said all and
believed all has been said to its prejudice, it produces so intestine an
inclination in opposition to your best arguments that you have little
power to resist it; for, as Cicero says, even those who most controvert
it, would yet that the books they write about it should visit the light
under their own names, and seek to derive glory from seeming to despise
it. All other things are communicable and fall into commerce: we lend our
goods and stake our lives for the necessity and service of our friends;
but to communicate a man's honour, and to robe another with a man's own
glory, is very rarely seen.
And yet we have some examples of that kind. Catulus Luctatius in the
Cimbrian war, having done all that in him lay to make his flying soldiers
face about upon the enemy, ran himself at last away with the rest, and
counterfeited the coward, to the end his men might rather seem to follow
their captain than to fly from the enemy; which was to abandon his own
reputation in order to cover the shame of others. When Charles V. came
into Provence in the year 1537, 'tis said that Antonio de Leva, seeing the
emperor positively resolved upon this expedition, and believing it would
redound very much to his honour, did, nevertheless, very stiffly oppose it
in the council, to the end that the entire glory of that resolution should
be attributed to his master, and that it might be said his own wisdom and
foresight had been such as that, contrary to the opinion of all, he had
brought about so great an enterprise; which was to do him honour at his
own expense. The Thracian ambassadors coming to comfort Archileonida, the
mother of Brasidas, upon the death of her son, and commending him to that
height as to say he had not left his like behind him, she rejected this
private and particular commendation to attribute it to the public: "Tell
me not that," said she; "I know the city of Sparta has many citizens both
greater and of greater worth than he." In the battle of Crecy, the Prince
of Wales, being then very young, had the vanguard committed to him: the
main stress of the battle happened to be in that place, which made the
lords who were with him, finding themselves overmatched, send to King
Edward to advance to their relief. He inquired of the condition his son
was in, and being answered that he was alive and on horseback: "I should,
then, do him wrong," said the king, "now to go and deprive him of the
honour of winning this battle he has so long and so bravely sustained;
what hazard soever he runs, that shall be entirely his own"; and,
accordingly, would neither go nor send, knowing that if he went, it would
be said all had been lost without his succour, and that the honour of the
victory would be wholly attributed to him.
"Semper enim quod postremum adjectum est,
id rem totam videtur traxisse."
["For always that which is last added, seems to have accomplished
the whole affair."—Livy, xxvii. 45.]
Many at Rome thought, and would usually say, that the greatest of Scipio's
acts were in part due to Laelius, whose constant practice it was still to
advance and support Scipio's grandeur and renown, without any care of his
own. And Theopompus, king of Sparta, to him who told him the republic
could not miscarry since he knew so well how to command, "Tis rather,"
answered he, "because the people know so well how to obey." As women
succeeding to peerages had, notwithstanding their sex, the privilege to
attend and give their votes in the trials that appertained to the
jurisdiction of peers; so the ecclesiastical peers, notwithstanding their
profession, were obliged to attend our kings in their wars, not only with
their friends and servants, but in their own persons. As the Bishop of
Beauvais did, who being with Philip Augustus at the battle of Bouvines,
had a notable share in that action; but he did not think it fit for him to
participate in the fruit and glory of that violent and bloody trade. He
with his own hand reduced several of the enemy that day to his mercy, whom
he delivered to the first gentleman he met either to kill or receive them
to quarter, referring the whole execution to this other hand; and he did
this with regard to William, Earl of Salisbury, whom he gave up to Messire
Jehan de Nesle. With a like subtlety of conscience to that I have just
named, he would kill but not wound, and for that reason ever fought with a
mace. And a certain person of my time, being reproached by the king that
he had laid hands on a priest, stiffly and positively denied he had done
any such thing: the meaning of which was, he had cudgelled and kicked him.
CHAPTER XLII——OF THE INEQUALITY AMOUNGST US.
Plutarch says somewhere that he does not find so great a difference
betwixt beast and beast as he does betwixt man and man; which he says in
reference to the internal qualities and perfections of the soul. And, in
truth, I find so vast a distance betwixt Epaminondas, according to my
judgment of him, and some that I know, who are yet men of good sense, that
I could willingly enhance upon Plutarch, and say that there is more
difference betwixt such and such a man than there is betwixt such a man
and such a beast:
["Ah! how much may one man surpass another!"
—Terence, Eunuchus, ii. 2.]
and that there are as many and innumerable degrees of mind as there are
cubits betwixt this and heaven. But as touching the estimate of men, 'tis
strange that, ourselves excepted, no other creature is esteemed beyond its
proper qualities; we commend a horse for his strength and sureness of
foot,
"Volucrem
Sic laudamus equum, facili cui plurima palma
Fervet, et exsultat rauco victoria circo,"
["So we praise the swift horse, for whose easy mastery many a hand
glows in applause, and victory exults in the hoarse circus.
—"Juvenal, viii. 57.]
and not for his rich caparison; a greyhound for his speed of heels, not
for his fine collar; a hawk for her wing, not for her gesses and bells.
Why, in like manner, do we not value a man for what is properly his own?
He has a great train, a beautiful palace, so much credit, so many thousand
pounds a year: all these are about him, but not in him. You will not buy a
pig in a poke: if you cheapen a horse, you will see him stripped of his
housing-cloths, you will see him naked and open to your eye; or if he be
clothed, as they anciently were wont to present them to princes to sell,
'tis only on the less important parts, that you may not so much consider
the beauty of his colour or the breadth of his crupper, as principally to
examine his legs, eyes, and feet, which are the members of greatest use:
"Regibus hic mos est: ubi equos mercantur, opertos
Inspiciunt; ne, si facies, ut saepe, decora
Molli fulta pede est, emptorem inducat hiantem"
["This is the custom of kings: when they buy horses, they have open
inspection, lest, if a fair head, as often chances, is supported by
a weak foot, it should tempt the gaping purchaser."
—Horace, Sat., i. 2, 86.]
why, in giving your estimate of a man, do you prize him wrapped and
muffled up in clothes? He then discovers nothing to you but such parts as
are not in the least his own, and conceals those by which alone one may
rightly judge of his value. 'Tis the price of the blade that you inquire
into, not of the scabbard: you would not peradventure bid a farthing for
him, if you saw him stripped. You are to judge him by himself and not by
what he wears; and, as one of the ancients very pleasantly said: "Do you
know why you repute him tall? You reckon withal the height of his
pattens."—[Seneca, Ep. 76.]—The pedestal is no part of the
statue. Measure him without his stilts; let him lay aside his revenues and
his titles; let him present himself in his shirt. Then examine if his body
be sound and sprightly, active and disposed to perform its functions. What
soul has he? Is she beautiful, capable, and happily provided of all her
faculties? Is she rich of what is her own, or of what she has borrowed?
Has fortune no hand in the affair? Can she, without winking, stand the
lightning of swords? is she indifferent whether her life expire by the
mouth or through the throat? Is she settled, even and content? This is
what is to be examined, and by that you are to judge of the vast
differences betwixt man and man. Is he:
"Sapiens, sibique imperiosus,
Quern neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent;
Responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores
Fortis; et in seipso totus teres atque rotundus,
Externi ne quid valeat per laeve morari;
In quem manca ruit semper fortuna?"
["The wise man, self-governed, whom neither poverty, nor death,
nor chains affright: who has the strength to resist his appetites
and to contemn honours: who is wholly self-contained: whom no
external objects affect: whom fortune assails in vain."
—Horace, Sat., ii. 7,]
such a man is five hundred cubits above kingdoms and duchies; he is an
absolute monarch in and to himself:
"Sapiens, . . . Pol! ipse fingit fortunam sibi;"
["The wise man is the master of his own fortune,"
—Plautus, Trin., ii. 2, 84.]
what remains for him to covet or desire?
"Nonne videmus,
Nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut, quoi
Corpore sejunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur,
Jucundo sensu, cura semotu' metuque?"
["Do we not see that human nature asks no more for itself than
that, free from bodily pain, it may exercise its mind agreeably,
exempt from care and fear."—Lucretius, ii. 16.]
Compare with such a one the common rabble of mankind, stupid and
mean-spirited, servile, instable, and continually floating with the
tempest of various passions, that tosses and tumbles them to and fro, and
all depending upon others, and you will find a greater distance than
betwixt heaven and earth; and yet the blindness of common usage is such
that we make little or no account of it; whereas if we consider a peasant
and a king, a nobleman and a vassal, a magistrate and a private man, a
rich man and a poor, there appears a vast disparity, though they differ no
more, as a man may say, than in their breeches.
In Thrace the king was distinguished from his people after a very pleasant
and especial manner; he had a religion by himself, a god all his own, and
which his subjects were not to presume to adore, which was Mercury,
whilst, on the other hand, he disdained to have anything to do with
theirs, Mars, Bacchus, and Diana. And yet they are no other than pictures
that make no essential dissimilitude; for as you see actors in a play
representing the person of a duke or an emperor upon the stage, and
immediately after return to their true and original condition of valets
and porters, so the emperor, whose pomp and lustre so dazzle you in
public:
"Scilicet grandes viridi cum luce smaragdi
Auto includuntur, teriturque thalassina vestis
Assidue, et Veneris sudorem exercita potat;"
["Because he wears great emeralds richly set in gold, darting green
lustre; and the sea-blue silken robe, worn with pressure, and moist
with illicit love (and absorbs the sweat of Venus)."
—Lucretius, iv. 1123.]
do but peep behind the curtain, and you will see no thing more than an
ordinary man, and peradventure more contemptible than the meanest of his
subjects:
"Ille beatus introrsum est, istius bracteata felicitas est;"
["The one is happy in himself; the happiness of the other is
counterfeit."—Seneca, Ep., 115.]
cowardice, irresolution, ambition, spite, and envy agitate him as much as
another:
"Non enim gazae, neque consularis
Submovet lictor miseros tumultus
Mentis, et curas laqueata circum
Tecta volantes."
["For not treasures, nor the consular lictor, can remove the
miserable tumults of the mind, nor cares that fly about panelled
ceilings."—Horace, Od., ii. 16, 9.]
Care and fear attack him even in the centre of his battalions:
"Re veraque metus hominum curaeque sequaces
Nec metuunt sonitus armorum, nee fera tela;
Audacterque inter reges, rerumque potentes
Versantur, neque fulgorem reverentur ab auro."
["And in truth the fears and haunting cares of men fear not the
clash of arms nor points of darts, and mingle boldly with great
kings and men in authority, nor respect the glitter of gold."
—Lucretius, ii. 47.]
Do fevers, gout, and apoplexies spare him any more than one of us? When
old age hangs heavy upon his shoulders, can the yeomen of his guard ease
him of the burden? When he is astounded with the apprehension of death,
can the gentlemen of his bedchamber comfort and assure him? When jealousy
or any other caprice swims in his brain, can our compliments and
ceremonies restore him to his good-humour? The canopy embroidered with
pearl and gold he lies under has no virtue against a violent fit of the
colic:
"Nee calidae citius decedunt corpore febres
Textilibus si in picturis, ostroque rubenti
Jactaris, quam si plebeia in veste cubandum est."
["Nor do burning fevers quit you sooner if you are stretched on a
couch of rich tapestry and in a vest of purple dye, than if you be
in a coarse blanket."—Idem, ii. 34.]
The flatterers of Alexander the Great possessed him that he was the son of
Jupiter; but being one day wounded, and observing the blood stream from
his wound: "What say you now, my masters," said he, "is not this blood of
a crimson colour and purely human? This is not of the complexion of that
which Homer makes to issue from the wounded gods." The poet Hermodorus had
written a poem in honour of Antigonus, wherein he called him the son of
the sun: "He who has the emptying of my close-stool," said Antigonus,
"knows to the contrary." He is but a man at best, and if he be deformed or
ill-qualified from his birth, the empire of the universe cannot set him to
rights:
"Puellae
Hunc rapiant; quidquid calcaverit hic, rosa fiat,"
["Let girls carry him off; wherever he steps let there spring up a
rose!"—Persius, Sat., ii. 38.]
what of all that, if he be a fool? even pleasure and good fortune are not
relished without vigour and understanding:
"Haec perinde sunt, ut ilius animus; qui ea possidet
Qui uti scit, ei bona; illi, qui non uritur recte, mala."
["Things are, as is the mind of their possessor; who knows how to
use them, to him they are good; to him who abuses them, ill."
—Terence, Heart., i. 3, 21.]
Whatever the benefits of fortune are, they yet require a palate to relish
them. 'Tis fruition, and not possession, that renders us happy:
["'Tis not lands, or a heap of brass and gold, that has removed
fevers from the ailing body of the owner, or cares from his mind.
The possessor must be healthy, if he thinks to make good use of his
realised wealth. To him who is covetous or timorous his house and
estate are as a picture to a blind man, or a fomentation to a
gouty."—Horace, Ep., i. 2, 47.]
He is a sot, his taste is palled and flat; he no more enjoys what he has
than one that has a cold relishes the flavour of canary, or than a horse
is sensible of his rich caparison. Plato is in the right when he tells us
that health, beauty, vigour, and riches, and all the other things called
goods, are equally evil to the unjust as good to the just, and the evil on
the contrary the same. And therefore where the body and the mind are in
disorder, to what use serve these external conveniences: considering that
the least prick with a pin, or the least passion of the soul, is
sufficient to deprive one of the pleasure of being sole monarch of the
world. At the first twitch of the gout it signifies much to be called Sir
and Your Majesty!
"Totus et argento conflatus, totus et auro;"
["Wholly made up of silver and gold."—Tibullus, i. 2, 70.]
does he not forget his palaces and girandeurs? If he be angry, can his
being a prince keep him from looking red and looking pale, and grinding
his teeth like a madman? Now, if he be a man of parts and of right nature,
royalty adds very little to his happiness;
"Si ventri bene, si lateri est, pedibusque tuffs, nil
Divitix poterunt regales addere majus;"
["If it is well with thy belly, thy side and thy feet, regal wealth
will be able to add nothing."—Horace, Ep., i. 12, 5.]
he discerns 'tis nothing but counterfeit and gullery. Nay, perhaps he
would be of King Seleucus' opinion, that he who knew the weight of a
sceptre would not stoop to pick it up, if he saw it lying before him, so
great and painful are the duties incumbent upon a good king.—[Plutarch,
If a Sage should Meddle with Affairs of Stale, c. 12.]—Assuredly it
can be no easy task to rule others, when we find it so hard a matter to
govern ourselves; and as to dominion, that seems so charming, the frailty
of human judgment and the difficulty of choice in things that are new and
doubtful considered, I am very much of opinion that it is far more easy
and pleasant to follow than to lead; and that it is a great settlement and
satisfaction of mind to have only one path to walk in, and to have none to
answer for but a man's self;
"Ut satius multo jam sit parere quietum,
Quam regere imperio res velle."
["'Tis much better quietly to obey than wish to rule."
—Lucretius, V, 1126.]
To which we may add that saying of Cyrus, that no man was fit to rule but
he who in his own worth was of greater value than those he was to govern;
but King Hiero in Xenophon says further, that in the fruition even of
pleasure itself they are in a worse condition than private men; forasmuch
as the opportunities and facility they have of commanding those things at
will takes off from the delight that ordinary folks enjoy:
"Pinguis amor, nimiumque patens, in taedia nobis
Vertitur, et, stomacho dulcis ut esca, nocet."
["Love in excess and too palpable turns to weariness, and, like
sweetmeats to the stomach, is injurious."—Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 25.]
Can we think that the singing boys of the choir take any great delight in
music? the satiety rather renders it troublesome and tedious to them.
Feasts, balls, masquerades and tiltings delight such as but rarely see,
and desire to see, them; but having been frequently at such
entertainments, the relish of them grows flat and insipid. Nor do women so
much delight those who make a common practice of the sport. He who will
not give himself leisure to be thirsty can never find the true pleasure of
drinking. Farces and tumbling tricks are pleasant to the spectators, but a
wearisome toil to those by whom they are performed. And that this is so,
we see that princes divert themselves sometimes in disguising their
quality, awhile to depose themselves, and to stoop to the poor and
ordinary way of living of the meanest of their people.
"Plerumque gratae divitibus vices
Mundaeque parvo sub lare pauperum
Coenae, sine aulaeis et ostro,
Soliicitam explicuere frontem."
["The rich are often pleased with variety; and the plain supper in a
poor cottage, without tapestry and purple, has relaxed the anxious
brow."—Horace, Od., iii. 29, 13.]
Nothing is so distasteful and clogging as abundance. What appetite would
not be baffled to see three hundred women at its mercy, as the grand
signor has in his seraglio? And, of his ancestors what fruition or taste
of sport did he reserve to himself, who never went hawking without seven
thousand falconers? And besides all this, I fancy that this lustre of
grandeur brings with it no little disturbance and uneasiness upon the
enjoyment of the most tempting pleasures; the great are too conspicuous
and lie too open to every one's view. Neither do I know to what end a man
should more require of them to conceal their errors, since what is only
reputed indiscretion in us, the people in them brand with the names of
tyranny and contempt of the laws, and, besides their proclivity to vice,
are apt to hold that it is a heightening of pleasure to them, to insult
over and to trample upon public observances. Plato, indeed, in his
Goygias, defines a tyrant to be one who in a city has licence to do
whatever his own will leads him to do; and by reason of this impunity, the
display and publication of their vices do ofttimes more mischief than the
vice itself. Every one fears to be pried into and overlooked; but princes
are so, even to their very gestures, looks and thoughts, the people
conceiving they have right and title to be judges of them besides that the
blemishes of the great naturally appear greater by reason of the eminence
and lustre of the place where they are seated, and that a mole or a wart
appears greater in them than a wide gash in others. And this is the reason
why the poets feign the amours of Jupiter to be performed in the disguises
of so many borrowed shapes, and that amongst the many amorous practices
they lay to his charge, there is only one, as I remember, where he appears
in his own majesty and grandeur.
But let us return to Hiero, who further complains of the inconveniences he
found in his royalty, in that he could not look abroad and travel the
world at liberty, being as it were a prisoner in the bounds and limits of
his own dominion, and that in all his actions he was evermore surrounded
with an importunate crowd. And in truth, to see our kings sit all alone at
table, environed with so many people prating about them, and so many
strangers staring upon them, as they always are, I have often been moved
rather to pity than to envy their condition. King Alfonso was wont to say,
that in this asses were in a better condition than kings, their masters
permitting them to feed at their own ease and pleasure, a favour that
kings cannot obtain of their servants. And it has never come into my fancy
that it could be of any great benefit to the life of a man of sense to
have twenty people prating about him when he is at stool; or that the
services of a man of ten thousand livres a year, or that has taken Casale
or defended Siena, should be either more commodious or more acceptable to
him, than those of a good groom of the chamber who understands his place.
The advantages of sovereignty are in a manner but imaginary: every degree
of fortune has in it some image of principality. Caesar calls all the
lords of France, having free franchise within their own demesnes,
roitelets or petty kings; and in truth, the name of sire excepted, they go
pretty far towards kingship; for do but look into the provinces remote
from court, as Brittany for example; take notice of the train, the
vassals, the officers, the employments, service, ceremony, and state of a
lord who lives retired from court in his own house, amongst his own
tenants and servants; and observe withal the flight of his imagination;
there is nothing more royal; he hears talk of his master once a year, as
of a king of Persia, without taking any further recognition of him, than
by some remote kindred his secretary keeps in some register. And, to speak
the truth, our laws are easy enough, so easy that a gentleman of France
scarce feels the weight of sovereignty pinch his shoulders above twice in
his life. Real and effectual subjection only concerns such amongst us as
voluntarily thrust their necks under the yoke, and who design to get
wealth and honours by such services: for a man that loves his own
fireside, and can govern his house without falling by the ears with his
neighbours or engaging in suits of law, is as free as a Duke of Venice.
"Paucos servitus, plures servitutem tenent."
["Servitude enchains few, but many enchain themselves to
servitude."—Seneca, Ep., 22.]
But that which Hiero is most concerned at is, that he finds himself
stripped of all friendship, deprived of all mutual society, wherein the
true and most perfect fruition of human life consists. For what testimony
of affection and goodwill can I extract from him that owes me, whether he
will or no, all that he is able to do? Can I form any assurance of his
real respect to me, from his humble way of speaking and submissive
behaviour, when these are ceremonies it is not in his choice to deny? The
honour we receive from those that fear us is not honour; those respects
are due to royalty and not to me:
"Maximum hoc regni bonum est
Quod facta domini cogitur populus sui
Quam ferre, tam laudare."
["'Tis the greatest benefit of a kingdom that the people is forced
to commend, as well as to bear the acts of the ruler."
—Seneca, Thyestes, ii. i, 30.]
Do I not see that the wicked and the good king, he that is hated and he
that is beloved, have the one as much reverence paid him as the other? My
predecessor was, and my successor shall be, served with the same ceremony
and state. If my subjects do me no harm, 'tis no evidence of any good
affection; why should I look upon it as such, seeing it is not in their
power to do it if they would? No one follows me or obeys my commands upon
the account of any friendship, betwixt him and me; there can be no
contracting of friendship where there is so little relation and
correspondence: my own height has put me out of the familiarity of and
intelligence with men; there is too great disparity and disproportion
betwixt us. They follow me either upon the account of decency and custom;
or rather my fortune, than me, to increase their own. All they say to me
or do for me is but outward paint, appearance, their liberty being on all
parts restrained by the great power and authority I have over them. I see
nothing about me but what is dissembled and disguised.
The Emperor Julian being one day applauded by his courtiers for his exact
justice: "I should be proud of these praises," said he, "did they come
from persons that durst condemn or disapprove the contrary, in case I
should do it." All the real advantages of princes are common to them with
men of meaner condition ('tis for the gods to mount winged horses and feed
upon ambrosia): they have no other sleep, nor other appetite than we; the
steel they arm themselves withal is of no better temper than that we also
use; their crowns neither defend them from the rain nor the sun.
Diocletian, who wore a crown so fortunate and revered, resigned it to
retire to the felicity of a private life; and some time after the
necessity of public affairs requiring that he should reassume his charge,
he made answer to those who came to court him to it: "You would not
offer," said he, "to persuade me to this, had you seen the fine order of
the trees I have planted in my orchard, and the fair melons I have sown in
my garden."
In Anacharsis' opinion, the happiest state of government would be where,
all other things being equal, precedence should be measured out by the
virtues, and repulses by the vices of men.
When King Pyrrhus prepared for his expedition into Italy, his wise
counsellor Cyneas, to make him sensible of the vanity of his ambition:
"Well, sir," said he, "to what end do you make all this mighty
preparation?"—"To make myself master of Italy," replied the king.
"And what after that is done?" said Cyneas. "I will pass over into Gaul
and Spain," said the other. "And what then?"—"I will then go to
subdue Africa; and lastly, when I have brought the whole world to my
subjection, I will sit down and rest content at my own ease."
"For God sake, sir," replied Cyneas, "tell me what hinders that you may
not, if you please, be now in the condition you speak of? Why do you not
now at this instant settle yourself in the state you seem to aim at, and
spare all the labour and hazard you interpose?"
"Nimirum, quia non cognovit, qux esset habendi
Finis, et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas."
["Forsooth because he does not know what should be the limit of
acquisition, and altogether how far real pleasure should increase."
—Lucretius, v. 1431]
I will conclude with an old versicle, that I think very apt to the
purpose:
"Mores cuique sui fingunt fortunam."
["Every man frames his own fortune."
—Cornelius Nepos, Life of Atticus]
CHAPTER XLIII——OF SUMPTUARY LAWS
The way by which our laws attempt to regulate idle and vain expenses in
meat and clothes, seems to be quite contrary to the end designed. The true
way would be to beget in men a contempt of silks and gold, as vain,
frivolous, and useless; whereas we augment to them the honours, and
enhance the value of such things, which, sure, is a very improper way to
create a disgust. For to enact that none but princes shall eat turbot,
shall wear velvet or gold lace, and interdict these things to the people,
what is it but to bring them into a greater esteem, and to set every one
more agog to eat and wear them? Let kings leave off these ensigns of
grandeur; they have others enough besides; those excesses are more
excusable in any other than a prince. We may learn by the example of
several nations better ways of exterior distinction of quality (which,
truly, I conceive to be very requisite in a state) enough, without
fostering to this purpose such corruption and manifest inconvenience. 'Tis
strange how suddenly and with how much ease custom in these indifferent
things establishes itself and becomes authority. We had scarce worn cloth
a year, in compliance with the court, for the mourning of Henry II., but
that silks were already grown into such contempt with every one, that a
man so clad was presently concluded a citizen: silks were divided betwixt
the physicians and surgeons, and though all other people almost went in
the same habit, there was, notwithstanding, in one thing or other,
sufficient distinction of the several conditions of men. How suddenly do
greasy chamois and linen doublets become the fashion in our armies, whilst
all neatness and richness of habit fall into contempt? Let kings but lead
the dance and begin to leave off this expense, and in a month the business
will be done throughout the kingdom, without edict or ordinance; we shall
all follow. It should be rather proclaimed, on the contrary, that no one
should wear scarlet or goldsmiths' work but courtesans and tumblers.
Zeleucus by the like invention reclaimed the corrupted manners of the
Locrians. His laws were, that no free woman should be allowed any more
than one maid to follow her, unless she was drunk: nor was to stir out of
the city by night, wear jewels of gold about her, or go in an embroidered
robe, unless she was a professed and public prostitute; that, bravos
excepted, no man was to wear a gold ring, nor be seen in one of those
effeminate robes woven in the city of Miletus. By which infamous
exceptions he discreetly diverted his citizens from superfluities and
pernicious pleasures, and it was a project of great utility to attract
then by honour and ambition to their duty and obedience.
Our kings can do what they please in such external reformations; their own
inclination stands in this case for a law:
"Quicquid principes faciunt, praecipere videntur."
["What princes themselves do, they seem to prescribe."
—Quintil., Declam., 3.]
Whatever is done at court passes for a rule through the rest of France.
Let the courtiers fall out with these abominable breeches, that discover
so much of those parts should be concealed; these great bellied doublets,
that make us look like I know not what, and are so unfit to admit of arms;
these long effeminate locks of hair; this foolish custom of kissing what
we present to our equals, and our hands in saluting them, a ceremony in
former times only due to princes. Let them not permit that a gentleman
shall appear in place of respect without his sword, unbuttoned and
untrussed, as though he came from the house of office; and that, contrary
to the custom of our forefathers and the particular privilege of the
nobles of this kingdom, we stand a long time bare to them in what place
soever, and the same to a hundred others, so many tiercelets and
quartelets of kings we have got nowadays and other like vicious
innovations: they will see them all presently vanish and cried down. These
are, 'tis true, but superficial errors; but they are of ill augury, and
enough to inform us that the whole fabric is crazy and tottering, when we
see the roughcast of our walls to cleave and split.
Plato in his Laws esteems nothing of more pestiferous consequence to his
city than to give young men the liberty of introducing any change in their
habits, gestures, dances, songs, and exercises, from one form to another;
shifting from this to that, hunting after novelties, and applauding the
inventors; by which means manners are corrupted and the old institutions
come to be nauseated and despised. In all things, saving only in those
that are evil, a change is to be feared; even the change of seasons,
winds, viands, and humours. And no laws are in their true credit, but such
to which God has given so long a continuance that no one knows their
beginning, or that there ever was any other.
CHAPTER XLIV——OF SLEEP
Reason directs that we should always go the same way, but not always at
the same pace. And, consequently, though a wise man ought not so much to
give the reins to human passions as to let him deviate from the right
path, he may, notwithstanding, without prejudice to his duty, leave it to
them to hasten or to slacken his speed, and not fix himself like a
motionless and insensible Colossus. Could virtue itself put on flesh and
blood, I believe the pulse would beat faster going on to assault than in
going to dinner: that is to say, there is a necessity she should heat and
be moved upon this account. I have taken notice, as of an extraordinary
thing, of some great men, who in the highest enterprises and most
important affairs have kept themselves in so settled and serene a calm, as
not at all to break their sleep. Alexander the Great, on the day assigned
for that furious battle betwixt him and Darius, slept so profoundly and so
long in the morning, that Parmenio was forced to enter his chamber, and
coming to his bedside, to call him several times by his name, the time to
go to fight compelling him so to do. The Emperor Otho, having put on a
resolution to kill himself that night, after having settled his domestic
affairs, divided his money amongst his servants, and set a good edge upon
a sword he had made choice of for the purpose, and now staying only to be
satisfied whether all his friends had retired in safety, he fell into so
sound a sleep that the gentlemen of his chamber heard him snore. The death
of this emperor has in it circumstances paralleling that of the great
Cato, and particularly this just related for Cato being ready to despatch
himself, whilst he only stayed his hand in expectation of the return of a
messenger he had sent to bring him news whether the senators he had sent
away were put out from the Port of Utica, he fell into so sound a sleep,
that they heard him snore in the next room; and the man, whom he had sent
to the port, having awakened him to let him know that the tempestuous
weather had hindered the senators from putting to sea, he despatched away
another messenger, and composing again himself in the bed, settled to
sleep, and slept till by the return of the last messenger he had certain
intelligence they were gone. We may here further compare him with
Alexander in the great and dangerous storm that threatened him by the
sedition of the tribune Metellus, who, attempting to publish a decree for
the calling in of Pompey with his army into the city at the time of
Catiline's conspiracy, was only and that stoutly opposed by Cato, so that
very sharp language and bitter menaces passed betwixt them in the senate
about that affair; but it was the next day, in the forenoon, that the
controversy was to be decided, where Metellus, besides the favour of the
people and of Caesar—at that time of Pompey's faction—was to
appear accompanied with a rabble of slaves and gladiators; and Cato only
fortified with his own courage and constancy; so that his relations,
domestics, and many virtuous people of his friends were in great
apprehensions for him; and to that degree, that some there were who passed
over the whole night without sleep, eating, or drinking, for the danger
they saw him running into; his wife and sisters did nothing but weep and
torment themselves in his house; whereas, he, on the contrary, comforted
every one, and after having supped after his usual manner, went to bed,
and slept profoundly till morning, when one of his fellow-tribunes roused
him to go to the encounter. The knowledge we have of the greatness of this
man's courage by the rest of his life, may warrant us certainly to judge
that his indifference proceeded from a soul so much elevated above such
accidents, that he disdained to let it take any more hold of his fancy
than any ordinary incident.
In the naval engagement that Augustus won of Sextus Pompeius in Sicily,
just as they were to begin the fight, he was so fast asleep that his
friends were compelled to wake him to give the signal of battle: and this
was it that gave Mark Antony afterwards occasion to reproach him that he
had not the courage so much as with open eyes to behold the order of his
own squadrons, and not to have dared to present himself before the
soldiers, till first Agrippa had brought him news of the victory obtained.
But as to the young Marius, who did much worse (for the day of his last
battle against Sylla, after he had marshalled his army and given the word
and signal of battle, he laid him down under the shade of a tree to repose
himself, and fell so fast asleep that the rout and flight of his men could
hardly waken him, he having seen nothing of the fight), he is said to have
been at that time so extremely spent and worn out with labour and want of
sleep, that nature could hold out no longer. Now, upon what has been said,
the physicians may determine whether sleep be so necessary that our lives
depend upon it: for we read that King Perseus of Macedon, being prisoner
at Rome, was killed by being kept from sleep; but Pliny instances such as
have lived long without sleep. Herodotus speaks of nations where the men
sleep and wake by half-years, and they who write the life of the sage
Epimenides affirm that he slept seven-and-fifty years together.
CHAPTER XLV——OF THE BATTLE OF DREUX
[December 19, 1562, in which the Catholics, under the command of the
Duc de Guise and the Constable de Montmorenci, defeated the
Protestants, commanded by the Prince de Conde. See Sismondi, Hist.
des Francais, vol. xviii., p. 354.]
Our battle of Dreux is remarkable for several extraordinary incidents; but
such as have no great kindness for M. de Guise, nor much favour his
reputation, are willing to have him thought to blame, and that his making
a halt and delaying time with the forces he commanded, whilst the
Constable, who was general of the army, was racked through and through
with the enemy's artillery, his battalion routed, and himself taken
prisoner, is not to be excused; and that he had much better have run the
hazard of charging the enemy in flank, than staying for the advantage of
falling in upon the rear, to suffer so great and so important a loss. But,
besides what the event demonstrated, he who will consider it without
passion or prejudice will easily be induced to confess that the aim and
design, not of a captain only, but of every private soldier, ought to
regard the victory in general, and that no particular occurrences, how
nearly soever they may concern his own interest, should divert him from
that pursuit. Philopoemen, in an encounter with Machanidas, having sent
before a good strong party of his archers and slingers to begin the
skirmish, and these being routed and hotly pursued by the enemy, who,
pushing on the fortune of their arms, and in that pursuit passing by the
battalion where Philopoemen was, though his soldiers were impatient to
fall on, he did not think fit to stir from his post nor to present himself
to the enemy to relieve his men, but having suffered these to be chased
and cut in pieces before his face, charged in upon the enemy's foot when
he saw them left unprotected by the horse, and notwithstanding that they
were Lacedaemonians, yet taking them in the nick, when thinking themselves
secure of the victory, they began to disorder their ranks; he did this
business with great facility, and then put himself in pursuit of
Machanidas. Which case is very like that of Monsieur de Guise.
In that bloody battle betwixt Agesilaus and the Boeotians, which Xenophon,
who was present at it, reports to be the sharpest that he had ever seen,
Agesilaus waived the advantage that fortune presented him, to let the
Boeotian battalions pass by and then to charge them in the rear, how
certain soever he might make himself of the victory, judging it would
rather be an effect of conduct than valour, to proceed that way; and
therefore, to show his prowess, rather chose with a marvellous ardour of
courage to charge them in the front; but he was well beaten and well
wounded for his pains, and constrained at last to disengage himself, and
to take the course he had at first neglected; opening his battalion to
give way to this torrent of Boeotians, and they being passed by, taking
notice that they marched in disorder, like men who thought themselves out
of danger, he pursued and charged them in flank; yet could not so prevail
as to bring it to so general a rout but that they leisurely retreated,
still facing about upon him till they had retired to safety.
CHAPTER XLVI——OF NAMES
What variety of herbs soever are shufed together in the dish, yet the
whole mass is swallowed up under one name of a sallet. In like manner,
under the consideration of names, I will make a hodge-podge of divers
articles.
Every nation has certain names, that, I know not why, are taken in no good
sense, as with us, John, William, Benedict. In the genealogy of princes,
also, there seem to be certain names fatally affected, as the Ptolemies of
Egypt, the Henries in England, the Charleses in France, the Baldwins in
Flanders, and the Williams of our ancient Aquitaine, from whence, 'tis
said, the name of Guyenne has its derivation; which would seem far fetched
were there not as crude derivations in Plato himself.
Item, 'tis a frivolous thing in itself, but nevertheless worthy to be
recorded for the strangeness of it, that is written by an eyewitness, that
Henry, Duke of Normandy, son of Henry II., king of England, making a great
feast in France, the concourse of nobility and gentry was so great, that
being, for sport's sake, divided into troops, according to their names, in
the first troop, which consisted of Williams, there were found an hundred
and ten knights sitting at the table of that name, without reckoning the
ordinary gentlemen and servants.
It is as pleasant to distinguish the tables by the names of the guests as
it was in the Emperor Geta to distinguish the several courses of his meat
by the first letters of the meats themselves; so that those that began
with B were served up together, as brawn, beef, bream, bustards,
becca-ficos; and so of the others. Item, there is a saying that it is a
good thing to have a good name, that is to say, credit and a good repute;
but besides this, it is really convenient to have a well-sounding name,
such as is easy of pronunciation and easy to be remembered, by reason that
kings and other great persons do by that means the more easily know and
the more hardly forget us; and indeed of our own servants we more
frequently call and employ those whose names are most ready upon the
tongue. I myself have seen Henry II., when he could not for his heart hit
of a gentleman's name of our country of Gascony, and moreover was fain to
call one of the queen's maids of honour by the general name of her race,
her own family name being so difficult to pronounce or remember; and
Socrates thinks it worthy a father's care to give fine names to his
children.
Item,'tis said that the foundation of Notre Dame la Grande at Poitiers
took its original from hence that a debauched young fellow formerly living
in that place, having got to him a wench, and, at her first coming in,
asking her name, and being answered that it was Mary, he felt himself so
suddenly pierced through with the awe of religion and the reverence to
that sacred name of the Blessed Virgin, that he not only immediately sent
the girl away, but became a reformed man and so continued the remainder of
his life; and that, in consideration of this miracle, there was erected
upon the place where this young man's house stood, first a chapel
dedicated to our Lady and afterwards the church that we now see standing
there. This vocal and auricular reproof wrought upon the conscience, and
that right into the soul; this that follows, insinuated itself merely by
the senses. Pythagoras being in company with some wild young fellows, and
perceiving that, heated with the feast, they comploted to go violate an
honest house, commanded the singing wench to alter her wanton airs; and by
a solemn, grave, and spondaic music, gently enchanted and laid asleep
their ardour.
Item, will not posterity say that our modern reformation has been
wonderfully delicate and exact, in having not only combated errors and
vices, and filled the world with devotion, humility, obedience, peace, and
all sorts of virtue; but in having proceeded so far as to quarrel with our
ancient baptismal names of Charles, Louis, Francis, to fill the world with
Methuselahs, Ezekiels, and Malachis, names of a more spiritual sound? A
gentleman, a neighbour of mine, a great admirer of antiquity, and who was
always extolling the excellences of former times in comparison with this
present age of ours, did not, amongst the rest, forget to dwell upon the
lofty and magnificent sound of the gentleman's names of those days, Don
Grumedan, Quedregan, Agesilan, which, but to hear named he conceived to
denote other kind of men than Pierre, Guillot, and Michel.
Item, I am mightily pleased with Jacques Amyot for leaving, throughout a
whole French oration, the Latin names entire, without varying and garbling
them to give them a French cadence. It seemed a little harsh and rough at
first; but already custom, by the authority of his Plutarch, has overcome
that novelty. I have often wished that such as write histories in Latin
would leave our names as they find them and as they are; for in making
Vaudemont into Vallemontanus, and metamorphosing names to make them suit
better with the Greek or Latin, we know not where we are, and with the
persons of the men lose the benefit of the story.
To conclude, 'tis a scurvy custom and of very ill consequence that we have
in our kingdom of France to call every one by the name of his manor or
seigneury; 'tis the thing in the world that the most prejudices and
confounds families and descents. A younger brother of a good family,
having a manor left him by his father, by the name of which he has been
known and honoured, cannot handsomely leave it; ten years after his
decease it falls into the hand of a stranger, who does the same: do but
judge whereabouts we shall be concerning the knowledge of these men. We
need look no further for examples than our own royal family, where every
partition creates a new surname, whilst, in the meantime, the original of
the family is totally lost. There is so great liberty taken in these
mutations, that I have not in my time seen any one advanced by fortune to
any extraordinary condition who has not presently had genealogical titles
added to him, new and unknown to his father, and who has not been
inoculated into some illustrious stem by good luck; and the obscurest
families are the most apt for falsification. How many gentlemen have we in
France who by their own account are of royal extraction? more, I think,
than who will confess they are not. Was it not a pleasant passage of a
friend of mine? There were, several gentlemen assembled together about the
dispute of one seigneur with another; which other had, in truth, some
preeminence of titles and alliances above the ordinary gentry. Upon the
debate of this prerogative, every one, to make himself equal to him,
alleged, this one extraction, that another; this, the near resemblance of
name, that, of arms; another, an old worm-eaten patent; the very least of
them was great-grandchild to some foreign king. When they came to sit
down, to dinner, my friend, instead of taking his place amongst them,
retiring with most profound conges, entreated the company to excuse him
for having hitherto lived with them at the saucy rate of a companion; but
being now better informed of their quality, he would begin to pay them the
respect due to their birth and grandeur, and that it would ill become him
to sit down among so many princes—ending this farce with a thousand
reproaches: "Let us, in God's name, satisfy ourselves with what our
fathers were contented with, with what we are. We are great enough, if we
rightly understand how to maintain it. Let us not disown the fortune and
condition of our ancestors, and let us lay aside these ridiculous
pretences, that can never be wanting to any one that has the impudence to
allege them."
Arms have no more security than surnames. I bear azure powdered with
trefoils or, with a lion's paw of the same armed gules in fesse. What
privilege has this to continue particularly in my house? A son-in-law will
transport it into another family, or some paltry purchaser will make them
his first arms. There is nothing wherein there is more change and
confusion.
But this consideration leads me, perforce, into another subject. Let us
pry a little narrowly into, and, in God's name, examine upon what
foundation we erect this glory and reputation for which the world is
turned topsy-turvy: wherein do we place this renown that we hunt after
with so much pains? It is, in the end, Peter or William that carries it,
takes it into his possession, and whom it only concerns. O what a valiant
faculty is hope, that in a mortal subject, and in a moment, makes nothing
of usurping infinity, immensity, eternity, and of supplying its master's
indigence, at its pleasure, with all things he can imagine or desire!
Nature has given us this passion for a pretty toy to play withal. And this
Peter or William, what is it but a sound, when all is done? or three or
four dashes with a pen, so easy to be varied that I would fain know to
whom is to be attributed the glory of so many victories, to Guesquin, to
Glesquin, or to Gueaquin? and yet there would be something of greater
moment in the case than in Lucian, that Sigma should serve Tau with a
process; for
"Non levia aut ludicra petuntur
Praemia;"
["They aim at no slight or jocular rewards."—AEneid, xii. 764.]
the chase is there in very good earnest: the question is, which of these
letters is to be rewarded for so many sieges, battles, wounds,
imprisonments, and services done to the crown of France by this famous
constable? Nicholas Denisot—[Painter and poet, born at Le Mans,1515.]—
never concerned himself further than the letters of his name, of which he
has altered the whole contexture to build up by anagram the Count
d'Alsinois, whom he has handsomely endowed with the glory of his poetry
and painting. The historian Suetonius was satisfied with only the meaning
of his name, which made him cashier his father's surname, Lenis, to leave
Tranquillus successor to the reputation of his writings. Who would believe
that Captain Bayard should have no honour but what he derives from the
deeds of Peter Terrail; and that Antonio Iscalin should suffer himself to
his face to be robbed of the honour of so many navigations and commands at
sea and land by Captain Paulin and the Baron de la Garde? Secondly, these
are dashes of the pen common to a thousand people. How many are there, in
every family, of the same name and surname? and how many more in several
families, ages, and countries? History tells us of three of the name of
Socrates, of five Platos, of eight Aristotles, of seven Xenophons, of
twenty Demetrii, and of twenty Theodores; and how many more she was not
acquainted with we may imagine. Who hinders my groom from calling himself
Pompey the Great? But after all, what virtue, what authority, or what
secret springs are there that fix upon my deceased groom, or the other
Pompey, who had his head cut off in Egypt, this glorious renown, and these
so much honoured flourishes of the pen, so as to be of any advantage to
them?
"Id cinerem et manes credis curare sepultos?"
["Do you believe the dead regard such things?"—AEneid, iv. 34.]
What sense have the two companions in greatest esteem amongst me,
Epaminondas, of this fine verse that has been so many ages current in his
praise,
"Consiliis nostris laus est attrita Laconum;"
["The glory of the Spartans is extinguished by my plans.
—"Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 17.]
or Africanus, of this other,
"A sole exoriente supra Maeotis Paludes
Nemo est qui factis me aequiparare queat."
["From where the sun rises over the Palus Maeotis, to where it sets,
there is no one whose acts can compare with mine"—Idem, ibid.]
Survivors indeed tickle themselves with these fine phrases, and by them
incited to jealousy and desire, inconsiderately and according to their own
fancy, attribute to the dead this their own feeling, vainly flattering
themselves that they shall one day in turn be capable of the same
character. However:
"Ad haec se
Romanus Graiusque, et Barbaras induperator
Erexit; caucus discriminis atque laboris
Inde habuit: tanto major famae sitis est, quam
Virtutis."
["For these the Roman, the Greek, and the Barbarian commander hath
aroused himself; he has incurred thence causes of danger and toil:
so much greater is the thirst for fame than for virtue."
—Juvenal, x. 137.]
CHAPTER XLVII——OF THE UNCERTAINTY OF OUR JUDGMENT
Well says this verse:
["There is everywhere much liberty of speech."—Iliad, xx. 249.]
For example:
["Hannibal conquered, but knew not how to make the best use of his
victorious venture."—Petrarch, Son., 83.]
Such as would improve this argument, and condemn the oversight of our
leaders in not pushing home the victory at Moncontour, or accuse the King
of Spain of not knowing how to make the best use of the advantage he had
against us at St. Quentin, may conclude these oversights to proceed from a
soul already drunk with success, or from a spirit which, being full and
overgorged with this beginning of good fortune, had lost the appetite of
adding to it, already having enough to do to digest what it had taken in:
he has his arms full, and can embrace no more: unworthy of the benefit
fortune has conferred upon him and the advantage she had put into his
hands: for what utility does he reap from it, if, notwithstanding, he give
his enemy respite to rally and make head against him? What hope is there
that he will dare at another time to attack an enemy reunited and
recomposed, and armed anew with anger and revenge, who did not dare to
pursue them when routed and unmanned by fear?
"Dum fortuna calet, dum conficit omnia terror."
["Whilst fortune is fresh, and terror finishes all."
—Lucan, vii. 734.]
But withal, what better opportunity can he expect than that he has lost?
'Tis not here, as in fencing, where the most hits gain the prize; for so
long as the enemy is on foot, the game is new to begin, and that is not to
be called a victory that puts not an end to the war. In the encounter
where Caesar had the worst, near the city of Oricum, he reproached
Pompey's soldiers that he had been lost had their general known how to
overcome; and afterwards clawed him in a very different fashion when it
came to his turn.
But why may not a man also argue, on the contrary, that it is the effect
of a precipitous and insatiate spirit not to know how to bound and
restrain its coveting; that it is to abuse the favours of God to exceed
the measure He has prescribed them: and that again to throw a man's self
into danger after a victory obtained is again to expose himself to the
mercy of fortune: that it is one of the greatest discretions in the rule
of war not to drive an enemy to despair? Sylla and Marius in the social
war, having defeated the Marsians, seeing yet a body of reserve that,
prompted by despair, was coming on like enraged brutes to dash in upon
them, thought it not convenient to stand their charge. Had not Monsieur de
Foix's ardour transported him so furiously to pursue the remains of the
victory of Ravenna, he had not obscured it by his own death. And yet the
recent memory of his example served to preserve Monsieur d'Anguien from
the same misfortune at the battle of Serisoles. 'Tis dangerous to attack a
man you have deprived of all means to escape but by his arms, for
necessity teaches violent resolutions:
"Gravissimi sunt morsus irritatae necessitatis."
["Irritated necessity bites deepest."—Portius Latro., Declam.]
"Vincitur haud gratis, jugulo qui provocat hostem."
["He is not readily beaten who provokes the enemy by shewing
his throat."—or: "He who presents himself to his foe, sells his
life dear."—Lucan, iv. 275.]
This was it that made Pharax withhold the King of Lacedaemon, who had won
a battle against the Mantineans, from going to charge a thousand Argians,
who had escaped in an entire body from the defeat, but rather let them
steal off at liberty that he might not encounter valour whetted and
enraged by mischance. Clodomir, king of Aquitaine, after his victory
pursuing Gondemar, king of Burgundy, beaten and making off as fast as he
could for safety, compelled him to face about and make head, wherein his
obstinacy deprived him of the fruit of his conquest, for he there lost his
life.
In like manner, if a man were to choose whether he would have his soldiers
richly and sumptuously accoutred or armed only for the necessity of the
matter in hand, this argument would step in to favour the first, of which
opinion was Sertorius, Philopcemen, Brutus, Caesar, and others, that it is
to a soldier an enflaming of courage and a spur himself in brave attire;
and withal a motive to be more obstinate in fight, having his arms, which
are in a manner his estate and whole inheritance to defend; which is the
reason, says Xenophon, why those of Asia carried their wives and
concubines, with their choicest jewels and greatest wealth, along with
them to the wars. But then these arguments would be as ready to stand up
for the other side; that a general ought rather to lessen in his men their
solicitude of preserving themselves than to increase it; that by such
means they will be in a double fear of hazarding their persons, as it will
be a double temptation to the enemy to fight with greater resolution where
so great booty and so rich spoils are to be obtained; and this very thing
has been observed in former times, notably to encourage the Romans against
the Samnites. Antiochus, shewing Hannibal the army he had raised,
wonderfully splendid and rich in all sorts of equipage, asked him if the
Romans would be satisfied with that army? "Satisfied," replied the other,
"yes, doubtless, were their avarice never so great." Lycurgus not only
forbad his soldiers all manner of bravery in their equipage, but,
moreover, to strip their conquered enemies, because he would, as he said,
that poverty and frugality should shine with the rest of the battle.
At sieges and elsewhere, where occasion draws us near to the enemy, we
willingly suffer our men to brave, rate, and affront him with all sorts of
injurious language; and not without some colour of reason: for it is of no
little consequence to take from them all hopes of mercy and composition,
by representing to them that there is no fair quarter to be expected from
an enemy they have incensed to that degree, nor other remedy remaining but
in victory. And yet Vitellius found himself deceived in this way of
proceeding; for having to do with Otho, weaker in the valour of his
soldiers, long unaccustomed to war and effeminated with the delights of
the city, he so nettled them at last with injurious language, reproaching
them with cowardice and regret for the mistresses and entertainments they
had left behind at Rome, that by this means he inspired them with such
resolution as no exhortation had had the power to have done, and himself
made them fall upon him, with whom their own captains before could by no
means prevail. And, indeed, when they are injuries that touch to the
quick, it may very well fall out that he who went but unwillingly to work
in the behalf of his prince will fall to't with another sort of mettle
when the quarrel is his own.
Considering of how great importance is the preservation of the general of
an army, and that the universal aim of an enemy is levelled directly at
the head, upon which all the others depend, the course seems to admit of
no dispute, which we know has been taken by so many great captains, of
changing their habit and disguising their persons upon the point of going
to engage. Nevertheless, the inconvenience a man by so doing runs into is
not less than that he thinks to avoid; for the captain, by this means
being concealed from the knowledge of his own men, the courage they should
derive from his presence and example happens by degrees to cool and to
decay; and not seeing the wonted marks and ensigns of their leader, they
presently conclude him either dead, or that, despairing of the business,
he is gone to shift for himself. And experience shows us that both these
ways have been successful and otherwise. What befell Pyrrhus in the battle
he fought against the Consul Levinus in Italy will serve us to both
purposes; for though by shrouding his person under the armour of Megacles
and making him wear his own, he undoubtedly preserved his own life, yet,
by that very means, he was withal very near running into the other
mischief of losing the battle. Alexander, Caesar, and Lucullus loved to
make themselves known in a battle by rich accoutrements and armour of a
particular lustre and colour: Agis, Agesilaus, and that great Gilippus, on
the contrary, used to fight obscurely armed, and without any imperial
attendance or distinction.
Amongst other oversights Pompey is charged withal at the battle of
Pharsalia, he is condemned for making his army stand still to receive the
enemy's charge; by "reason that" (I shall here steal Plutarch's own words,
which are better than mine) "he by so doing deprived himself of the
violent impression the motion of running adds to the first shock of arms,
and hindered that clashing of the combatants against one another which is
wont to give them greater impetuosity and fury; especially when they come
to rush in with their utmost vigour, their courages increasing by the
shouts and the career; 'tis to render the soldiers' ardour, as a man may
say, more reserved and cold." This is what he says. But if Caesar had come
by the worse, why might it not as well have been urged by another, that,
on the contrary, the strongest and most steady posture of fighting is that
wherein a man stands planted firm without motion; and that they who are
steady upon the march, closing up, and reserving their force within
themselves for the push of the business, have a great advantage against
those who are disordered, and who have already spent half their breath in
running on precipitately to the charge? Besides that an army is a body
made up of so many individual members, it is impossible for it to move in
this fury with so exact a motion as not to break the order of battle, and
that the best of them are not engaged before their fellows can come on to
help them. In that unnatural battle betwixt the two Persian brothers, the
Lacedaemonian Clearchus, who commanded the Greeks of Cyrus' party, led
them on softly and without precipitation to the charge; but, coming within
fifty paces, hurried them on full speed, hoping in so short a career both
to keep their order and to husband their breath, and at the same time to
give the advantage of impetuosity and impression both to their persons and
their missile arms. Others have regulated this question as to their armies
thus if your enemy come full drive upon you, stand firm to receive him; if
he stand to receive you, run full drive upon him.
In the expedition of the Emperor Charles V. into Provence, King Francis
was put to choose either to go meet him in Italy or to await him in his
own dominions; wherein, though he very well considered of how great
advantage it was to preserve his own territory entire and clear from the
troubles of war, to the end that, being unexhausted of its stores, it
might continually supply men and money at need; that the necessity of war
requires at every turn to spoil and lay waste the country before us, which
cannot very well be done upon one's own; to which may be added, that the
country people do not so easily digest such a havoc by those of their own
party as from an enemy, so that seditions and commotions might by such
means be kindled amongst us; that the licence of pillage and plunder
(which are not to be tolerated at home) is a great ease and refreshment
against the fatigues and sufferings of war; and that he who has no other
prospect of gain than his bare pay will hardly be kept from running home,
being but two steps from his wife and his own house; that he who lays the
cloth is ever at the charge of the feast; that there is more alacrity in
assaulting than defending; and that the shock of a battle's loss in our
own bowels is so violent as to endanger the disjointing of the whole body,
there being no passion so contagious as that of fear, that is so easily
believed, or that so suddenly diffuses itself; and that the cities that
should hear the rattle of this tempest at their gates, that should take in
their captains and soldiers yet trembling and out of breath, would be in
danger in this heat and hurry to precipitate themselves upon some untoward
resolution: notwithstanding all this, so it was that he chose to recall
the forces he had beyond the mountains and to suffer the enemy to come to
him. For he might, on the other hand, imagine that, being at home and
amongst his friends, he could not fail of plenty of all manner of
conveniences; the rivers and passes he had at his devotion would bring him
in both provisions and money in all security, and without the trouble of
convoy; that he should find his subjects by so much the more affectionate
to him, by how much their danger was more near and pressing; that having
so many cities and barriers to secure him, it would be in his power to
give the law of battle at his own opportunity and advantage; and that, if
it pleased him to delay the time, under cover and at his ease he might see
his enemy founder and defeat himself with the difficulties he was certain
to encounter, being engaged in a hostile country, where before, behind,
and on every side war would be made upon him; no means to refresh himself
or to enlarge his quarters, should diseases infest them, or to lodge his
wounded men in safety; no money, no victuals, but at the point of the
lance; no leisure to repose and take breath; no knowledge of the ways or
country to secure him from ambushes and surprises; and in case of losing a
battle, no possible means of saving the remains. Neither is there want of
example in both these cases.
Scipio thought it much better to go and attack his enemy's territories in
Africa than to stay at home to defend his own and to fight him in Italy,
and it succeeded well with him. But, on the contrary, Hannibal in the same
war ruined himself by abandoning the conquest of a foreign country to go
and defend his own. The Athenians having left the enemy in their own
dominions to go over into Sicily, were not favoured by fortune in their
design; but Agathocles, king of Syracuse, found her favourable to him when
he went over into Africa and left the war at home.
By which examples we are wont to conclude, and with some reason, that
events, especially in war, for the most part depend upon fortune, who will
not be governed by nor submit unto human reasons and prudence, according
to the poet:
"Et male consultis pretium est: prudentia fallit
Nec fortune probat causas, sequiturque merentes,
Sed vaga per cunctos nullo discrimine fertur.
Scilicet est aliud, quod nos cogatque regatque
Majus, et in proprias ducat mortalia leges."
["And there is value in ill counsel: prudence deceives: nor does
fortune inquire into causes, nor aid the most deserving, but turns
hither and thither without discrimination. Indeed there is a
greater power which directs and rules us, and brings mortal affairs
under its own laws."—Manilius, iv. 95.]
But, to take the thing right, it should seem that our counsels and
deliberations depend as much upon fortune as anything else we do, and that
she engages also our arguments in her uncertainty and confusion. "We argue
rashly and adventurously," says Timaeus in Plato, "by reason that, as well
as ourselves, our discourses have great participation in the temerity of
chance."
CHAPTER XLVIII——OF WAR HORSES, OR DESTRIERS
I here have become a grammarian, I who never learned any language but by
rote, and who do not yet know adjective, conjunction, or ablative. I think
I have read that the Romans had a sort of horses by them called 'funales'
or 'dextrarios', which were either led horses, or horses laid on at
several stages to be taken fresh upon occasion, and thence it is that we
call our horses of service 'destriers'; and our romances commonly use the
phrase of 'adestrer' for 'accompagner', to accompany. They also called
those that were trained in such sort, that running full speed, side by
side, without bridle or saddle, the Roman gentlemen, armed at all pieces,
would shift and throw themselves from one to the other, 'desultorios
equos'. The Numidian men-at-arms had always a led horse in one hand,
besides that they rode upon, to change in the heat of battle:
"Quibus, desultorum in modum, binos trahentibus equos, inter
acerrimam saepe pugnam, in recentem equum, ex fesso, armatis
transultare mos erat: tanta velocitas ipsis, tamque docile
equorum genus."
["To whom it was a custom, leading along two horses, often in the
hottest fight, to leap armed from a tired horse to a fresh one; so
active were the men, and the horses so docile."—Livy, xxiii. 29.]
There are many horses trained to help their riders so as to run upon any
one, that appears with a drawn sword, to fall both with mouth and heels
upon any that front or oppose them: but it often happens that they do more
harm to their friends than to their enemies; and, moreover, you cannot
loose them from their hold, to reduce them again into order, when they are
once engaged and grappled, by which means you remain at the mercy of their
quarrel. It happened very ill to Artybius, general of the Persian army,
fighting, man to man, with Onesilus, king of Salamis, to be mounted upon a
horse trained after this manner, it being the occasion of his death, the
squire of Onesilus cleaving the horse down with a scythe betwixt the
shoulders as it was reared up upon his master. And what the Italians
report, that in the battle of Fornova, the horse of Charles VIII., with
kicks and plunges, disengaged his master from the enemy that pressed upon
him, without which he had been slain, sounds like a very great chance, if
it be true.
[In the narrative which Philip de Commines has given of this battle,
in which he himself was present (lib. viii. ch. 6), he tells us
of wonderful performances by the horse on which the king was
mounted. The name of the horse was Savoy, and it was the most
beautiful horse he had ever seen. During the battle the king was
personally attacked, when he had nobody near him but a valet de
chambre, a little fellow, and not well armed. "The king," says
Commines, "had the best horse under him in the world, and therefore
he stood his ground bravely, till a number of his men, not a great
way from him, arrived at the critical minute."]
The Mamalukes make their boast that they have the most ready horses of any
cavalry in the world; that by nature and custom they were taught to know
and distinguish the enemy, and to fall foul upon them with mouth and
heels, according to a word or sign given; as also to gather up with their
teeth darts and lances scattered upon the field, and present them to their
riders, on the word of command. 'T is said, both of Caesar and Pompey,
that amongst their other excellent qualities they were both very good
horsemen, and particularly of Caesar, that in his youth, being mounted on
the bare back, without saddle or bridle, he could make the horse run,
stop, and turn, and perform all its airs, with his hands behind him. As
nature designed to make of this person, and of Alexander, two miracles of
military art, so one would say she had done her utmost to arm them after
an extraordinary manner for every one knows that Alexander's horse,
Bucephalus, had a head inclining to the shape of a bull; that he would
suffer himself to be mounted and governed by none but his master, and that
he was so honoured after his death as to have a city erected to his name.
Caesar had also one which had forefeet like those of a man, his hoofs
being divided in the form of fingers, which likewise was not to be ridden,
by any but Caesar himself, who, after his death, dedicated his statue to
the goddess Venus.
I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback, for it is the place
where, whether well or sick, I find myself most at ease. Plato recommends
it for health, as also Pliny says it is good for the stomach and the
joints. Let us go further into this matter since here we are.
We read in Xenophon a law forbidding any one who was master of a horse to
travel on foot. Trogus Pompeius and Justin say that the Parthians were
wont to perform all offices and ceremonies, not only in war but also all
affairs whether public or private, make bargains, confer, entertain, take
the air, and all on horseback; and that the greatest distinction betwixt
freemen and slaves amongst them was that the one rode on horseback and the
other went on foot, an institution of which King Cyrus was the founder.
There are several examples in the Roman history (and Suetonius more
particularly observes it of Caesar) of captains who, on pressing
occasions, commanded their cavalry to alight, both by that means to take
from them all hopes of flight, as also for the advantage they hoped in
this sort of fight.
"Quo baud dubie superat Romanus,"
["Wherein the Roman does questionless excel."—Livy, ix. 22.]
says Livy. And so the first thing they did to prevent the mutinies and
insurrections of nations of late conquest was to take from them their arms
and horses, and therefore it is that we so often meet in Caesar:
"Arma proferri, jumenta produci, obsides dari jubet."
["He commanded the arms to be produced, the horses brought out,
hostages to be given."—De Bello Gall., vii. II.]
The Grand Signior to this day suffers not a Christian or a Jew to keep a
horse of his own throughout his empire.
Our ancestors, and especially at the time they had war with the English,
in all their greatest engagements and pitched battles fought for the most
part on foot, that they might have nothing but their own force, courage,
and constancy to trust to in a quarrel of so great concern as life and
honour. You stake (whatever Chrysanthes in Xenophon says to the contrary)
your valour and your fortune upon that of your horse; his wounds or death
bring your person into the same danger; his fear or fury shall make you
reputed rash or cowardly; if he have an ill mouth or will not answer to
the spur, your honour must answer for it. And, therefore, I do not think
it strange that those battles were more firm and furious than those that
are fought on horseback:
"Caedebant pariter, pariterque ruebant
Victores victique; neque his fuga nota, neque illis."
["They fought and fell pell-mell, victors and vanquished; nor was
flight thought of by either."—AEneid, x. 756.]
Their battles were much better disputed. Nowadays there are nothing but
routs:
"Primus clamor atque impetus rem decernit."
["The first shout and charge decides the business."—Livy, xxv. 41.]
And the means we choose to make use of in so great a hazard should be as
much as possible at our own command: wherefore I should advise to choose
weapons of the shortest sort, and such of which we are able to give the
best account. A man may repose more confidence in a sword he holds in his
hand than in a bullet he discharges out of a pistol, wherein there must be
a concurrence of several circumstances to make it perform its office, the
powder, the stone, and the wheel: if any of which fail it endangers your
fortune. A man himself strikes much surer than the air can direct his
blow:
"Et, quo ferre velint, permittere vulnera ventis
Ensis habet vires; et gens quaecumque virorum est,
Bella gerit gladiis."
["And so where they choose to carry [the arrows], the winds allow
the wounds; the sword has strength of arm: and whatever nation of
men there is, they wage war with swords."—Lucan, viii. 384.]
But of that weapon I shall speak more fully when I come to compare the
arms of the ancients with those of modern use; only, by the way, the
astonishment of the ear abated, which every one grows familiar with in a
short time, I look upon it as a weapon of very little execution, and hope
we shall one day lay it aside. That missile weapon which the Italians
formerly made use of both with fire and by sling was much more terrible:
they called a certain kind of javelin, armed at the point with an iron
three feet long, that it might pierce through and through an armed man,
Phalarica, which they sometimes in the field darted by hand, sometimes
from several sorts of engines for the defence of beleaguered places; the
shaft being rolled round with flax, wax, rosin, oil, and other combustible
matter, took fire in its flight, and lighting upon the body of a man or
his target, took away all the use of arms and limbs. And yet, coming to
close fight, I should think they would also damage the assailant, and that
the camp being as it were planted with these flaming truncheons, would
produce a common inconvenience to the whole crowd:
"Magnum stridens contorta Phalarica venit,
Fulminis acta modo."
["The Phalarica, launched like lightning, flies through
the air with a loud rushing sound."—AEneid, ix. 705.]
They had, moreover, other devices which custom made them perfect in (which
seem incredible to us who have not seen them), by which they supplied the
effects of our powder and shot. They darted their spears with so great
force, as ofttimes to transfix two targets and two armed men at once, and
pin them together. Neither was the effect of their slings less certain of
execution or of shorter carriage:
["Culling round stones from the beach for their slings; and with
these practising over the waves, so as from a great distance to
throw within a very small circuit, they became able not only to
wound an enemy in the head, but hit any other part at pleasure."
—Livy, xxxviii. 29.]
Their pieces of battery had not only the execution but the thunder of our
cannon also:
"Ad ictus moenium cum terribili sonitu editos,
pavor et trepidatio cepit."
["At the battery of the walls, performed with a terrible noise,
the defenders began to fear and tremble."—Idem, ibid., 5.]
The Gauls, our kinsmen in Asia, abominated these treacherous missile arms,
it being their use to fight, with greater bravery, hand to hand:
["They are not so much concerned about large gashes-the bigger and
deeper the wound, the more glorious do they esteem the combat but
when they find themselves tormented by some arrow-head or bullet
lodged within, but presenting little outward show of wound,
transported with shame and anger to perish by so imperceptible a
destroyer, they fall to the ground."—-Livy, xxxviii. 21.]
A pretty description of something very like an arquebuse-shot. The ten
thousand Greeks in their long and famous retreat met with a nation who
very much galled them with great and strong bows, carrying arrows so long
that, taking them up, one might return them back like a dart, and with
them pierce a buckler and an armed man through and through. The engines,
that Dionysius invented at Syracuse to shoot vast massy darts and stones
of a prodigious greatness with so great impetuosity and at so great a
distance, came very near to our modern inventions.
But in this discourse of horses and horsemanship, we are not to forget the
pleasant posture of one Maistre Pierre Pol, a doctor of divinity, upon his
mule, whom Monstrelet reports always to have ridden sideways through the
streets of Paris like a woman. He says also, elsewhere, that the Gascons
had terrible horses, that would wheel in their full speed, which the
French, Picards, Flemings, and Brabanters looked upon as a miracle,
"having never seen the like before," which are his very words.
Caesar, speaking of the Suabians: "in the charges they make on horseback,"
says he, "they often throw themselves off to fight on foot, having taught
their horses not to stir in the meantime from the place, to which they
presently run again upon occasion; and according to their custom, nothing
is so unmanly and so base as to use saddles or pads, and they despise such
as make use of those conveniences: insomuch that, being but a very few in
number, they fear not to attack a great many." That which I have formerly
wondered at, to see a horse made to perform all his airs with a switch
only and the reins upon his neck, was common with the Massilians, who rid
their horses without saddle or bridle:
"Et gens, quae nudo residens Massylia dorso,
Ora levi flectit, fraenorum nescia, virga."
["The Massylians, mounted on the bare backs of their horses,
bridleless, guide them by a mere switch."—Lucan, iv. 682.]
"Et Numidae infraeni cingunt."
["The Numidians guiding their horses without bridles."
—AEneid, iv. 41.]
"Equi sine fraenis, deformis ipse cursus,
rigida cervice et extento capite currentium."
["The career of a horse without a bridle is ungraceful; the neck
extended stiff, and the nose thrust out."—Livy, xxxv. II.]
King Alfonso,—[Alfonso XI., king of Leon and Castile, died 1350.]—
he who first instituted the Order of the Band or Scarf in Spain, amongst
other rules of the order, gave them this, that they should never ride mule
or mulet, upon penalty of a mark of silver; this I had lately out of
Guevara's Letters. Whoever gave these the title of Golden Epistles had
another kind of opinion of them than I have. The Courtier says, that till
his time it was a disgrace to a gentleman to ride on one of these
creatures: but the Abyssinians, on the contrary, the nearer they are to
the person of Prester John, love to be mounted upon large mules, for the
greatest dignity and grandeur.
Xenophon tells us, that the Assyrians were fain to keep their horses
fettered in the stable, they were so fierce and vicious; and that it
required so much time to loose and harness them, that to avoid any
disorder this tedious preparation might bring upon them in case of
surprise, they never sat down in their camp till it was first well
fortified with ditches and ramparts. His Cyrus, who was so great a master
in all manner of horse service, kept his horses to their due work, and
never suffered them to have anything to eat till first they had earned it
by the sweat of some kind of exercise. The Scythians when in the field and
in scarcity of provisions used to let their horses blood, which they
drank, and sustained themselves by that diet:
"Venit et epoto Sarmata pastus equo."
["The Scythian comes, who feeds on horse-flesh"
—Martial, De Spectaculis Libey, Epigr. iii. 4.]
Those of Crete, being besieged by Metellus, were in so great necessity for
drink that they were fain to quench their thirst with their horses urine.—[Val.
Max., vii. 6, ext. 1.]
To shew how much cheaper the Turkish armies support themselves than our
European forces, 'tis said that besides the soldiers drink nothing but
water and eat nothing but rice and salt flesh pulverised (of which every
one may easily carry about with him a month's provision), they know how to
feed upon the blood of their horses as well as the Muscovite and Tartar,
and salt it for their use.
These new-discovered people of the Indies [Mexico and Yucatan D.W.], when
the Spaniards first landed amongst them, had so great an opinion both of
the men and horses, that they looked upon the first as gods and the other
as animals ennobled above their nature; insomuch that after they were
subdued, coming to the men to sue for peace and pardon, and to bring them
gold and provisions, they failed not to offer of the same to the horses,
with the same kind of harangue to them they had made to the others:
interpreting their neighing for a language of truce and friendship.
In the other Indies, to ride upon an elephant was the first and royal
place of honour; the second to ride in a coach with four horses; the third
to ride upon a camel; and the last and least honour to be carried or drawn
by one horse only. Some one of our late writers tells us that he has been
in countries in those parts where they ride upon oxen with pads, stirrups,
and bridles, and very much at their ease.
Quintus Fabius Maximus Rullianus, in a battle with the Samnites, seeing
his horse, after three or four charges, had failed of breaking into the
enemy's battalion, took this course, to make them unbridle all their
horses and spur their hardest, so that having nothing to check their
career, they might through weapons and men open the way to his foot, who
by that means gave them a bloody defeat. The same command was given by
Quintus Fulvius Flaccus against the Celtiberians:
["You will do your business with greater advantage of your horses'
strength, if you send them unbridled upon the enemy, as it is
recorded the Roman horse to their great glory have often done; their
bits being taken off, they charged through and again back through
the enemy's ranks with great slaughter, breaking down all their
spears."—Idem, xl. 40.]
The Duke of Muscovy was anciently obliged to pay this reverence to the
Tartars, that when they sent an embassy to him he went out to meet them on
foot, and presented them with a goblet of mares' milk (a beverage of
greatest esteem amongst them), and if, in drinking, a drop fell by chance
upon their horse's mane, he was bound to lick it off with his tongue. The
army that Bajazet had sent into Russia was overwhelmed with so dreadful a
tempest of snow, that to shelter and preserve themselves from the cold,
many killed and embowelled their horses, to creep into their bellies and
enjoy the benefit of that vital heat. Bajazet, after that furious battle
wherein he was overthrown by Tamerlane, was in a hopeful way of securing
his own person by the fleetness of an Arabian mare he had under him, had
he not been constrained to let her drink her fill at the ford of a river
in his way, which rendered her so heavy and indisposed, that he was
afterwards easily overtaken by those that pursued him. They say, indeed,
that to let a horse stale takes him off his mettle, but as to drinking, I
should rather have thought it would refresh him.
Croesus, marching his army through certain waste lands near Sardis, met
with an infinite number of serpents, which the horses devoured with great
appetite, and which Herodotus says was a prodigy of ominous portent to his
affairs.
We call a horse entire, that has his mane and ears so, and no other will
pass muster. The Lacedaemonians, having defeated the Athenians in Sicily,
returning triumphant from the victory into the city of Syracuse, amongst
other insolences, caused all the horses they had taken to be shorn and led
in triumph. Alexander fought with a nation called Dahas, whose discipline
it was to march two and two together armed on one horse, to the war; and
being in fight, one of them alighted, and so they fought on horseback and
on foot, one after another by turns.
I do not think that for graceful riding any nation in the world excels the
French. A good horseman, according to our way of speaking, seems rather to
have respect to the courage of the man than address in riding. Of all that
ever I saw, the most knowing in that art, who had the best seat and the
best method in breaking horses, was Monsieur de Carnavalet, who served our
King Henry II.
I have seen a man ride with both his feet upon the saddle, take off his
saddle, and at his return take it up again and replace it, riding all the
while full speed; having galloped over a cap, make at it very good shots
backwards with his bow; take up anything from the ground, setting one foot
on the ground and the other in the stirrup: with twenty other ape's
tricks, which he got his living by.
There has been seen in my time at Constantinople two men upon one horse,
who, in the height of its speed, would throw themselves off and into the
saddle again by turn; and one who bridled and saddled his horse with
nothing but his teeth; an other who betwixt two horses, one foot upon one
saddle and the other upon another, carrying the other man upon his
shoulders, would ride full career, the other standing bolt upright upon
and making very good shots with his bow; several who would ride full speed
with their heels upward, and their heads upon the saddle betwixt several
scimitars, with the points upwards, fixed in the harness. When I was a
boy, the prince of Sulmona, riding an unbroken horse at Naples, prone to
all sorts of action, held reals—[A small coin of Spain, the Two
Sicilies, &c.]—under his knees and toes, as if they had been
nailed there, to shew the firmness of his seat.
CHAPTER XLIX——OF ANCIENT CUSTOMS
I should willingly pardon our people for admitting no other pattern or
rule of perfection than their own peculiar manners and customs; for 'tis a
common vice, not of the vulgar only, but almost of all men, to walk in the
beaten road their ancestors have trod before them. I am content, when they
see Fabricius or Laelius, that they look upon their countenance and
behaviour as barbarous, seeing they are neither clothed nor fashioned
according to our mode. But I find fault with their singular indiscretion
in suffering themselves to be so blinded and imposed upon by the authority
of the present usage as every month to alter their opinion, if custom so
require, and that they should so vary their judgment in their own
particular concern. When they wore the busk of their doublets up as high
as their breasts, they stiffly maintained that they were in their proper
place; some years after it was slipped down betwixt their thighs, and then
they could laugh at the former fashion as uneasy and intolerable. The
fashion now in use makes them absolutely condemn the other two with so
great resolution and so universal consent, that a man would think there
was a certain kind of madness crept in amongst them, that infatuates their
understandings to this strange degree. Now, seeing that our change of
fashions is so prompt and sudden, that the inventions of all the tailors
in the world cannot furnish out new whim-whams enow to feed our vanity
withal, there will often be a necessity that the despised forms must again
come in vogue, these immediately after fall into the same contempt; and
that the same judgment must, in the space of fifteen or twenty years, take
up half-a-dozen not only divers but contrary opinions, with an incredible
lightness and inconstancy; there is not any of us so discreet, who suffers
not himself to be gulled with this contradiction, and both in external and
internal sight to be insensibly blinded.
I wish to muster up here some old customs that I have in memory, some of
them the same with ours, the others different, to the end that, bearing in
mind this continual variation of human things, we may have our judgment
more clearly and firmly settled.
The thing in use amongst us of fighting with rapier and cloak was in
practice amongst the Romans also:
"Sinistras sagis involvunt, gladiosque distringunt,"
["They wrapt their cloaks upon the left arm, and drew their
swords."—De Bello Civili, i. 75.]
says Caesar; and he observes a vicious custom of our nation, that
continues yet amongst us, which is to stop passengers we meet upon the
road, to compel them to give an account who they are, and to take it for
an affront and just cause of quarrel if they refuse to do it.
At the Baths, which the ancients made use of every day before they went to
dinner, and as frequently as we wash our hands, they at first only bathed
their arms and legs; but afterwards, and by a custom that has continued
for many ages in most nations of the world, they bathed stark naked in
mixed and perfumed water, looking upon it as a great simplicity to bathe
in mere water. The most delicate and affected perfumed themselves all over
three or four times a day. They often caused their hair to be pinched off,
as the women of France have some time since taken up a custom to do their
foreheads,
"Quod pectus, quod crura tibi, quod brachia veilis,"
["You pluck the hairs out of your breast, your arms, and thighs."
—Martial, ii. 62, i.]
though they had ointments proper for that purpose:
"Psilotro nitet, aut acids latet oblita creta."
["She shines with unguents, or with chalk dissolved in vinegar."
—Idem, vi. 93, 9.]
They delighted to lie soft, and alleged it as a great testimony of
hardiness to lie upon a mattress. They ate lying upon beds, much after the
manner of the Turks in this age:
"Inde thoro pater AEneas sic orsus ab alto."
["Thus Father AEneas, from his high bed of state, spoke."
—AEneid, ii. 2.]
And 'tis said of the younger Cato, that after the battle of Pharsalia,
being entered into a melancholy disposition at the ill posture of the
public affairs, he took his repasts always sitting, assuming a strict and
austere course of life. It was also their custom to kiss the hands of
great persons; the more to honour and caress them. And meeting with
friends, they always kissed in salutation, as do the Venetians:
"Gratatusque darem cum dulcibus oscula verbis."
["And kindest words I would mingle with kisses."
—Ovid, De Pont., iv. 9, 13]
In petitioning or saluting any great man, they used to lay their hands
upon his knees. Pasicles the philosopher, brother of Crates, instead of
laying his hand upon the knee laid it upon the private parts, and being
roughly repulsed by him to whom he made that indecent compliment: "What,"
said he, "is not that part your own as well as the other?" —[Diogenes
Laertius, vi. 89.]—They used to eat fruit, as we do, after dinner.
They wiped their fundaments (let the ladies, if they please, mince it
smaller) with a sponge, which is the reason that 'spongia' is a smutty
word in Latin; which sponge was fastened to the end of a stick, as appears
by the story of him who, as he was led along to be thrown to the wild
beasts in the sight of the people, asking leave to do his business, and
having no other way to despatch himself, forced the sponge and stick down
his throat and choked himself.—[Seneca, Ep., 70.] They used to wipe,
after coition, with perfumed wool:
"At tibi nil faciam; sed Iota mentula lana."
They had in the streets of Rome vessels and little tubs for passengers to
urine in:
"Pusi saepe lacum propter se, ac dolia curta.
Somno devincti, credunt extollere vestem."
["The little boys in their sleep often think they are near the
public urinal, and raise their coats to make use of it."
—Lucretius, iv.]
They had collation betwixt meals, and had in summer cellars of snow to
cool their wine; and some there were who made use of snow in winter, not
thinking their wine cool enough, even at that cold season of the year. The
men of quality had their cupbearers and carvers, and their buffoons to
make them sport. They had their meat served up in winter upon chafing
dishes, which were set upon the table, and had portable kitchens (of which
I myself have seen some) wherein all their service was carried about with
them:
"Has vobis epulas habete, lauti
Nos offendimur ambulante caena."
["Do you, if you please, esteem these feasts: we do not like the
ambulatory suppers."—Martial, vii. 48, 4.]
In summer they had a contrivance to bring fresh and clear rills through
their lower rooms, wherein were great store of living fish, which the
guests took out with their own hands to be dressed every man according to
his own liking. Fish has ever had this pre-eminence, and keeps it still,
that the grandees, as to them, all pretend to be cooks; and indeed the
taste is more delicate than that of flesh, at least to my fancy. But in
all sorts of magnificence, debauchery, and voluptuous inventions of
effeminacy and expense, we do, in truth, all we can to parallel them; for
our wills are as corrupt as theirs: but we want ability to equal them. Our
force is no more able to reach them in their vicious, than in their
virtuous, qualities, for both the one and the other proceeded from a
vigour of soul which was without comparison greater in them than in us;
and souls, by how much the weaker they are, by so much have they less
power to do either very well or very ill.
The highest place of honour amongst them was the middle. The name going
before, or following after, either in writing or speaking, had no
signification of grandeur, as is evident by their writings; they will as
soon say Oppius and Caesar, as Caesar and Oppius; and me and thee, as thee
and me. This is the reason that made me formerly take notice in the life
of Flaminius, in our French Plutarch, of one passage, where it seems as if
the author, speaking of the jealousy of honour betwixt the AEtolians and
Romans, about the winning of a battle they had with their joined forces
obtained, made it of some importance, that in the Greek songs they had put
the AEtolians before the Romans: if there be no amphibology in the words
of the French translation.
The ladies, in their baths, made no scruple of admitting men amongst them,
and moreover made use of their serving-men to rub and anoint them:
"Inguina succinctus nigri tibi servus aluta
Stat, quoties calidis nuda foveris aquis."
["A slave—his middle girded with a black apron—stands before you,
when, naked, you take a hot bath."—Martial, vii. 35, i.]
They all powdered themselves with a certain powder, to moderate their
sweats.
The ancient Gauls, says Sidonius Apollinaris, wore their hair long before
and the hinder part of the head shaved, a fashion that begins to revive in
this vicious and effeminate age.
The Romans used to pay the watermen their fare at their first stepping
into the boat, which we never do till after landing:
"Dum aes exigitur, dum mula ligatur,
Tota abit hora."
["Whilst the fare's paying, and the mule is being harnessed, a whole
hour's time is past."—Horace, Sat. i. 5, 13.]
The women used to lie on the side of the bed next the wall: and for that
reason they called Caesar,
"Spondam regis Nicomedis,"
["The bed of King Nicomedes."—Suetonius, Life of Caesar, 49.]
They took breath in their drinking, and watered their wine
"Quis puer ocius
Restinguet ardentis Falerni
Pocula praetereunte lympha?"
["What boy will quickly come and cool the heat of the Falernian
wine with clear water?"—Horace, Od., ii. z, 18.]
And the roguish looks and gestures of our lackeys were also in use amongst
them:
"O Jane, a tergo quern nulls ciconia pinsit,
Nec manus, auriculas imitari est mobilis albas,
Nec lingua, quantum sitiat canis Appula, tantum."
["O Janus, whom no crooked fingers, simulating a stork, peck at
behind your back, whom no quick hands deride behind you, by
imitating the motion of the white ears of the ass, against whom no
mocking tongue is thrust out, as the tongue of the thirsty Apulian
dog."—Persius, i. 58.]
The Argian and Roman ladies mourned in white, as ours did formerly and
should do still, were I to govern in this point. But there are whole books
on this subject.
CHAPTER L——OF DEMOCRITUS AND HERACLITUS
The judgment is an utensil proper for all subjects, and will have an oar
in everything: which is the reason, that in these Essays I take hold of
all occasions where, though it happen to be a subject I do not very well
understand, I try, however, sounding it at a distance, and finding it too
deep for my stature, I keep me on the shore; and this knowledge that a man
can proceed no further, is one effect of its virtue, yes, one of those of
which it is most proud. One while in an idle and frivolous subject, I try
to find out matter whereof to compose a body, and then to prop and support
it; another while, I employ it in a noble subject, one that has been
tossed and tumbled by a thousand hands, wherein a man can scarce possibly
introduce anything of his own, the way being so beaten on every side that
he must of necessity walk in the steps of another: in such a case, 'tis
the work of the judgment to take the way that seems best, and of a
thousand paths, to determine that this or that is the best. I leave the
choice of my arguments to fortune, and take that she first presents to me;
they are all alike to me, I never design to go through any of them; for I
never see all of anything: neither do they who so largely promise to show
it others. Of a hundred members and faces that everything has, I take one,
onewhile to look it over only, another while to ripple up the skin, and
sometimes to pinch it to the bones: I give a stab, not so wide but as deep
as I can, and am for the most part tempted to take it in hand by some new
light I discover in it. Did I know myself less, I might perhaps venture to
handle something or other to the bottom, and to be deceived in my own
inability; but sprinkling here one word and there another, patterns cut
from several pieces and scattered without design and without engaging
myself too far, I am not responsible for them, or obliged to keep close to
my subject, without varying at my own liberty and pleasure, and giving up
myself to doubt and uncertainty, and to my own governing method,
ignorance.
All motion discovers us: the very same soul of Caesar, that made itself so
conspicuous in marshalling and commanding the battle of Pharsalia, was
also seen as solicitous and busy in the softer affairs of love and
leisure. A man makes a judgment of a horse, not only by seeing him when he
is showing off his paces, but by his very walk, nay, and by seeing him
stand in the stable.
Amongst the functions of the soul, there are some of a lower and meaner
form; he who does not see her in those inferior offices as well as in
those of nobler note, never fully discovers her; and, peradventure, she is
best shown where she moves her simpler pace. The winds of passions take
most hold of her in her highest flights; and the rather by reason that she
wholly applies herself to, and exercises her whole virtue upon, every
particular subject, and never handles more than one thing at a time, and
that not according to it, but according to herself. Things in respect to
themselves have, peradventure, their weight, measures, and conditions; but
when we once take them into us, the soul forms them as she pleases. Death
is terrible to Cicero, coveted by Cato, indifferent to Socrates. Health,
conscience, authority, knowledge, riches, beauty, and their contraries,
all strip themselves at their entering into us, and receive a new robe,
and of another fashion, from the soul; and of what colour, brown, bright,
green, dark, and of what quality, sharp, sweet, deep, or superficial, as
best pleases each of them, for they are not agreed upon any common
standard of forms, rules, or proceedings; every one is a queen in her own
dominions. Let us, therefore, no more excuse ourselves upon the external
qualities of things; it belongs to us to give ourselves an account of
them. Our good or ill has no other dependence but on ourselves. 'Tis there
that our offerings and our vows are due, and not to fortune she has no
power over our manners; on the contrary, they draw and make her follow in
their train, and cast her in their own mould. Why should not I judge of
Alexander at table, ranting and drinking at the prodigious rate he
sometimes used to do?
Or, if he played at chess? what string of his soul was not touched by this
idle and childish game? I hate and avoid it, because it is not play
enough, that it is too grave and serious a diversion, and I am ashamed to
lay out as much thought and study upon it as would serve to much better
uses. He did not more pump his brains about his glorious expedition into
the Indies, nor than another in unravelling a passage upon which depends
the safety of mankind. To what a degree does this ridiculous diversion
molest the soul, when all her faculties are summoned together upon this
trivial account! and how fair an opportunity she herein gives every one to
know and to make a right judgment of himself? I do not more thoroughly
sift myself in any other posture than this: what passion are we exempted
from in it? Anger, spite, malice, impatience, and a vehement desire of
getting the better in a concern wherein it were more excusable to be
ambitious of being overcome; for to be eminent, to excel above the common
rate in frivolous things, nowise befits a man of honour. What I say in
this example may be said in all others. Every particle, every employment
of man manifests him equally with any other.
Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first,
finding human condition ridiculous and vain, never appeared abroad but
with a jeering and laughing countenance; whereas Heraclitus commiserating
that same condition of ours, appeared always with a sorrowful look, and
tears in his eyes:
"Alter
Ridebat, quoties a limine moverat unum
Protuleratque pedem; flebat contrarius alter."
["The one always, as often as he had stepped one pace from his
threshold, laughed, the other always wept."—Juvenal, Sat., x. 28.]
[Or, as Voltaire: "Life is a comedy to those who think;
a tragedy to those who feel." D.W.]
I am clearly for the first humour; not because it is more pleasant to
laugh than to weep, but because it expresses more contempt and
condemnation than the other, and I think we can never be despised
according to our full desert. Compassion and bewailing seem to imply some
esteem of and value for the thing bemoaned; whereas the things we laugh at
are by that expressed to be of no moment. I do not think that we are so
unhappy as we are vain, or have in us so much malice as folly; we are not
so full of mischief as inanity; nor so miserable as we are vile and mean.
And therefore Diogenes, who passed away his time in rolling himself in his
tub, and made nothing of the great Alexander, esteeming us no better than
flies or bladders puffed up with wind, was a sharper and more penetrating,
and, consequently in my opinion, a juster judge than Timon, surnamed the
Man-hater; for what a man hates he lays to heart. This last was an enemy
to all mankind, who passionately desired our ruin, and avoided our
conversation as dangerous, proceeding from wicked and depraved natures:
the other valued us so little that we could neither trouble nor infect him
by our example; and left us to herd one with another, not out of fear, but
from contempt of our society: concluding us as incapable of doing good as
evil.
Of the same strain was Statilius' answer, when Brutus courted him into the
conspiracy against Caesar; he was satisfied that the enterprise was just,
but he did not think mankind worthy of a wise man's concern'; according to
the doctrine of Hegesias, who said, that a wise man ought to do nothing
but for himself, forasmuch as he only was worthy of it: and to the saying
of Theodorus, that it was not reasonable a wise man should hazard himself
for his country, and endanger wisdom for a company of fools. Our condition
is as ridiculous as risible.
CHAPTER LI——OF THE VANITY OF WORDS
A rhetorician of times past said, that to make little things appear great
was his profession. This was a shoemaker, who can make a great shoe for a
little foot.—[A saying of Agesilaus.]—They would in Sparta
have sent such a fellow to be whipped for making profession of a tricky
and deceitful act; and I fancy that Archidamus, who was king of that
country, was a little surprised at the answer of Thucydides, when
inquiring of him, which was the better wrestler, Pericles, or he, he
replied, that it was hard to affirm; for when I have thrown him, said he,
he always persuades the spectators that he had no fall and carries away
the prize. —[Quintilian, ii. 15.]—The women who paint, pounce,
and plaster up their ruins, filling up their wrinkles and deformities, are
less to blame, because it is no great matter whether we see them in their
natural complexions; whereas these make it their business to deceive not
our sight only but our judgments, and to adulterate and corrupt the very
essence of things. The republics that have maintained themselves in a
regular and well-modelled government, such as those of Lacedaemon and
Crete, had orators in no very great esteem. Aristo wisely defined rhetoric
to be "a science to persuade the people;" Socrates and Plato "an art to
flatter and deceive." And those who deny it in the general description,
verify it throughout in their precepts. The Mohammedans will not suffer
their children to be instructed in it, as being useless, and the
Athenians, perceiving of how pernicious consequence the practice of it
was, it being in their city of universal esteem, ordered the principal
part, which is to move the affections, with their exordiums and
perorations, to be taken away. 'Tis an engine invented to manage and
govern a disorderly and tumultuous rabble, and that never is made use of,
but like physic to the sick, in a discomposed state. In those where the
vulgar or the ignorant, or both together, have been all-powerful and able
to give the law, as in those of Athens, Rhodes, and Rome, and where the
public affairs have been in a continual tempest of commotion, to such
places have the orators always repaired. And in truth, we shall find few
persons in those republics who have pushed their fortunes to any great
degree of eminence without the assistance of eloquence.
Pompey, Caesar, Crassus, Lucullus, Lentulus, Metellus, thence took their
chiefest spring, to mount to that degree of authority at which they at
last arrived, making it of greater use to them than arms, contrary to the
opinion of better times; for, L. Volumnius speaking publicly in favour of
the election of Q. Fabius and Pub. Decius, to the consular dignity: "These
are men," said he, "born for war and great in execution; in the combat of
the tongue altogether wanting; spirits truly consular. The subtle,
eloquent, and learned are only good for the city, to make praetors of, to
administer justice."—[Livy, x. 22.]
Eloquence most flourished at Rome when the public affairs were in the
worst condition and most disquieted with intestine commotions; as a free
and untilled soil bears the worst weeds. By which it should seem that a
monarchical government has less need of it than any other: for the
stupidity and facility natural to the common people, and that render them
subject to be turned and twined and, led by the ears by this charming
harmony of words, without weighing or considering the truth and reality of
things by the force of reason: this facility, I say, is not easily found
in a single person, and it is also more easy by good education and advice
to secure him from the impression of this poison. There was never any
famous orator known to come out of Persia or Macedon.
I have entered into this discourse upon the occasion of an Italian I
lately received into my service, and who was clerk of the kitchen to the
late Cardinal Caraffa till his death. I put this fellow upon an account of
his office: when he fell to discourse of this palate-science, with such a
settled countenance and magisterial gravity, as if he had been handling
some profound point of divinity. He made a learned distinction of the
several sorts of appetites; of that a man has before he begins to eat, and
of those after the second and third service; the means simply to satisfy
the first, and then to raise and actuate the other two; the ordering of
the sauces, first in general, and then proceeded to the qualities of the
ingredients and their effects; the differences of salads according to
their seasons, those which ought to be served up hot, and which cold; the
manner of their garnishment and decoration to render them acceptable to
the eye. After which he entered upon the order of the whole service, full
of weighty and important considerations:
"Nec minimo sane discrimine refert,
Quo gestu lepores, et quo gallina secetur;"
["Nor with less discrimination observes how we should carve a hare,
and how a hen." or, ("Nor with the least discrimination relates how
we should carve hares, and how cut up a hen.)"
—Juvenal, Sat., v. 123.]
and all this set out with lofty and magnificent words, the very same we
make use of when we discourse of the government of an empire. Which
learned lecture of my man brought this of Terence into my memory:
"Hoc salsum est, hoc adustum est, hoc lautum est, parum:
Illud recte: iterum sic memento: sedulo
Moneo, qux possum, pro mea sapientia.
Postremo, tanquam in speculum, in patinas,
Demea, Inspicere jubeo, et moneo, quid facto usus sit."
["This is too salt, that's burnt, that's not washed enough; that's
well; remember to do so another time. Thus do I ever advise them to
have things done properly, according to my capacity; and lastly,
Demea, I command my cooks to look into every dish as if it were a
mirror, and tell them what they should do."
—Terence, Adelph., iii. 3, 71.]
And yet even the Greeks themselves very much admired and highly applauded
the order and disposition that Paulus AEmilius observed in the feast he
gave them at his return from Macedon. But I do not here speak of effects,
I speak of words only.
I do not know whether it may have the same operation upon other men that
it has upon me, but when I hear our architects thunder out their bombast
words of pilasters, architraves, and cornices, of the Corinthian and Doric
orders, and suchlike jargon, my imagination is presently possessed with
the palace of Apollidon; when, after all, I find them but the paltry
pieces of my own kitchen door.
To hear men talk of metonomies, metaphors, and allegories, and other
grammar words, would not one think they signified some rare and exotic
form of speaking? And yet they are phrases that come near to the babble of
my chambermaid.
And this other is a gullery of the same stamp, to call the offices of our
kingdom by the lofty titles of the Romans, though they have no similitude
of function, and still less of authority and power. And this also, which I
doubt will one day turn to the reproach of this age of ours, unworthily
and indifferently to confer upon any we think fit the most glorious
surnames with which antiquity honoured but one or two persons in several
ages. Plato carried away the surname of Divine, by so universal a consent
that never any one repined at it, or attempted to take it from him; and
yet the Italians, who pretend, and with good reason, to more sprightly
wits and sounder sense than the other nations of their time, have lately
bestowed the same title upon Aretin, in whose writings, save tumid phrases
set out with smart periods, ingenious indeed but far-fetched and
fantastic, and the eloquence, be it what it may, I see nothing in him
above the ordinary writers of his time, so far is he from approaching the
ancient divinity. And we make nothing of giving the surname of great to
princes who have nothing more than ordinary in them.
CHAPTER LII——OF THE PARSIMONY OF THE ANCIENTS
Attilius Regulus, general of the Roman army in Africa, in the height of
all his glory and victories over the Carthaginians, wrote to the Republic
to acquaint them that a certain hind he had left in trust with his estate,
which was in all but seven acres of land, had run away with all his
instruments of husbandry, and entreating therefore, that they would please
to call him home that he might take order in his own affairs, lest his
wife and children should suffer by this disaster. Whereupon the Senate
appointed another to manage his business, caused his losses to be made
good, and ordered his family to be maintained at the public expense.
The elder Cato, returning consul from Spain, sold his warhorse to save the
money it would have cost in bringing it back by sea into Italy; and being
Governor of Sardinia, he made all his visits on foot, without other train
than one officer of the Republic who carried his robe and a censer for
sacrifices, and for the most part carried his trunk himself. He bragged
that he had never worn a gown that cost above ten crowns, nor had ever
sent above tenpence to the market for one day's provision; and that as to
his country houses, he had not one that was rough-cast on the outside.
Scipio AEmilianus, after two triumphs and two consulships, went an embassy
with no more than seven servants in his train. 'Tis said that Homer had
never more than one, Plato three, and Zeno, founder of the sect of Stoics,
none at all. Tiberius Gracchus was allowed but fivepence halfpenny a day
when employed as public minister about the public affairs, and being at
that time the greatest man of Rome.
CHAPTER LIII——OF A SAYING OF CAESAR
If we would sometimes bestow a little consideration upon ourselves, and
employ the time we spend in prying into other men's actions, and
discovering things without us, in examining our own abilities we should
soon perceive of how infirm and decaying material this fabric of ours is
composed. Is it not a singular testimony of imperfection that we cannot
establish our satisfaction in any one thing, and that even our own fancy
and desire should deprive us of the power to choose what is most proper
and useful for us? A very good proof of this is the great dispute that has
ever been amongst the philosophers, of finding out man's sovereign good,
that continues yet, and will eternally continue, without solution or
accord:
"Dum abest quod avemus, id exsuperare videtur
Caetera; post aliud, quum contigit illud, avemus,
Et sitis aequa tenet."
["While that which we desire is wanting, it seems to surpass all the
rest; then, when we have got it, we want something else; 'tis ever
the same thirst"—Lucretius, iii. 1095.]
Whatever it is that falls into our knowledge and possession, we find that
it satisfies not, and we still pant after things to come and unknown,
inasmuch as those present do not suffice for us; not that, in my judgment,
they have not in them wherewith to do it, but because we seize them with
an unruly and immoderate haste:
"Nam quum vidit hic, ad victum qux flagitat usus,
Et per quae possent vitam consistere tutam,
Omnia jam ferme mortalibus esse parata;
Divitiis homines, et honore, et laude potentes
Aflluere, atque bona natorum excellere fama;
Nec minus esse domi cuiquam tamen anxia corda,
Atque animi ingratis vitam vexare querelis
Causam, quae infestis cogit saevire querelis,
Intellegit ibi; vitium vas efficere ipsum,
Omniaque, illius vitio, corrumpier intus,
Qux collata foris et commoda quomque venirent."
["For when he saw that almost all things necessarily required for
subsistence, and which may render life comfortable, are already
prepared to their hand, that men may abundantly attain wealth,
honour, praise, may rejoice in the reputation of their children, yet
that, notwithstanding, every one has none the less in his heart and
home anxieties and a mind enslaved by wearing complaints, he saw
that the vessel itself was in fault, and that all good things which
were brought into it from without were spoilt by its own
imperfections."—Lucretius, vi. 9.]
Our appetite is irresolute and fickle; it can neither keep nor enjoy
anything with a good grace: and man concluding it to be the fault of the
things he is possessed of, fills himself with and feeds upon the idea of
things he neither knows nor understands, to which he devotes his hopes and
his desires, paying them all reverence and honour, according to the saying
of Caesar:
"Communi fit vitio naturae, ut invisis, latitantibus
atque incognitis rebus magis confidamas,
vehementiusque exterreamur."
["'Tis the common vice of nature, that we at once repose most
confidence, and receive the greatest apprehensions, from things
unseen, concealed, and unknown."—De Bello Civil, xi. 4.]
CHAPTER LIV——OF VAIN SUBTLETIES
There are a sort of little knacks and frivolous subtleties from which men
sometimes expect to derive reputation and applause: as poets, who compose
whole poems with every line beginning with the same letter; we see the
shapes of eggs, globes, wings, and hatchets cut out by the ancient Greeks
by the measure of their verses, making them longer or shorter, to
represent such or such a figure. Of this nature was his employment who
made it his business to compute into how many several orders the letters
of the alphabet might be transposed, and found out that incredible number
mentioned in Plutarch. I am mightily pleased with the humour of him,
["Alexander, as may be seen in Quintil., Institut. Orat., lib.
ii., cap. 20, where he defines Maratarexvia to be a certain
unnecessary imitation of art, which really does neither good nor
harm, but is as unprofitable and ridiculous as was the labour of
that man who had so perfectly learned to cast small peas through the
eye of a needle at a good distance that he never missed one, and was
justly rewarded for it, as is said, by Alexander, who saw the
performance, with a bushel of peas."—Coste.]
who having a man brought before him that had learned to throw a grain of
millet with such dexterity and assurance as never to miss the eye of a
needle; and being afterwards entreated to give something for the reward of
so rare a performance, he pleasantly, and in my opinion justly, ordered a
certain number of bushels of the same grain to be delivered to him, that
he might not want wherewith to exercise so famous an art. 'Tis a strong
evidence of a weak judgment when men approve of things for their being
rare and new, or for their difficulty, where worth and usefulness are not
conjoined to recommend them.
I come just now from playing with my own family at who could find out the
most things that hold by their two extremities; as Sire, which is a title
given to the greatest person in the nation, the king, and also to the
vulgar, as merchants, but never to any degree of men between. The women of
great quality are called Dames, inferior gentlewomen, Demoiselles, and the
meanest sort of women, Dames, as the first. The cloth of state over our
tables is not permitted but in the palaces of princes and in taverns.
Democritus said, that gods and beasts had sharper sense than men, who are
of a middle form. The Romans wore the same habit at funerals and feasts.
It is most certain that an extreme fear and an extreme ardour of courage
equally trouble and relax the belly. The nickname of Trembling with which
they surnamed Sancho XII., king of Navarre, tells us that valour will
cause a trembling in the limbs as well as fear. Those who were arming that
king, or some other person, who upon the like occasion was wont to be in
the same disorder, tried to compose him by representing the danger less he
was going to engage himself in: "You understand me ill," said he, "for
could my flesh know the danger my courage will presently carry it into, it
would sink down to the ground." The faintness that surprises us from
frigidity or dislike in the exercises of Venus are also occasioned by a
too violent desire and an immoderate heat. Extreme coldness and extreme
heat boil and roast. Aristotle says, that sows of lead will melt and run
with cold and the rigour of winter just as with a vehement heat. Desire
and satiety fill all the gradations above and below pleasure with pain.
Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution,
in the suffering of human accidents. The wise control and triumph over
ill, the others know it not: these last are, as a man may say, on this
side of accidents, the others are beyond them, who after having well
weighed and considered their qualities, measured and judged them what they
are, by virtue of a vigorous soul leap out of their reach; they disdain
and trample them underfoot, having a solid and well-fortified soul,
against which the darts of fortune, coming to strike, must of necessity
rebound and blunt themselves, meeting with a body upon which they can fix
no impression; the ordinary and middle condition of men are lodged betwixt
these two extremities, consisting of such as perceive evils, feel them,
and are not able to support them. Infancy and decrepitude meet in the
imbecility of the brain; avarice and profusion in the same thirst and
desire of getting.
A man may say with some colour of truth that there is an Abecedarian
ignorance that precedes knowledge, and a doctoral ignorance that comes
after it: an ignorance that knowledge creates and begets, at the same time
that it despatches and destroys the first. Of mean understandings, little
inquisitive, and little instructed, are made good Christians, who by
reverence and obedience simply believe and are constant in their belief.
In the average understandings and the middle sort of capacities, the error
of opinion is begotten; they follow the appearance of the first
impression, and have some colour of reason on their side to impute our
walking on in the old beaten path to simplicity and stupidity, meaning us
who have not informed ourselves by study. The higher and nobler souls,
more solid and clear-sighted, make up another sort of true believers, who
by a long and religious investigation of truth, have obtained a clearer
and more penetrating light into the Scriptures, and have discovered the
mysterious and divine secret of our ecclesiastical polity; and yet we see
some, who by the middle step, have arrived at that supreme degree with
marvellous fruit and confirmation, as to the utmost limit of Christian
intelligence, and enjoy their victory with great spiritual consolation,
humble acknowledgment of the divine favour, reformation of manners, and
singular modesty. I do not intend with these to rank those others, who to
clear themselves from all suspicion of their former errors and to satisfy
us that they are sound and firm, render themselves extremely indiscreet
and unjust, in the carrying on our cause, and blemish it with infinite
reproaches of violence and oppression. The simple peasants are good
people, and so are the philosophers, or whatever the present age calls
them, men of strong and clear reason, and whose souls are enriched with an
ample instruction of profitable sciences. The mongrels who have disdained
the first form of the ignorance of letters, and have not been able to
attain to the other (sitting betwixt two stools, as I and a great many
more of us do), are dangerous, foolish, and importunate; these are they
that trouble the world. And therefore it is that I, for my own part,
retreat as much as I can towards the first and natural station, whence I
so vainly attempted to advance.
Popular and purely natural poesy
["The term poesie populaire was employed, for the first time, in the
French language on this occasion. Montaigne created the expression,
and indicated its nature."—Ampere.]
has in it certain artless graces, by which she may come into comparison
with the greatest beauty of poetry perfected by art: as we see in our
Gascon villanels and the songs that are brought us from nations that have
no knowledge of any manner of science, nor so much as the use of writing.
The middle sort of poesy betwixt these two is despised, of no value,
honour, or esteem.
But seeing that the path once laid open to the fancy, I have found, as it
commonly falls out, that what we have taken for a difficult exercise and a
rare subject, prove to be nothing so, and that after the invention is once
warm, it finds out an infinite number of parallel examples. I shall only
add this one—that, were these Essays of mine considerable enough to
deserve a critical judgment, it might then, I think, fall out that they
would not much take with common and vulgar capacities, nor be very
acceptable to the singular and excellent sort of men; the first would not
understand them enough, and the last too much; and so they may hover in
the middle region.
CHAPTER LV——OF SMELLS
It has been reported of some, as of Alexander the Great, that their sweat
exhaled an odoriferous smell, occasioned by some rare and extraordinary
constitution, of which Plutarch and others have been inquisitive into the
cause. But the ordinary constitution of human bodies is quite otherwise,
and their best and chiefest excellency is to be exempt from smell. Nay,
the sweetness even of the purest breath has nothing in it of greater
perfection than to be without any offensive smell, like those of healthful
children, which made Plautus say of a woman:
"Mulier tum bene olet, ubi nihil olet."
["She smells sweetest, who smells not at all."
—Plautus, Mostel, i. 3, 116.]
And such as make use of fine exotic perfumes are with good reason to be
suspected of some natural imperfection which they endeavour by these
odours to conceal. To smell, though well, is to stink:
"Rides nos, Coracine, nil olentes
Malo, quam bene olere, nil olere."
["You laugh at us, Coracinus, because we are not scented; I would,
rather than smell well, not smell at all."—Martial, vi. 55, 4.]
And elsewhere:
"Posthume, non bene olet, qui bene semper olet."
["Posthumus, he who ever smells well does not smell well."
—Idem, ii. 12, 14.]
I am nevertheless a great lover of good smells, and as much abominate the
ill ones, which also I scent at a greater distance, I think, than other
men:
"Namque sagacius unus odoror,
Polypus, an gravis hirsutis cubet hircus in aliis
Quam canis acer, ubi latest sus."
["My nose is quicker to scent a fetid sore or a rank armpit, than a
dog to smell out the hidden sow."—Horace, Epod., xii. 4.]
Of smells, the simple and natural seem to me the most pleasing. Let the
ladies look to that, for 'tis chiefly their concern: amid the most
profound barbarism, the Scythian women, after bathing, were wont to powder
and crust their faces and all their bodies with a certain odoriferous drug
growing in their country, which being cleansed off, when they came to have
familiarity with men they were found perfumed and sleek. 'Tis not to be
believed how strangely all sorts of odours cleave to me, and how apt my
skin is to imbibe them. He that complains of nature that she has not
furnished mankind with a vehicle to convey smells to the nose had no
reason; for they will do it themselves, especially to me; my very
mustachios, which are full, perform that office; for if I stroke them but
with my gloves or handkerchief, the smell will not out a whole day; they
manifest where I have been, and the close, luscious, devouring, viscid
melting kisses of youthful ardour in my wanton age left a sweetness upon
my lips for several hours after. And yet I have ever found myself little
subject to epidemic diseases, that are caught, either by conversing with
the sick or bred by the contagion of the air, and have escaped from those
of my time, of which there have been several sorts in our cities and
armies. We read of Socrates, that though he never departed from Athens
during the frequent plagues that infested the city, he only was never
infected.
Physicians might, I believe, extract greater utility from odours than they
do, for I have often observed that they cause an alteration in me and work
upon my spirits according to their several virtues; which makes me approve
of what is said, that the use of incense and perfumes in churches, so
ancient and so universally received in all nations and religions, was
intended to cheer us, and to rouse and purify the senses, the better to
fit us for contemplation.
I could have been glad, the better to judge of it, to have tasted the
culinary art of those cooks who had so rare a way of seasoning exotic
odours with the relish of meats; as it was particularly observed in the
service of the king of Tunis, who in our days—[Muley-Hassam, in
1543.] —landed at Naples to have an interview with Charles the
Emperor. His dishes were larded with odoriferous drugs, to that degree of
expense that the cookery of one peacock and two pheasants amounted to a
hundred ducats to dress them after their fashion; and when the carver came
to cut them up, not only the dining-room, but all the apartments of his
palace and the adjoining streets were filled with an aromatic vapour which
did not presently vanish.
My chiefest care in choosing my lodgings is always to avoid a thick and
stinking air; and those beautiful cities, Venice and Paris, very much
lessen the kindness I have for them, the one by the offensive smell of her
marshes, and the other of her dirt.
CHAPTER LVI——OF PRAYERS
I propose formless and undetermined fancies, like those who publish
doubtful questions, to be after a disputed upon in the schools, not to
establish truth but to seek it; and I submit them to the judgments of
those whose office it is to regulate, not my writings and actions only,
but moreover my very thoughts. Let what I here set down meet with
correction or applause, it shall be of equal welcome and utility to me,
myself beforehand condemning as absurd and impious, if anything shall be
found, through ignorance or inadvertency, couched in this rhapsody,
contrary to the holy resolutions and prescriptions of the Catholic
Apostolic and Roman Church, into which I was born and in which I will die.
And yet, always submitting to the authority of their censure, which has an
absolute power over me, I thus rashly venture at everything, as in
treating upon this present subject.
I know not if or no I am wrong, but since, by a particular favour of the
divine bounty, a certain form of prayer has been prescribed and dictated
to us, word by word, from the mouth of God Himself, I have ever been of
opinion that we ought to have it in more frequent use than we yet have;
and if I were worthy to advise, at the sitting down to and rising from our
tables, at our rising from and going to bed, and in every particular
action wherein prayer is used, I would that Christians always make use of
the Lord's Prayer, if not alone, yet at least always. The Church may
lengthen and diversify prayers, according to the necessity of our
instruction, for I know very well that it is always the same in substance
and the same thing: but yet such a privilege ought to be given to that
prayer, that the people should have it continually in their mouths; for it
is most certain that all necessary petitions are comprehended in it, and
that it is infinitely proper for all occasions. 'Tis the only prayer I use
in all places and conditions, and which I still repeat instead of
changing; whence it also happens that I have no other so entirely by heart
as that.
It just now came into my mind, whence it is we should derive that error of
having recourse to God in all our designs and enterprises, to call Him to
our assistance in all sorts of affairs, and in all places where our
weakness stands in need of support, without considering whether the
occasion be just or otherwise; and to invoke His name and power, in what
state soever we are, or action we are engaged in, howsoever vicious. He is
indeed, our sole and unique protector, and can do all things for us: but
though He is pleased to honour us with this sweet paternal alliance, He
is, notwithstanding, as just as He is good and mighty; and more often
exercises His justice than His power, and favours us according to that,
and not according to our petitions.
Plato in his Laws, makes three sorts of belief injurious to the gods;
"that there are none; that they concern not themselves about our affairs;
that they never refuse anything to our vows, offerings, and sacrifices."
The first of these errors (according to his opinion, never continued
rooted in any man from his infancy to his old age); the other two, he
confesses, men might be obstinate in.
God's justice and His power are inseparable; 'tis in vain we invoke His
power in an unjust cause. We are to have our souls pure and clean, at that
moment at least wherein we pray to Him, and purified from all vicious
passions; otherwise we ourselves present Him the rods wherewith to
chastise us; instead of repairing anything we have done amiss, we double
the wickedness and the offence when we offer to Him, to whom we are to sue
for pardon, an affection full of irreverence and hatred. Which makes me
not very apt to applaud those whom I observe to be so frequent on their
knees, if the actions nearest to the prayer do not give me some evidence
of amendment and reformation:
"Si, nocturnus adulter,
Tempora Santonico velas adoperta cucullo."
["If a night adulterer, thou coverest thy head with a Santonic
cowl."—Juvenal, Sat., viii. 144.—The Santones were the people
who inhabited Saintonge in France, from whom the Romans derived the
use of hoods or cowls covering the head and face.]
And the practice of a man who mixes devotion with an execrable life seems
in some sort more to be condemned than that of a man conformable to his
own propension and dissolute throughout; and for that reason it is that
our Church denies admittance to and communion with men obstinate and
incorrigible in any notorious wickedness. We pray only by custom and for
fashion's sake; or rather, we read or pronounce our prayers aloud, which
is no better than an hypocritical show of devotion; and I am scandalised
to see a man cross himself thrice at the Benedicite, and as often at Grace
(and the more, because it is a sign I have in great veneration and
continual use, even when I yawn), and to dedicate all the other hours of
the day to acts of malice, avarice, and injustice. One hour to God, the
rest to the devil, as if by composition and compensation. 'Tis a wonder to
see actions so various in themselves succeed one another with such an
uniformity of method as not to interfere nor suffer any alteration, even
upon the very confines and passes from the one to the other. What a
prodigious conscience must that be that can be at quiet within itself
whilst it harbours under the same roof, with so agreeing and so calm a
society, both the crime and the judge?
A man whose whole meditation is continually working upon nothing but
impurity which he knows to be so odious to Almighty God, what can he say
when he comes to speak to Him? He draws back, but immediately falls into a
relapse. If the object of divine justice and the presence of his Maker
did, as he pretends, strike and chastise his soul, how short soever the
repentance might be, the very fear of offending the Infinite Majesty would
so often present itself to his imagination that he would soon see himself
master of those vices that are most natural and vehement in him. But what
shall we say of those who settle their whole course of life upon the
profit and emolument of sins, which they know to be mortal? How many
trades and vocations have we admitted and countenanced amongst us, whose
very essence is vicious? And he that, confessing himself to me,
voluntarily told me that he had all his lifetime professed and practised a
religion, in his opinion damnable and contrary to that he had in his
heart, only to preserve his credit and the honour of his employments, how
could his courage suffer so infamous a confession? What can men say to the
divine justice upon this subject?
Their repentance consisting in a visible and manifest reparation, they
lose the colour of alleging it both to God and man. Are they so impudent
as to sue for remission without satisfaction and without penitence? I look
upon these as in the same condition with the first: but the obstinacy is
not there so easy to be overcome. This contrariety and volubility of
opinion so sudden, so violent, that they feign, are a kind of miracle to
me: they present us with the state of an indigestible agony of mind.
It seemed to me a fantastic imagination in those who, these late years
past, were wont to reproach every man they knew to be of any extraordinary
parts, and made profession of the Catholic religion, that it was but
outwardly; maintaining, moreover, to do him honour forsooth, that whatever
he might pretend to the contrary he could not but in his heart be of their
reformed opinion. An untoward disease, that a man should be so riveted to
his own belief as to fancy that others cannot believe otherwise than as he
does; and yet worse, that they should entertain so vicious an opinion of
such great parts as to think any man so qualified, should prefer any
present advantage of fortune to the promises of eternal life and the
menaces of eternal damnation. They may believe me: could anything have
tempted my youth, the ambition of the danger and difficulties in the late
commotions had not been the least motives.
It is not without very good reason, in my opinion, that the Church
interdicts the promiscuous, indiscreet, and irreverent use of the holy and
divine Psalms, with which the Holy Ghost inspired King David. We ought not
to mix God in our actions, but with the highest reverence and caution;
that poesy is too holy to be put to no other use than to exercise the
lungs and to delight our ears; it ought to come from the conscience, and
not from the tongue. It is not fit that a prentice in his shop, amongst
his vain and frivolous thoughts, should be permitted to pass away his time
and divert himself with such sacred things. Neither is it decent to see
the Holy Book of the holy mysteries of our belief tumbled up and down a
hall or a kitchen they were formerly mysteries, but are now become sports
and recreations. 'Tis a book too serious and too venerable to be cursorily
or slightly turned over: the reading of the scripture ought to be a
temperate and premeditated act, and to which men should always add this
devout preface, 'sursum corda', preparing even the body to so humble and
composed a gesture and countenance as shall evidence a particular
veneration and attention. Neither is it a book for everyone to fist, but
the study of select men set apart for that purpose, and whom Almighty God
has been pleased to call to that office and sacred function: the wicked
and ignorant grow worse by it. 'Tis, not a story to tell, but a history to
revere, fear, and adore. Are not they then pleasant men who think they
have rendered this fit for the people's handling by translating it into
the vulgar tongue? Does the understanding of all therein contained only
stick at words? Shall I venture to say further, that by coming so near to
understand a little, they are much wider of the whole scope than before. A
pure and simple ignorance and wholly depending upon the exposition of
qualified persons, was far more learned and salutary than this vain and
verbal knowledge, which has only temerity and presumption.
And I do further believe that the liberty every one has taken to disperse
the sacred writ into so many idioms carries with it a great deal more of
danger than utility. The Jews, Mohammedans, and almost all other peoples,
have reverentially espoused the language wherein their mysteries were
first conceived, and have expressly, and not without colour of reason,
forbidden the alteration of them into any other. Are we assured that in
Biscay and in Brittany there are enough competent judges of this affair to
establish this translation into their own language? The universal Church
has not a more difficult and solemn judgment to make. In preaching and
speaking the interpretation is vague, free, mutable, and of a piece by
itself; so 'tis not the same thing.
One of our Greek historians age justly censures the he lived in, because
the secrets of the Christian religion were dispersed into the hands of
every mechanic, to expound and argue upon, according to his own fancy, and
that we ought to be much ashamed, we who by God's especial favour enjoy
the pure mysteries of piety, to suffer them to be profaned by the ignorant
rabble; considering that the Gentiles expressly forbad Socrates, Plato,
and the other sages to inquire into or so much as mention the things
committed to the priests of Delphi; and he says, moreover, that the
factions of princes upon theological subjects are armed not with zeal but
fury; that zeal springs from the divine wisdom and justice, and governs
itself with prudence and moderation, but degenerates into hatred and envy,
producing tares and nettles instead of corn and wine when conducted by
human passions. And it was truly said by another, who, advising the
Emperor Theodosius, told him that disputes did not so much rock the
schisms of the Church asleep, as it roused and animated heresies; that,
therefore, all contentions and dialectic disputations were to be avoided,
and men absolutely to acquiesce in the prescriptions and formulas of faith
established by the ancients. And the Emperor Andronicus having overheard
some great men at high words in his palace with Lapodius about a point of
ours of great importance, gave them so severe a check as to threaten to
cause them to be thrown into the river if they did not desist. The very
women and children nowadays take upon them to lecture the oldest and most
experienced men about the ecclesiastical laws; whereas the first of those
of Plato forbids them to inquire so much as into the civil laws, which
were to stand instead of divine ordinances; and, allowing the old men to
confer amongst themselves or with the magistrate about those things, he
adds, provided it be not in the presence of young or profane persons.
A bishop has left in writing that at the other end of the world there is
an isle, by the ancients called Dioscorides, abundantly fertile in all
sorts of trees and fruits, and of an exceedingly healthful air; the
inhabitants of which are Christians, having churches and altars, only
adorned with crosses without any other images, great observers of fasts
and feasts, exact payers of their tithes to the priests, and so chaste,
that none of them is permitted to have to do with more than one woman in
his life—[What Osorius says is that these people only had one wife
at a time.]—as to the rest, so content with their condition, that
environed with the sea they know nothing of navigation, and so simple that
they understand not one syllable of the religion they profess and wherein
they are so devout: a thing incredible to such as do not know that the
Pagans, who are so zealous idolaters, know nothing more of their gods than
their bare names and their statues. The ancient beginning of 'Menalippus',
a tragedy of Euripides, ran thus:
"O Jupiter! for that name alone
Of what thou art to me is known."
I have also known in my time some men's writings found fault with for
being purely human and philosophical, without any mixture of theology; and
yet, with some show of reason, it might, on the contrary, be said that the
divine doctrine, as queen and regent of the rest, better keeps her state
apart, that she ought to be sovereign throughout, not subsidiary and
suffragan, and that, peradventure, grammatical, rhetorical, logical
examples may elsewhere be more suitably chosen, as also the material for
the stage, games, and public entertainments, than from so sacred a matter;
that divine reasons are considered with greater veneration and attention
by themselves, and in their own proper style, than when mixed with and
adapted to human discourse; that it is a fault much more often observed
that the divines write too humanly, than that the humanists write not
theologically enough. Philosophy, says St. Chrysostom, has long been
banished the holy schools, as an handmaid altogether useless and thought
unworthy to look, so much as in passing by the door, into the sanctuary of
the holy treasures of the celestial doctrine; that the human way of
speaking is of a much lower form and ought not to adopt for herself the
dignity and majesty of divine eloquence. Let who will 'verbis
indisciplinatis' talk of fortune, destiny, accident, good and evil hap,
and other suchlike phrases, according to his own humour; I for my part
propose fancies merely human and merely my own, and that simply as human
fancies, and separately considered, not as determined by any decree from
heaven, incapable of doubt or dispute; matter of opinion, not matter of
faith; things which I discourse of according to my own notions, not as I
believe, according to God; after a laical, not clerical, and yet always
after a very religious manner, as children prepare their exercises, not to
instruct but to be instructed.
And might it not be said, that an edict enjoining all people but such as
are public professors of divinity, to be very reserved in writing of
religion, would carry with it a very good colour of utility and justice
—and to me, amongst the rest peradventure, to hold my prating? I
have been told that even those who are not of our Church nevertheless
amongst themselves expressly forbid the name of God to be used in common
discourse, nor so much even by way of interjection, exclamation, assertion
of a truth, or comparison; and I think them in the right: upon what
occasion soever we call upon God to accompany and assist us, it ought
always to be done with the greatest reverence and devotion.
There is, as I remember, a passage in Xenophon where he tells us that we
ought so much the more seldom to call upon God, by how much it is hard to
compose our souls to such a degree of calmness, patience, and devotion as
it ought to be in at such a time; otherwise our prayers are not only vain
and fruitless, but vicious: "forgive us," we say, "our trespasses, as we
forgive them that trespass against us"; what do we mean by this petition
but that we present to God a soul free from all rancour and revenge? And
yet we make nothing of invoking God's assistance in our vices, and
inviting Him into our unjust designs:
"Quae, nisi seductis, nequeas committere divis"
["Which you can only impart to the gods, when you have gained them
over."—Persius, ii. 4.]
the covetous man prays for the conservation of his vain and superfluous
riches; the ambitious for victory and the good conduct of his fortune; the
thief calls Him to his assistance, to deliver him from the dangers and
difficulties that obstruct his wicked designs, or returns Him thanks for
the facility he has met with in cutting a man's throat; at the door of the
house men are going to storm or break into by force of a petard, they fall
to prayers for success, their intentions and hopes of cruelty, avarice,
and lust.
"Hoc igitur, quo to Jovis aurem impellere tentas,
Dic agedum Staio: 'proh Jupiter! O bone, clamet,
Jupiter!' At sese non clamet Jupiter ipse."
["This therefore, with which you seek to draw the ear of Jupiter,
say to Staius. 'O Jupiter! O good Jupiter!' let him cry. Think
you Jupiter himself would not cry out upon it?"—Persius, ii. 21.]
Marguerite, Queen of Navarre,—[In the Heptameron.]—tells of a
young prince, who, though she does not name him, is easily enough by his
great qualities to be known, who going upon an amorous assignation to lie
with an advocate's wife of Paris, his way thither being through a church,
he never passed that holy place going to or returning from his pious
exercise, but he always kneeled down to pray. Wherein he would employ the
divine favour, his soul being full of such virtuous meditations, I leave
others to judge, which, nevertheless, she instances for a testimony of
singular devotion. But this is not the only proof we have that women are
not very fit to treat of theological affairs.
A true prayer and religious reconciling of ourselves to Almighty God
cannot enter into an impure soul, subject at the very time to the dominion
of Satan. He who calls God to his assistance whilst in a course of vice,
does as if a cut-purse should call a magistrate to help him, or like those
who introduce the name of God to the attestation of a lie.
"Tacito mala vota susurro
Concipimus."
["We whisper our guilty prayers."—-Lucan, v. 104.]
There are few men who durst publish to the world the prayers they make to
Almighty God:
"Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque, humilesque susurros
Tollere de templis, et aperto vivere voto"
["'Tis not convenient for every one to bring the prayers he mutters
out of the temple, and to give his wishes to the public ear.
—"Persius, ii. 6.]
and this is the reason why the Pythagoreans would have them always public
and heard by every one, to the end they might not prefer indecent or
unjust petitions as this man:
"Clare quum dixit, Apollo!
Labra movet, metuens audiri: Pulcra Laverna,
Da mihi fallere, da justum sanctumque videri;
Noctem peccatis, et fraudibus objice nubem."
["When he has clearly said Apollo! he moves his lips, fearful to be
heard; he murmurs: O fair Laverna, grant me the talent to deceive;
grant me to appear holy and just; shroud my sins with night, and
cast a cloud over my frauds."—Horace, Ep., i. 16, 59.—(Laverna
was the goddess of thieves.)]
The gods severely punished the wicked prayers of OEdipus in granting them:
he had prayed that his children might amongst themselves determine the
succession to his throne by arms, and was so miserable as to see himself
taken at his word. We are not to pray that all things may go as we would
have them, but as most concurrent with prudence.
We seem, in truth, to make use of our prayers as of a kind of jargon, and
as those do who employ holy words about sorceries and magical operations;
and as if we reckoned the benefit we are to reap from them as depending
upon the contexture, sound, and jingle of words, or upon the grave
composing of the countenance. For having the soul contaminated with
concupiscence, not touched with repentance, or comforted by any late
reconciliation with God, we go to present Him such words as the memory
suggests to the tongue, and hope from thence to obtain the remission of
our sins. There is nothing so easy, so sweet, and so favourable, as the
divine law: it calls and invites us to her, guilty and abominable as we
are; extends her arms and receives us into her bosom, foul and polluted as
we at present are, and are for the future to be. But then, in return, we
are to look upon her with a respectful eye; we are to receive this pardon
with all gratitude and submission, and for that instant at least, wherein
we address ourselves to her, to have the soul sensible of the ills we have
committed, and at enmity with those passions that seduced us to offend
her; neither the gods nor good men (says Plato) will accept the present of
a wicked man:
"Immunis aram si terigit manus,
Non sumptuosa blandior hostia
Mollivit aversos Penates
Farre pio et saliente mica."
["If a pure hand has touched the altar, the pious offering of a
small cake and a few grains of salt will appease the offended gods
more effectually than costly sacrifices."
—Horace, Od., iii. 23, 17.]
CHAPTER LVII——OF AGE
I cannot allow of the way in which we settle for ourselves the duration of
our life. I see that the sages contract it very much in comparison of the
common opinion: "what," said the younger Cato to those who would stay his
hand from killing himself, "am I now of an age to be reproached that I go
out of the world too soon?" And yet he was but eight-and-forty years old.
He thought that to be a mature and advanced age, considering how few
arrive unto it. And such as, soothing their thoughts with I know not what
course of nature, promise to themselves some years beyond it, could they
be privileged from the infinite number of accidents to which we are by a
natural subjection exposed, they might have some reason so to do. What am
idle conceit is it to expect to die of a decay of strength, which is the
effect of extremest age, and to propose to ourselves no shorter lease of
life than that, considering it is a kind of death of all others the most
rare and very seldom seen? We call that only a natural death; as if it
were contrary to nature to see a man break his neck with a fall, be
drowned in shipwreck, be snatched away with a pleurisy or the plague, and
as if our ordinary condition did not expose us to these inconveniences.
Let us no longer flatter ourselves with these fine words; we ought rather,
peradventure, to call that natural which is general, common, and
universal.
To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and,
therefore, so much less natural than the others; 'tis the last and
extremest sort of dying: and the more remote, the less to be hoped for. It
is, indeed, the bourn beyond which we are not to pass, and which the law
of nature has set as a limit, not to be exceeded; but it is, withal, a
privilege she is rarely seen to give us to last till then. 'Tis a lease
she only signs by particular favour, and it may be to one only in the
space of two or three ages, and then with a pass to boot, to carry him
through all the traverses and difficulties she has strewed in the way of
this long career. And therefore my opinion is, that when once forty years
we should consider it as an age to which very few arrive. For seeing that
men do not usually proceed so far, it is a sign that we are pretty well
advanced; and since we have exceeded the ordinary bounds, which is the
just measure of life, we ought not to expect to go much further; having
escaped so many precipices of death, whereinto we have seen so many other
men fall, we should acknowledge that so extraordinary a fortune as that
which has hitherto rescued us from those eminent perils, and kept us alive
beyond the ordinary term of living, is not like to continue long.
'Tis a fault in our very laws to maintain this error: these say that a man
is not capable of managing his own estate till he be five-and-twenty years
old, whereas he will have much ado to manage his life so long. Augustus
cut off five years from the ancient Roman standard, and declared that
thirty years old was sufficient for a judge. Servius Tullius superseded
the knights of above seven-and-forty years of age from the fatigues of
war; Augustus dismissed them at forty-five; though methinks it seems a
little unreasonable that men should be sent to the fireside till
five-and-fifty or sixty years of age. I should be of opinion that our
vocation and employment should be as far as possible extended for the
public good: I find the fault on the other side, that they do not employ
us early enough. This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at nineteen,
and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to determine
a dispute about a gutter.
For my part, I believe our souls are adult at twenty as much as they are
ever like to be, and as capable then as ever. A soul that has not by that
time given evident earnest of its force and virtue will never after come
to proof. The natural qualities and virtues produce what they have of
vigorous and fine, within that term or never,
"Si l'espine rion picque quand nai,
A pene que picque jamai,"
["If the thorn does not prick at its birth,
'twill hardly ever prick at all."]
as they say in Dauphin.
Of all the great human actions I ever heard or read of, of what sort
soever, I have observed, both in former ages and our own, more were
performed before the age of thirty than after; and this ofttimes in the
very lives of the same men. May I not confidently instance in those of
Hannibal and his great rival Scipio? The better half of their lives they
lived upon the glory they had acquired in their youth; great men after,
'tis true, in comparison of others; but by no means in comparison of
themselves. As to my own particular, I do certainly believe that since
that age, both my understanding and my constitution have rather decayed
than improved, and retired rather than advanced. 'Tis possible, that with
those who make the best use of their time, knowledge and experience may
increase with their years; but vivacity, promptitude, steadiness, and
other pieces of us, of much greater importance, and much more essentially
our own, languish and decay:
"Ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus aevi
Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus,
Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque, mensque."
["When once the body is shaken by the violence of time,
blood and vigour ebbing away, the judgment halts,
the tongue and the mind dote."—Lucretius, iii. 452.]
Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind; and I have
seen enough who have got a weakness in their brains before either in their
legs or stomach; and by how much the more it is a disease of no great pain
to the sufferer, and of obscure symptoms, so much greater is the danger.
For this reason it is that I complain of our laws, not that they keep us
too long to our work, but that they set us to work too late. For the
frailty of life considered, and to how many ordinary and natural rocks it
is exposed, one ought not to give up so large a portion of it to
childhood, idleness, and apprenticeship.
[Which Cotton thus renders: "Birth though noble, ought not to share
so large a vacancy, and so tedious a course of education." Florio
(1613) makes the passage read as-follows: "Methinks that,
considering the weakness of our life, and seeing the infinite number
of ordinary rocks and natural dangers it is subject unto, we should
not, so soon as we come into the world, allot so large a share
thereof unto unprofitable wantonness in youth, ill-breeding
idleness, and slow-learning prentisage."]
BOOK THE SECOND
CHAPTER I——OF THE INCONSTANCY OF OUR ACTIONS
Such as make it their business to oversee human actions, do not find
themselves in anything so much perplexed as to reconcile them and bring
them into the world's eye with the same lustre and reputation; for they
commonly so strangely contradict one another that it seems impossible they
should proceed from one and the same person. We find the younger Marius
one while a son of Mars and another a son of Venus. Pope Boniface VIII.
entered, it is said, into his Papacy like a fox, behaved himself in it
like a lion, and died like a dog; and who could believe it to be the same
Nero, the perfect image of all cruelty, who, having the sentence of a
condemned man brought to him to sign, as was the custom, cried out, "O
that I had never been taught to write!" so much it went to his heart to
condemn a man to death. All story is full of such examples, and every man
is able to produce so many to himself, or out of his own practice or
observation, that I sometimes wonder to see men of understanding give
themselves the trouble of sorting these pieces, considering that
irresolution appears to me to be the most common and manifest vice of our
nature witness the famous verse of the player Publius:
"Malum consilium est, quod mutari non potest."
["'Tis evil counsel that will admit no change."
—Pub. Mim., ex Aul. Gell., xvii. 14.]
There seems some reason in forming a judgment of a man from the most usual
methods of his life; but, considering the natural instability of our
manners and opinions, I have often thought even the best authors a little
out in so obstinately endeavouring to make of us any constant and solid
contexture; they choose a general air of a man, and according to that
interpret all his actions, of which, if they cannot bend some to a
uniformity with the rest, they are presently imputed to dissimulation.
Augustus has escaped them, for there was in him so apparent, sudden, and
continual variety of actions all the whole course of his life, that he has
slipped away clear and undecided from the most daring critics. I can more
hardly believe a man's constancy than any other virtue, and believe
nothing sooner than the contrary. He that would judge of a man in detail
and distinctly, bit by bit, would oftener be able to speak the truth. It
is a hard matter, from all antiquity, to pick out a dozen men who have
formed their lives to one certain and constant course, which is the
principal design of wisdom; for to comprise it all in one word, says one
of the ancients, and to contract all the rules of human life into one, "it
is to will, and not to will, always one and the same thing: I will not
vouchsafe," says he, "to add, provided the will be just, for if it be not
just, it is impossible it should be always one." I have indeed formerly
learned that vice is nothing but irregularity, and want of measure, and
therefore 'tis impossible to fix constancy to it. 'Tis a saying of.
Demosthenes, "that the beginning oh all virtue is consultation and
deliberation; the end and perfection, constancy." If we would resolve on
any certain course by reason, we should pitch upon the best, but nobody
has thought on't:
"Quod petit, spernit; repetit, quod nuper omisit;
AEstuat, et vitae disconvenit ordine toto."
["That which he sought he despises; what he lately lost, he seeks
again. He fluctuates, and is inconsistent in the whole order of
life."—Horace, Ep., i. I, 98.]
Our ordinary practice is to follow the inclinations of our appetite, be it
to the left or right, upwards or downwards, according as we are wafted by
the breath of occasion. We never meditate what we would have till the
instant we have a mind to have it; and change like that little creature
which receives its colour from what it is laid upon. What we but just now
proposed to ourselves we immediately alter, and presently return again to
it; 'tis nothing but shifting and inconsistency:
"Ducimur, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum."
["We are turned about like the top with the thong of others."
—Idem, Sat., ii. 7, 82.]
We do not go, we are driven; like things that float, now leisurely, then
with violence, according to the gentleness or rapidity of the current:
"Nonne videmus,
Quid sibi quisque velit, nescire, et quaerere semper
Commutare locum, quasi onus deponere possit?"
["Do we not see them, uncertain what they want, and always asking
for something new, as if they could get rid of the burthen."
—Lucretius, iii. 1070.]
Every day a new whimsy, and our humours keep motion with the time.
"Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse
Juppiter auctificas lustravit lumine terras."
["Such are the minds of men, that they change as the light with
which father Jupiter himself has illumined the increasing earth."
—Cicero, Frag. Poet, lib. x.]
We fluctuate betwixt various inclinations; we will nothing freely, nothing
absolutely, nothing constantly. In any one who had prescribed and
established determinate laws and rules in his head for his own conduct, we
should perceive an equality of manners, an order and an infallible
relation of one thing or action to another, shine through his whole life;
Empedocles observed this discrepancy in the Agrigentines, that they gave
themselves up to delights, as if every day was their last, and built as if
they had been to live for ever. The judgment would not be hard to make, as
is very evident in the younger Cato; he who therein has found one step, it
will lead him to all the rest; 'tis a harmony of very according sounds,
that cannot jar. But with us 't is quite contrary; every particular action
requires a particular judgment. The surest way to steer, in my opinion,
would be to take our measures from the nearest allied circumstances,
without engaging in a longer inquisition, or without concluding any other
consequence. I was told, during the civil disorders of our poor kingdom,
that a maid, hard by the place where I then was, had thrown herself out of
a window to avoid being forced by a common soldier who was quartered in
the house; she was not killed by the fall, and therefore, repeating her
attempt would have cut her own throat, had she not been prevented; but
having, nevertheless, wounded herself to some show of danger, she
voluntarily confessed that the soldier had not as yet importuned her
otherwise; than by courtship, earnest solicitation, and presents; but that
she was afraid that in the end he would have proceeded to violence, all
which she delivered with such a countenance and accent, and withal embrued
in her own blood, the highest testimony of her virtue, that she appeared
another Lucretia; and yet I have since been very well assured that both
before and after she was not so difficult a piece. And, according to my
host's tale in Ariosto, be as handsome a man and as worthy a gentleman as
you will, do not conclude too much upon your mistress's inviolable
chastity for having been repulsed; you do not know but she may have a
better stomach to your muleteer.
Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favour
and esteem for his valour, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him
of a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished,
and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work than
before, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him: "Yourself, sir,"
replied the other, "by having eased me of the pains that made me weary of
my life." Lucullus's soldier having been rifled by the enemy, performed
upon them in revenge a brave exploit, by which having made himself a
gainer, Lucullus, who had conceived a good opinion of him from that
action, went about to engage him in some enterprise of very great danger,
with all the plausible persuasions and promises he could think of;
"Verbis, quae timido quoque possent addere mentem"
["Words which might add courage to any timid man."
—Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 1, 2.]
"Pray employ," answered he, "some miserable plundered soldier in that
affair":
"Quantumvis rusticus, ibit,
Ibit eo, quo vis, qui zonam perdidit, inquit;"
["Some poor fellow, who has lost his purse, will go whither you
wish, said he."—Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 39.]
and flatly refused to go. When we read that Mahomet having furiously rated
Chasan, Bassa of the Janissaries, because he had seen the Hungarians break
into his squadrons, and himself behave very ill in the business, and that
Chasan, instead of any other answer, rushed furiously alone, scimitar in
hand, into the first body of the enemy, where he was presently cut to
pieces, we are not to look upon that action, peradventure, so much as
vindication as a turn of mind, not so much natural valour as a sudden
despite. The man you saw yesterday so adventurous and brave, you must not
think it strange to see him as great a poltroon the next: anger,
necessity, company, wine, or the sound of the trumpet had roused his
spirits; this is no valour formed and established by reason, but
accidentally created by such circumstances, and therefore it is no wonder
if by contrary circumstances it appear quite another thing.
These supple variations and contradictions so manifest in us, have given
occasion to some to believe that man has two souls; other two distinct
powers that always accompany and incline us, the one towards good and the
other towards ill, according to their own nature and propension; so abrupt
a variety not being imaginable to flow from one and the same source.
For my part, the puff of every accident not only carries me along with it
according to its own proclivity, but moreover I discompose and trouble
myself by the instability of my own posture; and whoever will look
narrowly into his own bosom, will hardly find himself twice in the same
condition. I give to my soul sometimes one face and sometimes another,
according to the side I turn her to. If I speak variously of myself, it is
because I consider myself variously; all the contrarieties are there to be
found in one corner or another; after one fashion or another: bashful,
insolent; chaste, lustful; prating, silent; laborious, delicate;
ingenious, heavy; melancholic, pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant;
liberal, covetous, and prodigal: I find all this in myself, more or less,
according as I turn myself about; and whoever will sift himself to the
bottom, will find in himself, and even in his own judgment, this
volubility and discordance. I have nothing to say of myself entirely,
simply, and solidly without mixture and confusion. 'Distinguo' is the most
universal member of my logic. Though I always intend to speak well of good
things, and rather to interpret such things as fall out in the best sense
than otherwise, yet such is the strangeness of our condition, that we are
often pushed on to do well even by vice itself, if well-doing were not
judged by the intention only. One gallant action, therefore, ought not to
conclude a man valiant; if a man were brave indeed, he would be always so,
and upon all occasions. If it were a habit of valour and not a sally, it
would render a man equally resolute in all accidents; the same alone as in
company; the same in lists as in a battle: for, let them say what they
will, there is not one valour for the pavement and another for the field;
he would bear a sickness in his bed as bravely as a wound in the field,
and no more fear death in his own house than at an assault. We should not
then see the same man charge into a breach with a brave assurance, and
afterwards torment himself like a woman for the loss of a trial at law or
the death of a child; when, being an infamous coward, he is firm in the
necessities of poverty; when he shrinks at the sight of a barber's razor,
and rushes fearless upon the swords of the enemy, the action is
commendable, not the man.
Many of the Greeks, says Cicero,—[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 27.]—
cannot endure the sight of an enemy, and yet are courageous in sickness;
the Cimbrians and Celtiberians quite contrary;
"Nihil enim potest esse aequabile,
quod non a certa ratione proficiscatur."
["Nothing can be regular that does not proceed from a fixed ground
of reason."—Idem, ibid., c. 26.]
No valour can be more extreme in its kind than that of Alexander: but it
is of but one kind, nor full enough throughout, nor universal.
Incomparable as it is, it has yet some blemishes; of which his being so
often at his wits' end upon every light suspicion of his captains
conspiring against his life, and the carrying himself in that inquisition
with so much vehemence and indiscreet injustice, and with a fear that
subverted his natural reason, is one pregnant instance. The superstition,
also, with which he was so much tainted, carries along with it some image
of pusillanimity; and the excess of his penitence for the murder of Clytus
is also a testimony of the unevenness of his courage. All we perform is no
other than a cento, as a man may say, of several pieces, and we would
acquire honour by a false title. Virtue cannot be followed but for
herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some other purpose, she
presently pulls it away again. 'Tis a vivid and strong tincture which,
when the soul has once thoroughly imbibed it, will not out but with the
piece. And, therefore, to make a right judgment of a man, we are long and
very observingly to follow his trace: if constancy does not there stand
firm upon her own proper base,
"Cui vivendi via considerata atque provisa est,"
["If the way of his life is thoroughly considered and traced out."
—Cicero, Paradox, v. 1.]
if the variety of occurrences makes him alter his pace (his path, I mean,
for the pace may be faster or slower) let him go; such an one runs before
the wind, "Avau le dent," as the motto of our Talebot has it.
'Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great a
dominion over us, since it is by chance we live. It is not possible for
any one who has not designed his life for some certain end, it is
impossible for any one to arrange the pieces, who has not the whole form
already contrived in his imagination. Of what use are colours to him that
knows not what he is to paint? No one lays down a certain design for his
life, and we only deliberate thereof by pieces. The archer ought first to
know at what he is to aim, and then accommodate his arm, bow, string,
shaft, and motion to it; our counsels deviate and wander, because not
levelled to any determinate end. No wind serves him who addresses his
voyage to no certain, port. I cannot acquiesce in the judgment given by
one in the behalf of Sophocles, who concluded him capable of the
management of domestic affairs, against the accusation of his son, from
having read one of his tragedies.
Neither do I allow of the conjecture of the Parians, sent to regulate the
Milesians sufficient for such a consequence as they from thence derived
coming to visit the island, they took notice of such grounds as were best
husbanded, and such country-houses as were best governed; and having taken
the names of the owners, when they had assembled the citizens, they
appointed these farmers for new governors and magistrates; concluding that
they, who had been so provident in their own private concerns, would be so
of the public too. We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a
contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there
is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others:
"Magnam rem puta, unum hominem agere."
["Esteem it a great thing always to act as one and the same
man."—Seneca, Ep., 150.]
Since ambition can teach man valour, temperance, and liberality, and even
justice too; seeing that avarice can inspire the courage of a shop-boy,
bred and nursed up in obscurity and ease, with the assurance to expose
himself so far from the fireside to the mercy of the waves and angry
Neptune in a frail boat; that she further teaches discretion and prudence;
and that even Venus can inflate boys under the discipline of the rod with
boldness and resolution, and infuse masculine courage into the heart of
tender virgins in their mothers' arms:
"Hac duce, custodes furtim transgressa jacentes,
Ad juvenem tenebris sola puella venit:"
["She leading, the maiden, furtively passing by the recumbent
guards, goes alone in the darkness to the youth."
—Tibullus, ii. 2, 75.]
'tis not all the understanding has to do, simply to judge us by our
outward actions; it must penetrate the very soul, and there discover by
what springs the motion is guided. But that being a high and hazardous
undertaking, I could wish that fewer would attempt it.
CHAPTER II——OF DRUNKENNESS
The world is nothing but variety and disemblance, vices are all alike, as
they are vices, and peradventure the Stoics understand them so; but
although they are equally vices, yet they are not all equal vices; and he
who has transgressed the ordinary bounds a hundred paces:
"Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum,"
["Beyond or within which the right cannot exist."
—Horace, Sat., i, 1, 107.]
should not be in a worse condition than he that has advanced but ten, is
not to be believed; or that sacrilege is not worse than stealing a
cabbage:
"Nec vincet ratio hoc, tantumdem ut peccet, idemque,
Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti,
Et qui nocturnus divum sacra legerit."
There is in this as great diversity as in anything whatever. The
confounding of the order and measure of sins is dangerous: murderers,
traitors, and tyrants get too much by it, and it is not reasonable they
should flatter their consciences, because another man is idle, lascivious,
or not assiduous at his devotion. Every one overrates the offence of his
companions, but extenuates his own. Our very instructors themselves rank
them sometimes, in my opinion, very ill. As Socrates said that the
principal office of wisdom was to distinguish good from evil, we, the best
of whom are vicious, ought also to say the same of the science of
distinguishing betwixt vice and vice, without which, and that very exactly
performed, the virtuous and the wicked will remain confounded and
unrecognised.
Now, amongst the rest, drunkenness seems to me to be a gross and brutish
vice. The soul has greater part in the rest, and there are some vices that
have something, if a man may so say, of generous in them; there are vices
wherein there is a mixture of knowledge, diligence, valour, prudence,
dexterity, and address; this one is totally corporeal and earthly. And the
rudest nation this day in Europe is that alone where it is in fashion.
Other vices discompose the understanding: this totally overthrows it and
renders the body stupid:
"Cum vini vis penetravit . . .
Consequitur gravitas membrorum, praepediuntur
Crura vacillanti, tardescit lingua, madet mens,
Nant oculi; clamor, singultus, jurgia, gliscunt."
["When the power of wine has penetrated us, a heaviness of the limbs
follows, the legs of the tottering person are impeded; the tongue
grows torpid, the mind is dimmed, the eyes swim; noise, hiccup, and
quarrels arise.—"Lucretius, i. 3, 475.]
The worst state of man is that wherein he loses the knowledge and
government of himself. And 'tis said amongst other things upon this
subject, that, as the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the top
whatever it has in the bottom, so wine, in those who have drunk beyond
measure, vents the most inward secrets:
"Tu sapientum
Curas et arcanum jocoso
Consilium retegis Lyaeo."
["Thou disclosest to the merry Lyacus the cares and secret
counsel of the wise."—Horace, Od., xxi. 1, 114.]
[Lyacus, a name given to Bacchus.]
Josephus tells us that by giving an ambassador the enemy had sent to him
his full dose of liquor, he wormed out his secrets. And yet, Augustus,
committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who
conquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more than
Tiberias did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels, though we
know they were both so given to drink that they have often been fain to
carry both the one and the other drunk out of the Senate:
"Hesterno inflatum venas ut semper, Lyaeo."
["Their veins full, as usual, of yesterday's wine."
—Virgil, Egl., vi. 15.]
And the design of killing Caesar was as safely communicated to Cimber,
though he would often be drunk, as to Cassius, who drank nothing but
water.
[As to which Cassius pleasantly said: "What, shall I bear
a tyrant, I who cannot bear wine?"]
We see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know their post, remember the
word, and keep to their ranks:
"Nec facilis victoria de madidis, et
Blaesis, atque mero titubantibus."
["Nor is a victory easily obtained over men so drunk, they can
scarce speak or stand."—Juvenal, Sat., xv. 47.]
I could not have believed there had been so profound, senseless, and dead
a degree of drunkenness had I not read in history that Attalus having, to
put a notable affront upon him, invited to supper the same Pausanias, who
upon the very same occasion afterwards killed Philip of Macedon, a king
who by his excellent qualities gave sufficient testimony of his education
in the house and company of Epaminondas, made him drink to such a pitch
that he could after abandon his beauty, as of a hedge strumpet, to the
muleteers and servants of the basest office in the house. And I have been
further told by a lady whom I highly honour and esteem, that near Bordeaux
and about Castres where she lives, a country woman, a widow of chaste
repute, perceiving in herself the first symptoms of breeding, innocently
told her neighbours that if she had a husband she should think herself
with child; but the causes of suspicion every day more and more
increasing, and at last growing up to a manifest proof, the poor woman was
reduced to the necessity of causing it to be proclaimed in her parish
church, that whoever had done that deed and would frankly confess it, she
did not only promise to forgive, but moreover to marry him, if he liked
the motion; whereupon a young fellow that served her in the quality of a
labourer, encouraged by this proclamation, declared that he had one
holiday found her, having taken too much of the bottle, so fast asleep by
the chimney and in so indecent a posture, that he could conveniently do
his business without waking her; and they yet live together man and wife.
It is true that antiquity has not much decried this vice; the writings
even of several philosophers speak very tenderly of it, and even amongst
the Stoics there are some who advise folks to give themselves sometimes
the liberty to drink, nay, to drunkenness, to refresh the soul:
"Hoc quoque virtutum quondam certamine, magnum
Socratem palmam promeruisse ferunt."
["In this trial of power formerly they relate that the great
Socrates deserved the palm."—Cornet. Gallus, Ep., i. 47.]
That censor and reprover of others, Cato, was reproached that he was a
hard drinker:
"Narratur et prisci Catonis
Saepe mero caluisse virtus."
["And of old Cato it is said, that his courage was often warmed with
wine."—Horace, Od., xxi. 3, 11.—Cato the Elder.]
Cyrus, that so renowned king, amongst the other qualities by which he
claimed to be preferred before his brother Artaxerxes, urged this
excellence, that he could drink a great deal more than he. And in the best
governed nations this trial of skill in drinking is very much in use. I
have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that lest the
digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were not amiss
once a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest they
should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that the Persians used
to consult about their most important affairs after being well warmed with
wine.
My taste and constitution are greater enemies to this vice than my
discourse; for besides that I easily submit my belief to the authority of
ancient opinions, I look upon it indeed as an unmanly and stupid vice, but
less malicious and hurtful than the others, which, almost all, more
directly jostle public society. And if we cannot please ourselves but it
must cost us something, as they hold, I find this vice costs a man's
conscience less than the others, besides that it is of no difficult
preparation, nor hard to be found, a consideration not altogether to be
despised. A man well advanced both in dignity and age, amongst three
principal commodities that he said remained to him of life, reckoned to me
this for one, and where would a man more justly find it than amongst the
natural conveniences? But he did not take it right, for delicacy and the
curious choice of wines is therein to be avoided. If you found your
pleasure upon drinking of the best, you condemn yourself to the penance of
drinking of the worst. Your taste must be more indifferent and free; so
delicate a palate is not required to make a good toper. The Germans drink
almost indifferently of all wines with delight; their business is to pour
down and not to taste; and it's so much the better for them: their
pleasure is so much the more plentiful and nearer at hand.
Secondly, to drink, after the French fashion, but at two meals, and then
very moderately, is to be too sparing of the favours of the god. There is
more time and constancy required than so. The ancients spent whole nights
in this exercise, and ofttimes added the day following to eke it out, and
therefore we are to take greater liberty and stick closer to our work. I
have seen a great lord of my time, a man of high enterprise and famous
success, that without setting himself to't, and after his ordinary rate of
drinking at meals, drank not much less than five quarts of wine, and at
his going away appeared but too wise and discreet, to the detriment of our
affairs. The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course of our lives ought
to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it; we should, like
shopboys and labourers, refuse no occasion nor omit any opportunity of
drinking, and always have it in our minds. Methinks we every day abridge
and curtail the use of wine, and that the after breakfasts, dinner
snatches, and collations I used to see in my father's house, when I was a
boy, were more usual and frequent then than now.
Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no: but it may be we are
more addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercises that
thwart and hinder one another in their vigour. Lechery weakens our stomach
on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce and
amorous for the exercise of love.
'Tis wonderful what strange stories I have heard my father tell of the
chastity of that age wherein he lived. It was for him to say it, being
both by art and nature cut out and finished for the service of ladies. He
spoke well and little: ever mixing his language with some illustration out
of authors most in use, especially in Spanish, and among the Spanish he
whom they called Marcus Aurelius—[ Guevara's Golden Book of Marcus
Aurelius Antoninus.]—was ordinarily in his mouth. His behaviour was
gently grave, humble, and very modest; he was very solicitous of neatness
and propriety both in his person and clothes, whether on horseback or
afoot, he was monstrously punctual in his word; and of a conscience and
religion generally tending rather towards superstition than otherwise. For
a man of little stature, very strong, well proportioned, and well knit; of
a pleasing countenance inclining to brown, and very adroit in all noble
exercises. I have yet in the house to be seen canes poured full of lead,
with which they say he exercised his arms for throwing the bar or the
stone, or in fencing; and shoes with leaden soles to make him lighter for
running or leaping. Of his vaulting he has left little miracles behind
him: I have seen him when past three score laugh at our exercises, and
throw himself in his furred gown into the saddle, make the tour of a table
upon his thumbs and scarce ever mount the stairs into his chamber without
taking three or four steps at a time. But as to what I was speaking of
before; he said there was scarce one woman of quality of ill fame in the
whole province: he would tell of strange confidences, and some of them his
own, with virtuous women, free from any manner of suspicion of ill, and
for his own part solemnly swore he was a virgin at his marriage; and yet
it was after a long practice of arms beyond the mountains, of which wars
he left us a journal under his own hand, wherein he has given a precise
account from point to point of all passages, both relating to the public
and to himself. And he was, moreover, married at a well advanced maturity,
in the year 1528, the three-and-thirtieth year of his age, upon his way
home from Italy. But let us return to our bottles.
The incommodities of old age, that stand in need of some refreshment and
support, might with reason beget in me a desire of this faculty, it being
as it were the last pleasure the course of years deprives us of. The
natural heat, say the good-fellows, first seats itself in the feet: that
concerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middle region, where it makes
a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of human
life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end, like a
vapour that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, where it makes
its final residence, and concludes the progress. I do not, nevertheless,
understand how a man can extend the pleasure of drinking beyond thirst,
and forge in his imagination an appetite artificial and against nature; my
stomach would not proceed so far; it has enough to do to deal with what it
takes in for its necessity. My constitution is not to care for drink but
as following eating and washing down my meat, and for that reason my last
draught is always the greatest. And seeing that in old age we have our
palate furred with phlegms or depraved by some other ill constitution, the
wine tastes better to us as the pores are cleaner washed and laid more
open. At least, I seldom taste the first glass well. Anacharsis wondered
that the Greeks drank in greater glasses towards the end of a meal than at
the beginning; which was, I suppose, for the same reason the Germans do
the same, who then begin the battle of drink.
Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk
till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and
to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that
good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their
youth; who mollifies the passions of the soul, as iron is softened by
fire; and in his Lazes allows such merry meetings, provided they have a
discreet chief to govern and keep them in order, as good and of great
utility; drunkenness being, he says, a true and certain trial of every
one's nature, and, withal, fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert
themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare
not attempt when sober. He, moreover, says that wine is able to supply the
soul with temperance and the body with health. Nevertheless, these
restrictions, in part borrowed from the Carthaginians, please him: that
men forbear excesses in the expeditions of war; that every judge and
magistrate abstain from it when about the administrations of his place or
the consultations of the public affairs; that the day is not to be
employed with it, that being a time due to other occupations, nor the
night on which a man intends to get children.
'Tis said that the philosopher Stilpo, when oppressed with age, purposely
hastened his end by drinking pure wine. The same thing, but not designed
by him, despatched also the philosopher Arcesilaus.
But 'tis an old and pleasant question, whether the soul of a wise man can
be overcome by the strength of wine?
"Si munitae adhibet vim sapientiae."
To what vanity does the good opinion we have of ourselves push us? The
most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to
keep itself upright, and from being overthrown by its own weakness. There
is not one of a thousand that is right and settled so much as one minute
in a whole life, and that may not very well doubt, whether according to
her natural condition she ever can be; but to join constancy to it is her
utmost perfection; I mean when nothing should jostle and discompose her,
which a thousand accidents may do. 'Tis to much purpose that the great
poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy, when, behold! he
goes mad with a love philtre. Is it to be imagined that an apoplexy will
not stun Socrates as well as a porter? Some men have forgotten their own
names by the violence of a disease; and a slight wound has turned the
judgment of others topsy-turvy. Let him be as wise as he will, after all
he is but a man; and than that what is there more frail, more miserable,
or more nothing? Wisdom does not force our natural dispositions,
"Sudores itaque, et pallorem exsistere toto
Corpore, et infringi linguam, vocemque aboriri,
Caligare oculos, sonere aures, succidere artus,
Demque concidere, ex animi terrore, videmus."
["Sweat and paleness come over the whole body, the tongue is
rendered powerless, the voice dies away, the eyes are darkened,
there is ringing in the ears, the limbs sink under us by the
influence of fear."—Lucretius, iii. 155.]
he must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him; he must tremble
upon the margin of a precipice, like a child; nature having reserved these
light marks of her authority, not to be forced by our reason and the stoic
virtue, to teach man his mortality and our weakness; he turns pale with
fear, red with shame, and groans with the cholic, if not with desperate
outcry, at least with hoarse and broken voice:
"Humani a se nihil alienum putet."
["Let him not think himself exempt from that which is incidental to
men in general."—Terence, Heauton, i. 1, 25.]
The poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit their
greatest heroes of tears:
"Sic fatur lacrymans, classique immittit habenas."
["Thus he speaks, weeping, and then sets sail with his fleet."
—Aeneid, vi. i.]
'Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, for
totally to suppress them is not in him to do. Even our great Plutarch,
that excellent and perfect judge of human actions, when he sees Brutus and
Torquatus kill their children, begins to doubt whether virtue could
proceed so far, and to question whether these persons had not rather been
stimulated by some other passion.—[Plutarch, Life of Publicola, c.
3.] —All actions exceeding the ordinary bounds are liable to
sinister interpretation, for as much as our liking no more holds with what
is above than with what is below it.
Let us leave that other sect, that sets up an express profession of
scornful superiority—[The Stoics.]—: but when even in that
sect, reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these rhodomontades of
Metrodorus:
"Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi: omnesque aditus tuos
interclusi ut ad me aspirare non posses;"
["Fortune, I have got the better of thee, and have made all the
avenues so sure thou canst not come at me."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 9.]
when Anaxarchus, by command of Nicocreon the tyrant of Cyprus, was put
into a stone mortar, and laid upon with mauls of iron, ceases not to say,
"Strike, batter, break; 'tis not Anaxarchus, 'tis but his sheath that you
pound and bray so"; when we hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant from
the middle of the flame, "This side is roasted enough, fall to and eat, it
is enough done; fall to work with the other;" when we hear the child in
Josephus' torn piece-meal with pincers, defying Antiochus, and crying out
with a constant and assured voice: "Tyrant, thou losest thy labour, I am
still at ease; where is the pain, where are the torments with which thou
didst so threaten me? Is this all thou canst do? My constancy torments
thee more than thy cruelty does me. O pitiful coward, thou faintest, and I
grow stronger; make me complain, make me bend, make me yield if thou
canst; encourage thy guards, cheer up thy executioners; see, see they
faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew, spur them up";
truly, a man must confess that there is some phrenzy, some fury, how holy
soever, that at that time possesses those souls. When we come to these
Stoical sallies: "I had rather be mad than voluptuous," a saying of
Antisthenes. When Sextius tells us, "he had rather be fettered with
affliction than pleasure": when Epicurus takes upon him to play with his
gout, and, refusing health and ease, defies all torments, and despising
the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covets and calls
out for others sharper, more violent, and more worthy of him;
"Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votis
Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem:"
["And instead of timid beasts, wishes the foaming boar or tawny lion
would come from the mountain."—AEneid, iv. 158.]
who but must conclude that these are wild sallies pushed on by a courage
that has broken loose from its place? Our soul cannot from her own seat
reach so high; 'tis necessary she must leave it, raise herself up, and,
taking the bridle in her teeth, transport her man so far that he shall
afterwards himself be astonished at what he has done; as, in war, the heat
of battle impels generous soldiers to perform things of so infinite
danger, as afterwards, recollecting them, they themselves are the first to
wonder at; as it also fares with the poets, who are often rapt with
admiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find the
track through which they performed so fine a Career; which also is in them
called fury and rapture. And as Plato says, 'tis to no purpose for a
sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy: so Aristotle says, that no
excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness; and he has reason to
call all transports, how commendable soever, that surpass our own judgment
and understanding, madness; forasmuch as wisdom is a regular government of
the soul, which is carried on with measure and proportion, and for which
she is to herself responsible. Plato argues thus, that the faculty of
prophesying is so far above us, that we must be out of ourselves when we
meddle with it, and our prudence must either be obstructed by sleep or
sickness, or lifted from her place by some celestial rapture.
CHAPTER III——A CUSTOM OF THE ISLE OF CEA
[Cos. Cea is the form of the name given by Pliny]
If to philosophise be, as 'tis defined, to doubt, much more to write at
random and play the fool, as I do, ought to be reputed doubting, for it is
for novices and freshmen to inquire and to dispute, and for the chairman
to moderate and determine.
My moderator is the authority of the divine will, that governs us without
contradiction, and that is seated above these human and vain
contestations.
Philip having forcibly entered into Peloponnesus, and some one saying to
Damidas that the Lacedaemonians were likely very much to suffer if they
did not in time reconcile themselves to his favour: "Why, you pitiful
fellow," replied he, "what can they suffer who do not fear to die?" It
being also asked of Agis, which way a man might live free? "Why," said he,
"by despising death." These, and a thousand other sayings to the same
purpose, distinctly sound of something more than the patient attending the
stroke of death when it shall come; for there are several accidents in
life far worse to suffer than death itself. Witness the Lacedaemonian boy
taken by Antigonus, and sold for a slave, who being by his master
commanded to some base employment: "Thou shalt see," says the boy, "whom
thou hast bought; it would be a shame for me to serve, being so near the
reach of liberty," and having so said, threw himself from the top of the
house. Antipater severely threatening the Lacedaemonians, that he might
the better incline them to acquiesce in a certain demand of his: "If thou
threatenest us with more than death," replied they, "we shall the more
willingly die"; and to Philip, having written them word that he would
frustrate all their enterprises: "What, wilt thou also hinder us from
dying?" This is the meaning of the sentence, "That the wise man lives as
long as he ought, not so long as he can; and that the most obliging
present Nature has made us, and which takes from us all colour of
complaint of our condition, is to have delivered into our own custody the
keys of life; she has only ordered, one door into life, but a hundred
thousand ways out. We may be straitened for earth to live upon, but earth
sufficient to die upon can never be wanting, as Boiocalus answered the
Romans."—[Tacitus, Annal., xiii. 56.]—Why dost thou complain
of this world? it detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the cause, if
thou livest in pain. There needs no more to die but to will to die:
"Ubique mors est; optime hoc cavit deus.
Eripere vitam nemo non homini potest;
At nemo mortem; mille ad hanc aditus patent."
["Death is everywhere: heaven has well provided for that. Any one
may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death. To death
there are a thousand avenues."—Seneca, Theb:, i, I, 151.]
Neither is it a recipe for one disease only; death is the infallible cure
of all; 'tis a most assured port that is never to be feared, and very
often to be sought. It comes all to one, whether a man give himself his
end, or stays to receive it by some other means; whether he pays before
his day, or stay till his day of payment come; from whencesoever it comes,
it is still his; in what part soever the thread breaks, there's the end of
the clue. The most voluntary death is the finest. Life depends upon the
pleasure of others; death upon our own. We ought not to accommodate
ourselves to our own humour in anything so much as in this. Reputation is
not concerned in such an enterprise; 'tis folly to be concerned by any
such apprehension. Living is slavery if the liberty of dying be wanting.
The ordinary method of cure is carried on at the expense of life; they
torment us with caustics, incisions, and amputations of limbs; they
interdict aliment and exhaust our blood; one step farther and we are cured
indeed and effectually. Why is not the jugular vein as much at our
disposal as the median vein? For a desperate disease a desperate cure.
Servius the grammarian, being tormented with the gout, could think of no
better remedy than to apply poison to his legs, to deprive them of their
sense; let them be gouty at their will, so they were insensible of pain.
God gives us leave enough to go when He is pleased to reduce us to such a
condition that to live is far worse than to die. 'Tis weakness to truckle
under infirmities, but it's madness to nourish them. The Stoics say, that
it is living according to nature in a wise man to, take his leave of life,
even in the height of prosperity, if he do it opportunely; and in a fool
to prolong it, though he be miserable, provided he be not indigent of
those things which they repute to be according to nature. As I do not
offend the law against thieves when I embezzle my own money and cut my own
purse; nor that against incendiaries when I burn my own wood; so am I not
under the lash of those made against murderers for having deprived myself
of my own life. Hegesias said, that as the condition of life did, so the
condition of death ought to depend upon our own choice. And Diogenes
meeting the philosopher Speusippus, so blown up with an inveterate dropsy
that he was fain to be carried in a litter, and by him saluted with the
compliment, "I wish you good health." "No health to thee," replied the
other, "who art content to live in such a condition."
And in fact, not long after, Speusippus, weary of so languishing a state
of life, found a means to die.
But this does not pass without admitting a dispute: for many are of
opinion that we cannot quit this garrison of the world without the express
command of Him who has placed us in it; and that it appertains to God who
has placed us here, not for ourselves only but for His Glory and the
service of others, to dismiss us when it shall best please Him, and not
for us to depart without His licence: that we are not born for ourselves
only, but for our country also, the laws of which require an account from
us upon the score of their own interest, and have an action of
manslaughter good against us; and if these fail to take cognisance of the
fact, we are punished in the other world as deserters of our duty:
"Proxima deinde tenent maesti loca, qui sibi letum
Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi
Proiecere animas."
["Thence the sad ones occupy the next abodes, who, though free
from guilt, were by their own hands slain, and, hating light,
sought death."—AEneid, vi. 434.]
There is more constancy in suffering the chain we are tied to than in
breaking it, and more pregnant evidence of fortitude in Regulus than in
Cato; 'tis indiscretion and impatience that push us on to these
precipices: no accidents can make true virtue turn her back; she seeks and
requires evils, pains, and grief, as the things by which she is nourished
and supported; the menaces of tyrants, racks, and tortures serve only to
animate and rouse her:
"Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus
Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido,
Per damma, percmdes, ab ipso
Ducit opes, animumque ferro."
["As in Mount Algidus, the sturdy oak even from the axe itself
derives new vigour and life."—Horace, Od., iv. 4, 57.]
And as another says:
"Non est, ut putas, virtus, pater,
Timere vitam; sed malis ingentibus
Obstare, nec se vertere, ac retro dare."
["Father, 'tis no virtue to fear life, but to withstand great
misfortunes, nor turn back from them."—Seneca, Theb., i. 190.]
Or as this:
"Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere mortem
Fortius ille facit, qui miser esse potest."
["It is easy in adversity to despise death; but he acts more
bravely, who can live wretched."—Martial, xi. 56, 15.]
'Tis cowardice, not virtue, to lie squat in a furrow, under a tomb, to
evade the blows of fortune; virtue never stops nor goes out of her path,
for the greatest storm that blows:
"Si fractus illabatur orbis,
Impavidum ferient ruinae."
["Should the world's axis crack, the ruins will but crush
a fearless head."—Horace, Od., iii. 3, 7.]
For the most part, the flying from other inconveniences brings us to this;
nay, endeavouring to evade death, we often run into its very mouth:
"Hic, rogo, non furor est, ne moriare, mori?"
["Tell me, is it not madness, that one should die for fear
of dying?"—Martial, ii. 80, 2.]
like those who, from fear of a precipice, throw themselves headlong into
it;
"Multos in summa pericula misfit
Venturi timor ipse mali: fortissimus ille est,
Qui promptus metuenda pati, si cominus instent,
Et differre potest."
["The fear of future ills often makes men run into extreme danger;
he is truly brave who boldly dares withstand the mischiefs he
apprehends, when they confront him and can be deferred."
—Lucan, vii. 104.]
"Usque adeo, mortis formidine, vitae
Percipit humanos odium, lucisque videndae,
Ut sibi consciscant moerenti pectore lethum
Obliti fontem curarum hunc esse timorem."
["Death to that degree so frightens some men, that causing them to
hate both life and light, they kill themselves, miserably forgetting
that this same fear is the fountain of their cares."
—Lucretius, iii. 79.]
Plato, in his Laws, assigns an ignominious sepulture to him who has
deprived his nearest and best friend, namely himself, of life and his
destined course, being neither compelled so to do by public judgment, by
any sad and inevitable accident of fortune, nor by any insupportable
disgrace, but merely pushed on by cowardice and the imbecility of a
timorous soul. And the opinion that makes so little of life, is
ridiculous; for it is our being, 'tis all we have. Things of a nobler and
more elevated being may, indeed, reproach ours; but it is against nature
for us to contemn and make little account of ourselves; 'tis a disease
particular to man, and not discerned in any other creatures, to hate and
despise itself. And it is a vanity of the same stamp to desire to be
something else than what we are; the effect of such a desire does not at
all touch us, forasmuch as it is contradicted and hindered in itself. He
that desires of a man to be made an angel, does nothing for himself; he
would be never the better for it; for, being no more, who shall rejoice or
be sensible of this benefit for him.
"Debet enim, misere cui forti, aegreque futurum est,
Ipse quoque esse in eo turn tempore, cum male possit
Accidere."
["For he to whom misery and pain are to be in the future, must
himself then exist, when these ills befall him."
—Idem, ibid., 874.]
Security, indolence, impassability, the privation of the evils of this
life, which we pretend to purchase at the price of dying, are of no manner
of advantage to us: that man evades war to very little purpose who can
have no fruition of peace; and as little to the purpose does he avoid
trouble who cannot enjoy repose.
Amongst those of the first of these two opinions, there has been great
debate, what occasions are sufficient to justify the meditation of
self-murder, which they call "A reasonable exit."—[ Diogenes
Laertius, Life of Zeno.]—For though they say that men must often die
for trivial causes, seeing those that detain us in life are of no very
great weight, yet there is to be some limit. There are fantastic and
senseless humours that have prompted not only individual men, but whole
nations to destroy themselves, of which I have elsewhere given some
examples; and we further read of the Milesian virgins, that by a frantic
compact they hanged themselves one after another till the magistrate took
order in it, enacting that the bodies of such as should be found so hanged
should be drawn by the same halter stark naked through the city. When
Therykion tried to persuade Cleomenes to despatch himself, by reason of
the ill posture of his affairs, and, having missed a death of more honour
in the battle he had lost, to accept of this the second in honour to it,
and not to give the conquerors leisure to make him undergo either an
ignominious death or an infamous life; Cleomenes, with a courage truly
Stoic and Lacedaemonian, rejected his counsel as unmanly and mean; "that,"
said he, "is a remedy that can never be wanting, but which a man is never
to make use of, whilst there is an inch of hope remaining": telling him,
"that it was sometimes constancy and valour to live; that he would that
even his death should be of use to his country, and would make of it an
act of honour and virtue." Therykion, notwithstanding, thought himself in
the right, and did his own business; and Cleomenes afterwards did the
same, but not till he had first tried the utmost malevolence of fortune.
All the inconveniences in the world are not considerable enough that a man
should die to evade them; and, besides, there being so many, so sudden and
unexpected changes in human things, it is hard rightly to judge when we
are at the end of our hope:
"Sperat et in saeva victus gladiator arena,
Sit licet infesto pollice turba minax."
["The gladiator conquered in the lists hopes on, though the
menacing spectators, turning their thumb, order him to die."
—Pentadius, De Spe, ap. Virgilii Catadecta.]
All things, says an old adage, are to be hoped for by a man whilst he
lives; ay, but, replies Seneca, why should this rather be always running
in a man's head that fortune can do all things for the living man, than
this, that fortune has no power over him that knows how to die? Josephus,
when engaged in so near and apparent danger, a whole people being
violently bent against him, that there was no visible means of escape,
nevertheless, being, as he himself says, in this extremity counselled by
one of his friends to despatch himself, it was well for him that he yet
maintained himself in hope, for fortune diverted the accident beyond all
human expectation, so that he saw himself delivered without any manner of
inconvenience. Whereas Brutus and Cassius, on the contrary, threw away the
remains of the Roman liberty, of which they were the sole protectors, by
the precipitation and temerity wherewith they killed themselves before the
due time and a just occasion. Monsieur d'Anguien, at the battle of
Serisolles, twice attempted to run himself through, despairing of the
fortune of the day, which went indeed very untowardly on that side of the
field where he was engaged, and by that precipitation was very near
depriving himself of the enjoyment of so brave a victory. I have seen a
hundred hares escape out of the very teeth of the greyhounds:
"Aliquis carnifici suo superstes fuit."
["Some have survived their executioners."—Seneca, Ep., 13.]
"Multa dies, variusque labor mutabilis nevi
Rettulit in melius; multos alterna revisens
Lusit, et in solido rursus fortuna locavit."
["Length of days, and the various labour of changeful time, have
brought things to a better state; fortune turning, shews a reverse
face, and again restores men to prosperity."—AEneid, xi. 425.]
Piny says there are but three sorts of diseases, to escape which a man has
good title to destroy himself; the worst of which is the stone in the
bladder, when the urine is suppressed.
["In the quarto edition of these essays, in 1588, Pliny is said to
mention two more, viz., a pain in the stomach and a headache, which,
he says (lib. xxv. c. 9.), were the only three distempers almost
for which men killed themselves."]
Seneca says those only which for a long time are discomposing the
functions of the soul. And some there have been who, to avoid a worse
death, have chosen one to their own liking. Democritus, general of the
AEtolians, being brought prisoner to Rome, found means to make his escape
by night: but close pursued by his keepers, rather than suffer himself to
be retaken, he fell upon his own sword and died. Antinous and Theodotus,
their city of Epirus being reduced by the Romans to the last extremity,
gave the people counsel universally to kill themselves; but, these
preferring to give themselves up to the enemy, the two chiefs went to seek
the death they desired, rushing furiously upon the enemy, with intention
to strike home but not to ward a blow. The Island of Gozzo being taken
some years ago by the Turks, a Sicilian, who had two beautiful daughters
marriageable, killed them both with his own hand, and their mother,
running in to save them, to boot, which having done, sallying out of the
house with a cross-bow and harquebus, with two shots he killed two of the
Turks nearest to his door, and drawing his sword, charged furiously in
amongst the rest, where he was suddenly enclosed and cut to pieces, by
that means delivering his family and himself from slavery and dishonour.
The Jewish women, after having circumcised their children, threw them and
themselves down a precipice to avoid the cruelty of Antigonus. I have been
told of a person of condition in one of our prisons, that his friends,
being informed that he would certainly be condemned, to avoid the ignominy
of such a death suborned a priest to tell him that the only means of his
deliverance was to recommend himself to such a saint, under such and such
vows, and to fast eight days together without taking any manner of
nourishment, what weakness or faintness soever he might find in himself
during the time; he followed their advice, and by that means destroyed
himself before he was aware, not dreaming of death or any danger in the
experiment. Scribonia advising her nephew Libo to kill himself rather than
await the stroke of justice, told him that it was to do other people's
business to preserve his life to put it after into the hands of those who
within three or four days would fetch him to execution, and that it was to
serve his enemies to keep his blood to gratify their malice.
We read in the Bible that Nicanor, the persecutor of the law of God,
having sent his soldiers to seize upon the good old man Razis, surnamed in
honour of his virtue the father of the Jews: the good man, seeing no other
remedy, his gates burned down, and the enemies ready to seize him,
choosing rather to die nobly than to fall into the hands of his wicked
adversaries and suffer himself to be cruelly butchered by them, contrary
to the honour of his rank and quality, stabbed himself with his own sword,
but the blow, for haste, not having been given home, he ran and threw
himself from the top of a wall headlong among them, who separating
themselves and making room, he pitched directly upon his head;
notwithstanding which, feeling yet in himself some remains of life, he
renewed his courage, and starting up upon his feet all bloody and wounded
as he was, and making his way through the crowd to a precipitous rock,
there, through one of his wounds, drew out his bowels, which, tearing and
pulling to pieces with both his hands, he threw amongst his pursuers, all
the while attesting and invoking the Divine vengeance upon them for their
cruelty and injustice.
Of violences offered to the conscience, that against the chastity of woman
is, in my opinion, most to be avoided, forasmuch as there is a certain
pleasure naturally mixed with it, and for that reason the dissent therein
cannot be sufficiently perfect and entire, so that the violence seems to
be mixed with a little consent of the forced party. The ecclesiastical
history has several examples of devout persons who have embraced death to
secure them from the outrages prepared by tyrants against their religion
and honour. Pelagia and Sophronia, both canonised, the first of these
precipitated herself with her mother and sisters into the river to avoid
being forced by some soldiers, and the last also killed herself to avoid
being ravished by the Emperor Maxentius.
It may, peradventure, be an honour to us in future ages, that a learned
author of this present time, and a Parisian, takes a great deal of pains
to persuade the ladies of our age rather to take any other course than to
enter into the horrid meditation of such a despair. I am sorry he had
never heard, that he might have inserted it amongst his other stories,
the saying of a woman, which was told me at Toulouse, who had passed
through the handling of some soldiers: "God be praised," said she, "that
once at least in my life I have had my fill without sin." In truth,
these cruelties are very unworthy the French good nature, and also, God
be thanked, our air is very well purged of them since this good advice:
'tis enough that they say "no" in doing it, according to the rule of the
good Marot.
"Un doulx nenny, avec un doulx sourire
Est tant honneste."—Marot.
History is everywhere full of those who by a thousand ways have exchanged
a painful and irksome life for death. Lucius Aruntius killed himself, to
fly, he said, both the future and the past. Granius Silvanus and Statius
Proximus, after having been pardoned by Nero, killed themselves; either
disdaining to live by the favour of so wicked a man, or that they might
not be troubled, at some other time, to obtain a second pardon,
considering the proclivity of his nature to suspect and credit accusations
against worthy men. Spargapises, son of Queen Tomyris, being a prisoner of
war to Cyrus, made use of the first favour Cyrus shewed him, in commanding
him to be unbound, to kill himself, having pretended to no other benefit
of liberty, but only to be revenged of himself for the disgrace of being
taken. Boges, governor in Eion for King Xerxes, being besieged by the
Athenian army under the conduct of Cimon, refused the conditions offered,
that he might safe return into Asia with all his wealth, impatient to
survive the loss of a place his master had given him to keep; wherefore,
having defended the city to the last extremity, nothing being left to eat,
he first threw all the gold and whatever else the enemy could make booty
of into the river Strymon, and then causing a great pile to be set on
fire, and the throats of all the women, children, concubines, and servants
to be cut, he threw their bodies into the fire, and at last leaped into it
himself.
Ninachetuen, an Indian lord, so soon as he heard the first whisper of the
Portuguese Viceroy's determination to dispossess him, without any apparent
cause, of his command in Malacca, to transfer it to the King of Campar, he
took this resolution with himself: he caused a scaffold, more long than
broad, to be erected, supported by columns royally adorned with tapestry
and strewed with flowers and abundance of perfumes; all which being
prepared, in a robe of cloth of gold, set full of jewels of great value,
he came out into the street, and mounted the steps to the scaffold, at one
corner of which he had a pile lighted of aromatic wood. Everybody ran to
see to what end these unusual preparations were made; when Ninachetuen,
with a manly but displeased countenance, set forth how much he had obliged
the Portuguese nation, and with how unspotted fidelity he had carried
himself in his charge; that having so often, sword in hand, manifested in
the behalf of others, that honour was much more dear to him than life, he
was not to abandon the concern of it for himself: that fortune denying him
all means of opposing the affront designed to be put upon him, his courage
at least enjoined him to free himself from the sense of it, and not to
serve for a fable to the people, nor for a triumph to men less deserving
than himself; which having said he leaped into the fire.
Sextilia, wife of Scaurus, and Paxaea, wife of Labeo, to encourage their
husbands to avoid the dangers that pressed upon them, wherein they had no
other share than conjugal affection, voluntarily sacrificed their own
lives to serve them in this extreme necessity for company and example.
What they did for their husbands, Cocceius Nerva did for his country, with
less utility though with equal affection: this great lawyer, flourishing
in health, riches, reputation, and favour with the Emperor, had no other
cause to kill himself but the sole compassion of the miserable state of
the Roman Republic. Nothing can be added to the beauty of the death of the
wife of Fulvius, a familiar favourite of Augustus: Augustus having
discovered that he had vented an important secret he had entrusted him
withal, one morning that he came to make his court, received him very
coldly and looked frowningly upon him. He returned home, full of, despair,
where he sorrowfully told his wife that, having fallen into this
misfortune, he was resolved to kill himself: to which she roundly replied,
"'tis but reason you should, seeing that having so often experienced the
incontinence of my tongue, you could not take warning: but let me kill
myself first," and without any more saying ran herself through the body
with a sword. Vibius Virrius, despairing of the safety of his city
besieged by the Romans and of their mercy, in the last deliberation of his
city's senate, after many arguments conducing to that end, concluded that
the most noble means to escape fortune was by their own hands: telling
them that the enemy would have them in honour, and Hannibal would be
sensible how many faithful friends he had abandoned; inviting those who
approved of his advice to come to a good supper he had ready at home,
where after they had eaten well, they would drink together of what he had
prepared; a beverage, said he, that will deliver our bodies from torments,
our souls from insult, and our eyes and ears from the sense of so many
hateful mischiefs, as the conquered suffer from cruel and implacable
conquerors. I have, said he, taken order for fit persons to throw our
bodies into a funeral pile before my door so soon as we are dead. Many
enough approved this high resolution, but few imitated it;
seven-and-twenty senators followed him, who, after having tried to drown
the thought of this fatal determination in wine, ended the feast with the
mortal mess; and embracing one another, after they had jointly deplored
the misfortune of their country, some retired home to their own houses,
others stayed to be burned with Vibius in his funeral pyre; and were all
of them so long in dying, the vapour of the wine having prepossessed the
veins, and by that means deferred the effect of poison, that some of them
were within an hour of seeing the enemy inside the walls of Capua, which
was taken the next morning, and of undergoing the miseries they had at so
dear a rate endeavoured to avoid. Jubellius Taurea, another citizen of the
same country, the Consul Fulvius returning from the shameful butchery he
had made of two hundred and twenty-five senators, called him back fiercely
by name, and having made him stop: "Give the word," said he, "that
somebody may dispatch me after the massacre of so many others, that thou
mayest boast to have killed a much more valiant man than thyself."
Fulvius, disdaining him as a man out of his wits, and also having received
letters from Rome censuring the inhumanity of his execution which tied his
hands, Jubellius proceeded: "Since my country has been taken, my friends
dead, and having with my own hands slain my wife and children to rescue
them from the desolation of this ruin, I am denied to die the death of my
fellow-citizens, let me borrow from virtue vengeance on this hated life,"
and therewithal drawing a short sword he carried concealed about him, he
ran it through his own bosom, falling down backward, and expiring at the
consul's feet.
Alexander, laying siege to a city of the Indies, those within, finding
themselves very hardly set, put on a vigorous resolution to deprive him of
the pleasure of his victory, and accordingly burned themselves in general,
together with their city, in despite of his humanity: a new kind of war,
where the enemies sought to save them, and they to destroy themselves,
doing to make themselves sure of death, all that men do to secure life.
Astapa, a city of Spain, finding itself weak in walls and defence to
withstand the Romans, the inhabitants made a heap of all their riches and
furniture in the public place; and, having ranged upon this heap all the
women and children, and piled them round with wood and other combustible
matter to take sudden fire, and left fifty of their young men for the
execution of that whereon they had resolved, they made a desperate sally,
where for want of power to overcome, they caused themselves to be every
man slain. The fifty, after having massacred every living soul throughout
the whole city, and put fire to this pile, threw themselves lastly into
it, finishing their generous liberty, rather after an insensible, than
after a sorrowful and disgraceful manner, giving the enemy to understand,
that if fortune had been so pleased, they had as well the courage to
snatch from them victory as they had to frustrate and render it dreadful,
and even mortal to those who, allured by the splendour of the gold melting
in this flame, having approached it, a great number were there suffocated
and burned, being kept from retiring by the crowd that followed after.
The Abydeans, being pressed by King Philip, put on the same resolution;
but, not having time, they could not put it 'in effect. The king, who was
struck with horror at the rash precipitation of this execution (the
treasure and movables that they had condemned to the flames being first
seized), drawing off his soldiers, granted them three days' time to kill
themselves in, that they might do it with more order and at greater ease:
which time they filled with blood and slaughter beyond the utmost excess
of all hostile cruelty, so that not so much as any one soul was left alive
that had power to destroy itself. There are infinite examples of like
popular resolutions which seem the more fierce and cruel in proportion as
the effect is more universal, and yet are really less so than when singly
executed; what arguments and persuasion cannot do with individual men,
they can do with all, the ardour of society ravishing particular
judgments.
The condemned who would live to be executed in the reign of Tiberius,
forfeited their goods and were denied the rites of sepulture; those who,
by killing themselves, anticipated it, were interred, and had liberty to
dispose of their estates by will.
But men sometimes covet death out of hope of a greater good. "I desire,"
says St. Paul, "to be with Christ," and "who shall rid me of these bands?"
Cleombrotus of Ambracia, having read Plato's Pheedo, entered into so great
a desire of the life to come that, without any other occasion, he threw
himself into the sea. By which it appears how improperly we call this
voluntary dissolution, despair, to which the eagerness of hope often
inclines us, and, often, a calm and temperate desire proceeding from a
mature and deliberate judgment. Jacques du Chastel, bishop of Soissons, in
St. Louis's foreign expedition, seeing the king and whole army upon the
point of returning into France, leaving the affairs of religion imperfect,
took a resolution rather to go into Paradise; wherefore, having taken
solemn leave of his friends, he charged alone, in the sight of every one,
into the enemy's army, where he was presently cut to pieces. In a certain
kingdom of the new discovered world, upon a day of solemn procession, when
the idol they adore is drawn about in public upon a chariot of marvellous
greatness; besides that many are then seen cutting off pieces of their
flesh to offer to him, there are a number of others who prostrate
themselves upon the place, causing themselves to be crushed and broken to
pieces under the weighty wheels, to obtain the veneration of sanctity
after death, which is accordingly paid them. The death of the bishop,
sword in hand, has more of magnanimity in it, and less of sentiment, the
ardour of combat taking away part of the latter.
There are some governments who have taken upon them to regulate the
justice and opportunity of voluntary death. In former times there was kept
in our city of Marseilles a poison prepared out of hemlock, at the public
charge, for those who had a mind to hasten their end, having first, before
the six hundred, who were their senate, given account of the reasons and
motives of their design, and it was not otherwise lawful, than by leave
from the magistrate and upon just occasion to do violence to themselves.—[Valerius
Maximus, ii. 6, 7.]—The same law was also in use in other places.
Sextus Pompeius, in his expedition into Asia, touched at the isle of Cea
in Negropont: it happened whilst he was there, as we have it from one that
was with him, that a woman of great quality, having given an account to
her citizens why she was resolved to put an end to her life, invited
Pompeius to her death, to render it the more honourable, an invitation
that he accepted; and having long tried in vain by the power of his
eloquence, which was very great, and persuasion, to divert her from that
design, he acquiesced in the end in her own will. She had passed the age
of four score and ten in a very happy state, both of body and mind; being
then laid upon her bed, better dressed than ordinary and leaning upon her
elbow, "The gods," said she, "O Sextus Pompeius, and rather those I leave
than those I go to seek, reward thee, for that thou hast not disdained to
be both the counsellor of my life and the witness of my death. For my
part, having always experienced the smiles of fortune, for fear lest the
desire of living too long may make me see a contrary face, I am going, by
a happy end, to dismiss the remains of my soul, leaving behind two
daughters of my body and a legion of nephews"; which having said, with
some exhortations to her family to live in peace, she divided amongst them
her goods, and recommending her domestic gods to her eldest daughter, she
boldly took the bowl that contained the poison, and having made her vows
and prayers to Mercury to conduct her to some happy abode in the other
world, she roundly swallowed the mortal poison. This being done, she
entertained the company with the progress of its operation, and how the
cold by degrees seized the several parts of her body one after another,
till having in the end told them it began to seize upon her heart and
bowels, she called her daughters to do the last office and close her eyes.
Pliny tells us of a certain Hyperborean nation where, by reason of the
sweet temperature of the air, lives rarely ended but by the voluntary
surrender of the inhabitants, who, being weary of and satiated with
living, had the custom, at a very old age, after having made good cheer,
to precipitate themselves into the sea from the top of a certain rock,
assigned for that service. Pain and the fear of a worse death seem to me
the most excusable incitements.
CHAPTER IV——TO-MORROW'S A NEW DAY
I give, as it seems to me, with good reason the palm to Jacques Amyot of
all our French writers, not only for the simplicity and purity of his
language, wherein he excels all others, nor for his constancy in going
through so long a work, nor for the depth of his knowledge, having been
able so successfully to smooth and unravel so knotty and intricate an
author (for let people tell me what they will, I understand nothing of
Greek; but I meet with sense so well united and maintained throughout his
whole translation, that certainly he either knew the true fancy of the
author, or having, by being long conversant with him, imprinted a vivid
and general idea of that of Plutarch in his soul, he has delivered us
nothing that either derogates from or contradicts him), but above all, I
am the most taken with him for having made so discreet a choice of a book
so worthy and of so great utility wherewith to present his country. We
ignorant fellows had been lost, had not this book raised us out of the
dirt; by this favour of his we dare now speak and write; the ladies are
able to read to schoolmasters; 'tis our breviary. If this good man be yet
living, I would recommend to him Xenophon, to do as much by that; 'tis a
much more easy task than the other, and consequently more proper for his
age. And, besides, though I know not how, methinks he does briskly—and
clearly enough trip over steps another would have stumbled at, yet
nevertheless his style seems to be more his own where he does not
encounter those difficulties, and rolls away at his own ease.
I was just now reading this passage where Plutarch says of himself, that
Rusticus being present at a declamation of his at Rome, there received a
packet from the emperor, and deferred to open it till all was done: for
which, says he, all the company highly applauded the gravity of this
person. 'Tis true, that being upon the subject of curiosity and of that
eager passion for news, which makes us with so much indiscretion and
impatience leave all to entertain a newcomer, and without any manner of
respect or outcry, tear open on a sudden, in what company soever, the
letters that are delivered to us, he had reason to applaud the gravity of
Rusticus upon this occasion; and might moreover have added to it the
commendation of his civility and courtesy, that would not interrupt the
current of his declamation. But I doubt whether any one can commend his
prudence; for receiving unexpected letters, and especially from an
emperor, it might have fallen out that the deferring to read them might
have been of great prejudice. The vice opposite to curiosity is
negligence, to which I naturally incline, and wherein I have seen some men
so extreme that one might have found letters sent them three or four days
before, still sealed up in their pockets.
I never open any letters directed to another; not only those intrusted
with me, but even such as fortune has guided to my hand; and am angry with
myself if my eyes unawares steal any contents of letters of importance he
is reading when I stand near a great man. Never was man less inquisitive
or less prying into other men's affairs than I.
In our fathers' days, Monsieur de Boutieres had like to have lost Turin
from having, while engaged in good company at supper, delayed to read
information that was sent him of the treason plotted against that city
where he commanded. And this very Plutarch has given me to understand,
that Julius Caesar had preserved himself, if, going to the Senate the day
he was assassinated by the conspirators, he had read a note which was
presented to him by, the way. He tells also the story of Archias, the
tyrant of Thebes, that the night before the execution of the design
Pelopidas had plotted to kill him to restore his country to liberty, he
had a full account sent him in writing by another Archias, an Athenian, of
the whole conspiracy, and that, this packet having been delivered to him
while he sat at supper, he deferred the opening of it, saying, which
afterwards turned to a proverb in Greece, "Business to-morrow."
A wise man may, I think, out of respect to another, as not to disturb the
company, as Rusticus did, or not to break off another affair of importance
in hand, defer to read or hear any new thing that is brought him; but for
his own interest or particular pleasure, especially if he be a public
minister, that he will not interrupt his dinner or break his sleep is
inexcusable. And there was anciently at Rome, the consular place, as they
called it, which was the most honourable at the table, as being a place of
most liberty, and of more convenient access to those who came in to speak
to the person seated there; by which it appears, that being at meat, they
did not totally abandon the concern of other affairs and incidents. But
when all is said, it is very hard in human actions to give so exact a rule
upon moral reasons, that fortune will not therein maintain her own right.
CHAPTER V——OF CONSCIENCE
The Sieur de la Brousse, my brother, and I, travelling one day together
during the time of our civil wars, met a gentleman of good sort. He was of
the contrary party, though I did not know so much, for he pretended
otherwise: and the mischief on't is, that in this sort of war the cards
are so shuffled, your enemy not being distinguished from yourself by any
apparent mark either of language or habit, and being nourished under the
same law, air, and manners, it is very hard to avoid disorder and
confusion. This made me afraid myself of meeting any of our troops in a
place where I was not known, that I might not be in fear to tell my name,
and peradventure of something worse; as it had befallen me before, where,
by such a mistake, I lost both men and horses, and amongst others an
Italian gentleman my page, whom I bred with the greatest care and
affection, was miserably slain, in whom a youth of great promise and
expectation was extinguished. But the gentleman my brother and I met had
so desperate, half-dead a fear upon him at meeting with any horse, or
passing by any of the towns that held for the King, that I at last
discovered it to be alarms of conscience. It seemed to the poor man as if
through his visor and the crosses upon his cassock, one would have
penetrated into his bosom and read the most secret intentions of his
heart; so wonderful is the power of conscience. It makes us betray,
accuse, and fight against ourselves, and for want of other witnesses, to
give evidence against ourselves:
"Occultum quatiens animo tortore flagellum."
["The torturer of the soul brandishing a sharp scourge within."
—Juvenal, iii. 195.]
This story is in every child's mouth: Bessus the Paeonian, being
reproached for wantonly pulling down a nest of young sparrows and killing
them, replied, that he had reason to do so, seeing that those little birds
never ceased falsely to accuse him of the murder of his father. This
parricide had till then been concealed and unknown, but the revenging fury
of conscience caused it to be discovered by him himself, who was to suffer
for it. Hesiod corrects the saying of Plato, that punishment closely
follows sin, it being, as he says, born at the same time with it. Whoever
expects punishment already suffers it, and whoever has deserved it expects
it. Wickedness contrives torments against itself:
"Malum consilium consultori pessimum."
["Ill designs are worst to the contriver."
—Apud Aul. Gellium, iv. 5.]
as the wasp stings and hurts another, but most of all itself, for it there
loses its sting and its use for ever,
"Vitasque in vulnere ponunt."
["And leave their own lives in the wound."
—Virgil, Geo., iv. 238.]
Cantharides have somewhere about them, by a contrariety of nature, a
counterpoison against their poison. In like manner, at the same time that
men take delight in vice, there springs in the conscience a displeasure
that afflicts us sleeping and waking with various tormenting imaginations:
"Quippe ubi se multi, per somnia saepe loquentes,
Aut morbo delirantes, protraxe ferantur,
Et celata diu in medium peccata dedisse."
["Surely where many, often talking in their sleep, or raving in
disease, are said to have betrayed themselves, and to have given
publicity to offences long concealed."—Lucretius, v. 1157.]
Apollodorus dreamed that he saw himself flayed by the Scythians and
afterwards boiled in a cauldron, and that his heart muttered these words
"I am the cause of all these mischiefs that have befallen thee." Epicurus
said that no hiding-hole could conceal the wicked, since they could never
assure themselves of being hid whilst their conscience discovered them to
themselves.
"Prima est haec ultio, quod se
Judice nemo nocens absohitur."
["Tis the first punishment of sin that no man absolves himself." or:
"This is the highest revenge, that by its judgment no offender is
absolved."—Juvenal, xiii. 2.]
As an ill conscience fills us with fear, so a good one gives us greater
confidence and assurance; and I can truly say that I have gone through
several hazards with a more steady pace in consideration of the secret
knowledge I had of my own will and the innocence of my intentions:
"Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit intra
Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo."
["As a man's conscience is, so within hope or fear prevails, suiting
to his design."—Ovid, Fast., i. 485.]
Of this are a thousand examples; but it will be enough to instance three
of one and the same person. Scipio, being one day accused before the
people of Rome of some crimes of a very high nature, instead of excusing
himself or flattering his judges: "It will become you well," said he, "to
sit in judgment upon a head, by whose means you have the power to judge
all the world." Another time, all the answer he gave to several
impeachments brought against him by a tribune of the people, instead of
making his defence: "Let us go, citizens," said he, "let us go render
thanks to the gods for the victory they gave me over the Carthaginians as
this day," and advancing himself before towards the Temple, he had
presently all the assembly and his very accuser himself following at his
heels. And Petilius, having been set on by Cato to demand an account of
the money that had passed through his hands in the province of Antioch,
Scipio being come into the senate to that purpose, produced a book from
under his robe, wherein he told them was an exact account of his receipts
and disbursements; but being required to deliver it to the prothonotary to
be examined, he refused, saying, he would not do himself so great a
disgrace; and in the presence of the whole senate tore the book with his
own hands to pieces. I do not believe that the most seared conscience
could have counterfeited so great an assurance. He had naturally too high
a spirit and was accustomed to too high a fortune, says Titius Livius, to
know how to be criminal, and to lower himself to the meanness of defending
his innocence. The putting men to the rack is a dangerous invention, and
seems to be rather a trial of patience than of truth. Both he who has the
fortitude to endure it conceals the truth, and he who has not: for why
should pain sooner make me confess what really is, than force me to say
what is not? And, on the contrary, if he who is not guilty of that whereof
he is accused, has the courage to undergo those torments, why should not
he who is guilty have the same, so fair a reward as life being in his
prospect? I believe the ground of this invention proceeds from the
consideration of the force of conscience: for, to the guilty, it seems to
assist the rack to make him confess his fault and to shake his resolution;
and, on the other side, that it fortifies the innocent against the
torture. But when all is done, 'tis, in plain truth, a trial full of
uncertainty and danger what would not a man say, what would not a man do,
to avoid so intolerable torments?
"Etiam innocentes cogit mentiri dolor."
["Pain will make even the innocent lie."—Publius Syrus, De Dolore.]
Whence it comes to pass, that him whom the judge has racked that he may
not die innocent, he makes him die both innocent and racked. A thousand
and a thousand have charged their own heads by false confessions, amongst
whom I place Philotas, considering the circumstances of the trial
Alexander put upon him and the progress of his torture. But so it is that
some say it is the least evil human weakness could invent; very inhumanly,
notwithstanding, and to very little purpose, in my opinion.
Many nations less barbarous in this than the Greeks and Romans who call
them so, repute it horrible and cruel to torment and pull a man to pieces
for a fault of which they are yet in doubt. How can he help your
ignorance? Are not you unjust, that, not to kill him without cause, do
worse than kill him? And that this is so, do but observe how often men
prefer to die without reason than undergo this examination, more painful
than execution itself; and that oft-times by its extremity anticipates
execution, and perform it. I know not where I had this story, but it
exactly matches the conscience of our justice in this particular. A
country-woman, to a general of a very severe discipline, accused one of
his soldiers that he had taken from her children the little soup meat she
had left to nourish them withal, the army having consumed all the rest;
but of this proof there was none. The general, after having cautioned the
woman to take good heed to what she said, for that she would make herself
guilty of a false accusation if she told a lie, and she persisting, he
presently caused the soldier's belly to be ripped up to clear the truth of
the fact, and the woman was found to be right. An instructive sentence.
CHAPTER VI——USE MAKES PERFECT
'Tis not to be expected that argument and instruction, though we never so
voluntarily surrender our belief to what is read to us, should be of force
to lead us on so far as to action, if we do not, over and above, exercise
and form the soul by experience to the course for which we design it; it
will, otherwise, doubtless find itself at a loss when it comes to the
pinch of the business. This is the reason why those amongst the
philosophers who were ambitious to attain to a greater excellence, were
not contented to await the severities of fortune in the retirement and
repose of their own habitations, lest he should have surprised them raw
and inexpert in the combat, but sallied out to meet her, and purposely
threw themselves into the proof of difficulties. Some of them abandoned
riches to exercise themselves in a voluntary poverty; others sought out
labour and an austerity of life, to inure them to hardships and
inconveniences; others have deprived themselves of their dearest members,
as of sight, and of the instruments of generation, lest their too
delightful and effeminate service should soften and debauch the stability
of their souls.
But in dying, which is the greatest work we have to do, practice can give
us no assistance at all. A man may by custom fortify himself against pain,
shame, necessity, and such-like accidents, but as to death, we can
experiment it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it. There
have, anciently, been men so excellent managers of their time that they
have tried even in death itself to relish and taste it, and who have bent
their utmost faculties of mind to discover what this passage is, but they
are none of them come back to tell us the news:
"Nemo expergitus exstat,
Frigida quern semel est vitai pausa sequuta."
["No one wakes who has once fallen into the cold sleep of death."
—Lucretius, iii. 942]
Julius Canus, a noble Roman, of singular constancy and virtue, having been
condemned to die by that worthless fellow Caligula, besides many
marvellous testimonies that he gave of his resolution, as he was just
going to receive the stroke of the executioner, was asked by a
philosopher, a friend of his: "Well, Canus, whereabout is your soul now?
what is she doing? What are you thinking of?"—"I was thinking,"
replied the other, "to keep myself ready, and the faculties of my mind
full settled and fixed, to try if in this short and quick instant of
death, I could perceive the motion of the soul when she parts from the
body, and whether she has any sentiment at the separation, that I may
after come again if I can, to acquaint my friends with it." This man
philosophises not unto death only, but in death itself. What a strange
assurance was this, and what bravery of courage, to desire his death
should be a lesson to him, and to have leisure to think of other things in
so great an affair:
"Jus hoc animi morientis habebat."
["This mighty power of mind he had dying."-Lucan, viii. 636.]
And yet I fancy, there is a certain way of making it familiar to us, and
in some sort of making trial what it is. We may gain experience, if not
entire and perfect, yet such, at least, as shall not be totally useless to
us, and that may render us more confident and more assured. If we cannot
overtake it, we may approach it and view it, and if we do not advance so
far as the fort, we may at least discover and make ourselves acquainted
with the avenues. It is not without reason that we are taught to consider
sleep as a resemblance of death: with how great facility do we pass from
waking to sleeping, and with how little concern do we lose the knowledge
of light and of ourselves. Peradventure, the faculty of sleeping would
seem useless and contrary to nature, since it deprives us of all action
and sentiment, were it not that by it nature instructs us that she has
equally made us to die as to live; and in life presents to us the eternal
state she reserves for us after it, to accustom us to it and to take from
us the fear of it. But such as have by violent accident fallen into a
swoon, and in it have lost all sense, these, methinks, have been very near
seeing the true and natural face of death; for as to the moment of the
passage, it is not to be feared that it brings with it any pain or
displeasure, forasmuch as we can have no feeling without leisure; our
sufferings require time, which in death is so short, and so precipitous,
that it must necessarily be insensible. They are the approaches that we
are to fear, and these may fall within the limits of experience.
Many things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect; I have
passed a good part of my life in a perfect and entire health; I say, not
only entire, but, moreover, sprightly and wanton. This state, so full of
verdure, jollity, and vigour, made the consideration of sickness so
formidable to me, that when I came to experience it, I found the attacks
faint and easy in comparison with what I had apprehended. Of this I have
daily experience; if I am under the shelter of a warm room, in a stormy
and tempestuous night, I wonder how people can live abroad, and am
afflicted for those who are out in the fields: if I am there myself, I do
not wish to be anywhere else. This one thing of being always shut up in a
chamber I fancied insupportable: but I was presently inured to be so
imprisoned a week, nay a month together, in a very weak, disordered, and
sad condition; and I have found that, in the time of my health, I much
more pitied the sick, than I think myself to be pitied when I am so, and
that the force of my imagination enhances near one-half of the essence and
reality of the thing. I hope that when I come to die I shall find it the
same, and that, after all, it is not worth the pains I take, so much
preparation and so much assistance as I call in, to undergo the stroke.
But, at all events, we cannot give ourselves too much advantage.
In the time of our third or second troubles (I do not well remember
which), going one day abroad to take the air, about a league from my own
house, which is seated in the very centre of all the bustle and mischief
of the late civil wars in France; thinking myself in all security and so
near to my retreat that I stood in need of no better equipage, I had taken
a horse that went very easy upon his pace, but was not very strong. Being
upon my return home, a sudden occasion falling out to make use of this
horse in a kind of service that he was not accustomed to, one of my train,
a lusty, tall fellow, mounted upon a strong German horse, that had a very
ill mouth, fresh and vigorous, to play the brave and set on ahead of his
fellows, comes thundering full speed in the very track where I was,
rushing like a Colossus upon the little man and the little horse, with
such a career of strength and weight, that he turned us both over and
over, topsy-turvy with our heels in the air: so that there lay the horse
overthrown and stunned with the fall, and I ten or twelve paces from him
stretched out at length, with my face all battered and broken, my sword
which I had had in my hand, above ten paces beyond that, and my belt
broken all to pieces, without motion or sense any more than a stock. 'Twas
the only swoon I was ever in till that hour in my life. Those who were
with me, after having used all the means they could to bring me to myself,
concluding me dead, took me up in their arms, and carried me with very
much difficulty home to my house, which was about half a French league
from thence. On the way, having been for more than two hours given over
for a dead man, I began to move and to fetch my breath; for so great
abundance of blood was fallen into my stomach, that nature had need to
rouse her forces to discharge it. They then raised me upon my feet, where
I threw off a whole bucket of clots of blood, as this I did also several
times by the way. This gave me so much ease, that I began to recover a
little life, but so leisurely and by so small advances, that my first
sentiments were much nearer the approaches of death than life:
"Perche, dubbiosa ancor del suo ritorno,
Non s'assicura attonita la mente."
["For the soul, doubtful as to its return, could not compose itself"
—Tasso, Gierus. Lib., xii. 74.]
The remembrance of this accident, which is very well imprinted in my
memory, so naturally representing to me the image and idea of death, has
in some sort reconciled me to that untoward adventure. When I first began
to open my eyes, it was with so perplexed, so weak and dead a sight, that
I could yet distinguish nothing but only discern the light:
"Come quel ch'or apre, or'chiude
Gli occhi, mezzo tra'l sonno e l'esser desto."
["As a man that now opens, now shuts his eyes, between sleep
and waking."—Tasso, Gierus. Lib., viii., 26.]
As to the functions of the soul, they advanced with the same pace and
measure with those of the body. I saw myself all bloody, my doublet being
stained all over with the blood I had vomited. The first thought that came
into my mind was that I had a harquebuss shot in my head, and indeed, at
the time there were a great many fired round about us. Methought my life
but just hung upon my, lips: and I shut my eyes, to help, methought, to
thrust it out, and took a pleasure in languishing and letting myself go.
It was an imagination that only superficially floated upon my soul, as
tender and weak as all the rest, but really, not only exempt from anything
displeasing, but mixed with that sweetness that people feel when they
glide into a slumber.
I believe it is the very same condition those people are in, whom we see
swoon with weakness in the agony of death we pity them without cause,
supposing them agitated with grievous dolours, or that their souls suffer
under painful thoughts. It has ever been my belief, contrary to the
opinion of many, and particularly of La Boetie, that those whom we see so
subdued and stupefied at the approaches of their end, or oppressed with
the length of the disease, or by accident of an apoplexy or falling
sickness,
"Vi morbi saepe coactus
Ante oculos aliquis nostros, ut fulminis ictu,
Concidit, et spumas agit; ingemit, et tremit artus;
Desipit, extentat nervos, torquetur, anhelat,
Inconstanter, et in jactando membra fatigat;"
["Often, compelled by the force of disease, some one as
thunderstruck falls under our eyes, and foams, groans, and trembles,
stretches, twists, breathes irregularly, and in paroxysms wears out
his strength."—Lucretius, iii. 485.]
or hurt in the head, whom we hear to mutter, and by fits to utter grievous
groans; though we gather from these signs by which it seems as if they had
some remains of consciousness, and that there are movements of the body; I
have always believed, I say, both the body and the soul benumbed and
asleep,
"Vivit, et est vitae nescius ipse suae,"
["He lives, and does not know that he is alive."
—Ovid, Trist., i. 3, 12.]
and could not believe that in so great a stupefaction of the members and
so great a defection of the senses, the soul could maintain any force
within to take cognisance of herself, and that, therefore, they had no
tormenting reflections to make them consider and be sensible of the misery
of their condition, and consequently were not much to be pitied.
I can, for my part, think of no state so insupportable and dreadful, as to
have the soul vivid and afflicted, without means to declare itself; as one
should say of such as are sent to execution with their tongues first cut
out (were it not that in this kind of dying, the most silent seems to me
the most graceful, if accompanied with a grave and constant countenance);
or if those miserable prisoners, who fall into the hands of the base
hangman soldiers of this age, by whom they are tormented with all sorts of
inhuman usage to compel them to some excessive and impossible ransom;
kept, in the meantime, in such condition and place, where they have no
means of expressing or signifying their thoughts and their misery. The
poets have feigned some gods who favour the deliverance of such as suffer
under a languishing death:
"Hunc ego Diti
Sacrum jussa fero, teque isto corpore solvo."
["I bidden offer this sacred thing to Pluto, and from that body
dismiss thee."—AEneid, iv. 782.]
both the interrupted words, and the short and irregular answers one gets
from them sometimes, by bawling and keeping a clutter about them; or the
motions which seem to yield some consent to what we would have them do,
are no testimony, nevertheless, that they live, an entire life at least.
So it happens to us in the yawning of sleep, before it has fully possessed
us, to perceive, as in a dream, what is done about us, and to follow the
last things that are said with a perplexed and uncertain hearing which
seems but to touch upon the borders of the soul; and to make answers to
the last words that have been spoken to us, which have more in them of
chance than sense.
Now seeing I have in effect tried it, I have no doubt but I have hitherto
made a right judgment; for first, being in a swoon, I laboured to rip open
the buttons of my doublet with my nails, for my sword was gone; and yet I
felt nothing in my imagination that hurt me; for we have many motions in
us that do not proceed from our direction;
"Semianimesque micant digiti, ferrumque retractant;"
["Half-dead fingers grope about, and grasp again the sword."
—AEneid, x. 396.]
so falling people extend their arms before them by a natural impulse,
which prompts our limbs to offices and motions without any commission from
our reason.
"Falciferos memorant currus abscindere membra . . .
Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod
Decidit abscissum; cum mens tamen atque hominis vis
Mobilitate mali, non quit sentire dolorem."
["They relate that scythe-bearing chariots mow off limbs, so that
they quiver on the ground; and yet the mind of him from whom the
limb is taken by the swiftness of the blow feels no pain."
—Lucretius, iii. 642.]
My stomach was so oppressed with the coagulated blood, that my hands moved
to that part, of their own voluntary motion, as they frequently do to the
part that itches, without being directed by our will. There are several
animals, and even men, in whom one may perceive the muscles to stir and
tremble after they are dead. Every one experimentally knows that there are
some members which grow stiff and flag without his leave. Now, those
passions which only touch the outward bark of us, cannot be said to be
ours: to make them so, there must be a concurrence of the whole man; and
the pains which are felt by the hand or the foot while we are sleeping,
are none of ours.
As I drew near my own house, where the alarm of my fall was already got
before me, and my family were come out to meet me, with the hubbub usual
in such cases, not only did I make some little answer to some questions
which were asked me; but they moreover tell me, that I was sufficiently
collected to order them to bring a horse to my wife whom on the road, I
saw struggling and tiring herself which is hilly and rugged. This should
seem to proceed from a soul its functions; but it was nothing so with me.
I knew not what I said or did, and they were nothing but idle thoughts in
the clouds, that were stirred up by the senses of the eyes and ears, and
proceeded not from me. I knew not for all that, whence I came or whither I
went, neither was I capable to weigh and consider what was said to me:
these were light effects, that the senses produced of themselves as of
custom; what the soul contributed was in a dream, lightly touched, licked
and bedewed by the soft impression of the senses. Notwithstanding, my
condition was, in truth, very easy and quiet; I had no affliction upon me,
either for others or myself; it was an extreme languor and weakness,
without any manner of pain. I saw my own house, but knew it not. When they
had put me to bed I found an inexpressible sweetness in that repose; for I
had been desperately tugged and lugged by those poor people who had taken
the pains to carry me upon their arms a very great and a very rough way,
and had in so doing all quite tired out themselves, twice or thrice one
after another. They offered me several remedies, but I would take none,
certainly believing that I was mortally wounded in the head. And, in
earnest, it had been a very happy death, for the weakness of my
understanding deprived me of the faculty of discerning, and that of my
body of the sense of feeling; I was suffering myself to glide away so
sweetly and after so soft and easy a manner, that I scarce find any other
action less troublesome than that was. But when I came again to myself and
to resume my faculties:
"Ut tandem sensus convaluere mei,"
["When at length my lost senses again returned."
—Ovid, Trist., i. 3, 14.]
which was two or three hours after, I felt myself on a sudden involved in
terrible pain, having my limbs battered and ground with my fall, and was.
so ill for two or three nights after, that I thought I was once more dying
again, but a more painful death, having concluded myself as good as dead
before, and to this hour am sensible of the bruises of that terrible
shock. I will not here omit, that the last thing I could make them beat
into my head, was the memory of this accident, and I had it over and over
again repeated to me, whither I was going, from whence I came, and at what
time of the day this mischance befell me, before I could comprehend it. As
to the manner of my fall, that was concealed from me in favour to him who
had been the occasion, and other flim-flams were invented. But a long time
after, and the very next day that my memory began to return and to
represent to me the state wherein I was, at the instant that I perceived
this horse coming full drive upon me (for I had seen him at my heels, and
gave myself for gone, but this thought had been so sudden, that fear had
had no leisure to introduce itself) it seemed to me like a flash of
lightning that had pierced my soul, and that I came from the other world.
This long story of so light an accident would appear vain enough, were it
not for the knowledge I have gained by it for my own use; for I do really
find, that to get acquainted with death, needs no more but nearly to
approach it. Every one, as Pliny says, is a good doctrine to himself,
provided he be capable of discovering himself near at hand. Here, this is
not my doctrine, 'tis my study; and is not the lesson of another, but my
own; and if I communicate it, it ought not to be ill taken, for that which
is of use to me, may also, peradventure, be useful to another. As to the
rest, I spoil nothing, I make use of nothing but my own; and if I play the
fool, 'tis at my own expense, and nobody else is concerned in't; for 'tis
a folly that will die with me, and that no one is to inherit. We hear but
of two or three of the ancients, who have beaten this path, and yet I
cannot say if it was after this manner, knowing no more of them but their
names. No one since has followed the track: 'tis a rugged road, more so
than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain, as that of the
soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate internal
windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble motions; 'tis a
new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us from the common
and most recommended employments of the world. 'Tis now many years since
that my thoughts have had no other aim and level than myself, and that I
have only pried into and studied myself: or, if I study any other thing,
'tis to apply it to or rather in myself. And yet I do not think it a
fault, if, as others do by other much less profitable sciences, I
communicate what I have learned in this, though I am not very well pleased
with my own progress. There is no description so difficult, nor doubtless
of so great utility, as that of a man's self: and withal, a man must curl
his hair and set out and adjust himself, to appear in public: now I am
perpetually tricking myself out, for I am eternally upon my own
description. Custom has made all speaking of a man's self vicious, and
positively interdicts it, in hatred to the boasting that seems inseparable
from the testimony men give of themselves:
"In vitium ducit culpae fuga."
["The avoiding a mere fault often leads us into a greater."
Or: "The escape from a fault leads into a vice"
—Horace, De Arte Poetics, verse 31.]
Instead of blowing the child's nose, this is to take his nose off
altogether. I think the remedy worse than the disease. But, allowing it to
be true that it must of necessity be presumption to entertain people with
discourses of one's self, I ought not, pursuing my general design, to
forbear an action that publishes this infirmity of mine, nor conceal the
fault which I not only practise but profess. Notwithstanding, to speak my
thought freely, I think that the custom of condemning wine, because some
people will be drunk, is itself to be condemned; a man cannot abuse
anything but what is good in itself; and I believe that this rule has only
regard to the popular vice. They are bits for calves, with which neither
the saints whom we hear speak so highly of themselves, nor the
philosophers, nor the divines will be curbed; neither will I, who am as
little the one as the other, If they do not write of it expressly, at all
events, when the occasions arise, they don't hesitate to put themselves on
the public highway. Of what does Socrates treat more largely than of
himself? To what does he more direct and address the discourses of his
disciples, than to speak of themselves, not of the lesson in their book,
but of the essence and motion of their souls? We confess ourselves
religiously to God and our confessor; as our neighbours, do to all the
people. But some will answer that we there speak nothing but accusation
against ourselves; why then, we say all; for our very virtue itself is
faulty and penetrable. My trade and art is to live; he that forbids me to
speak according to my own sense, experience, and practice, may as well
enjoin an architect not to speak of building according to his own
knowledge, but according to that of his neighbour; according to the
knowledge of another, and not according to his own. If it be vainglory for
a man to publish his own virtues, why does not Cicero prefer the eloquence
of Hortensius, and Hortensius that of Cicero? Peradventure they mean that
I should give testimony of myself by works and effects, not barely by
words. I chiefly paint my thoughts, a subject void of form and incapable
of operative production; 'tis all that I can do to couch it in this airy
body of the voice; the wisest and devoutest men have lived in the greatest
care to avoid all apparent effects. Effects would more speak of fortune
than of me; they manifest their own office and not mine, but uncertainly
and by conjecture; patterns of some one particular virtue. I expose myself
entire; 'tis a body where, at one view, the veins, muscles, and tendons
are apparent, every of them in its proper place; here the effects of a
cold; there of the heart beating, very dubiously. I do not write my own
acts, but myself and my essence.
I am of opinion that a man must be very cautious how he values himself,
and equally conscientious to give a true report, be it better or worse,
impartially. If I thought myself perfectly good and wise, I would rattle
it out to some purpose. To speak less of one's self than what one really
is is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is under
a man's value is pusillanimity and cowardice, according to, Aristotle. No
virtue assists itself with falsehood; truth is never matter of error. To
speak more of one's self than is really true is not always mere
presumption; 'tis, moreover, very often folly; to, be immeasurably pleased
with what one is, and to fall into an indiscreet self-love, is in my
opinion the substance of this vice. The most sovereign remedy to cure it,
is to do quite contrary to what these people direct who, in forbidding men
to speak of themselves, consequently, at the same time, interdict thinking
of themselves too. Pride dwells in the thought; the tongue can have but a
very little share in it.
They fancy that to think of one's self is to be delighted with one's self;
to frequent and converse with one's self, to be overindulgent; but this
excess springs only in those who take but a superficial view of
themselves, and dedicate their main inspection to their affairs; who call
it mere reverie and idleness to occupy one's self with one's self, and the
building one's self up a mere building of castles in the air; who look
upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger. If any one be in
rapture with his own knowledge, looking only on those below him, let him
but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will be abated,
when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample him under
foot. If he enter into a flattering presumption of his personal valour,
let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas; so many armies, so
many nations, that leave him so far behind them. No particular quality can
make any man proud, that will at the same time put the many other weak and
imperfect ones he has in the other scale, and the nothingness of human
condition to make up the weight. Because Socrates had alone digested to
purpose the precept of his god, "to know himself," and by that study
arrived at the perfection of setting himself at nought, he only was
reputed worthy the title of a sage. Whosoever shall so know himself, let
him boldly speak it out.
CHAPTER VII——OF RECOMPENSES OF HONOUR
They who write the life of Augustus Caesar,—[Suetonius, Life of
Augustus, c. 25.]—observe this in his military discipline, that he
was wonderfully liberal of gifts to men of merit, but that as to the true
recompenses of honour he was as sparing; yet he himself had been gratified
by his uncle with all the military recompenses before he had ever been in
the field. It was a pretty invention, and received into most governments
of the world, to institute certain vain and in themselves valueless
distinctions to honour and recompense virtue, such as the crowns of
laurel, oak, and myrtle, the particular fashion of some garment, the
privilege to ride in a coach in the city, or at night with a torch, some
peculiar place assigned in public assemblies, the prerogative of certain
additional names and titles, certain distinctions in the bearing of coats
of arms, and the like, the use of which, according to the several humours
of nations, has been variously received, and yet continues.
We in France, as also several of our neighbours, have orders of knighthood
that are instituted only for this end. And 'tis, in earnest, a very good
and profitable custom to find out an acknowledgment for the worth of rare
and excellent men, and to satisfy them with rewards that are not at all
chargeable either to prince or people. And that which has always been
found by ancient experience, and which we have heretofore observed among
ourselves, that men of quality have ever been more jealous of such
recompenses than of those wherein there was gain and profit, is not
without very good ground and reason. If with the reward, which ought to be
simply a recompense of honour, they should mix other commodities and add
riches, this mixture, instead of procuring an increase of estimation,
would debase and abate it. The Order of St. Michael, which has been so
long in repute amongst us, had no greater commodity than that it had no
communication with any other commodity, which produced this effect, that
formerly there was no office or title whatever to which the gentry
pretended with so great desire and affection as they did to that; no
quality that carried with it more respect and grandeur, valour and worth
more willingly embracing and with greater ambition aspiring to a
recompense purely its own, and rather glorious than profitable. For, in
truth, other gifts have not so great a dignity of usage, by reason they
are laid out upon all sorts of occasions; with money a man pays the wages
of a servant, the diligence of a courier, dancing, vaulting, speaking, and
the meanest offices we receive; nay, and reward vice with it too, as
flattery, treachery, and pimping; and therefore 'tis no wonder if virtue
less desires and less willingly receives this common sort of payment, than
that which is proper and peculiar to her, throughout generous and noble.
Augustus had reason to be more sparing of this than the other, insomuch
that honour is a privilege which derives its principal essence from
rarity; and so virtue itself:
"Cui malus est nemo, quis bonus esse potest?"
["To whom no one is ill who can be good?"-Martial, xii. 82.]
We do not intend it for a commendation when we say that such a one is
careful in the education of his children, by reason it is a common act,
how just and well done soever; no more than we commend a great tree, where
the whole forest is the same. I do not think that any citizen of Sparta
glorified himself much upon his valour, it being the universal virtue of
the whole nation; and as little upon his fidelity and contempt of riches.
There is no recompense becomes virtue, how great soever, that is once
passed into a custom; and I know not withal whether we can ever call it
great, being common.
Seeing, then, that these remunerations of honour have no other value and
estimation but only this, that few people enjoy them, 'tis but to be
liberal of them to bring them down to nothing. And though there should be
now more men found than in former times worthy of our order, the
estimation of it nevertheless should not be abated, nor the honour made
cheap; and it may easily happen that more may merit it; for there is no
virtue that so easily spreads as that of military valour. There is another
virtue, true, perfect, and philosophical, of which I do not speak, and
only make use of the word in our common acceptation, much greater than
this and more full, which is a force and assurance of the soul, equally
despising all sorts of adverse accidents, equable, uniform, and constant,
of which ours is no more than one little ray. Use, education, example, and
custom can do all in all to the establishment of that whereof I am
speaking, and with great facility render it common, as by the experience
of our civil wars is manifest enough; and whoever could at this time unite
us all, Catholic and Huguenot, into one body, and set us upon some brave
common enterprise, we should again make our ancient military reputation
flourish. It is most certain that in times past the recompense of this
order had not only a regard to valour, but had a further prospect; it
never was the reward of a valiant soldier but of a great captain; the
science of obeying was not reputed worthy of so honourable a guerdon.
There was therein a more universal military expertness required, and that
comprehended the most and the greatest qualities of a military man:
"Neque enim eaedem militares et imperatorix artes sunt,"
["For the arts of soldiery and generalship are not the same."
—Livy, xxv. 19.]
as also, besides, a condition suitable to such a dignity. But, I say,
though more men were worthy than formerly, yet ought it not to be more
liberally distributed, and it were better to fall short in not giving it
at all to whom it should be due, than for ever to lose, as we have lately
done, the fruit of so profitable an invention. No man of spirit will deign
to advantage himself with what is in common with many; and such of the
present time as have least merited this recompense themselves make the
greater show of disdaining it, in order thereby to be ranked with those to
whom so much wrong has been done by the unworthy conferring and debasing
the distinction which was their particular right.
Now, to expect that in obliterating and abolishing this, suddenly to
create and bring into credit a like institution, is not a proper attempt
for so licentious and so sick a time as this wherein we now are; and it
will fall out that the last will from its birth incur the same
inconveniences that have ruined the other.—[Montaigne refers to the
Order of the Saint-Esprit, instituted by Henry III. in 1578.]—The
rules for dispensing this new order had need to be extremely clipt and
bound under great restrictions, to give it authority; and this tumultuous
season is incapable of such a curb: besides that, before this can be
brought into repute, 'tis necessary that the memory of the first, and of
the contempt into which it is fallen, be buried in oblivion.
This place might naturally enough admit of some discourse upon the
consideration of valour, and the difference of this virtue from others;
but, Plutarch having so often handled this subject, I should give myself
an unnecessary trouble to repeat what he has said. But this is worth
considering: that our nation places valour, vaillance, in the highest
degree of virtue, as its very word evidences, being derived from valeur,
and that, according to our use, when we say a man of high worth a good
man, in our court style—'tis to say a valiant man, after the Roman
way; for the general appellation of virtue with them takes etymology from
vis, force. The proper, sole, and essential profession of, the French
noblesse is that of arms: and 'tis likely that the first virtue that
discovered itself amongst men and has given to some advantage over others,
was that by which the strongest and most valiant have mastered the weaker,
and acquired a particular authority and reputation, whence came to it that
dignified appellation; or else, that these nations, being very warlike,
gave the pre-eminence to that of the virtues which was most familiar to
them; just as our passion and the feverish solicitude we have of the
chastity of women occasions that to say, a good woman, a woman of worth, a
woman of honour and virtue, signifies merely a chaste woman as if, to
oblige them to that one duty, we were indifferent as to all the rest, and
gave them the reins in all other faults whatever to compound for that one
of incontinence.
CHAPTER VIII——OF THE AFFECTION OF FATHERS TO THEIR CHILDREN
To Madame D'Estissac.
MADAM, if the strangeness and novelty of my subject, which are wont to
give value to things, do not save me, I shall never come off with honour
from this foolish attempt: but 'tis so fantastic, and carries a face so
unlike the common use, that this, peradventure, may make it pass. 'Tis a
melancholic humour, and consequently a humour very much an enemy to my
natural complexion, engendered by the pensiveness of the solitude into
which for some years past I have retired myself, that first put into my
head this idle fancy of writing. Wherein, finding myself totally
unprovided and empty of other matter, I presented myself to myself for
argument and subject. 'Tis the only book in the world of its kind, and of
a wild and extravagant design. There is nothing worth remark in this
affair but that extravagancy: for in a subject so vain and frivolous, the
best workman in the world could not have given it a form fit to recommend
it to any manner of esteem.
Now, madam, having to draw my own picture to the life, I had omitted one
important feature, had I not therein represented the honour I have ever
had for you and your merits; which I have purposely chosen to say in the
beginning of this chapter, by reason that amongst the many other excellent
qualities you are mistress of, that of the tender love you have manifested
to your children, is seated in one of the highest places. Whoever knows at
what age Monsieur D'Estissac, your husband, left you a widow, the great
and honourable matches that have since been offered to you, as many as to
any lady of your condition in France, the constancy and steadiness
wherewith, for so many years, you have sustained so many sharp
difficulties, the burden and conduct of affairs, which have persecuted you
in every corner of the kingdom, and are not yet weary of tormenting you,
and the happy direction you have given to all these, by your sole prudence
or good fortune, will easily conclude with me that we have not so vivid an
example as yours of maternal affection in our times. I praise God, madam,
that it has been so well employed; for the great hopes Monsieur
D'Estissac, your son, gives of himself, render sufficient assurance that
when he comes of age you will reap from him all the obedience and
gratitude of a very good man. But, forasmuch as by reason of his tender
years, he has not been capable of taking notice of those offices of
extremest value he has in so great number received from you, I will, if
these papers shall one day happen to fall into his hands, when I shall
neither have mouth nor speech left to deliver it to him, that he shall
receive from me a true account of those things, which shall be more
effectually manifested to him by their own effects, by which he will
understand that there is not a gentleman in France who stands more
indebted to a mother's care; and that he cannot, in the future, give a
better nor more certain testimony of his own worth and virtue than by
acknowledging you for that excellent mother you are.
If there be any law truly natural, that is to say, any instinct that is
seen universally and perpetually imprinted in both beasts and men (which
is not without controversy), I can say, that in my opinion, next to the
care every animal has of its own preservation, and to avoid that which may
hurt him, the affection that the begetter bears to his offspring holds the
second place in this rank. And seeing that nature appears to have
recommended it to us, having regard to the extension and progression of
the successive pieces of this machine of hers, 'tis no wonder if, on the
contrary, that of children towards their parents is not so great. To which
we may add this other Aristotelian consideration, that he who confers a
benefit on any one, loves him better than he is beloved by him again: that
he to whom is owing, loves better than he who owes; and that every
artificer is fonder of his work, than, if that work had sense, it would be
of him; by reason that it is dear to us to be, and to be consists in
movement and action; therefore every one has in some sort a being in his
work. He who confers a benefit exercises a fine and honest action; he who
receives it exercises the useful only. Now the useful is much less lovable
than the honest; the honest is stable and permanent, supplying him who has
done it with a continual gratification. The useful loses itself, easily
slides away, and the memory of it is neither so fresh nor so pleasing.
Those things are dearest to us that have cost us most, and giving is more
chargeable than receiving.
Since it has pleased God to endue us with some capacity of reason, to the
end we may not, like brutes, be servilely subject and enslaved to the laws
common to both, but that we should by judgment and a voluntary liberty
apply ourselves to them, we ought, indeed, something to yield to the
simple authority of nature, but not suffer ourselves to be tyrannically
hurried away and transported by her; reason alone should have the conduct
of our inclinations. I, for my part, have a strange disgust for those
propensions that are started in us without the mediation and direction of
the judgment, as, upon the subject I am speaking of, I cannot entertain
that passion of dandling and caressing infants scarcely born, having as
yet neither motion of soul nor shape of body distinguishable, by which
they can render themselves amiable, and have not willingly suffered them
to be nursed near me. A true and regular affection ought to spring and
increase with the knowledge they give us of themselves, and then, if they
are worthy of it, the natural propension walking hand in hand with reason,
to cherish them with a truly paternal love; and so to judge, also, if they
be otherwise, still rendering ourselves to reason, notwithstanding the
inclination of nature. 'Tis oft-times quite otherwise; and, most commonly,
we find ourselves more taken with the running up and down, the games, and
puerile simplicities of our children, than we do, afterwards, with their
most complete actions; as if we had loved them for our sport, like
monkeys, and not as men; and some there are, who are very liberal in
buying them balls to play withal, who are very close-handed for the least
necessary expense when they come to age. Nay, it looks as if the jealousy
of seeing them appear in and enjoy the world when we are about to leave
it, rendered us more niggardly and stingy towards them; it vexes us that
they tread upon our heels, as if to solicit us to go out; if this were to
be feared, since the order of things will have it so that they cannot, to
speak the truth, be nor live, but at the expense of our being and life, we
should never meddle with being fathers at all.
For my part, I think it cruelty and injustice not to receive them into the
share and society of our goods, and not to make them partakers in the
intelligence of our domestic affairs when they are capable, and not to
lessen and contract our own expenses to make the more room for theirs,
seeing we beget them to that effect. 'Tis unjust that an old fellow,
broken and half dead, should alone, in a corner of the chimney, enjoy the
money that would suffice for the maintenance and advancement of many
children, and suffer them, in the meantime, to lose their' best years for
want of means to advance themselves in the public service and the
knowledge of men. A man by this course drives them to despair, and to seek
out by any means, how unjust or dishonourable soever, to provide for their
own support: as I have, in my time, seen several young men of good
extraction so addicted to stealing, that no correction could cure them of
it. I know one of a very good family, to whom, at the request of a brother
of his, a very honest and brave gentleman, I once spoke on this account,
who made answer, and confessed to me roundly, that he had been put upon
this paltry practice by the severity and avarice of his father; but that
he was now so accustomed to it he could not leave it off. And, at that
very time, he was trapped stealing a lady's rings, having come into her
chamber, as she was dressing with several others. He put me in mind of a
story I had heard of another gentleman, so perfect and accomplished in
this fine trade in his youth, that, after he came to his estate and
resolved to give it over, he could not hold his hands, nevertheless, if he
passed by a shop where he saw anything he liked, from catching it up,
though it put him to the shame of sending afterwards to pay for it. And I
have myself seen several so habituated to this quality that even amongst
their comrades they could not forbear filching, though with intent to
restore what they had taken. I am a Gascon, and yet there is no vice I so
little understand as that; I hate it something more by disposition than I
condemn it by reason; I do not so much as desire anything of another
man's. This province of ours is, in plain truth, a little more decried
than the other parts of the kingdom; and yet we have several times seen,
in our times, men of good families of other provinces, in the hands of
justice, convicted of abominable thefts. I fear this vice is, in some
sort, to be attributed to the fore-mentioned vice of the fathers.
And if a man should tell me, as a lord of very good understanding once
did, that "he hoarded up wealth, not to extract any other fruit and use
from his parsimony, but to make himself honoured and sought after by his
relations; and that age having deprived him of all other power, it was the
only remaining remedy to maintain his authority in his family, and to keep
him from being neglected and despised by all around," in truth, not only
old age, but all other imbecility, according to Aristotle, is the promoter
of avarice; that is something, but it is physic for a disease that a man
should prevent the birth of. A father is very miserable who has no other
hold on his children's affection than the need they have of his
assistance, if that can be called affection; he must render himself worthy
to be respected by his virtue and wisdom, and beloved by his kindness and
the sweetness of his manners; even the very ashes of a rich matter have
their value; and we are wont to have the bones and relics of worthy men in
regard and reverence. No old age can be so decrepid in a man who has
passed his life in honour, but it must be venerable, especially to his
children, whose soul he must have trained up to their duty by reason, not
by necessity and the need they have of him, nor by harshness and
compulsion:
"Et errat longe mea quidem sententia
Qui imperium credat esse gravius, aut stabilius,
Vi quod fit, quam illud, quod amicitia adjungitur."
["He wanders far from the truth, in my opinion, who thinks that
government more absolute and durable which is acquired by force than
that which is attached to friendship."—Terence, Adelph., i. I, 40.]
I condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul that is designed
for honour and liberty. There is I know not what of servile in rigour and
constraint; and I am of opinion that what is not to be done by reason,
prudence, and address, is never to be affected by force. I myself was
brought up after that manner; and they tell me that in all my first age I
never felt the rod but twice, and then very slightly. I practised the same
method with my children, who all of them died at nurse, except Leonora, my
only daughter, and who arrived to the age of five years and upward without
other correction for her childish faults (her mother's indulgence easily
concurring) than words only, and those very gentle; in which kind of
proceeding, though my end and expectation should be both frustrated, there
are other causes enough to lay the fault on without blaming my discipline,
which I know to be natural and just, and I should, in this, have yet been
more religious towards the males, as less born to subjection and more
free; and I should have made it my business to fill their hearts with
ingenuousness and freedom. I have never observed other effects of whipping
than to render boys more cowardly, or more wilfully obstinate.
Do we desire to be beloved of our children? Will we remove from them all
occasion of wishing our death though no occasion of so horrid a wish can
either be just or excusable?
"Nullum scelus rationem habet."
["No wickedness has reason."—Livy, xxviii. 28]
Let us reasonably accommodate their lives with what is in our power. In
order to this, we should not marry so young that our age shall in a manner
be confounded with theirs; for this inconvenience plunges us into many
very great difficulties, and especially the gentry of the nation, who are
of a condition wherein they have little to do, and who live upon their
rents only: for elsewhere, with people who live by their labour, the
plurality and company of children is an increase to the common stock; they
are so many new tools and instruments wherewith to grow rich.
I married at three-and-thirty years of age, and concur in the opinion of
thirty-five, which is said to be that of Aristotle. Plato will have nobody
marry before thirty; but he has reason to laugh at those who undertook the
work of marriage after five-and-fifty, and condemns their offspring as
unworthy of aliment and life. Thales gave the truest limits, who, young
and being importuned by his mother to marry, answered, "That it was too
soon," and, being grown into years and urged again, "That it was too
late." A man must deny opportunity to every inopportune action. The
ancient Gauls' looked upon it as a very horrid thing for a man to have
society with a woman before he was twenty years of age, and strictly
recommended to the men who designed themselves for war the keeping their
virginity till well grown in years, forasmuch as courage is abated and
diverted by intercourse with women:
"Ma, or congiunto a giovinetta sposa,
E lieto omai de' figli, era invilito
Negli affetti di padre et di marito."
["Now, married to a young wife and happy in children, he was
demoralised by his love as father and husband."
—Tasso, Gierus., x. 39.]
Muley Hassam, king of Tunis, he whom the Emperor Charles V. restored to
his kingdom, reproached the memory of his father Mahomet with the
frequentation of women, styling him loose, effeminate, and a getter of
children.—[Of whom he had thirty-four.]—The Greek history
observes of Iccus the Tarentine, of Chryso, Astyllus, Diopompos, and
others, that to keep their bodies in order for the Olympic games and such
like exercises, they denied themselves during that preparation all
commerce with Venus. In a certain country of the Spanish Indies men were
not permitted to marry till after forty age, and yet the girls were
allowed at ten. 'Tis not time for a gentleman of thirty years old to give
place to his son who is twenty; he is himself in a condition to serve both
in the expeditions of war and in the court of his prince; has need of all
his appurtenances; and yet, doubtless, he ought to surrender a share, but
not so great an one as to forget himself for others; and for such an one
the answer that fathers have ordinarily in their mouths, "I will not put
off my clothes, before I go to bed," serves well.
But a father worn out with age and infirmities, and deprived by weakness
and want of health of the common society of men, wrongs himself and his to
amass a great heap of treasure. He has lived long enough, if he be wise,
to have a mind to strip himself to go to bed, not to his very shirt, I
confess, but to that and a good, warm dressing-gown; the remaining pomps,
of which he has no further use, he ought voluntarily to surrender to
those, to whom by the order of nature they belong. 'Tis reason he should
refer the use of those things to them, seeing that nature has reduced him
to such a state that he cannot enjoy them himself; otherwise there is
doubtless malice and envy in the case. The greatest act of the Emperor
Charles V. was that when, in imitation of some of the ancients of his own
quality, confessing it but reason to strip ourselves when our clothes
encumber and grow too heavy for us, and to lie down when our legs begin to
fail us, he resigned his possessions, grandeur, and power to his son, when
he found himself failing in vigour, and steadiness for the conduct of his
affairs suitable with the glory he had therein acquired:
"Solve senescentem mature sanus equum, ne
Peccet ad extremum ridendus, et ilia ducat."
["Dismiss the old horse in good time, lest, failing in the lists,
the spectators laugh."—Horace, Epist., i., I, 8.]
This fault of not perceiving betimes and of not being sensible of the
feebleness and extreme alteration that age naturally brings both upon body
and mind, which, in my opinion, is equal, if indeed the soul has not more
than half, has lost the reputation of most of the great men in the world.
I have known in my time, and been intimately acquainted with persons of
great authority, whom one might easily discern marvellously lapsed from
the sufficiency I knew they were once endued with, by the reputation they
had acquired in their former years, whom I could heartily, for their own
sakes, have wished at home at their ease, discharged of their public or
military employments, which were now grown too heavy for their shoulders.
I have formerly been very familiar in a gentleman's house, a widower and
very old, though healthy and cheerful enough: this gentleman had several
daughters to marry and a son already of ripe age, which brought upon him
many visitors, and a great expense, neither of which well pleased him, not
only out of consideration of frugality, but yet more for having, by reason
of his age, entered into a course of life far differing from ours. I told
him one day a little boldly, as I used to do, that he would do better to
give us younger folk room, and to leave his principal house (for he had
but that well placed and furnished) to his son, and himself retire to an
estate he had hard by, where nobody would trouble his repose, seeing he
could not otherwise avoid being importuned by us, the condition of his
children considered. He took my advice afterwards, and found an advantage
in so doing.
I do not mean that a man should so instal them as not to reserve to
himself a liberty to retract; I, who am now arrived to the age wherein
such things are fit to be done, would resign to them the enjoyment of my
house and goods, but with a power of revocation if they should give me
cause to alter my mind; I would leave to them the use, that being no
longer convenient for me; and, of the general authority and power over
all, would reserve as much as—I thought good to myself; having
always held that it must needs be a great satisfaction to an aged father
himself to put his children into the way of governing his affairs, and to
have power during his own life to control their behaviour, supplying them
with instruction and advice from his own experience, and himself to
transfer the ancient honour and order of his house into the hands of those
who are to succeed him, and by that means to satisfy himself as to the
hopes he may conceive of their future conduct. And in order to this I
would not avoid their company; I would observe them near at hand, and
partake, according to the condition of my age, of their feasts and
jollities. If I did not live absolutely amongst them, which I could not do
without annoying them and their friends, by reason of the morosity of my
age and the restlessness of my infirmities, and without violating also the
rules and order of living I should then have set down to myself, I would,
at least, live near them in some retired part of my house, not the best in
show, but the most commodious. Nor as I saw some years ago, a dean of St.
Hilary of Poitiers given up to such a solitude, that at the time I came
into his chamber it had been two and twenty years that he had not stepped
one foot out of it, and yet had all his motions free and easy, and was in
good health, saving a cold that fell upon his lungs; he would, hardly once
in a week, suffer any one to come in to see him; he always kept himself
shut up in his chamber alone, except that a servant brought him, once a
day, something to eat, and did then but just come in and go out again. His
employment was to walk up and down, and read some book, for he was a bit
of a scholar; but, as to the rest, obstinately bent to die in this
retirement, as he soon after did. I would endeavour by pleasant
conversation to create in my children a warm and unfeigned friendship and
good-will towards me, which in well-descended natures is not hard to do;
for if they be furious brutes, of which this age of ours produces
thousands, we are then to hate and avoid them as such.
I am angry at the custom of forbidding children to call their father by
the name of father, and to enjoin them another, as more full of respect
and reverence, as if nature had not sufficiently provided for our
authority. We call Almighty God Father, and disdain to have our children
call us so; I have reformed this error in my family.—[As did Henry
IV. of France]—And 'tis also folly and injustice to deprive
children, when grown up, of familiarity with their father, and to carry a
scornful and austere countenance toward them, thinking by that to keep
them in awe and obedience; for it is a very idle farce that, instead of
producing the effect designed, renders fathers distasteful, and, which is
worse, ridiculous to their own children. They have youth and vigour in
possession, and consequently the breath and favour of the world; and
therefore receive these fierce and tyrannical looks—mere scarecrows—
of a man without blood, either in his heart or veins, with mockery and
contempt. Though I could make myself feared, I had yet much rather make
myself beloved: there are so many sorts of defects in old age, so much
imbecility, and it is so liable to contempt, that the best acquisition a
man can make is the kindness and affection of his own family; command and
fear are no longer his weapons. Such an one I have known who, having been
very imperious in his youth, when he came to be old, though he might have
lived at his full ease, would ever strike, rant, swear, and curse: the
most violent householder in France: fretting himself with unnecessary
suspicion and vigilance. And all this rumble and clutter but to make his
family cheat him the more; of his barn, his kitchen, cellar, nay, and his
very purse too, others had the greatest use and share, whilst he keeps his
keys in his pocket much more carefully than his eyes. Whilst he hugs
himself with the pitiful frugality of a niggard table, everything goes to
rack and ruin in every corner of his house, in play, drink, all sorts of
profusion, making sport in their junkets with his vain anger and fruitless
parsimony. Every one is a sentinel against him, and if, by accident, any
wretched fellow that serves him is of another humour, and will not join
with the rest, he is presently rendered suspected to him, a bait that old
age very easily bites at of itself. How often has this gentleman boasted
to me in how great awe he kept his family, and how exact an obedience and
reverence they paid him! How clearly he saw into his own affairs!
"Ille solos nescit omnia."
["He alone is ignorant of all that is passing."
—Terence, Adelph., iv. 2, 9.]
I do not know any one that can muster more parts, both natural and
acquired, proper to maintain dominion, than he; yet he is fallen from it
like a child. For this reason it is that I have picked out him, amongst
several others that I know of the same humour, for the greatest example.
It were matter for a question in the schools, whether he is better thus or
otherwise. In his presence, all submit to and bow to him, and give so much
way to his vanity that nobody ever resists him; he has his fill of
assents, of seeming fear, submission, and respect. Does he turn away a
servant? he packs up his bundle, and is gone; but 'tis no further than
just out of his sight: the steps of old age are so slow, the senses so
troubled, that he will live and do his old office in the same house a year
together without being perceived.
And after a fit interval of time, letters are pretended to come from a
great way off; very humble, suppliant; and full of promises of amendment,
by virtue of which he is again received into favour. Does Monsieur make
any bargain, or prepare any despatch that does not please? 'tis
suppressed, and causes afterwards forged to excuse the want of execution
in the one or answer in the other. No letters being first brought to him,
he never sees any but those that shall seem fit for his knowledge. If by
accident they fall first into his own hand, being used to trust somebody
to read them to him; he reads extempore what he thinks fit, and often
makes such a one ask him pardon who abuses and rails at him in his letter.
In short, he sees nothing, but by an image prepared and designed
beforehand and the most satisfactory they can invent, not to rouse and
awaken his ill humour and choler. I have seen, under various aspects,
enough of these modes of domestic government, long-enduring, constant, to
the like effect.
Women are evermore addicted to cross their husbands: they lay hold with
both hands on all occasions to contradict and oppose them; the first
excuse serves for a plenary justification. I have seen one who robbed her
husband wholesale, that, as she told her confessor, she might distribute
the more liberal alms. Let who will trust to that religious dispensation.
No management of affairs seems to them of sufficient dignity, if
proceeding from the husband's assent; they must usurp it either by
insolence or cunning, and always injuriously, or else it has not the grace
and authority they desire. When, as in the case I am speaking of, 'tis
against a poor old man and for the children, then they make use of this
title to serve their passion with glory; and, as for a common service,
easily cabal, and combine against his government and dominion. If they be
males grown up in full and flourishing health, they presently corrupt,
either by force or favour, steward, receivers, and all the rout. Such as
have neither wife nor son do not so easily fall into this misfortune; but
withal more cruelly and unworthily. Cato the elder in his time said: So
many servants, so many enemies; consider, then, whether according to the
vast difference between the purity of the age he lived in and the
corruption of this of ours, he does not seem to shew us that wife, son,
and servant, are so many enemies to us? 'Tis well for old age that it is
always accompanied by want of observation, ignorance, and a proneness to
being deceived. For should we see how we are used and would not acquiesce,
what would become of us? especially in such an age as this, where the very
judges who are to determine our controversies are usually partisans to the
young, and interested in the cause. In case the discovery of this cheating
escape me, I cannot at least fail to discern that I am very fit to be
cheated. And can a man ever enough exalt the value of a friend, in
comparison with these civil ties? The very image of it which I see in
beasts, so pure and uncorrupted, how religiously do I respect it! If
others deceive me, yet do I not, at least, deceive myself in thinking I am
able to defend myself from them, or in cudgelling my brains to make myself
so. I protect myself from such treasons in my own bosom, not by an unquiet
and tumultuous curiosity, but rather by diversion and resolution. When I
hear talk of any one's condition, I never trouble myself to think of him;
I presently turn my eyes upon myself to see in what condition I am;
whatever concerns another relates to me; the accident that has befallen
him gives me caution, and rouses me to turn my defence that way. We every
day and every hour say things of another that we might properly say of
ourselves, could we but apply our observation to our own concerns, as well
as extend it to others. And several authors have in this manner prejudiced
their own cause by running headlong upon those they attack, and darting
those shafts against their enemies, that are more properly, and with
greater advantage, to be turned upon themselves.
The late Mareschal de Montluc having lost his son, who died in the island
of Madeira, in truth a very worthy gentleman and of great expectation, did
to me, amongst his other regrets, very much insist upon what a sorrow and
heart-breaking it was that he had never made himself familiar with him;
and by that humour of paternal gravity and grimace to have lost the
opportunity of having an insight into and of well knowing, his son, as
also of letting him know the extreme affection he had for him, and the
worthy opinion he had of his virtue. "That poor boy," said he, "never saw
in me other than a stern and disdainful countenance, and is gone in a
belief that I neither knew how to love him nor esteem him according to his
desert. For whom did I reserve the discovery of that singular affection I
had for him in my soul? Was it not he himself, who ought to have had all
the pleasure of it, and all the obligation? I constrained and racked
myself to put on, and maintain this vain disguise, and have by that means
deprived myself of the pleasure of his conversation, and, I doubt, in some
measure, his affection, which could not but be very cold to me, having
never other from me than austerity, nor felt other than a tyrannical
manner of proceeding."
[Madame de Sevigne tells us that she never read this passage without
tears in her eyes. "My God!" she exclaims, "how full is this book
of good sense!" Ed.]
I find this complaint to be rational and rightly apprehended: for, as I
myself know by too certain experience, there is no so sweet consolation in
the loss of friends as the conscience of having had no reserve or secret
for them, and to have had with them a perfect and entire communication. Oh
my friend,—[La Boetie.] am I the better for being sensible of this;
or am I the worse? I am, doubtless, much the better. I am consoled and
honoured, in the sorrow for his death. Is it not a pious and a pleasing
office of my life to be always upon my friend's obsequies? Can there be
any joy equal to this privation?
I open myself to my family, as much as I can, and very willingly let them
know the state of my opinion and good will towards them, as I do to
everybody else: I make haste to bring out and present myself to them; for
I will not have them mistaken in me, in anything. Amongst other particular
customs of our ancient Gauls, this, as Caesar reports,—[De Bello
Gall., vi. r8.]—was one, that the sons never presented themselves
before their fathers, nor durst ever appear in their company in public,
till they began to bear arms; as if they would intimate by this, that it
was also time for their fathers to receive them into their familiarity and
acquaintance.
I have observed yet another sort of indiscretion in fathers of my time,
that, not contented with having deprived their children, during their own
long lives, of the share they naturally ought to have had in their
fortunes, they afterwards leave to their wives the same authority over
their estates, and liberty to dispose of them according to their own
fancy. And I have known a certain lord, one of the principal officers of
the crown, who, having in reversion above fifty thousand crowns yearly
revenue, died necessitous and overwhelmed with debt at above fifty years
of age; his mother in her extremest decrepitude being yet in possession of
all his property by the will of his father, who had, for his part, lived
till near fourscore years old. This appears to me by no means reasonable.
And therefore I think it of very little advantage to a man, whose affairs
are well enough, to seek a wife who encumbers his estate with a very great
fortune; there is no sort of foreign debt that brings more ruin to
families than this: my predecessors have ever been aware of that danger
and provided against it, and so have I. But those who dissuade us from
rich wives, for fear they should be less tractable and kind, are out in
their advice to make a man lose a real commodity for so frivolous a
conjecture. It costs an unreasonable woman no more to pass over one reason
than another; they cherish themselves most where they are most wrong.
Injustice allures them, as the honour of their virtuous actions does the
good; and the more riches they bring with them, they are so much the more
good-natured, as women, who are handsome, are all the more inclined and
proud to be chaste.
'Tis reasonable to leave the administration of affairs to the mothers,
till the children are old enough, according to law, to manage them; but
the father has brought them, up very ill, if he cannot hope that, when
they come to maturity, they will have more wisdom and ability in the
management of affairs than his wife, considering the ordinary weakness of
the sex. It were, notwithstanding, to say the truth, more against nature
to make the mothers depend upon the discretion of their children; they
ought to be plentifully provided for, to maintain themselves according to
their quality and age, by reason that necessity and indigence are much
more unbecoming and insupportable to them than to men; the son should
rather be cut short than the mother.
In general, the most judicious distribution of our goods, when we come to
die, is, in my opinion, to let them be distributed according to the custom
of the country; the laws have considered the matter better than we know
how to do, and 'tis wiser to let them fail in their appointment, than
rashly to run the hazard of miscarrying in ours. Nor are the goods
properly ours, since, by civil prescription and without us, they are all
destined to certain successors. And although we have some liberty beyond
that, yet I think we ought not, without great and manifest cause, to take
away that from one which his fortune has allotted him, and to which the
public equity gives him title; and that it is against reason to abuse this
liberty, in making it serve our own frivolous and private fancies. My
destiny has been kind to me in not presenting me with occasions to tempt
me and divert my affection from the common and legitimate institution. I
see many with whom 'tis time lost to employ a long exercise of good
offices: a word ill taken obliterates ten years' merit; he is happy who is
in a position to oil their goodwill at this last passage. The last action
carries it, not the best and most frequent offices, but the most recent
and present do the work. These are people that play with their wills as
with apples or rods, to gratify or chastise every action of those who
pretend to an interest in their care. 'Tis a thing of too great weight and
consequence to be so tumbled and tossed and altered every moment, and
wherein the wise determine once for all, having above all things regard to
reason and the public observance. We lay these masculine substitutions too
much to heart, proposing a ridiculous eternity to our names. We are,
moreover, too superstitious in vain conjectures as to the future, that we
derive from the words and actions of children. Peradventure they might
have done me an injustice, in dispossessing me of my right, for having
been the most dull and heavy, the most slow and unwilling at my book, not
of all my brothers only, but of all the boys in the whole province:
whether about learning my lesson, or about any bodily exercise. 'Tis a
folly to make an election out of the ordinary course upon the credit of
these divinations wherein we are so often deceived. If the ordinary rule
of descent were to be violated, and the destinies corrected in the choice
they have made of our heirs, one might more plausibly do it upon the
account of some remarkable and enormous personal deformity, a permanent
and incorrigible defect, and in the opinion of us French, who are great
admirers of beauty, an important prejudice.
The pleasant dialogue betwixt Plato's legislator and his citizens will be
an ornament to this place, "What," said they, feeling themselves about to
die, "may we not dispose of our own to whom we please? God! what cruelty
that it shall not be lawful for us, according as we have been served and
attended in our sickness, in our old age, in our affairs, to give more or
less to those whom we have found most diligent about us, at our own fancy
and discretion!" To which the legislator answers thus:
"My friends, who are now, without question, very soon to die, it is hard
for you in the condition you are, either to know yourselves, or what is
yours, according to the delphic inscription. I, who make the laws, am of
opinion, that you neither are yourselves your own, nor is that yours of
which you are possessed. Both your goods and you belong to your families,
as well those past as those to come; but, further, both your family and
goods much more appertain to the public. Wherefore, lest any flatterer in
your old age or in your sickness, or any passion of your own, should
unseasonably prevail with you to make an unjust will, I shall take care to
prevent that inconvenience; but, having respect both to the universal
interests of the city and that of your particular family, I shall
establish laws, and make it by good reasons appear, that private
convenience ought to give place to the common benefit. Go then cheerfully
where human necessity calls you. It is for me, who regard no more the one
thing than the other, and who, as much as in me lies, am provident of the
public interest, to have a care as to what you leave behind you."
To return to my subject: it appears to me that women are very rarely born,
to whom the prerogative over men, the maternal and natural excepted, is in
any sort due, unless it be for the punishment of such, as in some amorous
fever have voluntarily submitted themselves to them: but that in no way
concerns the old ones, of whom we are now speaking. This consideration it
is which has made us so willingly to enact and give force to that law,
which was never yet seen by any one, by which women are excluded the
succession to our crown: and there is hardly a government in the world
where it is not pleaded, as it is here, by the probability of reason that
authorises it, though fortune has given it more credit in some places than
in others. 'Tis dangerous to leave the disposal of our succession to their
judgment, according to the choice they shall make of children, which is
often fantastic and unjust; for the irregular appetites and depraved
tastes they have during the time of their being with child, they have at
all other times in the mind. We commonly see them fond of the most weak,
ricketty, and deformed children; or of those, if they have such, as are
still hanging at the breast. For, not having sufficient force of reason to
choose and embrace that which is most worthy, they the more willingly
suffer themselves to be carried away, where the impressions of nature are
most alone; like animals that know their young no longer than they give
them suck. As to the rest, it is easy by experience to be discerned that
this natural affection to which we give so great authority has but very
weak roots. For a very little profit, we every day tear their own children
out of the mothers' arms, and make them take ours in their room: we make
them abandon their own to some pitiful nurse, to whom we disdain to commit
ours, or to some she-goat, forbidding them, not only to give them suck,
what danger soever they run thereby, but, moreover, to take any manner of
care of them, that they may wholly be occupied with the care of and
attendance upon ours; and we see in most of them an adulterate affection,
more vehement than the natural, begotten by custom toward the foster
children, and a greater solicitude for the preservation of those they have
taken charge of, than of their own. And that which I was saying of goats
was upon this account; that it is ordinary all about where I live, to see
the countrywomen, when they want milk of their own for their children, to
call goats to their assistance; and I have at this hour two men-servants
that never sucked women's milk more than eight days after they were born.
These goats are immediately taught to come to suckle the little children,
know their voices when they cry, and come running to them. If any other
than this foster-child be presented to them, they refuse to let it suck;
and the child in like manner will refuse to suck another goat. I saw one
the other day from whom they had taken away the goat that used to nourish
it, by reason the father had only borrowed it of a neighbour; the child
would not touch any other they could bring, and died, doubtless of hunger.
Beasts as easily alter and corrupt their natural affection as we: I
believe that in what Herodotus relates of a certain district of Lybia,
there are many mistakes; he says that the women are there in common; but
that the child, so soon as it can go, finds him out in the crowd for his
father, to whom he is first led by his natural inclination.
Now, to consider this simple reason for loving our children, that we have
begot them, therefore calling them our second selves, it appears,
methinks, that there is another kind of production proceeding from us,
that is of no less recommendation: for that which we engender by the soul,
the issue of our understanding, courage, and abilities, springs from
nobler parts than those of the body, and that are much more our own: we
are both father and mother in this generation. These cost us a great deal
more and bring us more honour, if they have anything of good in them. For
the value of our other children is much more theirs than ours; the share
we have in them is very little; but of these all the beauty, all the grace
and value, are ours; and also they more vividly represent us than the
others. Plato adds, that these are immortal children that immortalise and
deify their fathers, as Lycurgus, Solon, Minos. Now, histories being full
of examples of the common affection of fathers to their children, it seems
not altogether improper to introduce some few of this other kind.
Heliodorus, that good bishop of Trikka, rather chose to lose the dignity,
profit, and devotion of so venerable a prelacy, than to lose his daughter;
a daughter that continues to this day very graceful and comely; but,
peradventure, a little too curiously and wantonly tricked, and too amorous
for an ecclesiastical and sacerdotal daughter. There was one Labienus at
Rome, a man of great worth and authority, and amongst other qualities
excellent in all sorts of literature, who was, as I take it, the son of
that great Labienus, the chief of Caesar's captains in the wars of Gaul;
and who, afterwards, siding with Pompey the great, so valiantly maintained
his cause, till he was by Caesar defeated in Spain. This Labienus, of whom
I am now speaking, had several enemies, envious of his good qualities,
and, tis likely, the courtiers and minions of the emperors of his time who
were very angry at his freedom and the paternal humour which he yet
retained against tyranny, with which it is to be supposed he had tinctured
his books and writings. His adversaries prosecuted several pieces he had
published before the magistrates at Rome, and prevailed so far against
him, as to have them condemned to the fire. It was in him that this new
example of punishment was begun, which was afterwards continued against
others at Rome, to punish even writing and studies with death. There would
not be means and matter enough of cruelty, did we not mix with them things
that nature has exempted from all sense and suffering, as reputation and
the products of the mind, and did we not communicate corporal punishments
to the teachings and monuments of the Muses. Now, Labienus could not
suffer this loss, nor survive these his so dear issue, and therefore
caused himself to be conveyed and shut up alive in the monument of his
ancestors, where he made shift to kill and bury himself at once. 'Tis hard
to shew a more vehement paternal affection than this. Cassius Severus, a
man of great eloquence and his very intimate friend, seeing his books
burned, cried out that by the same sentence they should as well condemn
him to the fire too, seeing that he carried in his memory all that they
contained. The like accident befel Cremutius Cordus, who being accused of
having in his books commended Brutus and Cassius, that dirty, servile, and
corrupt Senate, worthy a worse master than Tiberius, condemned his
writings to the flame. He was willing to bear them company, and killed
himself with fasting. The good Lucan, being condemned by that rascal Nero,
at the last gasp of his life, when the greater part of his blood was
already spent through the veins of his arms, which he had caused his
physician to open to make him die, and when the cold had seized upon all
his extremities, and began to approach his vital parts, the last thing he
had in his memory was some of the verses of his Battle of Phaysalia, which
he recited, dying with them in his mouth. What was this, but taking a
tender and paternal leave of his children, in imitation of the
valedictions and embraces, wherewith we part from ours, when we come to
die, and an effect of that natural inclination, that suggests to our
remembrance in this extremity those things which were dearest to us during
the time of our life?
Can we believe that Epicurus who, as he says himself, dying of the
intolerable pain of the stone, had all his consolation in the beauty of
the doctrine he left behind him, could have received the same satisfaction
from many children, though never so well-conditioned and brought up, had
he had them, as he did from the production of so many rich writings? Or
that, had it been in his choice to have left behind him a deformed and
untoward child or a foolish and ridiculous book, he, or any other man of
his understanding, would not rather have chosen to have run the first
misfortune than the other? It had been, for example, peradventure, an
impiety in St. Augustin, if, on the one hand, it had been proposed to him
to bury his writings, from which religion has received so great fruit, or
on the other to bury his children, had he had them, had he not rather
chosen to bury his children. And I know not whether I had not much rather
have begot a very beautiful one, through society with the Muses, than by
lying with my wife. To this, such as it is, what I give it I give
absolutely and irrevocably, as men do to their bodily children. That
little I have done for it, is no more at my own disposal; it may know many
things that are gone from me, and from me hold that which I have not
retained; and which, as well as a stranger, I should borrow thence, should
I stand in need. If I am wiser than my book, it is richer than I. There
are few men addicted to poetry, who would not be much prouder to be the
father to the AEneid than to the handsomest youth of Rome; and who would
not much better bear the loss of the one than of the other. For according
to Aristotle, the poet, of all artificers, is the fondest of his work.
'Tis hard to believe that Epaminondas, who boasted that in lieu of all
posterity he left two daughters behind him that would one day do their
father honour (meaning the two victories he obtained over the
Lacedaemonians), would willingly have consented to exchange these for the
most beautiful creatures of all Greece; or that Alexander or Caesar ever
wished to be deprived of the grandeur of their glorious exploits in war,
for the convenience of children and heirs, how perfect and accomplished
soever. Nay, I make a great question, whether Phidias or any other
excellent sculptor would be so solicitous of the preservation and
continuance of his natural children, as he would be of a rare statue,
which with long labour and study he had perfected according to art. And to
those furious and irregular passions that have sometimes inflamed fathers
towards their own daughters, and mothers towards their own sons, the like
is also found in this other sort of parentage: witness what is related of
Pygmalion who, having made the statue of a woman of singular beauty, fell
so passionately in love with this work of his, that the gods in favour of
his passion inspired it with life.
"Tentatum mollescit ebur, positoque rigore,
Subsidit digitis."
["The ivory grows soft under his touch and yields to his fingers."
—Ovid, Metam., x. 283.]
CHAPTER IX——OF THE ARMS OF THE PARTHIANS
'Tis an ill custom and unmanly that the gentlemen of our time have got,
not to put on arms but just upon the point of the most extreme necessity,
and to lay them by again, so soon as ever there is any show of the danger
being over; hence many disorders arise; for every one bustling and running
to his arms just when he should go to charge, has his cuirass to buckle on
when his companions are already put to rout. Our ancestors were wont to
give their head-piece, lance and gauntlets to be carried, but never put
off the other pieces so long as there was any work to be done. Our troops
are now cumbered and rendered unsightly with the clutter of baggage and
servants who cannot be from their masters, by reason they carry their
arms. Titus Livius speaking of our nation:
"Intolerantissima laboris corpora vix arma humeris gerebant."
["Bodies most impatient of labour could scarce endure to wear
their arms on their shoulders."—Livy, x. 28.]
Many nations do yet, and did anciently, go to war without defensive arms,
or with such, at least, as were of very little proof:
"Tegmina queis capitum, raptus de subere cortex."
["To whom the coverings of the heads were the bark of the
cork-tree."—AEneid, vii. 742.]
Alexander, the most adventurous captain that ever was, very seldom wore
armour, and such amongst us as slight it, do not by that much harm to the
main concern; for if we see some killed for want of it, there are few less
whom the lumber of arms helps to destroy, either by being overburthened,
crushed, and cramped with their weight, by a rude shock, or otherwise.
For, in plain truth, to observe the weight and thickness of the armour we
have now in use, it seems as if we only sought to defend ourselves, and
are rather loaded than secured by it. We have enough to do to support its
weight, being so manacled and immured, as if we were only to contend with
our own arms, and as if we had not the same obligation to defend them,
that they have to defend us. Tacitus gives a pleasant description of the
men-at-arms among our ancient Gauls, who were so armed as only to be able
to stand, without power to harm or to be harmed, or to rise again if once
struck down. Lucullus, seeing certain soldiers of the Medes, who formed
the van of Tigranes' army, heavily armed and very uneasy, as if in prisons
of iron, thence conceived hopes with great ease to defeat them, and by
them began his charge and victory. And now that our musketeers are in
credit, I believe some invention will be found out to immure us for our
safety, and to draw us to the war in castles, such as those the ancients
loaded their elephants withal.
This humour is far differing from that of the younger Scipio, who sharply
reprehended his soldiers for having planted caltrops under water, in a
ditch by which those of the town he held besieged might sally out upon
him; saying, that those who assaulted should think of attacking, and not
to fear; suspecting, with good reason, that this stop they had put to the
enemies, would make themselves less vigilant upon their guard. He said
also to a young man, who showed him a fine buckler he had, that he was
very proud of, "It is a very fine buckler indeed, but a Roman soldier
ought to repose greater confidence in his right hand than in his left."
Now 'tis nothing but the not being used to wear it that makes the weight
of our armour so intolerable:
"L'usbergo in dosso haveano, et l'elmo in testa,
Due di questi guerrier, de' quali io canto;
Ne notte o di, d' appoi ch' entraro in questa
Stanza, gl'haveano mai messi da canto;
Che facile a portar come la vesta
Era lor, perche in uso l'havean tanto:"
["Two of the warriors, of whom I sing, had on their backs their
cuirass and on their heads their casque, and never had night or day
once laid them by, whilst here they were; those arms, by long
practice, were grown as light to bear as a garment"
—Ariosto, Cant., MI. 30.]
the Emperor Caracalla was wont to march on foot, completely armed, at the
head of his army. The Roman infantry always carried not only a morion, a
sword, and a shield (for as to arms, says Cicero, they were so accustomed
to have them always on, that they were no more trouble to them than their
own limbs):
"Arma enim membra militis esse dicunt."
but, moreover, fifteen days' provision, together with a certain number of
stakes, wherewith to fortify their camp, sixty pounds in weight. And
Marius' soldiers, laden at the same rate, were inured to march in order of
battle five leagues in five hours, and sometimes, upon any urgent
occasion, six.
Their military discipline was much ruder than ours, and accordingly
produced much greater effects. The younger Scipio, reforming his army in
Spain, ordered his soldiers to eat standing, and nothing that was drest.
The jeer that was given a Lacedaemonian soldier is marvellously pat to
this purpose, who, in an expedition of war, was reproached for having been
seen under the roof of a house: they were so inured to hardship that, let
the weather be what it would, it was a shame to be seen under any other
cover than the roof of heaven. We should not march our people very far at
that rate.
As to what remains, Marcellinus, a man bred up in the Roman wars,
curiously observes the manner of the Parthians arming themselves, and the
rather, for being so different from that of the Romans. "They had," says
he, "armour so woven as to have all the scales fall over one another like
so many little feathers; which did nothing hinder the motion of the body,
and yet were of such resistance, that our darts hitting upon them, would
rebound" (these were the coats of mail our forefathers were so constantly
wont to use). And in another place: "they had," says he, "strong and able
horses, covered with thick tanned hides of leather, and were themselves
armed 'cap-a-pie' with great plates of iron, so artificially ordered, that
in all parts of the limbs, which required bending, they lent themselves to
the motion. One would have said, that they had been men of iron; having
armour for the head so neatly fitted, and so naturally representing the
form of a face, that they were nowhere vulnerable, save at two little
round holes, that gave them a little light, corresponding with their eyes,
and certain small chinks about their nostrils, through which they, with
great difficulty, breathed,"
"Flexilis inductis animatur lamina membris,
Horribilis visu; credas simulacra moveri
Ferrea, cognatoque viros spirare metallo.
Par vestitus equis: ferrata fronte minantur,
Ferratosque movent, securi vulneris, armos."
["Plates of steel are placed over the body, so flexible that,
dreadful to be seen, you would think these not living men, but
moving images. The horses are similarly armed, and, secured from
wounds, move their iron shoulders."—Claud, In Ruf., ii. 358.]
'Tis a description drawing very near resembling the equipage of the
men-at-arms in France, with their barded horses. Plutarch says, that
Demetrius caused two complete suits of armour to be made for himself and
for Alcimus, a captain of the greatest note and authority about him, of
six score pounds weight each, whereas the ordinary suits weighed but half
as much.
CHAPTER X——OF BOOKS
I make no doubt but that I often happen to speak of things that are much
better and more truly handled by those who are masters of the trade. You
have here purely an essay of my natural parts, and not of those acquired:
and whoever shall catch me tripping in ignorance, will not in any sort get
the better of me; for I should be very unwilling to become responsible to
another for my writings, who am not so to myself, nor satisfied with them.
Whoever goes in quest of knowledge, let him fish for it where it is to be
found; there is nothing I so little profess. These are fancies of my own,
by which I do not pretend to discover things but to lay open myself; they
may, peradventure, one day be known to me, or have formerly been,
according as fortune has been able to bring me in place where they have
been explained; but I have utterly forgotten it; and if I am a man of some
reading, I am a man of no retention; so that I can promise no certainty,
more than to make known to what point the knowledge I now have has risen.
Therefore, let none lay stress upon the matter I write, but upon my method
in writing it. Let them observe, in what I borrow, if I have known how to
choose what is proper to raise or help the invention, which is always my
own. For I make others say for me, not before but after me, what, either
for want of language or want of sense, I cannot myself so well express. I
do not number my borrowings, I weigh them; and had I designed to raise
their value by number, I had made them twice as many; they are all, or
within a very few, so famed and ancient authors, that they seem, methinks,
themselves sufficiently to tell who they are, without giving me the
trouble. In reasons, comparisons, and arguments, if I transplant any into
my own soil, and confound them amongst my own, I purposely conceal the
author, to awe the temerity of those precipitate censors who fall upon all
sorts of writings, particularly the late ones, of men yet living; and in
the vulgar tongue which puts every one into a capacity of criticising and
which seem to convict the conception and design as vulgar also. I will
have them give Plutarch a fillip on my nose, and rail against Seneca when
they think they rail at me. I must shelter my own weakness under these
great reputations. I shall love any one that can unplume me, that is, by
clearness of understanding and judgment, and by the sole distinction of
the force and beauty of the discourse. For I who, for want of memory, am
at every turn at a loss to, pick them out of their national livery, am yet
wise enough to know, by the measure of my own abilities, that my soil is
incapable of producing any of those rich flowers that I there find
growing; and that all the fruits of my own growth are not worth any one of
them. For this, indeed, I hold myself responsible; if I get in my own way;
if there be any vanity and defect in my writings which I do not of myself
perceive nor can discern, when pointed out to me by another; for many
faults escape our eye, but the infirmity of judgment consists in not being
able to discern them, when by another laid open to us. Knowledge and truth
may be in us without judgment, and judgment also without them; but the
confession of ignorance is one of the finest and surest testimonies of
judgment that I know. I have no other officer to put my writings in rank
and file, but only fortune. As things come into my head, I heap them one
upon another; sometimes they advance in whole bodies, sometimes in single
file. I would that every one should see my natural and ordinary pace,
irregular as it is; I suffer myself to jog on at my own rate. Neither are
these subjects which a man is not permitted to be ignorant in, or casually
and at a venture, to discourse of. I could wish to have a more perfect
knowledge of things, but I will not buy it so dear as it costs. My design
is to pass over easily, and not laboriously, the remainder of my life;
there is nothing that I will cudgel my brains about; no, not even
knowledge, of what value soever.
I seek, in the reading of books, only to please myself by an honest
diversion; or, if I study, 'tis for no other science than what treats of
the knowledge of myself, and instructs me how to die and how to live well.
"Has meus ad metas sudet oportet equus."
["My horse must work according to my step."
—Propertius, iv.]
I do not bite my nails about the difficulties I meet with in my reading;
after a charge or two, I give them over. Should I insist upon them, I
should both lose myself and time; for I have an impatient understanding,
that must be satisfied at first: what I do not discern at once is by
persistence rendered more obscure. I do nothing without gaiety;
continuation and a too obstinate endeavour, darkens, stupefies, and tires
my judgment. My sight is confounded and dissipated with poring; I must
withdraw it, and refer my discovery to new attempts; just as, to judge
rightly of the lustre of scarlet, we are taught to pass the eye lightly
over it, and again to run it over at several sudden and reiterated
glances. If one book do not please me, I take another; and I never meddle
with any, but at such times as I am weary of doing nothing. I care not
much for new ones, because the old seem fuller and stronger; neither do I
converse much with Greek authors, because my judgment cannot do its work
with imperfect intelligence of the material.
Amongst books that are simply pleasant, of the moderns, Boccaccio's
Decameron, Rabelais, and the Basia of Johannes Secundus (if those may be
ranged under the title) are worth reading for amusement. As to the Amadis,
and such kind of stuff, they had not the credit of arresting even my
childhood. And I will, moreover, say, whether boldly or rashly, that this
old, heavy soul of mine is now no longer tickled with Ariosto, no, nor
with the worthy Ovid; his facility and inventions, with which I was
formerly so ravished, are now of no more relish, and I can hardly have the
patience to read them. I speak my opinion freely of all things, even of
those that, perhaps, exceed my capacity, and that I do not conceive to be,
in any wise, under my jurisdiction. And, accordingly, the judgment I
deliver, is to show the measure of my own sight, and not of the things I
make so bold to criticise. When I find myself disgusted with Plato's
'Axiochus', as with a work, with due respect to such an author be it
spoken, without force, my judgment does not believe itself: it is not so
arrogant as to oppose the authority of so many other famous judgments of
antiquity, which it considers as its tutors and masters, and with whom it
is rather content to err; in such a case, it condemns itself either to
stop at the outward bark, not being able to penetrate to the heart, or to
consider it by sortie false light. It is content with only securing itself
from trouble and disorder; as to its own weakness, it frankly acknowledges
and confesses it. It thinks it gives a just interpretation to the
appearances by its conceptions presented to it; but they are weak and
imperfect. Most of the fables of AEsop have diverse senses and meanings,
of which the mythologists chose some one that quadrates well to the fable;
but, for the most part, 'tis but the first face that presents itself and
is superficial only; there yet remain others more vivid, essential, and
profound, into which they have not been able to penetrate; and just so
'tis with me.
But, to pursue the business of this essay, I have always thought that, in
poesy, Virgil, Lucretius, Catullus, and Horace by many degrees excel the
rest; and signally, Virgil in his Georgics, which I look upon as the most
accomplished piece in poetry; and in comparison of which a man may easily
discern that there are some places in his AEneids, to which the author
would have given a little more of the file, had he had leisure: and the
fifth book of his AEneids seems to me the most perfect. I also love Lucan,
and willingly read him, not so much for his style, as for his own worth,
and the truth and solidity of his opinions and judgments. As for good
Terence, the refined elegance and grace of the Latin tongue, I find him
admirable in his vivid representation of our manners and the movements of
the soul; our actions throw me at every turn upon him; and I cannot read
him so often that I do not still discover some new grace and beauty. Such
as lived near Virgil's time complained that some should compare Lucretius
to him. I am of opinion that the comparison is, in truth, very unequal: a
belief that, nevertheless, I have much ado to assure myself in, when I
come upon some excellent passage in Lucretius. But if they were so angry
at this comparison, what would they say to the brutish and barbarous
stupidity of those who, nowadays, compare him with Ariosto? Would not
Ariosto himself say?
"O seclum insipiens et inficetum!"
["O stupid and tasteless age."—Catullus, xliii. 8.]
I think the ancients had more reason to be angry with those who compared
Plautus with Terence, though much nearer the mark, than Lucretius with
Virgil. It makes much for the estimation and preference of Terence, that
the father of Roman eloquence has him so often, and alone of his class, in
his mouth; and the opinion that the best judge of Roman poets —[Horace,
De Art. Poetica, 279.]—has passed upon his companion. I have often
observed that those of our times, who take upon them to write comedies (in
imitation of the Italians, who are happy enough in that way of writing),
take three or four plots of those of Plautus or Terence to make one of
their own, and , crowd five or six of Boccaccio's novels into one single
comedy. That which makes them so load themselves with matter is the
diffidence they have of being able to support themselves with their own
strength. They must find out something to lean to; and not having of their
own stuff wherewith to entertain us, they bring in the story to supply the
defect of language. It is quite otherwise with my author; the elegance and
perfection of his way of speaking makes us lose the appetite of his plot;
his refined grace and elegance of diction everywhere occupy us: he is so
pleasant throughout,
"Liquidus, puroque simillimus amni,"
["Liquid, and likest the pure river."
—Horace, Ep., ii. s, 120.]
and so possesses the soul with his graces that we forget those of his
fable. This same consideration carries me further: I observe that the best
of the ancient poets have avoided affectation and the hunting after, not
only fantastic Spanish and Petrarchic elevations, but even the softer and
more gentle touches, which are the ornament of all succeeding poesy. And
yet there is no good judgment that will condemn this in the ancients, and
that does not incomparably more admire the equal polish, and that
perpetual sweetness and flourishing beauty of Catullus's epigrams, than
all the stings with which Martial arms the tails of his. This is by the
same reason that I gave before, and as Martial says of himself:
"Minus illi ingenio laborandum fuit,
in cujus locum materia successerat:"
["He had the less for his wit to do that the subject itself
supplied what was necessary."—Martial, praef. ad lib. viii.]
The first, without being moved, or without getting angry, make themselves
sufficiently felt; they have matter enough of laughter throughout, they
need not tickle themselves; the others have need of foreign assistance; as
they have the less wit they must have the more body; they mount on
horseback, because they are not able to stand on their own legs. As in our
balls, those mean fellows who teach to dance, not being able to represent
the presence and dignity of our noblesse, are fain to put themselves
forward with dangerous jumping, and other strange motions and tumblers
tricks; and the ladies are less put to it in dance; where there are
various coupees, changes, and quick motions of body, than in some other of
a more sedate kind, where they are only to move a natural pace, and to
represent their ordinary grace and presence. And so I have seen good
drolls, when in their own everyday clothes, and with the same face they
always wear, give us all the pleasure of their art, when their
apprentices, not yet arrived at such a pitch of perfection, are fain to
meal their faces, put themselves into ridiculous disguises, and make a
hundred grotesque faces to give us whereat to laugh. This conception of
mine is nowhere more demonstrable than in comparing the AEneid with
Orlando Furioso; of which we see the first, by dint of wing, flying in a
brave and lofty place, and always following his point: the latter,
fluttering and hopping from tale to tale, as from branch to branch, not
daring to trust his wings but in very short flights, and perching at every
turn, lest his breath and strength should fail.
"Excursusque breves tentat."
["And he attempts short excursions."
—Virgil, Georgics, iv. 194.]
These, then, as to this sort of subjects, are the authors that best please
me.
As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more profit with
the pleasure, and whence I learn how to marshal my opinions and
conditions, the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch, since he
has been translated into French, and Seneca. Both of these have this
notable convenience suited to my humour, that the knowledge I there seek
is discoursed in loose pieces, that do not require from me any trouble of
reading long, of which I am incapable. Such are the minor works of the
first and the epistles of the latter, which are the best and most
profiting of all their writings. 'Tis no great attempt to take one of them
in hand, and I give over at pleasure; for they have no sequence or
dependence upon one another. These authors, for the most part, concur in
useful and true opinions; and there is this parallel betwixt them, that
fortune brought them into the world about the same century: they were both
tutors to two Roman emperors: both sought out from foreign countries: both
rich and both great men. Their instruction is the cream of philosophy, and
delivered after a plain and pertinent manner. Plutarch is more uniform and
constant; Seneca more various and waving: the last toiled and bent his
whole strength to fortify virtue against weakness, fear, and vicious
appetites; the other seems more to slight their power, and to disdain to
alter his pace and to stand upon his guard. Plutarch's opinions are
Platonic, gentle, and accommodated to civil society; those of the other
are Stoical and Epicurean, more remote from the common use, but, in my
opinion, more individually commodious and more firm. Seneca seems to lean
a little to the tyranny of the emperors of his time, and only seems; for I
take it for certain that he speaks against his judgment when he condemns
the action of the generous murderers of Caesar. Plutarch is frank
throughout: Seneca abounds with brisk touches and sallies; Plutarch with
things that warm and move you more; this contents and pays you better: he
guides us, the other pushes us on.
As to Cicero, his works that are most useful to my design are they that
treat of manners and rules of our life. But boldly to confess the truth
(for since one has passed the barriers of impudence, there is no bridle),
his way of writing appears to me negligent and uninviting: for his
prefaces, definitions, divisions, and etymologies take up the greatest
part of his work: whatever there is of life and marrow is smothered and
lost in the long preparation. When I have spent an hour in reading him,
which is a great deal for me, and try to recollect what I have thence
extracted of juice and substance, for the most part I find nothing but
wind; for he is not yet come to the arguments that serve to his purpose,
and to the reasons that properly help to form the knot I seek. For me, who
only desire to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent, these
logical and Aristotelian dispositions of parts are of no use. I would have
a man begin with the main proposition. I know well enough what death and
pleasure are; let no man give himself the trouble to anatomise them to me.
I look for good and solid reasons, at the first dash, to instruct me how
to stand their shock, for which purpose neither grammatical subtleties nor
the quaint contexture of words and argumentations are of any use at all. I
am for discourses that give the first charge into the heart of the
redoubt; his languish about the subject; they are proper for the schools,
for the bar, and for the pulpit, where we have leisure to nod, and may
awake, a quarter of an hour after, time enough to find again the thread of
the discourse. It is necessary to speak after this manner to judges, whom
a man has a design to gain over, right or wrong, to children and common
people, to whom a man must say all, and see what will come of it. I would
not have an author make it his business to render me attentive: or that he
should cry out fifty times Oyez! as the heralds do. The Romans, in their
religious exercises, began with 'Hoc age' as we in ours do with 'Sursum
corda'; these are so many words lost to me: I come already fully prepared
from my chamber. I need no allurement, no invitation, no sauce; I eat the
meat raw, so that, instead of whetting my appetite by these preparatives,
they tire and pall it. Will the licence of the time excuse my sacrilegious
boldness if I censure the dialogism of Plato himself as also dull and
heavy, too much stifling the matter, and lament so much time lost by a
man, who had so many better things to say, in so many long and needless
preliminary interlocutions? My ignorance will better excuse me in that I
understand not Greek so well as to discern the beauty of his language. I
generally choose books that use sciences, not such as only lead to them.
The two first, and Pliny, and their like, have nothing of this Hoc age;
they will have to do with men already instructed; or if they have, 'tis a
substantial Hoc age; and that has a body by itself. I also delight in
reading the Epistles to Atticus, not only because they contain a great
deal of the history and affairs of his time, but much more because I
therein discover much of his own private humours; for I have a singular
curiosity, as I have said elsewhere, to pry into the souls and the natural
and true opinions of the authors, with whom I converse. A man may indeed
judge of their parts, but not of their manners nor of themselves, by the
writings they exhibit upon the theatre of the world. I have a thousand
times lamented the loss of the treatise Brutus wrote upon Virtue, for it
is well to learn the theory from those who best know the practice.
But seeing the matter preached and the preacher are different things, I
would as willingly see Brutus in Plutarch, as in a book of his own. I
would rather choose to be certainly informed of the conference he had in
his tent with some particular friends of his the night before a battle,
than of the harangue he made the next day to his army; and of what he did
in his closet and his chamber, than what he did in the public square and
in the senate. As to Cicero, I am of the common opinion that, learning
excepted, he had no great natural excellence. He was a good citizen, of an
affable nature, as all fat, heavy men, such as he was, usually are; but
given to ease, and had, in truth, a mighty share of vanity and ambition.
Neither do I know how to excuse him for thinking his poetry fit to be
published; 'tis no great imperfection to make ill verses, but it is an
imperfection not to be able to judge how unworthy his verses were of the
glory of his name. For what concerns his eloquence, that is totally out of
all comparison, and I believe it will never be equalled. The younger
Cicero, who resembled his father in nothing but in name, whilst commanding
in Asia, had several strangers one day at his table, and, amongst the
rest, Cestius seated at the lower end, as men often intrude to the open
tables of the great. Cicero asked one of his people who that man was, who
presently told him his name; but he, as one who had his thoughts taken up
with something else, and who had forgotten the answer made him, asking
three or four times, over and over again; the same question, the fellow,
to deliver himself from so many answers and to make him know him by some
particular circumstance; "'tis that Cestius," said he, "of whom it was
told you, that he makes no great account of your father's eloquence in
comparison of his own." At which Cicero, being suddenly nettled, commanded
poor Cestius presently to be seized, and caused him to be very well
whipped in his own presence; a very discourteous entertainer! Yet even
amongst those, who, all things considered, have reputed his, eloquence
incomparable, there have been some, who have not stuck to observe some
faults in it: as that great Brutus his friend, for example, who said 'twas
a broken and feeble eloquence, 'fyactam et elumbem'. The orators also,
nearest to the age wherein he lived, reprehended in him the care he had of
a certain long cadence in his periods, and particularly took notice of
these words, 'esse videatur', which he there so often makes use of. For my
part, I more approve of a shorter style, and that comes more roundly off.
He does, though, sometimes shuffle his parts more briskly together, but
'tis very seldom. I have myself taken notice of this one passage:
"Ego vero me minus diu senem mallem,
quam esse senem, antequam essem."
["I had rather be old a brief time, than be old before old age.
—"Cicero, De Senect., c. 10.]
The historians are my right ball, for they are pleasant and easy, and
where man, in general, the knowledge of whom I hunt after, appears more
vividly and entire than anywhere else:
[The easiest of my amusements, the right ball at tennis being that
which coming to the player from the right hand, is much easier
played with.—Coste.]
the variety and truth of his internal qualities, in gross and piecemeal,
the diversity of means by which he is united and knit, and the accidents
that threaten him. Now those that write lives, by reason they insist more
upon counsels than events, more upon what sallies from within, than upon
what happens without, are the most proper for my reading; and, therefore,
above all others, Plutarch is the man for me. I am very sorry we have not
a dozen Laertii,—[Diogenes Laertius, who wrote the Lives of the
Philosophers]—or that he was not further extended; for I am equally
curious to know the lives and fortunes of these great instructors of the
world, as to know the diversities of their doctrines and opinions. In this
kind of study of histories, a man must tumble over, without distinction,
all sorts of authors, old and new, French or foreign, there to know the
things of which they variously treat. But Caesar, in my opinion,
particularly deserves to be studied, not for the knowledge of the history
only, but for himself, so great an excellence and perfection he has above
all the rest, though Sallust be one of the number. In earnest, I read this
author with more reverence and respect than is usually allowed to human
writings; one while considering him in his person, by his actions and
miraculous greatness, and another in the purity and inimitable polish of
his language, wherein he not only excels all other historians, as Cicero
confesses, but, peradventure, even Cicero himself; speaking of his enemies
with so much sincerity in his judgment, that, the false colours with which
he strives to palliate his evil cause, and the ordure of his pestilent
ambition excepted, I think there is no fault to be objected against him,
saving this, that he speaks too sparingly of himself, seeing so many great
things could not have been performed under his conduct, but that his own
personal acts must necessarily have had a greater share in them than he
attributes to them.
I love historians, whether of the simple sort, or of the higher order. The
simple, who have nothing of their own to mix with it, and who only make it
their business to collect all that comes to their knowledge, and
faithfully to record all things, without choice or discrimination, leave
to us the entire judgment of discerning the truth. Such, for example,
amongst others, is honest Froissart, who has proceeded in his undertaking
with so frank a plainness that, having committed an error, he is not
ashamed to confess and correct it in the place where the finger has been
laid, and who represents to us even the variety of rumours that were then
spread abroad, and the different reports that were made to him; 'tis the
naked and inform matter of history, and of which every one may make his
profit, according to his understanding. The more excellent sort of
historians have judgment to pick out what is most worthy to be known; and,
of two reports, to examine which is the most likely to be true: from the
condition of princes and their humours, they conclude their counsels, and
attribute to them words proper for the occasion; such have title to assume
the authority of regulating our belief to what they themselves believe;
but certainly, this privilege belongs to very few. For the middle sort of
historians, of which the most part are, they spoil all; they will chew our
meat for us; they take upon them to judge of, and consequently, to incline
the history to their own fancy; for if the judgment lean to one side, a
man cannot avoid wresting and writhing his narrative to that bias; they
undertake to select things worthy to be known, and yet often conceal from
us such a word, such a private action, as would much better instruct us;
omit, as incredible, such things as they do not understand, and
peradventure some, because they cannot express good French or Latin. Let
them display their eloquence and intelligence, and judge according to
their own fancy: but let them, withal, leave us something to judge of
after them, and neither alter nor disguise, by their abridgments and at
their own choice, anything of the substance of the matter, but deliver it
to us pure and entire in all its dimensions.
For the most part, and especially in these latter ages, persons are culled
out for this work from amongst the common people, upon the sole
consideration of well-speaking, as if we were to learn grammar from them;
and the men so chosen have fair reason, being hired for no other end and
pretending to nothing but babble, not to be very solicitous of any part
but that, and so, with a fine jingle of words, prepare us a pretty
contexture of reports they pick up in the streets. The only good histories
are those that have been written themselves who held command in the
affairs whereof they write, or who participated in the conduct of them,
or, at least, who have had the conduct of others of the same nature. Such
are almost all the Greek and Roman histories: for, several eye-witnesses
having written of the same subject, in the time when grandeur and learning
commonly met in the same person, if there happen to be an error, it must
of necessity be a very slight one, and upon a very doubtful incident. What
can a man expect from a physician who writes of war, or from a mere
scholar, treating of the designs of princes? If we could take notice how
scrupulous the Romans were in this, there would need but this example:
Asinius Pollio found in the histories of Caesar himself something
misreported, a mistake occasioned; either by reason he could not have his
eye in all parts of his army at once and had given credit to some
individual persons who had not delivered him a very true account; or else,
for not having had too perfect notice given him by his lieutenants of what
they had done in his absence.—[Suetonius, Life of Caesar, c. 56.]—By
which we may see, whether the inquisition after truth be not very
delicate, when a man cannot believe the report of a battle from the
knowledge of him who there commanded, nor from the soldiers who were
engaged in it, unless, after the method of a judicial inquiry, the
witnesses be confronted and objections considered upon the proof of the
least detail of every incident. In good earnest the knowledge we have of
our own affairs, is much more obscure: but that has been sufficiently
handled by Bodin, and according to my own sentiment —[In the work by
jean Bodin, entitled "Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem." 1566.]—A
little to aid the weakness of my memory (so extreme that it has happened
to me more than once, to take books again into my hand as new and unseen,
that I had carefully read over a few years before, and scribbled with my
notes) I have adopted a custom of late, to note at the end of every book
(that is, of those I never intend to read again) the time when I made an
end on't, and the judgment I had made of it, to the end that this might,
at least, represent to me the character and general idea I had conceived
of the author in reading it; and I will here transcribe some of those
annotations.
I wrote this, some ten years ago, in my Guicciardini (of what language
soever my books speak to me in, I always speak to them in my own): "He is
a diligent historiographer, from whom, in my opinion, a man may learn the
truth of the affairs of his time, as exactly as from any other; in the
most of which he was himself also a personal actor, and in honourable
command. There is no appearance that he disguised anything, either upon
the account of hatred, favour, or vanity; of which the free censures he
passes upon the great ones, and particularly those by whom he was advanced
and employed in commands of great trust and honour, as Pope Clement VII.,
give ample testimony. As to that part which he thinks himself the best at,
namely, his digressions and discourses, he has indeed some very good, and
enriched with fine features; but he is too fond of them: for, to leave
nothing unsaid, having a subject so full, ample, almost infinite, he
degenerates into pedantry and smacks a little of scholastic prattle. I
have also observed this in him, that of so many souls and so many effects,
so many motives and so many counsels as he judges, he never attributes any
one to virtue, religion, or conscience, as if all these were utterly
extinct in the world: and of all the actions, how brave soever in outward
show they appear in themselves, he always refers the cause and motive to
some vicious occasion or some prospect of profit. It is impossible to
imagine but that, amongst such an infinite number of actions as he makes
mention of, there must be some one produced by the way of honest reason.
No corruption could so universally have infected men that some one would
not escape the contagion which makes me suspect that his own taste was
vicious, whence it might happen that he judged other men by himself."
In my Philip de Commines there is this written: "You will here find the
language sweet and delightful, of a natural simplicity, the narration
pure, with the good faith of the author conspicuous therein; free from
vanity, when speaking of himself, and from affection or envy, when
speaking of others: his discourses and exhortations rather accompanied
with zeal and truth, than with any exquisite sufficiency; and, throughout,
authority and gravity, which bespeak him a man of good extraction, and
brought up in great affairs."
Upon the Memoirs of Monsieur du Bellay I find this: "'Tis always pleasant
to read things written by those that have experienced how they ought to be
carried on; but withal, it cannot be denied but there is a manifest
decadence in these two lords—[Martin du Bellay and Guillaume de
Langey, brothers, who jointly wrote the Memoirs.]—from the freedom
and liberty of writing that shine in the elder historians, such as the
Sire de Joinville, the familiar companion of St. Louis; Eginhard,
chancellor to Charlemagne; and of later date, Philip de Commines. What we
have here is rather an apology for King Francis, against the Emperor
Charles V., than history. I will not believe that they have falsified
anything, as to matter of fact; but they make a common practice of
twisting the judgment of events, very often contrary to reason, to our
advantage, and of omitting whatsoever is ticklish to be handled in the
life of their master; witness the proceedings of Messieurs de Montmorency
and de Biron, which are here omitted: nay, so much as the very name of
Madame d'Estampes is not here to be found. Secret actions an historian may
conceal; but to pass over in silence what all the world knows and things
that have drawn after them public and such high consequences, is an
inexcusable defect. In fine, whoever has a mind to have a perfect
knowledge of King Francis and the events of his reign, let him seek it
elsewhere, if my advice may prevail. The only profit a man can reap from
these Memoirs is in the special narrative of battles and other exploits of
war wherein these gentlemen were personally engaged; in some words and
private actions of the princes of their time, and in the treaties and
negotiations carried on by the Seigneur de Langey, where there are
everywhere things worthy to be known, and discourses above the vulgar
strain."
CHAPTER XI——OF CRUELTY
I fancy virtue to be something else, and something more noble, than good
nature, and the mere propension to goodness, that we are born into the
world withal. Well-disposed and well-descended souls pursue, indeed, the
same methods, and represent in their actions the same face that virtue
itself does: but the word virtue imports, I know not what, more great and
active than merely for a man to suffer himself, by a happy disposition, to
be gently and quietly drawn to the rule of reason. He who, by a natural
sweetness and facility, should despise injuries received, would doubtless
do a very fine and laudable thing; but he who, provoked and nettled to the
quick by an offence, should fortify himself with the arms of reason
against the furious appetite of revenge, and after a great conflict,
master his own passion, would certainly do a great deal more. The first
would do well; the latter virtuously: one action might be called goodness,
and the other virtue; for methinks, the very name of virtue presupposes
difficulty and contention, and cannot be exercised without an opponent.
'Tis for this reason, perhaps, that we call God good, mighty, liberal and
just; but we do not call Him virtuous, being that all His operations are
natural and without endeavour.—[Rousseau, in his Emile, book v.,
adopts this passage almost in the same words.]— It has been the
opinion of many philosophers, not only Stoics, but Epicureans—and
this addition—
["Montaigne stops here to make his excuse for thus naming the
Epicureans with the Stoics, in conformity to the general opinion
that the Epicureans were not so rigid in their morals as the Stoics,
which is not true in the main, as he demonstrates at one view. This
involved Montaigne in a tedious parenthesis, during which it is
proper that the reader be attentive, that he may not entirely lose
the thread of the argument. In some later editions of this author,
it has been attempted to remedy this inconvenience, but without
observing that Montaigne's argument is rendered more feeble and
obscure by such vain repetitions: it is a licence that ought not to
be taken, because he who publishes the work of another, ought to
give it as the other composed ft. But, in Mr Cotton's translation,
he was so puzzled with this enormous parenthesis that he has quite
left it out"—Coste.]
I borrow from the vulgar opinion, which is false, notwithstanding the
witty conceit of Arcesilaus in answer to one, who, being reproached that
many scholars went from his school to the Epicurean, but never any from
thence to his school, said in answer, "I believe it indeed; numbers of
capons being made out of cocks, but never any cocks out of capons."
—[Diogenes Laertius, Life of Archesilaus, lib. iv., 43.]—For,
in truth, the Epicurean sect is not at all inferior to the Stoic in
steadiness, and the rigour of opinions and precepts. And a certain Stoic,
showing more honesty than those disputants, who, in order to quarrel with
Epicurus, and to throw the game into their hands, make him say what he
never thought, putting a wrong construction upon his words, clothing his
sentences, by the strict rules of grammar, with another meaning, and a
different opinion from that which they knew he entertained in his mind and
in his morals, the Stoic, I say, declared that he abandoned the Epicurean
sect, upon this among other considerations, that he thought their road too
lofty and inaccessible;
["And those are called lovers of pleasure, being in effect
lovers of honour and justice, who cultivate and observe all
the virtues."—Cicero, Ep. Fam., xv. i, 19.]
These philosophers say that it is not enough to have the soul seated in a
good place, of a good temper, and well disposed to virtue; it is not
enough to have our resolutions and our reasoning fixed above all the power
of fortune, but that we are, moreover, to seek occasions wherein to put
them to the proof: they would seek pain, necessity, and contempt to
contend with them and to keep the soul in breath:
"Multum sibi adjicit virtus lacessita."
["Virtue is much strengthened by combats."
or: "Virtue attacked adds to its own force."
—Seneca, Ep., 13.]
'Tis one of the reasons why Epaminondas, who was yet of a third sect,
—[The Pythagorean.]—refused the riches fortune presented to
him by very lawful means; because, said he, I am to contend with poverty,
in which extreme he maintained himself to the last. Socrates put himself,
methinks, upon a ruder trial, keeping for his exercise a confounded
scolding wife, which was fighting at sharps. Metellus having, of all the
Roman senators, alone attempted, by the power of virtue, to withstand the
violence of Saturninus, tribune of the people at Rome, who would, by all
means, cause an unjust law to pass in favour of the commons, and, by so
doing, having incurred the capital penalties that Saturninus had
established against the dissentient, entertained those who, in this
extremity, led him to execution with words to this effect: That it was a
thing too easy and too base to do ill; and that to do well where there was
no danger was a common thing; but that to do well where there was danger
was the proper office of a man of virtue. These words of Metellus very
clearly represent to us what I would make out, viz., that virtue refuses
facility for a companion; and that the easy, smooth, and descending way by
which the regular steps of a sweet disposition of nature are conducted is
not that of a true virtue; she requires a rough and stormy passage; she
will have either exotic difficulties to wrestle with, like that of
Metellus, by means whereof fortune delights to interrupt the speed of her
career, or internal difficulties, that the inordinate appetites and
imperfections of our condition introduce to disturb her.
I am come thus far at my ease; but here it comes into my head that the
soul of Socrates, the most perfect that ever came to my knowledge, should
by this rule be of very little recommendation; for I cannot conceive in
that person any the least motion of a vicious inclination: I cannot
imagine there could be any difficulty or constraint in the course of his
virtue: I know his reason to be so powerful and sovereign over him that
she would never have suffered a vicious appetite so much as to spring in
him. To a virtue so elevated as his, I have nothing to oppose. Methinks I
see him march, with a victorious and triumphant pace, in pomp and at his
ease, without opposition or disturbance. If virtue cannot shine bright,
but by the conflict of contrary appetites, shall we then say that she
cannot subsist without the assistance of vice, and that it is from her
that she derives her reputation and honour? What then, also, would become
of that brave and generous Epicurean pleasure, which makes account that it
nourishes virtue tenderly in her lap, and there makes it play and wanton,
giving it for toys to play withal, shame, fevers, poverty, death, and
torments? If I presuppose that a perfect virtue manifests itself in
contending, in patient enduring of pain, and undergoing the uttermost
extremity of the gout; without being moved in her seat; if I give her
troubles and difficulty for her necessary objects: what will become of a
virtue elevated to such a degree, as not only to despise pain, but,
moreover, to rejoice in it, and to be tickled with the throes of a sharp
colic, such as the Epicureans have established, and of which many of them,
by their actions, have given most manifest proofs? As have several others,
who I find to have surpassed in effects even the very rules of their
discipline. Witness the younger Cato: When I see him die, and tearing out
his own bowels, I am not satisfied simply to believe that he had then his
soul totally exempt from all trouble and horror: I cannot think that he
only maintained himself in the steadiness that the Stoical rules
prescribed him; temperate, without emotion, and imperturbed. There was,
methinks, something in the virtue of this man too sprightly and fresh to
stop there; I believe that, without doubt, he felt a pleasure and delight
in so noble an action, and was more pleased in it than in any other of his
life:
"Sic abiit a vita, ut causam moriendi nactum se esse gauderet."
["He quitted life rejoicing that a reason for dying had arisen."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 30.]
I believe it so thoroughly that I question whether he would have been
content to have been deprived of the occasion of so brave an exploit; and
if the goodness that made him embrace the public concern more than his
own, withheld me not, I should easily fall into an opinion that he thought
himself obliged to fortune for having put his virtue upon so brave a
trial, and for having favoured that theif—[Caesar]—in treading
underfoot the ancient liberty of his country. Methinks I read in this
action I know not what exaltation in his soul, and an extraordinary and
manly emotion of pleasure, when he looked upon the generosity and height
of his enterprise:
"Deliberate morte ferocior,"
["The more courageous from the deliberation to die."
—Horace, Od., i. 37, 29.]
not stimulated with any hope of glory, as the popular and effeminate
judgments of some have concluded (for that consideration was too mean and
low to possess so generous, so haughty, and so determined a heart as his),
but for the very beauty of the thing in itself, which he who had the
handling of the springs discerned more clearly and in its perfection than
we are able to do. Philosophy has obliged me in determining that so brave
an action had been indecently placed in any other life than that of Cato;
and that it only appertained to his to end so; notwithstanding, and
according to reason, he commanded his son and the senators who accompanied
him to take another course in their affairs:
"Catoni, quum incredibilem natura tribuisset gravitatem,
eamque ipse perpetue constantia roboravisset, semperque
in proposito consilio permansisset, moriendum potius,
quam tyranni vultus aspiciendus, erat."
["Cato, whom nature had given incredible dignity, which he had
fortified by perpetual constancy, ever remaining of his
predetermined opinion, preferred to die rather than to look
on the countenance of a tyrant."—Cicero, De Ofc., i. 31.]
Every death ought to hold proportion with the life before it; we do not
become others for dying. I always interpret the death by the life
preceding; and if any one tell me of a death strong and constant in
appearance, annexed to a feeble life, I conclude it produced by some
feeble cause, and suitable to the life before. The easiness then of his
death and the facility of dying he had acquired by the vigour of his soul;
shall we say that it ought to abate anything of the lustre of his virtue?
And who, that has his brain never so little tinctured with the true
philosophy, can be content to imagine Socrates only free from fear and
passion in the accident of his prison, fetters, and condemnation? and that
will not discover in him not only firmness and constancy (which was his
ordinary condition), but, moreover, I know not what new satisfaction, and
a frolic cheerfulness in his last words and actions? In the start he gave
with the pleasure of scratching his leg when his irons were taken off,
does he not discover an equal serenity and joy in his soul for being freed
from past inconveniences, and at the same time to enter into the knowledge
of the things to come? Cato shall pardon me, if he please; his death
indeed is more tragical and more lingering; but yet this is, I know not
how, methinks, finer. Aristippus, to one that was lamenting this death:
"The gods grant me such an one," said he. A man discerns in the soul of
these two great men and their imitators (for I very much doubt whether
there were ever their equals) so perfect a habitude to virtue, that it was
turned to a complexion. It is no longer a laborious virtue, nor the
precepts of reason, to maintain which the soul is so racked, but the very
essence of their soul, its natural and ordinary habit; they have rendered
it such by a long practice of philosophical precepts having lit upon a
rich and fine nature; the vicious passions that spring in us can find no
entrance into them; the force and vigour of their soul stifle and
extinguish irregular desires, so soon as they begin to move.
Now, that it is not more noble, by a high and divine resolution, to hinder
the birth of temptations, and to be so formed to virtue, that the very
seeds of vice are rooted out, than to hinder by main force their progress;
and, having suffered ourselves to be surprised with the first motions of
the passions, to arm ourselves and to stand firm to oppose their progress,
and overcome them; and that this second effect is not also much more
generous than to be simply endowed with a facile and affable nature, of
itself disaffected to debauchery and vice, I do not think can be doubted;
for this third and last sort of virtue seems to render a man innocent, but
not virtuous; free from doing ill, but not apt enough to do well:
considering also, that this condition is so near neighbour to imperfection
and cowardice, that I know not very well how to separate the confines and
distinguish them: the very names of goodness and innocence are, for this
reason, in some sort grown into contempt. I very well know that several
virtues, as chastity, sobriety, and temperance, may come to a man through
personal defects. Constancy in danger, if it must be so called, the
contempt of death, and patience in misfortunes, may ofttimes be found in
men for want of well judging of such accidents, and not apprehending them
for such as they are. Want of apprehension and stupidity sometimes
counterfeit virtuous effects as I have often seen it happen, that men have
been commended for what really merited blame. An Italian lord once said
this, in my presence, to the disadvantage of his own nation: that the
subtlety of the Italians, and the vivacity of their conceptions were so
great, and they foresaw the dangers and accidents that might befall them
so far off, that it was not to be thought strange, if they were often, in
war, observed to provide for their safety, even before they had discovered
the peril; that we French and the Spaniards, who were not so cunning, went
on further, and that we must be made to see and feel the danger before we
would take the alarm; but that even then we could not stick to it. But the
Germans and Swiss, more gross and heavy, had not the sense to look about
them, even when the blows were falling about their ears. Peradventure, he
only talked so for mirth's sake; and yet it is most certain that in war
raw soldiers rush into dangers with more precipitancy than after they have
been cudgelled*—(The original has eschauldex—scalded)
"Haud ignarus . . . . quantum nova gloria in armis,
Et praedulce decus, primo certamine possit."
["Not ignorant how much power the fresh glory of arms and sweetest
honour possess in the first contest."—AEneid, xi. 154]
For this reason it is that, when we judge of a particular action, we are
to consider the circumstances, and the whole man by whom it is performed,
before we give it a name.
To instance in myself: I have sometimes known my friends call that
prudence in me, which was merely fortune; and repute that courage and
patience, which was judgment and opinion; and attribute to me one title
for another, sometimes to my advantage and sometimes otherwise. As to the
rest, I am so far from being arrived at the first and most perfect degree
of excellence, where virtue is turned into habit, that even of the second
I have made no great proofs. I have not been very solicitous to curb the
desires by which I have been importuned. My virtue is a virtue, or rather
an innocence, casual and accidental. If I had been born of a more
irregular complexion, I am afraid I should have made scurvy work; for I
never observed any great stability in my soul to resist passions, if they
were never so little vehement: I know not how to nourish quarrels and
debates in my own bosom, and, consequently, owe myself no great thanks
that I am free from several vices:
"Si vitiis mediocribus et mea paucis
Mendosa est natura, alioqui recta, velut si
Egregio inspersos reprehendas corpore naevos:"
["If my nature be disfigured only with slight and few vices, and is
otherwise just, it is as if you should blame moles on a fair body."
—Horatius, Sat., i. 6, 65.]
I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason. She has caused me to be
descended of a race famous for integrity and of a very good father; I know
not whether or no he has infused into me part of his humours, or whether
domestic examples and the good education of my infancy have insensibly
assisted in the work, or, if I was otherwise born so:
"Seu Libra, seu me Scorpius adspicit
Formidolosus, pars violentior
Natalis hors, seu tyrannus
Hesperive Capricornus undae:"
["Whether the Balance or dread Scorpio, more potent over my natal
hour, aspects me, or Capricorn, supreme over the Hesperian sea."
—Horace, Od., ii. 117.]
but so it is, that I have naturally a horror for most vices. The answer of
Antisthenes to him who asked him, which was the best apprenticeship "to
unlearn evil," seems to point at this. I have them in horror, I say, with
a detestation so natural, and so much my own, that the same instinct and
impression I brought of them with me from my nurse, I yet retain, and no
temptation whatever has had the power to make me alter it. Not so much as
my own discourses, which in some things lashing out of the common road
might seem easily to license me to actions that my natural inclination
makes me hate. I will say a prodigious thing, but I will say it, however:
I find myself in many things more under reputation by my manners than by
my opinion, and my concupiscence less debauched than my reason. Aristippus
instituted opinions so bold in favour of pleasure and riches as set all
the philosophers against him: but as to his manners, Dionysius the tyrant,
having presented three beautiful women before him, to take his choice; he
made answer, that he would choose them all, and that Paris got himself
into trouble for having preferred one before the other two: but, having
taken them home to his house, he sent them back untouched. His servant
finding himself overladen upon the way, with the money he carried after
him, he ordered him to pour out and throw away that which troubled him.
And Epicurus, whose doctrines were so irreligious and effeminate, was in
his life very laborious and devout; he wrote to a friend of his that he
lived only upon biscuit and water, entreating him to send him a little
cheese, to lie by him against he had a mind to make a feast. Must it be
true, that to be a perfect good man, we must be so by an occult, natural,
and universal propriety, without law, reason, or example? The debauches
wherein I have been engaged, have not been, I thank God, of the worst
sort, and I have condemned them in myself, for my judgment was never
infected by them; on the contrary, I accuse them more severely in myself
than in any other; but that is all, for, as to the rest. I oppose too
little resistance and suffer myself to incline too much to the other side
of the balance, excepting that I moderate them, and prevent them from
mixing with other vices, which for the most part will cling together, if a
man have not a care. I have contracted and curtailed mine, to make them as
single and as simple as I can:
"Nec ultra
Errorem foveo."
["Nor do I cherish error further."
or: "Nor carry wrong further."
—Juvenal, viii. 164.]
For as to the opinion of the Stoics, who say, "That the wise man when he
works, works by all the virtues together, though one be most apparent,
according to the nature of the action"; and herein the similitude of a
human body might serve them somewhat, for the action of anger cannot work,
unless all the humours assist it, though choler predominate; —if
they will thence draw a like consequence, that when the wicked man does
wickedly, he does it by all the vices together, I do not believe it to be
so, or else I understand them not, for I by effect find the contrary.
These are sharp, unsubstantial subleties, with which philosophy sometimes
amuses itself. I follow some vices, but I fly others as much as a saint
would do. The Peripatetics also disown this indissoluble connection; and
Aristotle is of opinion that a prudent and just man may be intemperate and
inconsistent. Socrates confessed to some who had discovered a certain
inclination to vice in his physiognomy, that it was, in truth, his natural
propension, but that he had by discipline corrected it. And such as were
familiar with the philosopher Stilpo said, that being born with addiction
to wine and women, he had by study rendered himself very abstinent both
from the one and the other.
What I have in me of good, I have, quite contrary, by the chance of my
birth; and hold it not either by law, precept, or any other instruction;
the innocence that is in me is a simple one; little vigour and no art.
Amongst other vices, I mortally hate cruelty, both by nature and judgment,
as the very extreme of all vices: nay, with so much tenderness that I
cannot see a chicken's neck pulled off without trouble, and cannot without
impatience endure the cry of a hare in my dog's teeth, though the chase be
a violent pleasure. Such as have sensuality to encounter, freely make use
of this argument, to shew that it is altogether "vicious and unreasonable;
that when it is at the height, it masters us to that degree that a man's
reason can have no access," and instance our own experience in the act of
love,
"Quum jam praesagit gaudia corpus,
Atque in eo est Venus,
ut muliebria conserat arva."
[None of the translators of the old editions used for this etext
have been willing to translate this passage from Lucretius, iv.
1099; they take a cop out by bashfully saying: "The sense is in the
preceding passage of the text." D.W.]
wherein they conceive that the pleasure so transports us, that our reason
cannot perform its office, whilst we are in such ecstasy and rapture. I
know very well it may be otherwise, and that a man may sometimes, if he
will, gain this point over himself to sway his soul, even in the critical
moment, to think of something else; but then he must ply it to that bent.
I know that a man may triumph over the utmost effort of this pleasure: I
have experienced it in myself, and have not found Venus so imperious a
goddess, as many, and much more virtuous men than I, declare. I do not
consider it a miracle, as the Queen of Navarre does in one of the Tales of
her Heptameron—["Vu gentil liure pour son estoffe."]—(which is
a very pretty book of its kind), nor for a thing of extreme difficulty, to
pass whole nights, where a man has all the convenience and liberty he can
desire, with a long-coveted mistress, and yet be true to the pledge first
given to satisfy himself with kisses and suchlike endearments, without
pressing any further. I conceive that the example of the pleasure of the
chase would be more proper; wherein though the pleasure be less, there is
the higher excitement of unexpected joy, giving no time for the reason,
taken by surprise, to prepare itself for the encounter, when after a long
quest the beast starts up on a sudden in a place where, peradventure, we
least expected it; the shock and the ardour of the shouts and cries of the
hunters so strike us, that it would be hard for those who love this lesser
chase, to turn their thoughts upon the instant another way; and the poets
make Diana triumph over the torch and shafts of Cupid:
"Quis non malarum, quas amor curas habet,
Haec inter obliviscitur?"
["Who, amongst such delights would not remove out of his thoughts
the anxious cares of love."—Horace, Epod., ii. 37.]
To return to what I was saying before, I am tenderly compassionate of
others' afflictions, and should readily cry for company, if, upon any
occasion whatever, I could cry at all. Nothing tempts my tears but tears,
and not only those that are real and true, but whatever they are, feigned
or painted. I do not much lament the dead, and should envy them rather;
but I very much lament the dying. The savages do not so much offend me, in
roasting and eating the bodies of the dead, as they do who torment and
persecute the living. Nay, I cannot look so much as upon the ordinary
executions of justice, how reasonable soever, with a steady eye. Some one
having to give testimony of Julius Caesar's clemency; "he was," says he,
"mild in his revenges. Having compelled the pirates to yield by whom he
had before been taken prisoner and put to ransom; forasmuch as he had
threatened them with the cross, he indeed condemned them to it, but it was
after they had been first strangled. He punished his secretary Philemon,
who had attempted to poison him, with no greater severity than mere
death." Without naming that Latin author,—[Suetonius, Life of Casay,
c. 74.]—who thus dares to allege as a testimony of mercy the killing
only of those by whom we have been offended; it is easy to guess that he
was struck with the horrid and inhuman examples of cruelty practised by
the Roman tyrants.
For my part, even in justice itself, all that exceeds a simple death
appears to me pure cruelty; especially in us who ought, having regard to
their souls, to dismiss them in a good and calm condition; which cannot
be, when we have agitated them by insufferable torments. Not long since, a
soldier who was a prisoner, perceiving from a tower where he was shut up,
that the people began to assemble to the place of execution, and that the
carpenters were busy erecting a scaffold, he presently concluded that the
preparation was for him, and therefore entered into a resolution to kill
himself, but could find no instrument to assist him in his design except
an old rusty cart-nail that fortune presented to him; with this he first
gave himself two great wounds about his throat, but finding these would
not do, he presently afterwards gave himself a third in the belly, where
he left the nail sticking up to the head. The first of his keepers who
came in found him in this condition: yet alive, but sunk down and
exhausted by his wounds. To make use of time, therefore, before he should
die, they made haste to read his sentence; which having done, and he
hearing that he was only condemned to be beheaded, he seemed to take new
courage, accepted wine which he had before refused, and thanked his judges
for the unhoped-for mildness of their sentence; saying, that he had taken
a resolution to despatch himself for fear of a more severe and
insupportable death, having entertained an opinion, by the preparations he
had seen in the place, that they were resolved to torment him with some
horrible execution, and seemed to be delivered from death in having it
changed from what he apprehended.
I should advise that those examples of severity by which 'tis designed to
retain the people in their duty, might be exercised upon the dead bodies
of criminals; for to see them deprived of sepulture, to see them boiled
and divided into quarters, would almost work as much upon the vulgar, as
the pain they make the living endure; though that in effect be little or
nothing, as God himself says, "Who kill the body, and after that have no
more that they can do;"—[Luke, xii. 4.]—and the poets
singularly dwell upon the horrors of this picture, as something worse than
death:
"Heu! reliquias semiustas regis, denudatis ossibus,
Per terram sanie delibutas foede divexarier."
["Alas! that the half-burnt remains of the king, exposing his bones,
should be foully dragged along the ground besmeared with gore."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 44.]
I happened to come by one day accidentally at Rome, just as they were upon
executing Catena, a notorious robber: he was strangled without any emotion
of the spectators, but when they came to cut him in quarters, the hangman
gave not a blow that the people did not follow with a doleful cry and
exclamation, as if every one had lent his sense of feeling to the
miserable carcase. Those inhuman excesses ought to be exercised upon the
bark, and not upon the quick. Artaxerxes, in almost a like case, moderated
the severity of the ancient laws of Persia, ordaining that the nobility
who had committed a fault, instead of being whipped, as they were used to
be, should be stripped only and their clothes whipped for them; and that
whereas they were wont to tear off their hair, they should only take off
their high-crowned tiara.'—[Plutarch, Notable Sayings of the Ancient
King.]—The so devout Egyptians thought they sufficiently satisfied
the divine justice by sacrificing hogs in effigy and representation; a
bold invention to pay God so essential a substance in picture only and in
show.
I live in a time wherein we abound in incredible examples of this vice,
through the licence of our civil wars; and we see nothing in ancient
histories more extreme than what we have proof of every day, but I cannot,
any the more, get used to it. I could hardly persuade myself, before I saw
it with my eyes, that there could be found souls so cruel and fell, who,
for the sole pleasure of murder, would commit it; would hack and lop off
the limbs of others; sharpen their wits to invent unusual torments and new
kinds of death, without hatred, without profit, and for no other end but
only to enjoy the pleasant spectacle of the gestures and motions, the
lamentable groans and cries of a man dying in anguish. For this is the
utmost point to which cruelty can arrive:
"Ut homo hominem, non iratus, non timens,
tantum spectaturus, occidat."
["That a man should kill a man, not being angry, not in fear, only
for the sake of the spectacle."—Seneca, Ep., 90.]
For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast
pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received no
offence at all; and that which frequently happens, that the stag we hunt,
finding himself weak and out of breath, and seeing no other remedy,
surrenders himself to us who pursue him, imploring mercy by his tears:
"Questuque cruentus,
Atque imploranti similis,"
["Who, bleeding, by his tears seems to crave mercy."
—AEnead, vii. 501.]
has ever been to me a very unpleasing sight; and I hardly ever take a
beast alive that I do not presently turn out again. Pythagoras bought them
of fishermen and fowlers to do the same:
"Primoque a caede ferarum,
Incaluisse puto maculatum sanguine ferrum."
["I think 'twas slaughter of wild beasts that first stained the
steel of man with blood."—Ovid, Met., xv. 106.]
Those natures that are sanguinary towards beasts discover a natural
proneness to cruelty. After they had accustomed themselves at Rome to
spectacles of the slaughter of animals, they proceeded to those of the
slaughter of men, of gladiators. Nature has herself, I fear, imprinted in
man a kind of instinct to inhumanity; nobody takes pleasure in seeing
beasts play with and caress one another, but every one is delighted with
seeing them dismember, and tear one another to pieces. And that I may not
be laughed at for the sympathy I have with them, theology itself enjoins
us some favour in their behalf; and considering that one and the same
master has lodged us together in this palace for his service, and that
they, as well as we, are of his family, it has reason to enjoin us some
affection and regard to them. Pythagoras borrowed the metempsychosis from
the Egyptians; but it has since been received by several nations, and
particularly by our Druids:
"Morte carent animae; semperque, priore relicts
Sede, novis domibus vivunt, habitantque receptae."
["Souls never die, but, having left their former seat, live
and are received into new homes."—Ovid, Met., xv. 158.]
The religion of our ancient Gauls maintained that souls, being eternal,
never ceased to remove and shift their places from one body to another;
mixing moreover with this fancy some consideration of divine justice; for
according to the deportments of the soul, whilst it had been in Alexander,
they said that God assigned it another body to inhabit, more or less
painful, and proper for its condition:
"Muta ferarum
Cogit vincla pati; truculentos ingerit ursis,
Praedonesque lupis; fallaces vulpibus addit:
Atque ubi per varios annos, per mille figuras
Egit, Lethaeo purgatos flumine, tandem
Rursus ad humanae revocat primordia formae:"
["He makes them wear the silent chains of brutes, the bloodthirsty
souls he encloses in bears, the thieves in wolves, the deceivers in
foxes; where, after successive years and a thousand forms, man had
spent his life, and after purgation in Lethe's flood, at last he
restores them to the primordial human shapes."
—Claudian, In Ruf., ii. 482.]
If it had been valiant, he lodged it in the body of a lion; if voluptuous,
in that of a hog; if timorous, in that of a hart or hare; if malicious, in
that of a fox, and so of the rest, till having purified it by this
chastisement, it again entered into the body of some other man:
"Ipse ego nam memini, Trojani, tempore belli
Panthoides Euphorbus eram."
["For I myself remember that, in the days of the Trojan war, I was
Euphorbus, son of Pantheus."—Ovid, Met., xv. 160; and see Diogenes
Laertius, Life of Pythagoras.]
As to the relationship betwixt us and beasts, I do not much admit of it;
nor of that which several nations, and those among the most ancient and
most noble, have practised, who have not only received brutes into their
society and companionship, but have given them a rank infinitely above
themselves, esteeming them one while familiars and favourites of the gods,
and having them in more than human reverence and respect; others
acknowledged no other god or divinity than they:
"Bellux a barbaris propter beneficium consecratae."
["Beasts, out of opinion of some benefit received by them, were
consecrated by barbarians"—Cicero, De Natura Deor., i. 36.]
"Crocodilon adorat
Pars haec; illa pavet saturam serpentibus ibin:
Effigies sacri hic nitet aurea cercopitheci;
Hic piscem flumints, illic
Oppida tota canem venerantur."
["This place adores the crocodile; another dreads the ibis, feeder
on serpents; here shines the golden image of the sacred ape; here
men venerate the fish of the river; there whole towns worship a
dog."—Juvenal, xv. 2.]
And the very interpretation that Plutarch, gives to this error, which is
very well conceived, is advantageous to them: for he says that it was not
the cat or the ox, for example, that the Egyptians adored: but that they,
in those beasts, adored some image of the divine faculties; in this,
patience and utility: in that, vivacity, or, as with our neighbours the
Burgundians and all the Germans, impatience to see themselves shut up; by
which they represented liberty, which they loved and adored above all
other godlike attributes, and so of the rest. But when, amongst the more
moderate opinions, I meet with arguments that endeavour to demonstrate the
near resemblance betwixt us and animals, how large a share they have in
our greatest privileges, and with how much probability they compare us
together, truly I abate a great deal of our presumption, and willingly
resign that imaginary sovereignty that is attributed to us over other
creatures.
But supposing all this were not true, there is nevertheless a certain
respect, a general duty of humanity, not only to beasts that have life and
sense, but even to trees, and plants. We owe justice to men, and
graciousness and benignity to other creatures that are capable of it;
there is a certain commerce and mutual obligation betwixt them and us. Nor
shall I be afraid to confess the tenderness of my nature so childish, that
I cannot well refuse to play with my dog, when he the most unseasonably
importunes me to do so. The Turks have alms and hospitals for beasts. The
Romans had public care to the nourishment of geese, by whose vigilance
their Capitol had been preserved. The Athenians made a decree that the
mules and moyls which had served at the building of the temple called
Hecatompedon should be free and suffered to pasture at their own choice,
without hindrance. The Agrigentines had a common use solemnly to inter the
beasts they had a kindness for, as horses of some rare quality, dogs, and
useful birds, and even those that had only been kept to divert their
children; and the magnificence that was ordinary with them in all other
things, also particularly appeared in the sumptuosity and numbers of
monuments erected to this end, and which remained in their beauty several
ages after. The Egyptians buried wolves, bears, crocodiles, dogs, and cats
in sacred places, embalmed their bodies, and put on mourning at their
death. Cimon gave an honourable sepulture to the mares with which he had
three times gained the prize of the course at the Olympic Games. The
ancient Xantippus caused his dog to be interred on an eminence near the
sea, which has ever since retained the name, and Plutarch says, that he
had a scruple about selling for a small profit to the slaughterer an ox
that had been long in his service.
CHAPTER XII. — APOLOGY FOR RAIMOND SEBOND.
Learning is, indeed, a very great and a very material accomplishment; and
those who despise it sufficiently discover their own want of
understanding; but learning yet I do not prize it at the excessive rate
that some others do, as Herillus, the philosopher, for one, who therein
places the sovereign good, and maintained "That it was only in her to
render us wise and contented," which I do not believe; no more than I do
what others have said, that learning is the mother of all virtue, and that
all vice proceeds from ignorance, which, if it be true, required a very
long interpretation. My house has long-been open to men of knowledge, and
is very well known to them; for my father, who governed it fifty years and
upwards, inflamed with the new ardour with which Francis the First
embraced letters, and brought them into esteem, with great diligence and
expense hunted after the acquaintance of learned men, receiving them into
his house as persons sacred, and that had some particular inspiration of
divine wisdom; collecting their sayings and sentences as so many oracles,
and with so much the greater reverence and religion as he was the less
able to judge of them; for he had no knowledge of letters any more than
his predecessors. For my part I love them well, but I do not adore them.
Amongst others, Peter Bunel, a man of great reputation for knowledge in
his time, having, with some others of his sort, staid some days at
Montaigne in my father's company, he presented him at his departure with a
book, entitled Theologia naturalis; sive Liber Creaturarum, magistri
Raimondi de Sebonde. And as the Italian and Spanish tongues were
familiar to my father, and as this book was written in a sort of jargon of
Spanish with Latin terminations, he hoped that, with a little help, he
might be able to understand it, and therefore recommended it to him for a
very useful book, and proper tor the time wherein he gave it to him; which
was when the novel doctrines of Luther began to be in vogue, and in many
places to stagger our ancient belief: wherein he was very well advised,
wisely, in his own reason, foreseeing that the beginning of this distemper
would easily run into an execrable atheism, for the vulgar, not having the
faculty of judging of things, suffering themselves to be carried away by
chance and appearance, after having once been inspired with the boldness
to despise and control those opinions which they had before had in extreme
reverence, such as those wherein their salvation is concerned, and that
some of the articles of their religion are brought into doubt and dispute,
they afterwards throw all other parts of their belief into the same
uncertainty, they having with them no other authority or foundation than
the others they had already discomposed; and shake off all the impressions
they had received from the authority of the laws, or the reverence of the
ancient customs, as a tyrannical yoke:
Nam cupide eonculcatur nimis ante metutum;
"For with most eagerness they spurn the law,
By which they were before most kept in awe;"
resolving to admit nothing for the future to which they had not first
interposed their own decrees, and given their particular consent.
It happened that my father, a little before his death, having accidentally
found this book under a heap of other neglected papers, commanded me to
translate it for him into French. It is good too translate such authors as
this, where there is little but the matter itself to express; but such
wherein grace of language and elegance of style are aimed at, are
dangerous to attempt, especially when a man is to turn them into a weaker
idiom. It was a strange and a new undertaking for me; but having by chance
at that time nothing else to do, and not being able to resist the command
of the best father that ever was, I did it as well as I could; and he was
so well pleased with it as to order it to be printed, which after his
death was done.
I found the ideas of this author exceeding fine the contexture of his work
well followed, and his design full of piety; and because many people take
a delight to read it, and particularly the ladies, to whom we owe the most
service, I have often thought to assist them to clear the book of two
principal objections made to it. His design is bold and daring, for he
undertakes, by human and natural reasons, to establish and make good,
against the atheists, all the articles of the Christian religion: wherein,
to speak the truth, he is so firm and so successful that I do not think it
possible to do better upon that subject; nay, I believe he has been
equalled by none. This work seeming to me to be too beautiful and too rich
for an author whose name is so little known, and of whom all that we know
is that he was a Spaniard, practising physic at Toulouse about two hundred
years ago; I enquired of Adrian Turnebus, who knew all things, what he
thought of that book; who made answer, "That he thought it was some
abstract drawn from St. Thomas d'Aquin; for that, in truth, his mind, so
full of infinite erudition and admirable subtlety, was alone capable of
such thoughts." Be this as it may, whoever was the author and inventor
(and 'tis not reasonable, without greater certainty, to deprive Sebond of
that title), he was a man of great judgment and most admirable parts.
The first thing they reprehend in his work is "That Christians are to
blame to repose their belief upon human reason, which is only conceived by
faith and the particular inspiration of divine grace." In which objection
there appears to be something of zeal to piety, and therefore we are to
endeavour to satisfy those who put it forth with the greater mildness and
respect. This were a task more proper for a man well read in divinity than
for me, who know nothing of it; nevertheless, I conceive that in a thing
so divine, so high, and so far transcending all human intelligence, as is
that truth, with which it has pleased the bounty of God to enlighten us,
it is very necessary that he should moreover lend us his assistance, as a
very extraordinary favour and privilege, to conceive and imprint it in our
understanding. And I do not believe that means purely human are in any
sort capable of doing it: for, if they were, so many rare and excellent
souls, and so abundantly furnished with natural force, in former ages,
could not have failed, by their reason, to arrive at this knowledge. 'Tis
faith alone that livelily mind certainly comprehends the deep mysteries of
our religion; but, withal, I do not say that it is not a worthy and very
laudable attempt to accommodate those natural and human utensils with
which God has endowed us to the service of our faith: it is not to be
doubted but that it is the most noble use we can put them to; and that
there is not a design in a Christian man more noble than to make it the
aim and end of all his studies to extend and amplify the truth of his
belief. We do not satisfy ourselves with serving God with our souls and
understandings only, we moreover owe and render him a corporal reverence,
and apply our limbs and motions, and external things to do him honour; we
must here do the same, and accompany our faith with all the reason we
have, but always with this reservation, not to fancy that it is upon us
that it depends, nor that our arguments and endeavours can arrive at so
supernatural and divine a knowledge. If it enters not into us by an
extraordinary infusion; if it enters not only by reason, but, moreover, by
human ways, it is not in us in its true dignity and splendour: and yet, I
am afraid, we only have it by this way.
If we hold upon God by the mediation of a lively faith; if we hold upon
God by him, and not by us; if we had a divine basis and foundation, human
occasions would not have the power to shake us as they do; our fortress
would not surrender to so weak a battery; the love of novelty, the
constraint of princes, the success of one party, and the rash and
fortuitous change of our opinions, would not have the power to stagger and
alter our belief: we should not then leave it to the mercy of every new
argument, nor abandon it to all the rhetoric in the world; we should
withstand the fury of these waves with an immovable and unyielding
constancy:
As a great rock repels the rolling tides,
That foam and bark about her marble sides,
From its strong bulk
If we were but touched with this ray of divinity, it would appear
throughout; not only our words, but our works also, would carry its
brightness and lustre; whatever proceeded from us would be seen
illuminated with this noble light. We ought to be ashamed that, in all the
human sects, there never was any of the faction, that did not, in some
measure, conform his life and behaviour to it, whereas so divine and
heavenly an institution does only distinguish Christians by the name! Will
you see the proof of this? Compare our manners to those of a Mahometan or
Pagan, you will still find that we fall very
short; there, where, out of regard to the reputation and advantage of our
religion, we ought to shine in excellency at a vast distance beyond all
others: and that it should be said of us, "Are they so just, so
charitable, so good: Then they are Christians." All other signs are common
to all religions; hope, trust, events, ceremonies, penance,
martyrs. The peculiar mark of our truth ought to be our virtue, as it is
also the most heavenly and difficult, and the most worthy product of
truth. For this our good St. Louis was in the right, who, when the Tartar
king, who was become Christian, designed to come to Lyons to kiss the
Pope's feet, and there to be an eye-witness of the sanctity he hoped to
find in our manner, immediately diverted him from his purpose; for fear
lest our disorderly way of living should, on the contrary, put him out of
conceit with so holy a belief! And yet it happened quite otherwise since
to that other, who, going to Rome, to the same end, and there seeing the
dissoluteness of the prelates and people of that time, settled himself so
much the more firmly in our religion, considering how great the force and
divinity of it must necessarily be that could maintain its dignity and
splendour among so much corruption, and in so vicious hands. If we had but
one single grain of faith, we should remove mountains from their places,
saith the sacred Word; our actions, that would then be directed and
accompanied by the divinity, would not be merely human, they would have in
them something of miraculous, as well as our belief: Brevis est
institutio vit honest beauque, si credos. "Believe, and the way to
happiness and virtue is a short one." Some impose upon the world that they
believe that which they do not; others, more in number, make themselves
believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to
believe. We think it strange if, in the civil war which, at this time,
disorders our state, we see events float and vary aller a common and
ordinary manner; which is because we bring nothing to it but our own.
Justice, which is in one party, is only there for ornament and palliation;
it, is, indeed, pretended, but 'tis not there received, settled and
espoused: it is there, as in the mouth of an advocate, not as in the heart
and affection of the party. God owes his extraordinary assistance to faith
and religion; not to our passions. Men there are the conductors, and
therein serve themselves with religion, whereas it ought to be quite
contrary. Observe, if it be not by our own hands that we guide and train
it, and draw it like wax into so many contrary figures, from a rule in
itself so direct and firm. When and where was this more manifest than in
France in our days? They who have taken it on the left hand, they who have
taken it on the right; they who call it black, they who call it white,
alike employ it to their violent and ambitious designs, conduct it with a
progress, so conform in riot and injustice that they render the diversity
they pretended in their opinions, in a thing whereon the conduct and rule
of our life depends, doubtful and hard to believe. Did one ever see, come
from the same school and discipline, manners more united, and more the
same? Do but observe with what horrid impudence we toss divine arguments
to and fro, and how irreligiously we have both rejected and retaken them,
accord—as fortune has shifted our places in these intestine storms.
This so solemn proposition, "Whether it be lawful for a subject to rebel
and take up arms against his prince for the defence of his religion," do
you remember in whose mouths, the last year, the affirmative of it was the
prop of one party, and the negative the pillar of another? And hearken now
from what quarter comes the voice and instruction of the one and the
other, and if arms make less noise and rattle for this cause than for
that. We condemn those to the fire who say that truth must be made to bear
the yoke of our necessity; and how much worse does France than say it? Let
us confess the truth; whoever should draw out from the army, even that
raised by the king, those who take up arms out of pure zeal to religion,
and also those who only do it to protect the laws of their country, or for
the service of their prince, could hardly, out of both these put together,
make one complete company of gens-d'armes. Whence does this proceed, that
there are so few to be found who have maintained the same will and the
same progress in our civil commotions, and that we see them one while move
but a foot-pace, and another run full speed? and the same men one while
damage our affairs by their violent heat and fierceness, and another by
their coldness, gentleness, and slowness; but that they are pushed on by
particular and casual considerations, according to the variety wherein
they move?
I evidently perceive that we do not willingly afford devotion any other
offices but those that least suit with our own passions.
There hostility so admirable as the Christian. Our zeal performs wonders,
when it seconds our inclinations to hatred, cruelty, ambition, avarice,
detraction, and rebellion: but when it moves, against the hair, towards
bounty, benignity, and temperance, unless, by miracle, some rare and
virtuous disposition prompts us to it, we stir neither hand nor toot. Our
religion is intended to extirpate vices, whereas it screens, nourishes,
and incites them. We must not mock God. If we believed in him, I do not
say by faith, but with a simple belief, that is to say (and I speak it to
our great shame) if we believed in him and recognised him as we do any
other history, or as we would do one of our companions, we should love him
above all other things for the infinite bounty and beauty that shines in
him;—at least, he would go equal in our affection with riches,
pleasure, glory, and our friends. The best of us is not so much afraid to
outrage him as he is afraid to injure his neighbour, his kinsman, or his
master. Is there any understanding so weak that, having on one side the
object of one of our vicious pleasures, and on the other (in equal
knowledge and persuasion) the state of an immortal glory, would change the
first for the other? and yet we often renounce this out of mere contempt:
for what lust tempts us to blaspheme, if not, perhaps, the very desire to
offend. The philosopher Antisthenes, as he was being initiated in the
mysteries of Orpheus, the priest telling him, "That those who professed
themselves of that religion were certain to receive perfect and eternal
felicity after death,"—"If thou believest that," answered he, "why
dost thou not die thyself?" Diogenes, more rudely, according to his
manner, and more remote from our purpose, to the priest that in like
manner preached to him, "To become of his religion, that he might obtain
the happiness of the other world;—"What!" said he, "thou wouldest
have me to believe that Agesilaus and Epaminondas, who were so great men,
shall be miserable, and that thou, who art but a calf, and canst do
nothing to purpose, shalt be happy, because thou art a priest?" Did we
receive these great promises of eternal beatitude with the same reverence
and respect that we do a philosophical discourse, we should not have death
in so great horror:
Non jam se moriens dissolvi conqurreretur;
Sed magis ire foras, stemque relinquere ut angais,
Gauderet, prealonga senex aut cornua cervus.
"We should not on a death bed grieve to be
Dissolved, but rather launch out cheerfully
From our old hut, and with the snake, be glad
To cast off the corrupted slough we had;
Or with th' old stag rejoice to be now clear
From the large horns, too ponderous grown to bear."
"I desire to be dissolved," we should say, "and to be with Jesus Christ"
The force of Plato's arguments concerning the immortality of the soul set
some of his disciples to seek a premature grave, that they might the
sooner enjoy the things he had made them hope for.
All this is a most evident sign that we only receive our religion after
our own fashion, by our own hands, and no otherwise than as other
religions are received. Either we are happened in the country where it is
in practice, or we reverence the antiquity of it, or the authority of the
men who have maintained it, or fear the menaces it fulminates against
misbelievers, or are allured by its promises. These considerations ought,
'tis true, to be applied to our belief but as subsidiaries only, for they
are human obligations. Another religion, other witnesses, the like
promises and threats, might, by the same way, imprint a quite contrary
belief. We are Christians by the same title that we are Perigordians or
Germans. And what Plato says, "That there are few men so obstinate in
their atheism whom a pressing danger will not reduce to an acknowledgment
of the divine power," does not concern a true Christian: 'tis for mortal
and human religions to be received by human recommendation. What kind of
faith can that be that cowardice and want of courage establish in us? A
pleasant faith, that does not believe what it believes but for want of
courage to disbelieve it! Can a vicious passion, such as inconstancy and
astonishment, cause any regular product in our souls? "They are confident
in their judgment," says he, "that what is said of hell and future
torments is all feigned: but an occasion of making the expedient
presenting itself, when old age or diseases bring them to the brink of the
grave, the terror of death, by the horror of that future condition,
inspires them with a new belief!" And by reason that such impressions
render them timorous, he forbids in his Laws all such threatening
doctrines, and all persuasion that anything of ill can befall a man from
the gods, excepting for his great good when they happen to him, and for a
medicinal effect. They say of Bion that, infected with the atheism of
Theodoras, he had long had religious men in great scorn and contempt, but
that death surprising him, he gave himself up to the most extreme
superstition; as if the gods withdrew and returned according to the
necessities of Bion. Plato and these examples would conclude that we are
brought to a belief of God either by reason or by force. Atheism being a
proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to
establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men
enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary
and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them;
who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant
them in their own conscience. Yet will they not fail to lift up their
hands towards heaven if you give them a good thrust with a sword in the
breast, and when fear or sickness has abated and dulled the licentious
fury of this giddy humour they will easily re-unite, and very discreetly
suffer themselves to be reconciled to the public faith and examples. A
doctrine seriously digested is one thing, and those superficial
impressions another; which springing from the disorder of an unhinged
understanding, float at random and great uncertainty in the fancy.
Miserable and senseless men, who strive to be worse than they can!
The error of paganism and the ignorance of our sacred truth, let this
great soul of Plato, but great only in human greatness, fall also into
this other mistake, "That children and old men were most susceptible of
religion," as if it sprung and derived its credit from our weakness. The
knot that ought to bind the judgment and the will, that ought to restrain
the soul and join it to our creator, should be a knot that derives its
foldings and strength not from our considerations, from our reasons and
passions, but from a divine and supernatural constraint, having but one
form, one face, and one lustre, which is the authority of God and his
divine grace. Now the heart and soul being governed and commanded by
faith, 'tis but reason that they should muster all our other faculties,
according as they are able to perform to the service and assistance of
their design. Neither is it to be imagined that all this machine has not
some marks imprinted upon it by the hand of the mighty architect, and that
there is not in the things of this world some image that in some measure
resembles the workman who has built and formed them. He has, in his
stupendous works, left the character of his divinity, and 'tis our own
weakness only that hinders us from discerning it. 'Tis what he himself is
pleased to tell us, "That he manifests his invisible operations to us by
those that are visible." Sebond applied himself to this laudable and noble
study, and demonstrates to us that there is not any part or member of the
world that disclaims or derogates from its maker. It were to do wrong to
the divine goodness, did not the universe consent to our belief. The
heavens, the earth, the elements, our bodies and our souls,—all
things concur to this; we have but to find out the way to use them; they
instruct us, if we are capable of instruction. For this world is a sacred
temple, into which man is introduced, there to contemplate statues, not
the works of a mortal hand, but such as the divine purpose has made the
objects of sense; the sun, the stars, the water, and the earth, to
represent those that are intelligible to us. "The invisible tilings of
God," says St. Paul, "appear by the creation of the world, his eternal
wisdom and divinity being considered by his works."
And God himself envies not men the grace
Of seeing and admiring heaven's face;
But, rolling it about, he still anew
Presents its varied splendour to our view,
And on oar minds himself inculcates, so
That we th' Almighty mover well may know:
Instructing us by seeing him the cause
Of ill, to revcreoce and obey his laws."
Now our prayers and human discourses are but as sterile and undigested
matter. The grace of God is the form; 'tis that which gives fashion and
value to it. As the virtuous actions of Socrates and Cato remain vain and
fruitless, for not having had the love and obedience to the true creator
of all things, so is it with our imaginations and discourses; they have a
kind of body, but it is an inform mass, without fashion and without light,
if faith and grace be not added thereto. Faith coming to tinct and
illustrate Sehond's arguments renders them firm and stolid; and to that
degree that they are capable of serving for directions, and of being the
first guides to an elementary Christian to put him into the way of this
knowledge. They in some measure form him to, and render him capable of,
the grace of God, by which means he afterwards completes and perfects
himself in the true belief. I know a man of authority, bred up to letters,
who has confessed to me to have been brought back from the errors of
unbelief by Sebond's arguments. And should they be stripped of this
ornament, and of the assistance and approbation of the faith, and be
looked upon as mere fancies only, to contend with those who are
precipitated into the dreadful and horrible darkness of irrligion, they
will even there find them as solid and firm as any others of the same
quality that can be opposed against them; so that we shall be ready to say
to our opponents:
Si melius quid habes, arcesse; vel imperium fer:
"If you have arguments more fit.
Produce them, or to these submit."
let them admit the force of our reasons, or let them show us others, and
upon some other subject, better woven and of finer thread. I am, unawares,
half engaged in the second objection, to which I proposed to make answer
in the behalf of Sebond. Some say that his arguments are weak, and unable
to make good what he intends, and undertake with great ease to confute
them. These are to be a little more roughly handled, for they are more
dangerous and malicious than the first Men willingly wrest the sayings of
others to favour their own prejudicate opinions. To an atheist all
writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his
own venom. These have their judgments so prepossessed that they cannot
relish Sebond's reasons. As to the rest, they think we give them very fair
play in putting them into the liberty of combatting our religion with
weapons merely human, whom, in her majesty, full of authority and command,
they durst not attack. The means that I shall use, and that I think most
proper to subdue this frenzy, is to crush and spurn under foot pride and
human arrogance; to make them sensible of the inanity, vanity, and
vileness of man; to wrest the wretched arms of their reason out of their
hands; to make them bow down and bite the ground under the authority and
reverence of the Divine Majesty. 'Tis to that alone that knowledge and
wisdom appertain; that alone that can make a true estimate of itself, and
from which we purloin whatever we value ourselves upon: [—Greek—]
"God permits not any being but himself to be truly wise." Let us subdue
this presumption, the first foundation of the tyranny of the evil spirit
Deus superbis re-sistit, humilibus autem dal gratiam. "God resists
the proud, but gives grace to the humble." "Understanding is in the gods,"
says Plato, "and not at all, or very little, in men." Now it is in the
mean time a great consolation to a Christian man to see our frail and
mortal parts so fitly suited to our holy and divine faith that, when we
employ them to the subjects of their own mortal and frail nature they are
not even there more unitedly or more firmly adjusted. Let us see, then, if
man has in his power other more forcible and convincing reasons than those
of Sebond; that is to say, if it be in him to arrive at any certainty by
argument and reason. For St. Augustin, disputing against these people, has
good cause to reproach them with injustice, "In that they maintain the
part of our belief to be false that our reason cannot establish." And to
show that a great many things may be, and have been, of which our nature
could not sound the reason and causes, he proposes to them certain known
and undoubted experiments, wherein men confess they see nothing; and this
he does, as all other things, with a curious and ingenious inquisition. We
must do more than this, and make them know that, to convince the weakness
of their reason, there is no necessity of culling out uncommon examples:
and that it is so defective and so blind that there is no faculty clear
enough for it; that to it the easy and the hard are all one; that all
subjects equally, and nature in general, disclaim its authority and reject
its mediation.
What does truth mean when she preaches to us to fly worldly philosophy,
when she so often inculcates to us, "That our wisdom is but folly in the
sight of God: that the vainest of all vanities is man: that the man who
presumes upon his wisdom does not yet know what wisdom is; and that man,
who is nothing, if he thinks himself to be anything, does seduce and
deceive himself." These sentences of the Holy Spirit do so clearly and
vividly express that which I would maintain that I should need no other
proof against men who would with all humility and obedience submit to his
authority: but these will be whipped at their own expense, and will not
suffer a man to oppose their reason but by itself.
Let us then, for once, consider a man alone, without foreign assistance,
armed only with his own proper arms, and unfurnished of the divine grace
and wisdom, which is all his honour, strength, and the foundation of his
being. Let us see how he stands in this fine equipage. Let him make me
understand, by the force of his reason, upon what foundations he has built
those great advantages he thinks he has over other creatures. Who has made
him believe that this admirable motion of the celestial arch, the eternal
light of those luminaries that roll so high over his head, the wondrous
and fearful motions of that infinite ocean, should be established and
continue so many ages for his service and convenience? Can any thing be
imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature, who is
not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all
things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he
has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole? And
the privilege which he attributes to himself of being the only creature in
this vast fabric who has the understanding to discover the beauty and the
paris of it; the only one who can return thanks to the architect, and keep
account of the revenues and disbursements of the world; who, I wonder,
sealed him this patent? Let us see his commission for this great
employment Was it granted in favour of the wise only? Few people will be
concerned in it. Are fools and wicked persons worthy so extraordinary a
favour, and, being the worst part of the world, to be preferred before the
rest? Shall we believe this man?—"For whose sake shall we,
therefore, conclude that the world was made? For theirs who have the use
of reason: these are gods and men, than whom certainly nothing can be
better:" we can never sufficiently decry the impudence of this
conjunction. But, wretched creature, what has he in himself worthy of such
an advantage? Considering the incorruptible existence of the celestial
bodies; beauty; magnitude, and continual revolution by so exact a rule;
Cum suspicimus mni clestia mundi
Templa super, stellisque micantibus arthera fiium,
El venit in mcntem lun solisque viarurn.
"When we the heavenly arch above behold.
And the vast sky adorned with stars of gold.
And mark the r'eglar course? that the sun
And moon in their alternate progress run."
considering the dominion and influence those bodies have, not only over
our lives and fortunes;
Facta etenim et vitas hominum suspendit ab aatris;
"Men's lives and actions on the stars depend."
but even over our inclinations, our thoughts and wills, which they govern,
incite and agitate at the mercy of their influences, as our reason teaches
us;
"Contemplating the stars he finds that they
Rule by a secret and a silent sway;
And that the enamell'd spheres which roll above
Do ever by alternate causes move.
And, studying these, he can also foresee,
By certain signs, the turns of destiny;"
seeing that not only a man, not only kings, but that monarchies, empires,
and all this lower world follow the influence of the celestial motions,
"How great a change a little motion brings!
So great this kingdom is that governs kings:"
if our virtue, our vices, our knowledge, and this very discourse we are
upon of the power of the stars, and the comparison we are making betwixt
them and us, proceed, as our reason supposes, from their favour;
"One mad in love may cross the raging main,
To level lofty Ilium with the plain;
Another's fate inclines him more by far
To study laws and statutes for the bar.
Sons kill their father, fathers kill their sons,
And one arm'd brother 'gainst another runs..
This war's not their's, but fate's, that spurs them on
To shed the blood which, shed, they must bemoan;
And I ascribe it to the will of fate
That on this theme I now expatiate:"
if we derive this little portion of reason we have from the bounty of
heaven, how is it possible that reason should ever make us equal to it?
How subject its essence and condition to our knowledge? Whatever we see in
those bodies astonishes us: Qu molitio, qua ferramenta, qui vectes,
qu machina, qui ministri tanti operis fuerunt? "What contrivance,
what tools, what materials, what engines, were employed about so
stupendous a work?" Why do we deprive them of soul, of life, and
discourse? Have we discovered in them any immoveable or insensible
stupidity, we who have no commerce with them but by obedience? Shall we
say that we have discovered in no other creature but man the use of a
reasonable soul? What! have we seen any thing like the sun? Does he cease
to be, because we have seen nothing like him? And do his motions cease,
because there are no other like them? If what we have not seen is not, our
knowledge is marvellously contracted: Qu sunt tant animi angusti!
"How narrow are our understandings!" Are they not dreams of human vanity,
to make the moon a celestial earth? there to fancy mountains and vales, as
Anaxagoras did? there to fix habitations and human abodes, and plant
colonies for our convenience, as Plato and Plutarch have done? And of our
earth to make a luminous and resplendent star? "Amongst the other
inconveniences of mortality this is one, that darkness of the
understanding which leads men astray, not so much from a necessity of
erring, but from a love of error. The corruptible body stupifies the soul,
and the earthly habitation dulls the faculties of the imagination."
Presumption is our natural and original disease. The most wretched and
frail of all creatures is man, and withal the proudest. He feels and sees
himself lodged here in the dirt and filth of the world, nailed and
rivetted to the worst and deadest part of the universe, in the lowest
story of the house, the most remote from the heavenly arch, with animals
of the worst condition of the three; and yet in his imagination will be
placing himself above the circle of the moon, and bringing the heavens
under his feet. 'Tis by the same vanity of imagination that he equals
himself to God, attributes to himself divine qualities, withdraws and
separates himself from the the crowd of other creatures, cuts out the
shares of the animals, his fellows and companions, and distributes to them
portions of faculties and force, as himself thinks fit How does he know,
by the strength of his understanding, the secret and internal motions of
animals?—from what comparison betwixt them and us does he conclude
the stupidity he attributes to them? When I play with my cat who knows
whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert
one another with our play. If I have my hour to begin or to refus, she
also has hers. Plato, in his picture of the golden age under Saturn,
reckons, among the chief advantages that a man then had, his communication
with beasts, of whom, inquiring and informing himself, he knew the true
qualities and differences of them all, by which he acquired a very perfect
intelligence and prudence, and led his life more happily than we could do.
Need we a better proof to condemn human impudence in the concern of
beasts? This great author was of opinion that nature, for the most part in
the corporal form she gave them, had only regard to the use of prognostics
that were derived thence in his time. The defect that hinders
communication betwixt them and us, why may it not be in our part as well
as theirs? 'Tis yet to determine where the fault lies that we understand
not one another,—for we understand them no more than they do us; and
by the same reason they may think us to be beasts as we think them. 'Tis
no great wonder if we understand not them, when we do not understand a
Basque or a Troglodyte. And yet some have boasted that they understood
them, as Apollonius Tyanaus, Melampus, Tiresias, Thales, and others. And
seeing, as cusmographers report, that there are nations that have a dog
for their king, they must of necessity be able to interpret his voice and
motions. We must observe the parity betwixt us, have some tolerable
apprehension of their meaning, and so have beasts of ours,—much
about the same. They caress us, threaten us, and beg of us, and we do the
same to them.
As to the rest, we manifestly discover that they have a full and absolute
communication amongst themselves, and that they perfectly understand one
another, not only those of the same, but of divers kinds:
"The tamer herds, and wilder sort of brutes.
Though we of higher race conclude them mutes.
Yet utter dissonant and various notes,
From gentler lungs or more distended throats,
As fear, or grief, or anger, do them move,
Or as they do approach the joys of love."
In one kind of barking of a dog the horse knows there is anger, of another
sort of bark he is not afraid. Even in the very beasts that have no voice
at all, we easily conclude, from the society of offices we observe amongst
them, some other sort of communication: their very motions discover it:
"As infants who, for want of words, devise
Expressive motions with their hands and eyes."
And why not, as well as our dumb people, dispute, argue, and tell stories
by signs? Of whom I have seen some, by practice, so clever and active that
way that, in fact, they wanted nothing of the perfection of making
themselves understood. Lovers are angry, reconciled, intreat, thank,
appoint, and, in short, speak all things by their eyes:
"Even silence in a lover
Love and passion can discover."
What with the hands? We require, promise, call, dismiss, threaten, pray,
supplicate, deny, refuse, interrogate, admire, number, confess, repent,
fear, express confusion, doubt, instruct, command, incite, encourage,
swear, testify, accuse, condemn, absolve, abuse, despise, defy, provoke,
flatter, applaud, bless, submit, mock, reconcile, recommend, exalt,
entertain, congratulate, complain, grieve, despair, wonder, exclaim, and
what not! And all this with a variety and multiplication, even emulating
speech. With the head we invite, remand, confess, deny, give the lie,
welcome, honour, reverence, disdain, demand, rejoice, lament, reject,
caress, rebuke, submit, huff, encourage, threaten, assure, and inquire.
What with the eyebrows?—what with the shoulders! There is not a
motion that does not speak, and in an intelligible language without
discipline, and a public language that every one understands: whence it
should follow, the variety and use distinguished from others considered,
that these should rather be judged the property of human nature. I omit
what necessity particularly does suddenly suggest to those who are in
need;—the alphabets upon the fingers, grammars in gesture, and the
sciences which are only by them exercised and expressed; and the nations
that Pliny reports have no other language. An ambassador of the city of
Abdera, after a long conference with Agis, King of Sparta, demanded of
him, "Well, sir, what answer must I return to my fellow-citizens?" "That I
have given thee leave," said he, "to say what thou wouldest, and as much
as thou wouldest, without ever speaking a word." is not this a silent
speaking, and very easy to be understood?
As to the rest, what is there in us that we do not see in the operations
of animals? Is there a polity better ordered, the offices better
distributed, and more inviolably observed and maintained, than that of
bees? Can we imagine that such, and so regular, a distribution of
employments can be carried on without reasoning and deliberation?
"Hence to the bee some sages have assign'd
Some portion of the god and heavenly wind."
The swallows that we see at the return of the spring, searching all the
corners of our houses for the most commodious places wherein to build
their nest; do they seek without judgment, and amongst a thousand choose
out the most proper for their purpose, without discretion? And in that
elegant and admirable contexture of their buildings, can birds rather make
choice of a square figure than a round, of an obtuse than of a right
angle, without knowing their properties and effects? Do they bring water,
and then clay, without knowing that the hardness of the latter grows
softer by being wetted? Do they mat their palace with moss or down without
foreseeing that their tender young will lie more safe and easy? Do they
secure themselves from the wet and rainy winds, and place their lodgings
against the east, without knowing the different qualities of the winds,
and considering that one is more wholesome than another? Why does the
spider make her web tighter in one place, and slacker in another; why now
make one sort of knot, and then another, if she has not deliberation,
thought, and conclusion? We sufficiently discover in most of their works
how much animals excel us, and how unable our art is to imitate them. We
see, nevertheless, in our rougher performances, that we employ all our
faculties, and apply the utmost power of our souls; why do we not conclude
the same of them?
Why should we attribute to I know not what natural and servile inclination
the works that excel all we can do by nature and art? wherein, without
being aware, we give them a mighty advantage over us in making nature,
with maternal gentleness and love, accompany and learn them, as it were,
by the hand to all the actions and commodities of their life, whilst she
leaves us to chance and fortune, and to seek out by art the things that
are necessary to our conservation, at the same time denying us the means
of being able, by any instruction or effort of understanding, to arrive at
the natural sufficiency of beasts; so that their brutish stupidity
surpasses, in all conveniences, all that our divine intelligence can do.
Really, at this rate, we might with great reason call her an unjust
stepmother: but it is nothing so, our polity is not so irregular and
unformed.
Nature has universally cared for all her creatures, and there is not one
she has not amply furnished with all means necessary for the conservation
of its being. For the common complaints I hear men make (as the license of
their opinions one while lifts them up above the clouds, and then again
depresses them to the antipodes), that we are the only animal abandoned
naked upon the bare earth, tied and bound, not having wherewithal to arm
and clothe us but by the spoil of others; whereas nature has covered all
other creatures either with shells, husks, bark, hair, wool, prickles,
leather, down, feathers, scales, or silk, according to the necessities of
their being; has armed them with talons, teeth, or horns, wherewith to
assault and defend, and has herself taught them that which is most proper
for them, to swim, to run, to fly, and sing, whereas man neither knows how
to walk, speak, eat, or do any thing but weep, without teaching;
"Like to the wretched mariner, when toss'd
By raging seas upon the desert coast,
The tender babe lies naked on the earth,
Of all supports of life stript by his birth;
When nature first presents him to the day,
Freed from the cell wherein before he lay,
He fills the ambient air with doleful cries.
Foretelling thus life's future miseries;
But beasts, both wild and tame, greater and less,
Do of themselves in strength and bulk increase;
They need no rattle, nor the broken chat,
Ay which the nurse first teaches boys to prate
They look not out for different robes to wear,
According to the seasons of the year;
And need no arms nor walls their goods to save,
Since earth and liberal nature ever have,
And will, in all abundance, still produce
All things whereof they can have need or use:"
these complaints are false; there is in the polity of the world a greater
equality and more uniform relation. Our skins are as sufficient to defend
us from the injuries of the weather as theirs are; witness several nations
that yet know not the use of clothes. Our ancient Gauls were but slenderly
clad, any more than the Irish, our neighbours, though in so cold a
climate; but we may better judge of this by ourselves: for all those parts
that we are pleased to expose to the air are found very able to endure it:
the face, the feet, the hands, the arms, the head, according to the
various habit; if there be a tender part about us, and that would seem to
be in danger from cold, it should be the stomach where the digestion is;
and yet our forefathers were there always open, and our ladies, as tender
and delicate as they are, go sometimes half-bare as low as the navel.
Neither is the binding or swathing of infants any more necessary; and the
Lacedmoman mothers brought theirs in all liberty of motion of members,
without any ligature at all. Our crying is common with the greatest part
of other animals, and there are but few creatures that are not observed to
groan, and bemoan themselves a long time after they come into the world;
forasmuch as it is a behaviour suitable to the weakness wherein they find
themselves. As to the custom of eating, it is in us, as in them, natural,
and without instruction;
"For every one soon finds his natural force.
Which he, or better may employ, or worse."
Who doubts but an infant, arrived to the strength of feeding himself, may
make shift to find something to eat And the earth produces and offers him
wherewithal to supply his necessity, without other culture and artifice;
and if not at all times, no more does she do it to beasts, witness the
provision we see ants and other creatures hoard up against the dead
seasons of the year. The late discovered nations, so abundantly furnished
with natural meat and drink, without care, or without cookery, may give us
to understand that bread is not our only food, and that, without tillage,
our mother nature has provided us sufficiently of all we stand in need of:
nay, it appears more fully and plentifully than she does at present, now
that we have added our own industry:
"The earth did first spontaneously afford
Choice fruits and wines to furnish out the board;
With herbs and flow'rs unsown in verdant fields.
But scarce by art so good a harvest yields;
Though men and oxen mutually have strove,
With all their utmost force the soil t' improve,"
the debauchery and irregularity of our appetites outstrips all the
inventions we can contrive to satisfy it.
As to arms, we have more natural ones than than most other animals more
various motions of limbs, and naturally and without lesson extract more
service from them. Those that are trained to fight naked are seen to throw
themselves into the like hazards that we do. If some beasts surpass us in
this advantage, we surpass many others. And the industry of fortifying the
body, and covering it by acquired means, we have by instinct and natural
precept? That it is so, the elephant shows who sharpen, and whets the
teeth he makes use of in war (for he has particular ones for that service,
which he spares, and never employs them at all to any other use); when
bulls go to fight, they toss and throw the dust about them; boars whet
their tusks; and the ichneumon, when he is about to engage with the
crocodile, fortifies his body, and covers and crusts it all over with
close-wrought and well-tempered slime, as with a cuirass. Why shall we not
say that it is also natural for us to arm ourselves with wood and iron?
As to speech, it is certain that if it be not natural it is not necessary.
Nevertheless I believe that a child which had been brought up in an
absolute solitude, remote from all society of men (which would be an
experiment very hard to make), would have some kind of speech to express
his meaning by. And 'tis not to be supposed that nature should have denied
that to us which she has given to several other animals: for what is this
faculty we observe in them, of complaining, rejoicing, calling to one
another for succour, and inviting each other to love, which they do with
the voice, other than speech? And why should they not speak to one
another? They speak to us, and we to them. In how many several sorts of
ways do we speak to our dogs, and they answer us? We converse with them in
another sort of language, and use other appellations, than we do with
birds, hogs, oxen, horses, and alter the idiom according to the kind.
"Thus from one swarm of ants some sally out.
To spy another's stock or mark its rout."
Lactantius seems to attribute to beasts not only speech, but laughter
also. And the difference of language which is seen amongst us, according
to the difference of countries, is also observed in animals of the same
kind. Aristotle, in proof of this, instances the Various calls of
partridges, according to the situation of places:
"And various birds do from their warbling throats
At various times, utter quite different notes,
And some their hoarse songs with the seasons change."
But it is yet to be known what language this child would speak; and of
that what is said by guess has no great appearance. If a man will allege
to me, in opposition to this opinion, that those who are naturally deaf
speak not, I answer that this is not only because they could not receive
the instruction of speaking by ear, but rather because the sense of
hearing, of which they are deprived, relates to that of speaking, and that
these hold together by a natural and inseparable tie, in such manner that
what we speak we must first speak to ourselves within, and make it sound
in our own ears, before we can utter it to others.
All this I have said to prove the resemblance there is in human things,
and to bring us back and join us to the crowd. We are neither above nor
below the rest All that is under heaven, says the sage, runs one law and
one fortune:
"All things remain
Bound and entangled in one fatal chain."
There is, indeed, some difference,—there are several orders and
degrees; but it is under the aspect of one and the same nature:
"All things by their own rites proceed, and draw
Towards their ends, by nature's certain law."
Man must be compelled and restrained within the bounds of this polity.
Miserable creature! he is not in a condition really to step over the rail.
He is fettered and circumscribed, he is subjected to the same necessity
that the other creatures of his rank and order are, and of a very mean
condition, without any prerogative of true and real pre-eminence. That
which he attributes to himself, by vain fancy and opinion, has neither
body nor taste. And if it be so, that he only, of all the animals, has
this liberty of imagination and irregularity of thoughts, representing to
him that which is, that which is not, and that he would have, the false
and the true, 'tis an advantage dearly bought, and of which he has very
little reason to be proud; for thence springs the principal and original
fountain of all the evils that befal him,—sin, sickness,
irresolution, affliction, despair. I say, then, to return to my subject,
that there is no appearance to induce a man to believe that beasts should,
by a natural and forced inclination, do the same things that we do by our
choice and industry. We ought from like effects to conclude like
faculties, and from greater effects greater faculties; and consequently
confess that the same reasoning, and the same ways by which we operate,
are common with them, or that they have others that are better. Why should
we imagine this natural constraint in them, who experience no such effect
in ourselves? added that it is more honourable to be guided and obliged to
act regularly by a natural and inevitable condition, and nearer allied to
the divinity, than to act regularly by a temerarious and fortuitous
liberty, and more safe to entrust the reins of our conduct in the hands of
nature than our own. The vanity of our presumption makes us prefer rather
to owe our sufficiency to our own exertions than to her bounty, and to
enrich the other animals with natural goods, and abjure them in their
favour, in order to honour and ennoble ourselves with goods acquired, very
foolishly in my opinion; for I should as much value parts and virtues
naturally and purely my own as those I had begged and obtained from
education. It is not in our power to obtain a nobler reputation than to be
favoured of God and nature.
For instance, take the fox, the people of Thrace make use of when they
wish to pass over the ice of some frozen river, and turn him out before
them to that purpose; when we see him lay his ear upon the bank of the
river, down to the ice, to listen if from a more remote or nearer distance
he can hear the noise of the waters' current, and, according as he finds
by that the ice to be of a less or greater thickness, to retire or
advance,—have we not reason to believe thence that the same rational
thoughts passed through his head that we should have upon the like
occasions; and that it is a ratiocination and consequence, drawn from
natural sense, that that which makes a noise runs, that which runs is not
frozen, what is not frozen is liquid, and that which is liquid yields to
impression! For to attribute this to a mere quickness of the sense of
hearing, without reason and consequence, is a chimra that cannot enter
into the imagination. We are to suppose the same of the many sorts of
subtleties and inventions with which beasts secure themselves from, and
frustrate, the enterprizes we plot against them.
And if we will make an advantage even of this, that it is in our power to
seize them, to employ them in our service, and to use them at our
pleasure, 'tis still but the same advantage we have over one another. We
have our slaves upon these terms: the Climacid, were they not women in
Syria who, squat on all fours, served for a ladder or footstool, by which
the ladies mounted their coaches? And the greatest part of free persons
surrender, for very trivial conveniences, their life and being into the
power of another. The wives and concubines of the Thracians contended who
should be chosen to be slain upon their husband's tomb. Have tyrants ever
failed of finding men enough vowed to their devotion? some of them
moreover adding this necessity, of accompanying them in death as well as
life? Whole armies have bound themselves after this manner to their
captains. The form of the oath in the rude school of gladiators was in
these words: "We swear to suffer ourselves to be chained, burnt, wounded,
and killed with the sword, and to endure all that true gladiators suffer
from their master, religiously engaging both body and soul in his
service."
Uire meum, si vis, flamma caput, et pete ferro
Corpus, et iutorto verbere terga seca.
"Wound me with steel, or burn my head with fire.
Or scourge my shoulders with well-twisted wire."
This was an obligation indeed, and yet there, in one year, ten thousand
entered into it, to their destruction. When the Scythians interred their
king they strangled upon his body the most beloved of his concubines, his
cup-bearer, the master of his horse, his chamberlain, the usher of his
chamber, and his cook. And upon the anniversary thereof they killed fifty
horses, mounted by fifty pages, that they had impaled all up the spine of
the back to the throat, and there left them fixed in triumph about his
tomb. The men that serve us do it cheaper, and for a less careful and
favourable usage than what we treat our hawks, horses and dogs withal. To
what solicitude do we not submit for the conveniences of these? I do not
think that servants of the most abject condition would willingly do that
for their masters that princes think it an honour to do for their beasts.
Diogenes seeing his relations solicitous to redeem, him from servitude:
"They are fools," said he; "'tis he that keeps and nourishes me that in
reality serves me." And they who entertain beasts ought rather to be said
to serve them, than to be served by them. And withal in this these have
something more generous in that one lion never submitted to another lion,
nor one horse to another, for want of courage. As we go to the chase of
beasts, so do tigers and lions to the chase of men, and do the same
execution upon one another; dogs upon hares, pikes upon tench, swallows
upon grass-hoppers, and sparrow-hawks upon blackbirds and larks:
"The stork with snakes and lizards from the wood
And pathless wilds supports her callow brood,
While Jove's own eagle, bird of noble blood,
Scours the wide country for undaunted food;
Sweeps the swift hare or swifter fawn away,
And feeds her nestlings with the generous prey."
We divide the quarry, as well as the pains and labour of the chase, with
our hawks and hounds. And about Amphipolis, in Thrace, the hawkers and
wild falcons equally divide the prey in the half. As also along the lake
Motis, if the fisherman does not honestly leave the wolves an equal share
of what he has caught, they presently go and tear his nets in pieces. And
as we have a way of sporting that is carried on more by subtlety than
force, as springing hares, and angling with line and hook, there is also
the like amongst other animals. Aristotle says that the cuttle-fish casts
a gut out of her throat as long as a line, which she extends and draws
back at pleasure; and as she perceives some little fish approach her she
lets it nibble upon the end of this gut, lying herself concealed in the
sand or mud, and by little and little draws it in, till the little fish is
so near her that at one spring she may catch it.
As to strength, there is no creature in the world exposed to so many
injuries as man. We need not a whale, elephant, or a crocodile, nor any
such-like animals, of which one alone is sufficient to dispatch a great
number of men, to do our business; lice are sufficient to vacate Sylla's
dictatorship; and the heart and life of a great and triumphant emperor is
the breakfast of a little contemptible worm!
Why should we say that it is only for man, or knowledge built up by art
and meditation, to distinguish the things useful for his being, and proper
for the cure of his diseases, and those which are not; to know the virtues
of rhubarb and polypody. When we see the goats of Candia, when wounded
with an arrow, among a million of plants choose out dittany for their
cure; and the tortoise, when she has eaten a viper, immediately go out to
look for origanum to purge her; the dragon to rub and clear his eyes with
fennel; the storks to give themselves clysters of sea-water; the elephants
to draw not only out of their own bodies, and those of their companions,
but out of the bodies of their masters too (witness the elephant of King
Porus whom Alexander defeated), the darts and javelins thrown at them in
battle, and that so dexterously that we ourselves could not do it with so
little pain to the patient;—why do we not say here also that this is
knowledge and reason? For to allege, to their disparagement, that 'tis by
the sole instruction and dictate of nature that they know all this, is not
to take from them the dignity of knowledge and reason, but with greater
force to attribute it to them than to us, for the honour of so infallible
a mistress. Chrysippus, though in other things as scornful a judge of the
condition of animals as any other philosopher whatever, considering the
motions of a dog, who coming to a place where three ways met, either to
hunt after his master he has lost, or in pursuit of some game that flies
before him, goes snuffing first in one of the ways, and then in another,
and, after having made himself sure of two, without finding the trace of
what he seeks, dashes into the third without examination, is forced to
confess that this reasoning is in the dog: "I have traced my master to
this place; he must of necessity be gone one of these three ways; he is
not gone this way nor that, he must then infallibly be gone this other;"
and that assuring himself by this conclusion, he makes no use of his nose
in the third way, nor ever lays it to the ground, but suffers himself to
be carried on there bv the force of reason. This sally, purely logical,
and this use of propositions divided and conjoined, and the right
enumeration of parts, is it not every whit as good that the dog knows all
this of himself as well as from Trapezuntius?
Animals are not incapable, however, of being instructed after our method.
We teach blackbirds, ravens, pies, and parrots, to speak: and the facility
wherewith we see they lend us their voices, and render both them and their
breath so supple and pliant, to be formed and confined within a certain
number of letters and syllables, does evince that they have a reason
within, which renders them so docile and willing to learn. Everybody, I
believe, is glutted with the several sorts of tricks that tumblers teach
their dogs; the dances, where they do not miss any one cadence of the
sound they hear; the several various motions and leaps they make them
perform by the command of a word. But I observe this effect with the
greatest admiration, which nevertheless is very common, in the dogs that
lead the blind, both in the country and in cities: I have taken notice how
they stop at certain doors, where they are wont to receive alms; how they
avoid the encounter of coaches and carts, even there where they have
sufficient room to pass; I have seen them, by the trench of a town,
forsake a plain and even path and take a worse, only to keep their masters
further from the ditch;—how could a man have made this dog
understand that it was his office to look to his master's safely only, and
to despise his own conveniency to serve him? And how had he the knowledge
that a way was wide enough for him that was not so for a blind man? Can
all this be apprehended without ratiocination!
I must not omit what Plutarch says he saw of a dog at Rome with the
Emperor Vespasian, the father, at the theatre of Marcellus. This dog
served a player, that played a farce of several parts and personages, and
had therein his part. He had, amongst other things, to counterfeit himself
for some time dead, by reason of a certain drug he was supposed to eat
After he had swallowed a piece of bread, which passed for the drug, he
began after awhile to tremble and stagger, as if he was taken giddy: at
last, stretching himself out stiff, as if dead, he suffered himself to be
drawn and dragged from place to place, as it was his part to do; and
afterward, when he knew it to be time, he began first gently to stir, as
if awaking out of a profound sleep, and lifting up his head looked about
him after such a manner as astonished all the spectators.
The oxen that served in the royal gardens of Susa, to water them, and turn
certain great wheels to draw water for that purpose, to which buckets were
fastened (such as there are many in Languedoc), being ordered every one to
draw a hundred turns a day, they were so accustomed to this number that it
was impossible by any force to make them draw one turn more; but, their
task being performed, they would suddenly stop and stand still. We are
almost men before we can count a hundred, and have lately discovered
nations that have no knowledge of numbers at all.
There is more understanding required in the teaching of' others than in
being taught. Now, setting aside what Democritus held and proved, "That
most of the arts we have were taught us by other animals," as by the
spider to weave and sew; by the swallow to build; by the swan and
nightingale music; and by several animals to make medicines:—Aristotle
is of opinion "That the nightingales teach their young ones to sing, and
spend a great deal of time and care in it;" whence it happens that those
we bring up in cages, and which have not had the time to learn of their
parents, want much of the grace of their singing: we may judge by this
that they improve by discipline and study; and, even amongst the wild, it
is not all and every one alike—every one has learnt to do better or
worse, according to their capacity. And so jealous are they one of
another, whilst learning, that they contention with emulation, and by so
vigorous a contention that sometimes the vanquished fall dead upon the
place, the breath rather failing than the voice. The younger ruminate
pensively and begin to mutter some broken notes; the disciple listens to
the master's lesson, and gives the best account he is able; they are
silent oy turns; one may hear faults corrected and observe some
reprehensions of the teacher. " have formerly seen," says Arrian, "an
elephant having a cymbal hung at each leg, and another fastened to his
trunk, at the sound of which all the others danced round about him, rising
and bending at certain cadences, as they were guided by the instrument;
and 'twas delightful to hear this harmony." In the spectacles of Rome
there were ordinarily seen elephants taught to move and dance to the sound
of the voice, dances wherein were several changes and cadences very hard
to learn. And some have been known so intent upon their lesson as
privately to practice it by themselves, that they might not be chidden nor
beaten by their masters.
But this other story of the pie, of which we have Plutarch himself for a
warrant, is very strange. She lived in a barber's shop at Rome, and did
wonders in imitating with her voice whatever she heard. It happened one
day that certain trumpeters stood a good while sounding before the shop.
After that, and all the next day, the pie was pensive, dumb, and
melancholic; which every body wondered at, and thought the noise of the
trumpets had so stupified and astonished her that her voice was gone with
her hearing. But they found at last that it was a profound meditation and
a retiring into herself, her thoughts exercising and preparing her voice
to imitate the sound of those trumpets, so that the first voice she
uttered was perfectly to imitate their strains, stops, and changes; having
by this new lesson quitted and taken in disdain all she had learned
before.
I will not omit this other example of a dog, also, which the same Plutarch
(I am sadly confounding all order, but I do not propose arrangement here
any more than elsewhere throughout my book) which Plutarch says he saw on
board a ship. This dog being puzzled how to get the oil that was in the
bottom of a jar, which he could not reach with his tongue by reason of the
narrow mouth of the vessel, went and fetched stones and let them fall into
the jar till he made the oil rise so high that he could reach it. What is
this but an effect of a very subtle capacity! 'Tis said that the ravens of
Barbary do the same, when the water they would drink is too low. This
action is somewhat akin to what Juba, a king of their nation relates of
the elephants: "That when, by the craft of the hunter, one of them is
trapped in certain deep pits prepared for them, and covered over with
brush to deceive them, all the rest, in great diligence, bring a great
many stones and logs of wood to raise the bottom so that he may get out."
But this animal, in several other effects, comes so near to human capacity
that, should I particularly relate all that experience hath delivered to
us, I should easily have what I usually maintain granted: namely, that
there is more difference betwixt such and such a man than betwixt such a
beast and such a man. The keeper of an elephant in a private house of
Syria robbed him every meal of the half of his allowance. One day his
master would himself feed him, and poured the full measure of barley he
had ordered for his allowance into his manger which the elephant, casting
an angry look at the keeper, with his trunk separated the one-half from
the other, and thrust it aside, by that declaring the wrong was done him.
And another, having a keeper that mixed stones with his corn to make up
the measure, came to the pot where he was boiling meat for his own dinner,
and filled it with ashes. These are particular effects: but that which all
the world has seen, and all the world knows, that in all the armies of the
Levant one of the greatest force consisted in elephants, with whom they
did, without comparison, much greater execution than we now do with our
artillery; which takes, pretty nearly, their place in a day of battle (as
may easily be supposed by such as are well read in ancient history);
"The sires of these huge animals were wont
The Carthaginian Hannibal to mount;
Our leaders also did these beasts bestride,
And mounted thus Pyrrhus his foes defied;
Nay, more, upon their backs they used to bear
Castles with armed cohorts to the war."
They must necessarily have very confidently relied upon the fidelity and
understanding of these beasts when they entrusted them with the vanguard
of a battle, where the least stop they should have made, by reason of the
bulk and heaviness of their bodies, and the least fright that should have
made them face about upon their own people, had been enough to spoil all:
and there are but few examples where it has happened that they have fallen
foul upon their own troops, whereas we ourselves break into our own
battalions and rout one another. They had the charge not of one simple
movement only, but of many several things to be performed in the battle:
as the Spaniards did to their dogs in their new conquest of the Indies, to
whom they gave pay and allowed them a share in the spoil; and those
animals showed as much dexterity and judgment in pursuing the victory and
stopping the pursuit; in charging and retiring, as occasion required; and
in distinguishing their friends from their enemies, as they did ardour and
fierceness.
We more admire and value things that are unusual and strange than those of
ordinary observation. I had not else so long insisted upon these examples:
for I believe whoever shall strictly observe what we ordinarily see in
those animals we have amongst us may there find as wonderful effects as
those we seek in remote countries and ages. 'Tis one and the same nature
that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the
present state of things, might certainly conclude as to both the future
ana the past. I have formerly seen men, brought hither by sea from very
distant countries, whose language not being understood by us, and moreover
their mien, countenance, and habit, being quite differing from ours; which
of us did not repute them savages and brutes! Who did not attribute it to
stupidity and want of common sense to see them mute, ignorant of the
French tongue, ignorant of our salutations and cringes, our port and
behaviour, from which all human nature must by all means take its pattern
and example. All that seems strange to us, and that we do not understand,
we condemn. The same thing happens also in the judgments we make of
beasts. They have several conditions like to ours; from those we may, by
comparison, draw some conjecture: but by those qualities that are
particular to themselves, what know we what to make of them! The horses,
dogs, oxen, sheep, birds, and most of the animals that live amongst us,
know our voices, and suffer themselves to be governed by them: so did
Crassus's lamprey, and came when he called it; as also do the eels that
are found in the Lake Arethusa; and I have seen several ponds where the
fishes come to eat at a certain call of those who use to feed them.
"They every one have names, and one and all
Straightway appear at their own master's call:"
We may judge of that. We may also say that the elephants have some
participation of religion forasmuch as after several washings and
purifications they are observed to lift up their trunk like arms, and,
fixing their eyes towards the rising of the sun, continue long in
meditation and contemplation, at certain hours of the days, of their own
motion; without instruction or precept But because we do not see any such
signs in other animals, we cannot for that conclude that they are without
religion, nor make any judgment of what is concealed from us. As we
discern something in this action which the philosopher Cleanthes took
notice of, because it something resembles our own. He saw, he says, "Ants
go from their ant-hill, carrying the dead body of an ant towards another
ant-hill, whence several other ants came out to meet them, as if to speak
with them; where, after having been a while together, the last returned to
consult, you may suppose, with their fellow-citizens, and so made two or
three journeys, by reason of the difficulty of capitulation. In the
conclusion, the last comers brought the first a worm out of their burrow,
as it were for the ransom of the defunct, which the first laid upon their
backs and carried home, leaving the dead body to the others." This was the
interpretation that Cleanthes gave of this transaction, giving us by that
to understand that those creatures that have no voice are not,
nevertheless, without intercourse and mutual communication, whereof 'tis
through our own defect that we do not participate; and for that reason
foolishly take upon us to pass our censure. But they yet produce either
effects far beyond our capacity, to which we are so far from being able to
arrive by imitation that we cannot so much as by imitation conceive it.
Many are of opinion that in the great and last naval engagement that
Antony lost to Augustus, his admiral galley was stayed in the middle of
her course by the little fish the Latins call remora, by reason of
the property she has of staying all sorts of vessels to which she fastens
herself. And the Emperor Caligula, sailing with a great navy upon the
coast of Romania, his galley only was suddenly stayed by the same fish,
which, he caused to be taken, fastened as it was to the keel of his ship,
very angry that such a little animal could resist both the sea, the wind,
and the force of all his oars, by being only fastened by the beak to his
galley (for it is a shell-fish); and was moreover, not without great
reason, astonished that, being brought to him in the vessel, it had no
longer the strength it had without. A citizen of Cyzicus formerly acquired
the reputation of a good mathematician for having learnt the quality of
the hedge-hog: he has his burrow open in divers places, and to several
winds, and, foreseeing the wind that is to come, stops the hole on that
side, which that citizen observing, gave the city certain predictions of
the wind which was presently to blow. The camlon takes her colour from
the place upon which she is laid; but the polypus gives himself what
colour he pleases, according to occasion, either to conceal himself from
what he fears, or from what he has a design to seize: in the camlon 'tis
a passive, but in the polypus 'tis an active, change. We have some changes
of colour, as in fear, anger, shame, and other passions, that alter our
complexions; but it is by the effect of suffering, as with the camlon.
It is in the power of the jaundice, indeed, to make us turn yellow, but
'tis not in the power of our own will. Now these effects that we discover
in other animals, much greater than ours, seem to imply some more
excellent faculty in them unknown to us; as 'tis to be presumed there are
several other qualities and abilities of theirs, of which no appearances
have arrived at us.
Amongst all the predictions of elder times, the most ancient and the most
certain were those taken from the flight of birds; we have nothing certain
like it, nor any thing to be so much admired. That rule and order of the
moving of the wing, whence they derived the consequences of future things,
must of necessity be guided by some excellent means to so noble an
operation: for to attribute this great effect to any natural disposition,
without the intelligence, consent, and meditation of him by whom it is
produced, is an opinion evidently false. That it is so, the cramp-fish has
this quality, not only to benumb all the members that touch her, but even
through the nets transmit a heavy dulness into the hands of those that
move and handle them; nay, it is further said that if one pour water upon
her, he will feel this numbness mount up the water to the hand, and
stupefy the feeling through the water. This is a miraculous force; but
'tis not useless to the cramp-fish; she knows it, and makes use on't; for,
to catch the prey she desires, she will bury herself in the mud, that
other fishes swimming over her, struck and benumbed with this coldness of
hers, may fall into her power. Cranes, swallows, and other birds of
passage, by shifting their abode according to the seasons, sufficiently
manifest the knowledge they have of their divining faculty, and put it in
use. Huntsmen assure us that to cull out from amongst a great many puppies
that which ought to be preserved as the best, the best way is to refer the
choice to the mother; as thus, take them and carry them out of the kennel,
and the first she brings back will certainly be the best; or if you make a
show as if you would environ the kennel with fire, that one she first
catches up to save. By which it appears they have a sort of prognostic
which we have not; or that they have some virtue in judging of their
whelps other and more certain than we have.
The manner of coming into the world, of engendering, nourishing, acting,
moving, living and dying of beasts, is so near to ours that whatever we
retrench from their moving causes, and add to our own condition above
theirs, can by no means proceed from any meditation of our own reason. For
the regimen of our health, physicians propose to us the example of the
beasts' manners and way of living; for this saying (out of Plutarch) has
in all times been in the mouth of these people: "Keep warm thy feet and
head, as to the rest, live like a beast."
The chief of all natural actions is generation; we have a certain
disposition of members which is the most proper for us to that end;
nevertheless, we are ordered by Lucretius to conform to the gesture and
posture of the brutes as the most effectual:—
More ferarum,
Quadrupedumque magis ritu, plerumque putantur
Concipere uxores:
Quia sic loca sumere possunt,
Pectoribus positis, sublatis semina lumbis;
and the same authority condemns, as hurtful, those indiscreet and impudent
motions which the women have added of their own invention, to whom it
proposes the more temperate and modest pattern and practice of the beasts
of their own sex:—
Nam mulier prohibet se concipere atque rpugnt,
Clunibus ipsa viri Venerem si lta retractet,
Atque exossato ciet omni pectore fluctua.
Ejicit enim sulci recta regione viaque
Vomerem, atque locis avertit seminis ictum.
If it be justice to render to every one their due, the beasts that serve,
love, and defend their benefactors, and that pursue and fall upon
strangers and those who offend them, do in this represent a certain air of
our justice; as also in observing a very equitable equality in the
distribution of what they have to their young. And as to friendship, they
have it without comparison more lively and constant than men have. King
Lysimachus's dog, Hyrcanus, master being dead, lay on his bed, obstinately
refusing either to eat or drink; and, the day that his body was burnt, he
took a run and leaped into the fire, where he was consumed, As also did
the dog of one Pyrrhus, for he would not stir from off his master's bed
from the time he died; and when they carried him away let himself be
carried with him, and at last leaped into the pile where they burnt his
master's body. There are inclinations of affection which sometimes spring
in us, without the consultation of reason; and by a fortuitous temerity,
which others call sympathy; of which beasts are as capable as we. We see
horses take such an acquaintance with one another that we have much ado to
make them eat or travel, when separated; we observe them to fancy a
particular colour in those of their own kind, and, where they meet it, run
to it with great joy and demonstrations of good will, and have a dislike
and hatred for some other colour. Animals have choice, as well as we, in
their amours, and cull out their mistresses; neither are they exempt from
our jealousies and implacable malice.
Desires are either natural and necessary, as to eat and drink; or natural
and not necessary, as the coupling with females; or neither natural nor
necessary; of which last sort are almost all the desires of men; they are
all superfluous and artificial. For 'tis marvellous how little will
satisfy nature, how little she has left us to desire; our ragouts and
kickshaws are not of her ordering. The Stoics say that a man may live on
an olive a day. The delicacy of our wines is no part of her instruction,
nor the refinements we introduce into the indulgence of our amorous
appetites:—
Neque ilia
Magno prognatum deposcit consule cunnum.
"Nature, in her pursuit of love, disclaims
The pride of titles, and the pomp of names."
These irregular desires, that the ignorance of good and a false opinion
have infused into us, are so many that they almost exclude all the
natural; just as if there were so great a number of strangers in the city
as to thrust out the natural inhabitants, or, usurping upon their ancient
rights and privileges, should extinguish their authority and introduce new
laws and customs of their own. Animals are much more regular than we, and
keep themselves with greater moderation within the limits nature has
prescribed; but yet not so exactly that they have not sometimes an analogy
with our debauches. And as there have been furious desires that have
impelled men to the love of beasts, so there have been examples of beasts
that have fallen in love with us, and been seized with monstrous affection
betwixt kinds; witness the elephant who was rival to Aristophanes the
grammarian in the love of a young herb-wench in the city of Alexandria,
who was nothing behind him in all the offices of a very passionate suitor;
for going through the market where they sold fruit, he would take some in
his trunk and carry them to her. He would as much as possible keep her
always in his sight, and would sometimes put his trunk under her
handkerchief into her bosom, to feel her breasts. They tell also of a
dragon in love with a girl, and of a goose enamoured of a child; of a ram
that was suitor to the minstrelless Glaucia, in the town of Asopus; and we
see not unfrequently baboons furiously in love with women. We see also
certain male animals that are fond of the males of their own kind. Oppian
and others give us some examples of the reverence that beasts have to
their kindred in their copulations; but experience often shows us the
contrary:—
Nec habetur turpe juvenc
Ferre patrem tergo; fit equo sua filia conjux;
Quasque creavit, init pecudes caper; ipsaque cujus
Semine concepta est, ex illo concipit ales.
"The heifer thinks it not a shame to take
Her lusty sire upon her willing back:
The horse his daughter leaps, goats scruple not
T' increase the herd by those they have begot;
And birds of all sorts do in common live,
And by the seed they have conceived conceive."
And for subtle cunning, can there be a more pregnant example than in the
philosopher Thales's mule? who, fording a river, laden with salt, and by
accident stumbling there, so that the sacks he carried were all wet,
perceiving that by the melting of the salt his burden was something
lighter, he never failed, so oft as he came to any river, to lie down with
his load; till his master, discovering the knavery, ordered that he should
be laden with wood? wherein, finding himself mistaken, he ceased to
practise that device. There are several that very vividly represent the
true image of our avarice; for we see them infinitely solicitus to get all
they can, and hide it with that exceeding great care, though they never
make any use of it at all. As to thrift, they surpass us not only in the
foresight and laying up, and saving for the time to come, but they have,
moreover, a great deal of the science necessary thereto. The ants bring
abroad into the sun their grain and seed to air, refresh and dry them when
they perceive them to mould and grow musty, lest they should decay and
rot. But the caution and prevention they use in gnawing their grains of
wheat surpass all imagination of human prudence; for by reason that the
wheat does not always continue sound and dry, but grows soft, thaws and
dissolves as if it were steeped in milk, whilst hasting to germination;
for fear lest it should shoot and lose the nature and property of a
magazine for their subsistence, they nibble off the end by which it should
shoot and sprout.
As to what concerns war, which is the greatest and most magnificent of
human actions, I would very fain know whether we would use it for an
argument of some prerogative or, on contrary, for a testimony of our
weakness and imperfection; as, in truth, the science of undoing and
killing one another, and of ruining and destroying our own kind, has
nothing in it so tempting as to make it be coveted by beasts who have it
not.
Quando leoni Fortior eripuit vitam leo? quo nemore unquam
Expiravit aper majoris dentibus apri?
"No lion drinks a weaker lion's gore,
No boar expires beneath a stronger boar."
Yet are they not universally exempt; witness the furious encounters of
bees, and the enterprises of the princes of the contrary armies:—
Spe duobus Regibus incessit magno discordia motu;
Continuoque animos vulgi et trepidantia bello
Gorda licet long prsciscere.
"But if contending factions arm the hive,
When rival kings in doubtful battle strive,
Tumultuous crowds the dread event prepare,
And palpitating hearts that beat to war."
I never read this divine description but that, methinks, I there see human
folly and vanity represented in their true and lively colours. For these
warlike movements, that so ravish us with their astounding noise and
horror, this rattle of guns, drums, and cries,
Fulgur ibi ad coelum se tollit, totaque circum
re renidescit tellus, subterque virm vi
Excitur pedibus sonitus, clamoreque montes
Icti rejectant voces ad sidera mundi;
"When burnish'd arms to heaven dart their rays,
And many a steely beam i' th' sunlight plays,
When trampled is the earth by horse and man,
Until the very centre groans again,
And that the rocks, struck by the various cries,
Reverberate the sound unto the skies;"
in the dreadful embattling of so many thousands of armed men, and so great
fury, ardour, and courage, 'tis pleasant to consider by what idle
occasions they are excited, and by how light ones appeased:—
Paridis propter narratur amorem
Greci Barbari diro collisa duello:
"Of wanton Paris the illicit love
Did Greece and Troy to ten years' warfare move:"
all Asia was ruined and destroyed for the lust of Paris; the envy of one
single man, a despite, a pleasure, a domestic jealousy, causes that ought
not to set two oyster-wenches by the ears, is the mover of all this mighty
bustle. Shall we believe those very men who are themselves the principal
authors of these mischiefs? Let us then hear the greatest, the most
powerful, the most victorious emperor that ever was, turning into a jest,
very pleasantly and ingeniously, several battles fought both by sea and
land, the blood and lives of five hundred thousand men that followed his
fortune, and the strength and riches of two parts of the world drained for
the expense of his expeditions:—
Quod futuit Glaphyran Antonius, hanc mihi poenam
Fulvia constituit, se quoqne uti futuam.
Fulviam ego ut futuam! quid, si me Manius oret
Podicem, faciam? Non puto, si sapiam.
Aut futue, aut pugnemus, ait
Quid, si mihi vitii
Charior est ips mentula? Signa canant.
Qui? moi, que je serve Fulvie!
Sufflt-il quelle en ait envie?
A ce compte, on verrait se retirer von moi
Mille pouses mal satisfaites.
Aime-moi, me dit elle, ou combattons. Mais quoi?
Elle est bien laide! Allons, sonnes trompettes.
'Cause Anthony is fired with Glaphire's charms
Fain would his Fulvia tempt me to her arms.
If Anthony be false, what then? must I
Be slave to Fulvia's lustful tyranny?
Then would a thousand wanton, waspish wives,
(I use my Latin with the liberty of conscience you are pleased to allow
me.) Now this great body, with so many fronts, and so many motions, which
seems to threaten heaven and earth:—
Quam multi Lybico volvuntur marmore fluctus,
Svus ubi Orion hibemis conditur undis,
Vel quam solo novo dens torrentur Arist,
Aut Hermi campo, aut Lyci flaventibus arvis;
Scuta sonant, pulsuque pedum tremit excita tellus:
"Not thicker billows beat the Lybian main,
When pale Orion sits in wintry rain;
Nor thicker harvests on rich Hermus rise,
Or Lycian fields, when Phobus burns the skies,
Than stand these troops: their bucklers ring around;
Their trampling turns the turf and shakes the solid ground:"
this furious monster, with so many heads and arms, is yet man—feeble,
calamitous, and miserable man! 'Tis but an ant-hill disturbed and
provoked:—
It nigrum campis agmen:
"The black troop marches to the field:"
a contrary blast, the croaking of a flight of ravens, the stumble of a
horse, the casual passage of an eagle, a dream, a voice, a sign, a morning
mist, are any one of them sufficient to beat down and overturn him. Dart
but a sunbeam in his face, he is melted and vanished. Blow but a little
dust in his eyes, as our poet says of the bees, and all our ensigns and
legions, with the great Pompey himself at the head of them, are routed and
crushed to pieces; for it was he, as I take it, that Sertorious beat in
Spain with those fine arms, which also served Eumenes against Antigonus,
and Surena against Crassus:—
"Swarm to my bed like bees into their hives.
Declare for love, or war, she said; and frown'd:
No love I'll grant: to arms bid trumpets sound."
Hi motus animorum, atque hoc certamina tanta,
Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescent.
"Yet at thy will these dreadful conflicts cease,
Throw but a little dust and all is peace."
Let us but slip our flies after them, and they will have the force and
courage to defeat them. Of fresh memory, the Portuguese having besieged
the city of Tamly, in the territory of Xiatine, the inhabitants of the
place brought a great many hives, of which are great plenty in that place,
upon the wall; and with fire drove the bees so furiously upon the enemy
that they gave over the enterprise, not being able to stand their attacks
and endure their stings; and so the citizens, by this new sort of relief,
gained liberty and the victory with so wonderful a fortune, that at the
return of their defenders from the battle they found they had not lost so
much as one. The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same
mould; the weight and importance of the actions of princes considered, we
persuade ourselves that they must be produced by some as weighty and
important causes; but we are deceived; for they are pushed on, and pulled
back in their motions, by the same springs that we are in our little
undertakings. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbour
causes a war betwixt princes; the same reason that makes us whip a lackey,
falling into the hands of a king makes him ruin a whole province. They are
as lightly moved as we, but they are able to do more. In a gnat and an
elephant the passion is the same.
As to fidelity, there is no animal in the world so treacherous as man. Our
histories have recorded the violent pursuits that dogs have made after the
murderers of their masters. King Pyrrhus observing a dog that watched a
dead man's body, and understanding that he had for three days together
performed that office, commanded that the body should be buried, and took
the dog along with him. One day, as he was at a general muster of his
army, this dog, seeing his master's murderers, with great barking and
extreme signs of anger flew upon them, and by this first accusation
awakened the revenge of this murder, which was soon after perfected by
form of justice. As much was done by the dog of the wise Hesiod, who
convicted the sons of Ganictor of Naupactus of the murder committed on the
person of his master. Another dog being to guard a temple at Athens,
having spied a sacrilegious thief carrying away the finest jewels, fell to
barking at him with all his force, but the warders not awaking at the
noise, he followed him, and day being broke, kept off at a little
distance, without losing sight of him; if he offered him any thing to eat
he would not take it, but would wag his tail at all the passengers he met,
and took whatever they gave him; and if the thief laid down to sleep, he
likewise stayed upon the same place. The news of this dog being come to
the warders of the temple they put themselves upon the pursuit, inquiring
of the colour of the dog, and at last found him in the city of Cromyon,
and the thief also, whom they brought back to Athens, where he got his
reward; and the judges, in consideration of this good office, ordered a
certain measure of corn for the dog's daily sustenance, at the public
charge, and the priests to take care of it. Plutarch delivers this story
for a certain truth, and that it happened in the age wherein he lived.
As to gratitude (for I think we need bring this word into a little
repute), this one example, which Apion reports himself to have been an
eye-witness of, shall suffice.
"One day," says he, "at Rome, they entertained the people with the sight
of the fighting of several strange beasts, and principally of lions of an
unusual size; there was one amongst the rest who, by his furious
deportment, by the strength and largeness of his limbs, and by his loud
and dreadful roaring, attracted the eyes of all the spectators. Amongst
other slaves that were presented to the people in this combat of beasts
there was one Androdus, of Dacia, belonging to a Roman lord of consular
dignity. This lion having seen him at a distance first made a sudden stop,
as it were in a wondering posture, and then softly approached nearer in a
gentle and peaceable manner, as if it were to enter into acquaintance with
him. This being done, and being now assured of what he sought for, he
began to wag his tail, as dogs do when they flatter their masters, and to
kiss and lick the hands and thighs of the poor wretch, who was beside
himself, and almost dead with fear. Androdus being by this kindness of the
lion a little come to himself, and having taken so much heart as to
consider and know him, it was a singular pleasure to see the joy and
caresses that passed betwixt them. At which the people breaking into loud
acclamations of joy, the emperor caused the slave to be called, to know
from him the cause of so strange an event; who thereupon told him a new
and a very strange story: "My master," said he, "being pro-consul in
Africa, I was constrained, by his severity and cruel usage, being daily
beaten, to steal from him and run away; and, to hide myself secretly from
a person of so great authority in the province, I thought it my best way
to fly to the solitudes, sands, and uninhabitable parts of that country,
resolving that in case the means of supporting life should chance to fail
me, to make some shift or other to kill myself. The sun being excessively
hot at noon, and the heat intolerable, I lit upon a private and almost
inaccessible cave, and went into it Soon after there came in to me this
lion, with one foot wounded and bloody, complaining and groaning with the
pain he endured. At his coming I was exceeding afraid; but he having spied
me hid in the comer of his den, came gently to me, holding out and showing
me his wounded foot, as if he demanded my assistance in his distress. I
then drew out a great splinter he had got there, and, growing a little
more familiar with him, squeezing the wound thrust out the matter, dirt,
and gravel which was got into it, and wiped and cleansed it the best I
could. He, finding himself something better, and much eased of his pain,
laid him down to rest, and presently fell asleep with his foot in my hand.
From that time forward he and I lived together in this cave three whole
years upon one and the same diet; for of the beasts that he killed in
hunting he always brought me the best pieces, which I roasted in the sun
for want of fire, and so ate it. At last, growing weary of this wild and
brutish life, the lion being one day gone abroad to hunt for our ordinary
provision, I departed thence, and the third day after was taken by the
soldiers, who brought me from Africa to this city to my master, who
presently condemned me to die, and to be thus exposed to the wild beasts.
Now, by what I see, this lion was also taken soon after, who has now
sought to recompense me for the benefit and cure that he received at my
hands." This is the story that Androdus told the emperor, which he also
conveyed from hand to hand to the people; wherefore, at the general
request, he was absolved from his sentence and set at liberty, and the
lion was, by order of the people, presented to him. "We afterwards saw,"
says Apion, "Androdus leading this lion, in nothing but a small leash,
from tavern to tavern at Rome, and receiving what money every body would
give him, the lion being so gentle as to suffer himself to be covered with
the flowers that the people threw upon him, every one that met him saying,
'There goes the lion that entertained the man; there goes the man that
cured the lion.'"
We often lament the loss of beasts we love, and so do they the loss of us:—
Post, bellator equus, positis insignibus, thon
It lacrymans, guttisque humectt grandibus ora.
"To close the pomp, thon, the steed of state.
Is led, the fun'ral of his lord to wait.
Stripped of his trappings, with a sullen pace
He walks, and the big tears run rolling down his face."
As some nations have their wives in common, and some others have every one
his own, is not the same seen among beasts, and marriages better kept than
ours? As to the society and confederation they make amongst themselves, to
league together and to give one another mutual assistance, is it not known
that oxen, hogs, and other animals, at the cry of any of their kind that
we offend, all the herd run to his aid and embody for his defence? The
fish Scarus, when he has swallowed the angler's hook, his fellows all
crowd about him and gnaw the line in pieces; and if, by chance, one be got
into the bow net, the others present him their tails on the outside, which
he holding fast with his teeth, they after that manner disengage and draw
him out.
Mullets, when one of their companions is engaged, cross the line over
their back, and, with a fin they have there, indented like a saw, cut and
saw it asunder. As to the particular offices that we receive from one
another for the service of life, there are several like examples amongst
them. 'Tis said that the whale never moves that she has not always before
her a little fish like the sea-gudgeon, for this reason called the
guide-fish, whom the whale follows, suffering himself to be led and turned
with as great facility as the rudder guides the ship; in recompense of
which service also, whereas all the other things, whether beast or vessel,
that enter into the dreadful gulf of this monster's mouth, are immediately
lost and swallowed up, this little fish retires into it in great security,
and there sleeps, during which time the whale never stirs; but so soon as
ever it goes out he immediately follows it; and if by accident he loses
the sight of his little guide, he goes wandering here and there, and
strikes his sides against the rocks like a ship that has lost her helm;
which Plutarch affirms to have seen in the island of Anticyra. There is a
like society betwixt the little bird called the wren and the crocodile.
The wren serves for a sentinel over this great animal; and if the
ichneumon, his mortal enemy, approach to fight him, this little bird, for
fear lest he should surprise him asleep, both with his voice and bill
rouses him and gives him notice of his danger. He feeds of this monster's
leavings, who receives him familiarly into his mouth, suffering him to
peck in his jaws and betwixt his teeth, and thence to pick out the bits of
flesh that remain; and when he has a mind to shut his mouth, he first
gives the bird warning to go out by closing it by little and little, and
without bruising or doing it any harm at all. The shell-fish called the
naker, lives in the same intelligence with the shrimp, a little sort of
animal of the lobster kind, which serves him in the nature of a porter,
sitting at the opening of the shell, which the naker keeps always gaping
and open till the shrimp sees some little fish, proper for their prey,
within the hollow of the shell, where she enters too, and pinches the
naker so to the quick that she is forced to close her shell, where they
two together devour the prey they have trapped in their fort. In the
manner of living of the tunnies we observe a singular knowledge of the
three parts of mathematics. As to astrology, they teach it men, for they
stay in the place where they are surprised by the brumal solstice, and
never stir thence till the next equinox; for which reason Aristotle
himself attributes to them this science. As to geometry and arithmetic,
they always form their numbers in the figure of a cube, every way square,
and make up the body of a battalion, solid, close, and environed round
with six equal sides, and swim in this square order, as large behind as
before; so that whoever in seeing them can count one rank may easily
number the whole troop, by reason that the depth is equal to the breadth,
and the breadth to the length.
As to magnanimity, it will be hard to exhibit a better instance of it than
in the example of the great dog sent to Alexander the Great from the
Indies. They first brought him a stag to encounter, next a boar, and after
that a bear, all which he slighted, and disdained to stir from his place;
but when he saw a lion he then immediately roused himself, evidently
manifesting that he declared that alone worthy to enter the lists with
him. Touching repentance and the acknowledgment of faults, 'tis reported
of an elephant that, having in the impetuosity of his rage killed his
keeper, he fell into so extreme a sorrow that he would never after eat,
but starved himself to death. And as to clemency, 'tis said of a tiger,
the most cruel of all beasts, that a kid having been put in to him, he
suffered a two days' hunger rather than hurt it, and the third broke the
grate he was shut up in, to seek elsewhere for prey; so unwilling he was
to fall upon the kid, his familiar and his guest, And as to the laws of
familiarity and agreement, formed by conversation, it ordinarily happens
that we bring up cats, dogs, and hares, tame together.
But that which seamen by experience know, and particularly in the Sicilian
Sea, of the quality of the halcyons, surpasses all human thought of what
kind of animal has nature even so much honoured the birth? The poets
indeed say that one only island, Delos, which was before a floating
island, was fixed for the service of Latona's lying-in; but God has
ordered that the whole ocean should be stayed, made stable and smooth,
without waves, without winds or rain, whilst the halcyon produces her
young, which is just about the solstice, the shortest day of the year; so
that by her privilege we have seven days and seven nights in the very
heart of winter wherein we may sail without danger. Their females never
have to do with any other male but their own, whom they serve and assist
all their lives, without ever forsaking him. If he becomes weak and broken
with age, they take him upon their shoulders and carry him from place to
place, and serve him till death. But the most inquisitive into the secrets
of nature could never yet arrive at the knowledge of the wonderful fabric
wherewith the halcyon builds her nest for her little ones, nor guess at
the materials. Plutarch, who has seen and handled many of them, thinks it
is the bones of some fish which she joins and binds together, interlacing
them, some lengthwise and others across, and adding ribs and hoops in such
manner that she forms at last a round vessel fit to launch; which being
done, and the building finished, she carries it to the beach, where the
sea beating gently against it shows where she is to mend what is not well
jointed and knit, and where better to fortify the seams that are leaky,
that open at the beating of the waves; and, on the contrary, what is well
built and has had the due finishing, the beating of the waves does so
close and bind together that it is not to be broken or cracked by blows
either of stone or iron without very much ado. And that which is more to
be admired is the proportion and figure of the cavity within, which is
composed and proportioned after such a manner as not to receive or admit
any other thing than the bird that built it; for to any thing else it is
so impenetrable, close, and shut, nothing can enter, not so much as the
water of the sea. This is a very dear description of this building, and
borrowed from a very good hand; and yet me-thinks it does not give us
sufficient light into the difficulty of this architecture. Now from what
vanity can it proceed to despise and look down upon, and disdainfully to
interpret, effects that we can neither imitate nor comprehend?
To pursue a little further this equality and correspondence betwixt us and
beasts, the privilege our soul so much glorifies herself upon, of things
she conceives to her own law, of striping all things that come to her of
their mortal and corporeal qualities, of ordering and placing things she
conceives worthy her taking notice of, stripping and divesting them of
their corruptible qualities, and making them to lay aside length, breadth,
depth, weight, colour, smell, roughness, smoothness, hardness, softness,
and all sensible accidents, as mean and superfluous vestments, to
accommodate them to her own immortal and spiritual condition; as Rome and
Paris, for example, that I have in my fancy, Paris that I imagine, I
imagine and comprehend it without greatness and without place, without
stone, without plaster, and without wood; this very same privilege, I say,
seems evidently to be in beasts; for a courser accustomed to trumpets, to
musket-shots, and battles, whom we see start and tremble in his sleep and
stretched upon his litter, as if he were in a fight; it is almost certain
that he conceives in his soul the beat of a drum without noise, and an
army without arms and without body:—
Quippe videbis equos fortes, cum membra jacebunt
In somnis, sudare tamen, spirareque spe,
Et quasi de palm summas contendere vires:
"You shall see maneg'd horses in their sleep
Sweat, snort, start, tremble, and a clutter keep,
As if with all their force they striving were
The victor's palm proudly away to bear:"
the hare, that a greyhound imagines in his sleep, after which we see him
pant so whilst he sleeps, stretch out his tail, shake his legs, and
perfectly represents all the motions of a course, is a hare without fur
and without bones:—
Venantumque canes in molli spe quiete
Jactant crura tamen subito, vocesque repente
Mittunt, et crebras reducunt naribus auras,
Ut vestigia si teneant inventa ferarum:
Expergeftique sequuntur inania spe
Cervorum simulacra, fag quasi dedita cernant;
Donee discussis redeant erroribus ad se:
"And hounds stir often in their quiet rest,
Spending their mouths, as if upon a quest,
Snuff, and breathe quick and short, as if they went
In a full chase upon a burning scent:
Nay, being wak'd, imagin'd stags pursue,
As if they had them in their real view,
Till, having shook themselves more broad awake,
They do at last discover the mistake:"
the watch-dogs, that we often observe to snarl in their dreams, and
afterwards bark out, and start up as if they perceived some stranger at
hand; the stranger that their soul discerns is a man spiritual and
imperceptible, without dimension, without colour, and without being:—
Consueta domi catulorum blanda propago
Degere, spe levem ex oculis volucremque soporem
Discutere, et corpus de terra corripere instant,
Proinde quasi ignotas facies atque ora tuantur.
"The fawning whelps of household curs will rise,
And, shaking the soft slumber from their eyes,
Oft bark and stare at ev'ry one within,
As upon faces they had never seen."
to the beauty of the body, before I proceed any further I should know
whether or no we are agreed about the description. 'Tis likely we do not
well know what beauty is in nature and in general, since to our own human
beauty we give so many divers forms, of which, were there any natural rule
and prescription, we should know it in common, as the heat of the fire.
But we fancy the forms according to our own appetite and liking:—
Turpis Romano Belgicus ore color:
"A German hue ill suits, a Roman face."
The Indians paint it black and tawny, with great swelled lips, wide flat
noses and load the cartilage betwixt the nostrils with great rings of
gold, to make it hang down to the mouth; as also the under lip with great
hoops, enriched with precious stones, that weigh them down to fall upon
the chin, it being with them a singular grace to show their teeth, even
below the roots. In Peru the greatest ears are the most beautiful, which
they stretch out as far as they can by art. And a man now living says that
he has seen in an eastern nation this care of enlarging them in so great
repute, and the ear loaded with so ponderous jewels, that he did with
great ease put his arm, sleeve and all, through the hole of an ear. There
are elsewhere nations that take great care to black their teeth, and hate
to see them white, whilst others paint them red. The women are reputed
more beautiful, not only in Biscay, but elsewhere, for having their heads
shaved; and, which is more, in certain frozen countries, as Pliny reports.
The Mexicans esteem a low forehead a great beauty, and though they shave
all other parts, they nourish hair on the forehead and increase it by art,
and have great breasts in so great reputation that they affect to give
their children suck over their shoulders. We should paint deformity so.
The Italians fashion it gross and massy; the Spaniards gaunt and slender;
and amongst us one has it white, another brown; one soft and delicate,
another strong and vigorous; one will have his mistress soft and gentle,
others haughty and majestic. Just as the preference in beauty that Plato
attributes to the spherical figure the Epicureans gave rather to the
pyramidal or square, and cannot swallow a god in the form of a bowl. But,
be it how it will, nature has no more privileged us in this from her
common laws than in the rest And if we will judge ourselves aright, we
shall find that, if there be some animals less favoured in this than we,
there are others, and in greater number, that are more; a multis
animalibus decore vincimur "Many animals surpass us in beauty," even
among the terrestrial, our compatriots; for as to those of sea, setting
the figure aside, which cannot fall into any manner of proportion, being
so much another thing in colour, clearness, smoothness, and arrangement,
we sufficiently give place to them; and no less, in all qualities, to the
aerial. And this prerogative that the poets make such a mighty matter of,
our erect stature, looking towards heaven our original,
Pronaque cum spectent animalia ctera terrain,
Os homini sublime ddit, columque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus,
"Whilst all the brutal creatures downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
He set man's face aloft, that, with his eyes
Uplifted, he might view the starry skies,"
is truly poetical; for there are several little beasts who have their
sight absolutely turned towards heaven; and I find the gesture of camels
and ostriches much higher raised and more erect than ours. What animals
have not their faces above and not before, and do not look opposite, as we
do; and that do not in their natural posture discover as much of heaven
and earth as man? And what qualities of our bodily constitution, in Plato
and Cicero, may not indifferently serve a thousand sorts of beasts? Those
that most resemble us are the most despicable and deformed of all the
herd; for those, as to outward appearance and form of visage, are baboons:—
Simia quam similis, turpissima bestia, nobis?
"How like to man, in visage and in shape,
Is, of all beasts the most uncouth, the ape?"
as to the internal and vital parts, the hog. In earnest, when I consider
man stark naked, even in that sex which seems to have greatest share of
beauty, his defects, natural subjection, and imperfections, I find that we
have more reason than any other animal, to cover ourselves; and are to be
excused from borrowing of those to whom nature has in this been kinder
than to us, to trick ourselves out with their beauties, and hide ourselves
under their spoils, their wool, feathers, hair, and silk. Let us observe,
as to the rest, that man is the sole animal whose nudities offend his own
companions, and the only one who in his natural actions withdraws and
hides himself from his own kind. And really 'tis also an effect worth
consideration, that they who are masters in the trade prescribe, as a
remedy for amorous passions, the full and free view of the body a man
desires; for that to cool the ardour there needs no more but freely and
fully to see what he loves:—
Ille quod obscnas in aperto corpore partes
Viderat, in cursu qui fuit, hsit amor.
"The love that's tilting when those parts appear
Open to view, flags in the hot career,"
And, although this receipt may peradventure proceed from a nice and cold
humour, it is notwithstanding a very great sign of our deficiencies that
use and acquaintance should make us disgust one another. It is not
modesty, so much as cunning and prudence, that makes our ladies so
circumspect to refuse us admittance into their cabinets before they are
painted and tricked up for the public view:—
Nec Veneres nostras hoc fallit; quo magis ips
Omnia summopere hos vit postscenia celant,
Quos retinere volunt, adstrictoque esse in amore:
"Of this our ladies are full well aware,
Which make them, with such privacy and care,
Behind the scene all those defects remove,
Likely to check the flame of those they love,"
whereas, in several animals there is nothing that we do not love, and that
does not please our senses; so that from their very excrements we do not
only extract wherewith to heighten our sauces, but also our richest
ornaments and perfumes. This discourse reflects upon none but the ordinary
sort of women, and is not so sacrilegious as to comprehend those divine,
supernatural, and extraordinary beauties, which we see shine occasionally
among us like stars under a corporeal and terrestrial veil.
As to the rest, the very share that we allow to beasts of the bounty of
nature, by our own confession, is very much to their advantage. We
attribute to ourselves imaginary and fantastic good, future and absent
good, for which human capacity cannot of herself be responsible; or good,
that we falsely attribute to ourselves by the license of opinion, as
reason, knowledge, and honour, and leave to them for their dividend,
essential, durable, and palpable good, as peace, repose, security,
innocence, and health; health, I say, the fairest and richest present that
nature can make us. Insomuch that philosophy, even the Stoic, is so bold
as to say, "That Heraclitus and Pherecides, could they have trucked their
wisdom for health, and have delivered themselves, the one of his dropsy,
and the other of the lousy disease that tormented him, they had done
well." By which they set a greater value upon wisdom, comparing and
putting it into the balance with health, than they do with this other
proposition, which is also theirs; they say that if Circe had presented
Ulysses with the two potions, the one to make a fool become a wise man,
and the other to make a wise man become a fool, that Ulysses ought rather
to have chosen the last, than consent to that by which Circe changed his
human figure into that of a beast; and say that wisdom itself would have
spoke to him after this manner: "Forsake me, let me alone, rather than
lodge me under the body and figure of an ass." How! the philosophers, then
will abandon this great and divine wisdom for this corporeal and
terrestrial covering? It is then no more by reason, by discourse, and by
the soul, that we excel beasts; 'tis by our beauty, our fair complexion,
and our fine symmetry of parts, for which we must quit our intelligence,
our prudence, and all the rest. Well, I accept this open and free
confession; certainly they knew that those parts, upon which we so much
value ourselves, are no other than vain fancy. If beasts then had all the
virtue, knowledge, wisdom, and stoical perfection, they would still be
beasts, and would not be comparable to man, miserable, wicked, mad, man.
For, in short, whatever is not as we are is nothing worth; and God, to
procure himself an esteem among us, must put himself into that shape, as
we shall show anon. By which it appears that it is not upon any true
ground of reason, but by a foolish pride and vain opinion, that we prefer
ourselves before other animals, and separate ourselves from their society
and condition.
But to return to what I was upon before; we have for our part inconstancy,
irresolution, incertitude, sorrow, superstition, solicitude of things to
come, even after we shall be no more, ambition, avarice, jealousy, envy,
irregular, frantic, and untamed appetites, war, lying, disloyalty,
detraction, and curiosity. Doubtless, we have strangely overpaid this fine
reason, upon which we so much glorify ourselves, and this capacity of
judging and knowing, if we have bought it at the price of this infinite
number of passions to which we are eternally subject. Unless we shall also
think fit, as even Socrates does, to add to the counterpoise that notable
prerogative above beasts, That whereas nature has prescribed them certain
seasons and limits for the delights of Venus, she has given us the reins
at all hours and all seasons." Ut vinum ogrotis, quia prodest rar,
nocet sopissime, melius est non adhibere omnino, quam, spe dubio salutis,
in apertam per-niciem incurrere; sic, haud scio an melius fuerit humano
generi motum istum celerem cogitationis, acumen, solertiam, quam rationem
vocamus, quoniam pestifera sint multis, ad-modum paucis saluiaria, non
dari omnino, quam tam muniice et tam large dari? As it falls out that
wine often hurting the sick, and very rarely doing them good, it is better
not to give them any at all than to run into an apparent danger out of
hope of an uncertain benefit, so I know not whether it had not been better
for mankind that this quick motion, this penetration, this subtlety that
we call reason, had not been given to man at all; considering how
pestiferous it is to many, and useful but to few, than to have been
conferred in so abundant manner, and with so liberal a hand." Of what
advantage can we conceive the knowledge of so many things was to Yarro and
Aristotle? Did it exempt them from human inconveniences? Were they by it
freed from the accidents that lay heavy upon the shoulders of a porter?
Did they extract from their logic any consolation for the gout? Or, for
knowing how this humour is lodged in the joints, did they feel it the
less? Did they enter into composition with death by knowing that some
nations rejoice at his approach; or with cuckoldry, by knowing that in
some parts of the world wives are in common? On the contrary, having been
reputed the greatest men for knowledge, the one amongst the Romans and the
other amongst the Greeks, and in a time when learning did most flourish,
we have not heard, nevertheless, that they had any particular excellence
in their lives; nay, the Greek had enough to do to clear himself from some
notable blemishes in his. Have we observed that pleasure and health have a
better relish with him that understands astrology and grammar than with
others?
Illiterati num minus nervi rigent?
"Th' illiterate ploughman is as fit
For Venus' service as the wit:"
or shame and poverty less troublesome to the first than to the last?
Scilicet et morbis et debilitate carebis,
Et luctum et curam effugies, et tempora vit
Longa tibi post hc fato meliore dabuntur.
"Disease thy couch shall flee,
And sorrow and care; yes, thou, be sure, wilt see
Long years of happiness, till now unknown."
I have known in my time a hundred artisans, a hundred labourers, wiser and
more happy than the rectors of the university, and whom I had much rather
have resembled. Learning, methinks, has its place amongst the necessary,
things of life, as glory, nobility, dignity, or at the most, as beauty,
riches, and such other qualities, which indeed are useful to it, but
remotely, and more by opinion than by nature. We stand very little more in
need of offices, rules, and laws of living in our society, than cranes and
ants do in theirs; and yet we see that these carry themselves very
regularly without erudition. If man was wise, he would take the true value
of every thing according as it was useful and proper to his life. Whoever
will number us by our actions and deportments will find many more
excellent men amongst the ignorant than among the learned; aye, in all
sorts of virtue. Old Rome seems to me to have been of much greater value,
both for peace and war, than that learned Rome that ruined itself. And,
though all the rest should be equal, yet integrity and innocency would
remain to the ancients, for they cohabit singularly well with simplicity.
But I will leave this discourse, that would lead me farther than I am
willing to follow; and shall only say this further, 'tis only humility and
submission that can make a complete good man. We are not to leave the
knowledge of his duty to every man's own judgment; we are to prescribe it
to him, and not suffer him to choose it at his own discretion; otherwise,
according to the imbecility, and infinite variety of our reasons and
opinions, we should at large forge ourselves duties that would, as
Epicurus says, enjoin us to eat one another.
The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it
was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire
after, nor to dispute; forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a
rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor. From
obedience and submission spring all other virtues, as all sin does from
selfopinion. And, on the contrary, the first temptation that by the devil
was offered to human nature, its first poison insinuated itself into us by
the promise made us of knowledge and wisdom; Eritis sicut Dii, scientes
bonum et malum. "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." And the
sirens, in Homer, to allure Ulysses, and draw him within the danger of
their snares, offered to give him knowledge. The plague of man is the
opinion of wisdom; and for this reason it is that ignorance is so
recommended to us, by our religion, as proper to faith and obedience; Cavete
ne quis vos decipiat per philosophiam et inanes seductiones, secundum
elementa mundi. "Take heed, lest any man deceive you by philosophy and
vain deceit, after the tradition of men, and the rudiments of the world."
There is in this a general consent amongst all sorts of philosophers, that
the sovereign good consists in the tranquillity of the soul and body; but
where shall we find it?
Ad summum, sapiens uno minor est Jove, dives,
Liber, honoratus, pulcher, rex deniqne regum;
Prcipue sanus, nisi cum pituita molesta est:
"In short, the wise is only less than Jove,
Rich, free, and handsome; nay, a king above
All earthly kings; with health supremely blest,
Excepting when a cold disturbs his rest!"
It seems, in truth, that nature, for the consolation of our miserable and
wretched state, has only given us presumption for our inheritance. 'Tis as
Epictetus says, that man has nothing properly his own, but the use of his
opinion; we have nothing but wind and smoke for our portion. The gods have
health in essence, says philosophy, and sickness in intelligence. Man, on
the contrary, possesses his goods by fancy, his ills in essence. We have
reason to magnify the power of our imagination; for all our goods are only
in dream. Hear this poor calamitous animal huff! "There is nothing," says
Cicero, "so charming as the employment of letters; of letters, I say, by
means whereof the infinity of things, the immense grandeur of nature, the
heavens even in this world, the earth, and the seas are discovered to us;
'tis they that have taught us religion, moderation, and the grandeur of
courage, and that have rescued our souls from darkness, to make her see
all things, high, low, first, last, and middling; 'tis they that furnish
us wherewith to live happily and well, and conduct us to pass over our
lives without displeasure, and without offence." Does not this man seem to
speak of the condition of the ever-living and almighty God? But as to
effects, a thousand little countrywomen have lived lives more equal, more
sweet, and constant than his.
Deus ille fuit, deus, inclyte Memmi,
Qui princeps vit rationem invenit earn, qu
Nunc appellatur sapientia; quique per artem
Fluctibus tantis vitam, tantisque tenebris,
In tam tranquilla et tam clara luce locavit:
"That god, great Memmus, was a god no doubt
Who, prince of life, first found that reason out
Now wisdom called; and by his art, who did
That life in tempests tost, and darkness hid,
Place in so great a calm, and clear a light:"
here are brave ranting words; but a very slight accident put this man's
understanding in a worse condition than that of the meanest shepherd,
notwithstanding this instructing god, this divine wisdom. Of the same
stamp and impudence is the promise of Democritus's book: "I am going to
speak of all things;" and that foolish title that Aristotle prefixes to
one of his, order only afforded him a few lucid intervals which he
employed in composing his book, and at last made him kill himself,—Eusebius's
Chronicon.
Of the Mortal Gods; and the judgment of Chrysippus, that "Dion was as
virtuous as God;" and my Seneca himself says, that "God had given him
life; but that to live well was his own;" conformably to this other: In
virtute vere gloriamur; quod non contingeret, si id donum Deo, non
nobis haberemus: "We truly glory in our virtue; which would not be, if
it was given us of God, and not by ourselves;" this is also Seneca's
saying; "that the wise man hath fortitude equal with God, but that his is
in spite of human frailty, wherein therefore he more than equals God."
There is nothing so ordinary as to meet with sallies of the like temerity;
there is none of us, who take so much offence to see himself equalled with
God, as he does to see himself undervalued by being ranked with other
creatures; so much more are we jealous of our own interest than that of
our Creator.
But we must trample under foot this foolish vanity, and briskly and boldly
shake the ridiculous foundation upon which these false opinions are
founded. So long as man shall believe he has any means and power of
himself, he will never acknowledge what he owes to his Maker; his eggs
shall always be chickens, as the saying is; we must therefore strip him to
his shirt. Let us see some notable examples of the effects of his
philosophy: Posidonius being tormented with a disease so painful as made
him writhe his arms and gnash his teeth, thought he sufficiently scorned
the dolour, by crying out against it: "Thou mayst do thy worst, I will not
confess that thou art an evil." He was as sensible of the pain as my
footman, but he made a bravado of bridling his tongue, at least, and
restraining it within the laws of his sect: Re succumbere non
oportebat, verbis gloriantem. "It did not become him, that spoke so
big, to confess his frailty when he came to the test." Arcesilas being ill
of the gout, and Car-neades, who had come to see him, going away troubled
at his condition, he called him back, and showing him his feet and breast:
"There is nothing comes thence hither," said he. This has something a
better grace, for he feels himself in pain, and would be disengaged from
it; but his heart, notwithstanding, is not conquered nor subdued by it.
The other stands more obstinately to his point, but, I fear, rather
verbally than really. And Dionysius Heracleotes, afflicted with a vehement
smarting in his eyes, was reduced to quit these stoical resolutions. But
even though knowledge should, in effect, do as they say, and could blunt
the point, and dull the edge, of the misfortunes that attend us, what does
she, more than what ignorance does more purely and evidently?—The
philosopher Pyrrho, being at sea in very great danger, by reason of a
mighty storm, presented nothing to the imitation of those who were with
him, in that extremity, but a hog they had on board, that was fearless and
unconcerned at the tempest. Philosophy, when she has said all she can,
refers us at last to the example of a gladiator, wrestler, or muleteer, in
which sort of people we commonly observe much less apprehension of death,
sense of pain, and other inconveniences, and more of endurance, than ever
knowledge furnished any one withal, that was not bom and bred to hardship.
What is the cause that we make incisions, and cut the tender limbs of an
infant, and those of a horse, more easily than our own—but ignorance
only? How many has mere force of imagination made sick? We often see men
cause themselves to be let blood, purged, and physicked, to be cured of
diseases they only feel in opinion.—When real infirmities fail us,
knowledge lends us her's; that colour, that complexion, portend some
catarrhous defluxion; this hot season threatens us with a fever; this
breach in the life-line of your left hand gives you notice of some near
and dangerous indisposition; and at last she roundly attacks health
itself; saying, this sprightliness and vigour of youth cannot continue in
this posture; there must be blood taken, and the heat abated, lest it turn
against yourself. Compare the life of a man subjected to such
imaginations, to that of a labourer that suffers himself to be led by his
natural appetite, measuring things only by the present sense, without
knowledge, and without prognostic, that feels no pain or sickness, but
when he is really ill. Whereas the other has the stone in his soul, before
he has it in his bladder; as if it were not time enough to suffer the evil
when it shall come, he must anticipate it by fancy, and run to meet it.
What I say of physic may generally serve in example for all other
sciences. Thence is derived that ancient opinion of the philosophers that
placed the sovereign good in the discovery of the weakness of our judgment
My ignorance affords me as much occasion of hope as of fear; and having no
other rule for my health than that of the examples of others, and of
events I see elsewhere upon the like occasion, I find of all sorts, and
rely upon those which by comparison are most favourable to me. I receive
health with open arms, free, full, and entire, and by so much the more
whet my appetite to enjoy it, by how much it is at present less ordinary
and more rare; so far am I from troubling its repose and sweetness with
the bitterness of a new and constrained manner of living. Beasts
sufficiently show us how much the agitation of our minds brings
infirmities and diseases upon us. That which is told us of those of
Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to the serenity
and tranquillity of the air they live in; but I rather attribute it to the
serenity and tranquillity of their souls, free from all passion, thought,
or employment, extended or unpleasing, a people that pass over their lives
in a wonderful simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law,
without king, or any manner of religion. And whence comes that, which we
find by experience, that the heaviest and dullest men are most able; and
the most to be desired in amorous performances; and that the love of a
muleteer often renders itself more acceptable than that of a gentleman, if
it be not that the agitation of the soul in the latter disturbs his
physical ability, dissolves and tires it, as it also ordinarily troubles
and tires itself. What puts the soul beside itself, and more usually
throws it into madness, but her own promptness, vigour, and agility, and,
finally, her own proper force? Of what is the most subtle folly made, but
of the most subtle wisdom? As great friendships spring from great
enmities, and vigorous health from mortal diseases, so from the rare and
vivid agitations of our souls proceed the most wonderful and most
distracted frenzies; 'tis but half a turn of the toe from the one to the
other. In the actions of madmen we see how infinitely madness resembles
the most vigorous operations of the soul. Who does not know how
indiscernible the difference is betwixt folly and the sprightly elevations
of a free soul, and the effects of a supreme and extraordinary virtue?
Plato says that melancholy persons are the most capable of discipline, and
the most excellent; and accordingly in none is there so great a propension
to madness. Great wits are ruined by their own proper force and
pliability; into what a condition, through his own agitation and
promptness of fancy, is one of the most judicious, ingenious, and nearest
formed, of any other Italian poet, to the air of the ancient and true
poesy, lately fallen! Has he not vast obligation to this vivacity that has
destroyed him? to this light that has blinded him? to this exact and
subtle apprehension of reason that has put him beside his own? to this
curious and laborious search after sciences, that has reduced him to
imbecility? and to this rare aptitude to the exercises of the soul, that
has rendered him without exercise and without soul? I was more angry, if
possible, than compassionate, to see him at Ferrara in so pitiful a
condition surviving himself, forgetting both himself and his works, which,
without his knowledge, though before his face, have been published
unformed and incorrect.
Would you have a man healthy, would you have him regular, and in a steady
and secure posture? Muffle him up in the shades of stupidity and sloth. We
must be made beasts to be made wise, and hoodwinked before we are fit to
be led. And if one shall tell me that the advantage of having a cold and
dull sense of pain and other evils, brings this disadvantage along with
it, to render us consequently less sensible also in the fruition of good
and pleasure, this is true; but the misery of our condition is such that
we have not so much to enjoy as to avoid, and that the extremest pleasure
does not affect us to the degree that a light grief does: Segnius
homines bona quam mala sentiunt. We are not so sensible of the most
perfect health as we are of the least sickness.
Pungit
In cute vix sum ma violatum plagula corpus;
Quando valere nihil quemquam movet. Hoc juvat unum,
Quod me non torquet latus, aut pes;
Ctera quisquam Vix queat aut sanum sese, aut sentire valentem.
"The body with a little sting is griev'd,
When the most perfect health is not perceiv'd,
This only pleases me, that spleen nor gout
Neither offend my side nor wring my foot;
Excepting these, scarce any one can tell,
Or e'er observes, when he's in health and well."
Our well-being is nothing but the not being ill. Which is the reason why
that sect of philosophers, which sets the greatest value upon pleasure,
has yet fixed it chiefly in unconsciousness of pain. To be freed from ill
is the greatest good that man can hope for or desire; as Ennius says,—
Nimium boni est, cui nihil est mali;
for that every tickling and sting which are in certain pleasures, and that
seem to raise us above simple health and passiveness, that active, moving,
and, I know not how, itching, and biting pleasure; even that very pleasure
itself aims at nothing but insensibility as its mark. The appetite that
carries us headlong to women's embraces has no other end but only to cure
the torment of our ardent and furious desires, and only requires to be
glutted and laid at rest, and delivered from the fever. And so of the
rest. I say, then, that if simplicity conducts us to a state free from
evil, she leads us to a very happy one according to our condition. And yet
we are not to imagine it so stupid an insensibility as to be totally
without sense; for Crantor had very good reason to controvert the
insensibility of Epicurus, if founded so deep that the very first attack
and birth of evils were not to be perceived: "I do not approve such an
insensibility as is neither possible nor to be desired. I am very well
content not to be sick; but if I am, I would know that I am so; and if a
caustic be applied, or incisions made in any part, I would feel them." In
truth, whoever would take away the knowledge and sense of evil, would at
the same time eradicate the sense of pleasure, and finally annihilate man
himself: Istud nihil dolere, non sine magn mercede contingit,
immanitatis in animo, stuporis in corpore. "An insensibility that is
not to be purchased but at the price of inhumanity in the soul, and of
stupidity of the body." Evil appertains to man of course. Neither is pain
always to be avoided, nor pleasure always pursued.
'Tis a great advantage to the honour of ignorance that knowledge itself
throws us into its arms, when she finds herself puzzled to fortify us
against the weight of evil; she is constrained to come to this
composition, to give us the reins, and permit us to fly into the lap of
the other, and to shelter ourselves under her protection from the strokes
and injuries of fortune. For what else is her meaning when she instructs
us to divert our thoughts from the ills that press upon us, and entertain
them with the meditation of pleasures past and gone; to comfort ourselves
in present afflictions with the remembrance of fled delights, and to call
to our succour a vanished satisfaction, to oppose it to the discomfort
that lies heavy upon us? Levationes gritudinum in avocatione a
cogitand molesti, et revocation ad contemplandas voluptates, ponit;
"He directs us to alleviate our grief and pains by rejecting unpleasant
thoughts, and recalling agreeable ideas;" if it be not that where her
power fails she would supply it with policy, and make use of sleight of
hand where force of limbs will not serve her turn? For not only to a
philosopher, but to any man in his right wits, when he has upon him the
thirst of a burning fever, what satisfaction can it be to him to remember
the pleasure he took in drinking Greek wine a month ago? It would rather
only make matters worse to him:—
Che ricordarsi il ben doppia la noia.
"The thinking of pleasure doubles trouble."
Of the same stamp is this other counsel that philosophy gives, only to
remember the happiness that is past, and to forget the misadventures we
have undergone; as if we had the science of oblivion in our own power, and
counsel, wherein we are yet no more to seek.
Suavis laborum est prteritorum rmoria.
"Sweet is the memory of by-gone pain."
How does philosophy, that should arm me to contend with fortune, and steel
my courage to trample all human adversities under foot, arrive to this
degree of cowardice to make me hide my head at this rate, and save myself
by these pitiful and ridiculous shifts? For the memory represents to us
not what we choose, but what she pleases; nay, there is nothing that so
much imprints any thing in our memory as a desire to forget it. And 'tis a
good way to retain and keep any thing safe in the soul to solicit her to
lose it. And this is false: Est situm in nobis, ut et adversa quasi
perpetua oblivione obruamus, et secunda jucunde et suaviter meminerimus;
"it is in our power to bury, as it were, in a perpetual oblivion, all
adverse accidents, and to retain a pleasant and delightful memory of our
successes;" and this is true: Memini etiam quo nolo; oblivisci non
possum quo volo. "I do also remember what I would not; but I cannot
forget what I would." And whose counsel is this? His, qui se unies
sapiervtem profiteri sit ausus; "who alone durst profess himself a
wise man."
Qui genus humanum ingenio superavit, et omnes
Prstinxit stellas, exortus uti thereus Sol.
"Who from mankind the prize of knowledge won,
And put the stars out like the rising sun."
To empty and disfurnish the memory, is not this the true way to ignorance?
Iners malorum remedium ignorantia est.
"Ignorance is but a dull remedy for evils."
We find several other like precepts, whereby we are permitted to borrow
frivolous appearances from the vulgar, where we find the strongest reason
will not answer the purpose, provided they administer satisfaction and
comfort Where they cannot cure the wound, they are content to palliate and
benumb it I believe they will not deny this, that if they could add order
and constancy in a state of life that could maintain itself in ease and
pleasure by some debility of judgment, they would accept it:—
Potare, et spargere flores
Incipiam, patiarque vel inconsultus haberi.
"Give me to drink, and, crown'd with flowers, despise
The grave disgrace of being thought unwise."
There would be a great many philosophers of Lycas's mind this man, being
otherwise of very regular manners, living quietly and contentedly in his
family, and not failing in any office of his duty, either towards his own
or strangers, and very carefully preserving himself from hurtful things,
became, nevertheless, by some distemper in his brain, possessed with a
conceit that he was perpetually in the theatre, a spectator of the finest
sights and the best comedies in the world; and being cured by the
physicians of his frenzy, was hardly prevented from endeavouring by suit
to compel them to restore him again to his pleasing imagination:—
Pol I me occidistis, amici,
Non servastis, ait; cui sic extorta voluptas,
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error;
"By heaven! you've killed me, friends, outright,
And not preserved me; since my dear delight
And pleasing error, by my better sense
Unhappily return'd, is banished hence;"
with a madness like that of Thrasylaus the son of Pythodorus, who made
himself believe that all the ships that weighed anchor from the port of
Pirus, and that came into the haven, only made their voyages for his
profit; congratulating them upon their successful navigation, and
receiving them with the greatest joy; and when his brother Crito caused
him to be restored to his better understanding, he infinitely regretted
that sort of condition wherein he had lived with so much delight and free
from all anxiety of mind. 'Tis according to the old Greek verse, that
"there is a great deal of convenience in not being over-wise."
And Ecclesiastes, "In much wisdom there is much sorrow;" and "Who gets
wisdom gets labour and trouble."
Even that to which philosophy consents in general, that last remedy which
she applies to all sorts of necessities, to put an end to the life we are
not able to endure. Placet?—Pare. Non placet?—Qucumque
vis, exi. Pungit dolor?—Vel fodiat sane. Si nudus es, da jugulum;
sin tectus armis Vulcaniis, id est fortitudine, rsist; "Does it
please?—Obey it. Not please?—Go where thou wilt. Does grief
prick thee,—nay, stab thee?—If thou art naked, present thy
throat; if covered with the arms of Vulcan, that is, fortitude, resist
it." And this word, so used in the Greek festivals, aut bibat, aut
abeat, "either drink or go," which sounds better upon the tongue of a
Gascon, who naturally changes the h into v, than on that of Cicero:—
Vivere si recte nescis, decede peritis.
Lusisti satis, edisti satis, atque bibisti;
Tempus abire tibi est, ne potum largius quo
Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius tas.
"If to live well and right thou dost not know,
Give way, and leave thy place to those that do.
Thou'st eaten, drunk, and play'd to thy content,
'Tis time to make thy parting compliment,
Lest youth, more decent in their follies, scoff
The nauseous scene, and hiss thee reeling off;"
What is it other than a confession of his impotency, and a sending back
not only to ignorance, to be there in safety, but even to stupidity,
insensibility, and nonentity?
Democritum postquam matura vetustas
Admonuit memorem motus languescere mentis;
Sponte sua letho caput obvius obtulit ipse.
"Soon as, through age, Democritus did find
A manifest decadence in his mind,
He thought he now surviv'd to his own wrong,
And went to meet his death, that stay'd too long."
'Tis what Antisthenes said, "That a man should either make provision of
sense to understand, or of a halter to hang himself;" and what Chrysippus
alleged upon this saying of the poet Tyrtus:—
"Or to arrive at virtue or at death;"
and Crates said, "That love would be cured by hunger, if not by time; and
whoever disliked these two remedies, by a rope." That Sextius, of whom
both Seneca and Plutarch speak with so high an encomium, having applied
himself, all other things set aside, to the study of philosophy, resolved
to throw himself into the sea, seeing the progress of his studies too
tedious and slow. He ran to find death, since he could not overtake
knowledge. These are the words of the law upon the subject: "If
peradventure some great inconvenience happen, for which there is no
remedy, the haven is near, and a man may save himself by swimming out of
his body as out of a leaky skiff; for 'tis the fear of dying, and not the
love of life, that ties the fool to his body."
As life renders itself by simplicity more pleasant, so more innocent and
better, also it renders it as I was saying before: "The simple and
ignorant," says St. Paul, "raise themselves up to heaven and take
possession of it; and we, with all our knowledge, plunge ourselves into
the infernal abyss." I am neither swayed by Valentinian, a professed enemy
to all learning and letters, nor by Licinius, both Roman emperors, who
called them the poison and pest of all political government; nor by
Mahomet, who, as 'tis said, interdicted all manner of learning to his
followers; but the example of the great Lycurgus, and his authority, with
the reverence of the divine Lacedemonian policy, so great, so admirable,
and so long flourishing in virtue and happiness, without any institution
or practice of letters, ought certainly to be of very great weight. Such
as return from the new world discovered by the Spaniards in our fathers'
days, testify to us how much more honestly and regularly those nations
live, without magistrate and without law, than ours do, where there are
more officers and lawyers than there are of other sorts of men and
business:—
Di cittatorie piene, e di libelli,
D'esamine, e di carte di procure,
Hanno le mani e il seno, e gran fastelli
Di chioge, di consigli, et di letture:
Per cui le faculta de* poverelli
Non sono mai nelle citt sicure;
Hanno dietro e dinanzi, e d'ambi i lati,
Notai, procuratori, ed avvocati.
"Their bags were full of writs, and of citations,
Of process, and of actions and arrests,
Of bills, of answers, and of replications,
In courts of delegates, and of requests,
To grieve the simple sort with great vexations;
They had resorting to them as their guests,
Attending on their circuit, and their journeys,
Scriv'ners, and clerks, and lawyers, and attorneys."
It was what a Roman senator of the latter ages said, that their
predecessors' breath stunk of garlic, but their stomachs were perfumed
with a good conscience; and that, on the contrary, those of his time were
all sweet odour without, but stunk within of all sorts of vices; that is
to say, as I interpret it, that they abounded with learning and eloquence,
but were very defective in moral honesty. Incivility, ignorance,
simplicity, roughness, are the natural companions of innocence; curiosity,
subtlety, knowledge, bring malice in their train; humility, fear,
obedience, and affability, which are the principal things that support and
maintain human society, require an empty and docile soul, and little
presuming upon itself.
Christians have a particular knowledge, how natural and original an evil
curiosity is in man; the thirst of knowledge, and the desire to become
more wise, was the first ruin of man, and the way by which he precipitated
himself into eternal damnation. Pride was his ruin and corruption. 'Tis
pride that diverts him from the common path, and makes him embrace
novelties, and rather choose to be head of a troop, lost and wandering in
the path of error; to be a master and a teacher of lies, than to be a
disciple in the school of truth, suffering himself to be led and guided by
the hand of another, in the right and beaten road. 'Tis, peradventure, the
meaning of this old Greek saying, that superstition follows pride, and
obeys it as if it were a father: [—Greek—] Ah, presumption,
how much dost thou hinder us?
After that Socrates was told that the god of wisdom had assigned to him
the title of sage, he was astonished at it, and, searching and examining
himself throughout, could find no foundation for this divine judgment. He
knew others as just, temperate, valiant, and learned, as himself; and more
eloquent, more handsome, and more profitable to their country than he. At
last he concluded that he was not distinguished from others, nor wise, but
only because he did not think himself so; and that his God considered the
opinion of knowledge and wisdom as a singular absurdity in man; and that
his best doctrine was the doctrine of ignorance, and simplicity his best
wisdom. The sacred word declares those miserable among us who have an
opinion of themselves: "Dust and ashes," says it to such, "what hast thou
wherein to glorify thyself?" And, in another place, "God has made man like
unto a shadow," of whom who can judge, when by removing the light it shall
be vanished! Man is a thing of nothing.
Our force is so far from being able to comprehend the divine height, that,
of the works of our Creator, those best bear his mark, and are with better
title his, which we the least understand. To meet with an incredible thing
is an occasion to Christians to believe; and it is so much the more
according to reason, by how much it is against human reason. If it were
according to reason, it would be no more a miracle; and if it were
according to example, it would be no longer a singular thing. Melius
scitur Deus nesdendo: "God is better known by not knowing him," says
St. Austin: and Tacitus, Sanctius est ac reverentius de actis Deorum
credere, quam scire; "it is more holy and reverent to believe the
works of God than to know them;" and Plato thinks there is something of
impiety in inquiring too curiously into God, the world, and the first
causes of things: Atque illum quidem parentem hujus universitaiis
invenire, difficile; et, quum jam inveneris, indicare in vulgtis, nefas:
"to find out the parent of the world is very difficult; and when found
out, to reveal him to the vulgar is sin," says Cicero. We talk indeed of
power, truth, justice; which are words that signify some great thing; but
that thing we neither see nor conceive at all. We say that God fears, that
God is angry, that God loves,
Immortalia mortali sermone notantes:
"Giving to things immortal mortal names."
These are all agitations and emotions that cannot be in God, according to
our form, nor can we imagine them, according to his. It only belongs to
God to know himself, and to interpret his own works; and he does it in our
language, going out of himself, to stoop to us who grovel upon the earth.
How can prudence, which is the choice between good and evil, be properly
attributed to him whom no evil can touch? How can reason and intelligence,
which we make use of, to arrive by obscure at apparent things; seeing that
nothing is obscure to him? How justice, which distributes to every one
what appertains to him, a thing begot by the society and community of men,
how is that in God? How temperance, which is the moderation of corporal
pleasures, that have no place in the Divinity? Fortitude to support pain,
labour, and dangers, as little appertains to him as the rest; these three
things have no access to him. For which reason Aristotle holds him equally
exempt from virtue and vice: Neque gratia, neque ira teneri potest;
quod quo talia essent, imbecilla essent omnia? "He can neither be
affected with favour nor indignation, because both these are the effects
of frailty."
The participation we have in the knowledge of truth, such as it is, is not
acquired by our own force: God has sufficiently given us to understand
that, by the witnesses he has chosen out of the common people, simple and
ignorant men, that he has been pleased to employ to instruct us in his
admirable secrets. Our faith is not of our own acquiring; 'tis purely the
gift of another's bounty: 'tis not by meditation, or by virtue of our own
understanding, that we have acquired our religion, but by foreign
authority and command wherein the imbecility of our own judgment does more
assist us than any force of it; and our blindness more than our clearness
of sight: 'tis more by__ the mediation of our ignorance than of our
knowledge that we know any thing of the divine wisdom. 'Tis no wonder if
our natural and earthly parts cannot conceive that supernatural and
heavenly knowledge: let us bring nothing of our own, but obedience and
subjection; for, as it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the
wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not
God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom
of God, the world knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of
preaching to save them that believe."
Finally, should I examine whether it be in the power of man to find out
that which he seeks and if that quest, wherein he has busied himself so
many ages, has enriched him with any new force, or any solid truth; I
believe he will confess, if he speaks from his conscience, that all he has
got by so long inquiry is only to have learned to know his own weakness.
We have only by a long study confirmed and verified the natural ignorance
we were in before. The same has fallen out to men truly wise, which
befalls the ears of corn; they shoot and raise their heads high and pert,
whilst empty; but when full and swelled with grain in maturity, begin to
flag and droop. So men, having tried and sounded all things, and having
found in that mass of knowledge, and provision of so many various things,
nothing solid and firm, and nothing but vanity, have quitted their
presumption, and acknowledged their natural condition. 'Tis what Velleius
reproaches Cotta withal and Cicero, "that they had learned of Philo, that
they had learned nothing." Pherecydes, one of the seven sages, writing to
Thales upon his death-bed; "I have," said he, "given order to my people,
after my interment, to carry my writings to thee. If they please thee and
the other sages, publish; if not, suppress them. They contain no certainty
with which I myself am satisfied. Neither do I pretend to know the truth,
or to attain to it. I rather open than discover things." The wisest man
that ever was, being asked what he knew, made answer, "He knew this, that
he knew nothing." By which he verified what has been said, that the
greatest part of what we know is the least of what we do not; that is to
say, that even what we think we know is but a piece, and a very little
one, of our ignorance. We know things in dreams, says Plato, and are
ignorant of them in truth. Ormes pene veteres nihil cognosci, nihil
percipi, nihil sciri posse dixerunt; angustos sensus, imbecilles animos,
brevia curricula vito. "Almost all the ancients have declared that
there is nothing to be known, nothing to be perceived or understood; the
senses are too limited, men's minds too weak, and the course of life too
short." And of Cicero himself, who stood indebted to his learning for all
he was worth, Valerius says, "That he began to disrelish letters in his
old age; and when at his studies, it was with great independency upon any
one party; following what he thought probable, now in one sect, and then
in another, evermore wavering under the doubts of the academy." Dicendum
est, sed ita ut nihil affirment, quceram omnia, dubitans plerumque, et
mihi diffidens. "Something I must say, but so as to affirm nothing; I
inquire into all things, but for the most part in doubt and distrust of
myself."
I should have too fair a game should I consider man in his common way of
living and in gross; yet I might do it by his own rule, who judges truth
not by weight, but by the number of votes. Let us set the people aside,
Qui vigilans stertit,....
Mortua cui vita est prope jam vivo atque videnti;
"Half of his life by lazy sleep's possess'd,
And when awake his soul but nods at best;"
who neither feel nor judge, and let most of their natural faculties lie
idle; I will take man in his highest ground. Let us consider him in that
little number of men, excellent and culled out from the rest, who, having
been endowed with a remarkable and particular natural force, have moreover
hardened and whetted it by care, study, and art, and raised it to the
highest pitch of wisdom to which it can possibly arrive. They have
adjusted their souls to all ways and all biases; have propped and
supported them with all foreign helps proper for them, and enriched and
adorned them with all they could borrow for their advantage, both within
and without the world; 'tis in these is placed the utmost and most supreme
height to which human nature can attain. They have regulated the world
with policies and laws. They have instructed it with arts and sciences,
and by the example of their admirable manners. I shall make account of
none but such men as these, their testimony and experience. Let us examine
how far they have proceeded, and where they stopped. The errors and
defects that we shall find amongst these men the world may boldly avow as
their own.
Whoever goes in search of any thing must come to this, either to say that
he has found it, or that it is not to be found, or that he is yet upon the
search. All philosophy is divided into these three kinds; her design is to
seek out truth, knowledge, and certainty. The Peripatetics, Epicureans,
Stoics, and others, have thought they have found it. These established the
sciences we have, and have treated of them as of certain knowledge.
Clitomachus, Carneades, and the Academics, have despaired in their search,
and concluded that truth could not be conceived by our understandings. The
result of these is weakness and human ignorance. This sect has had the
most and the most noble followers. Pyrrho, and other skeptics or
epechists, whose dogmas are held by many of the ancients to be taken from
Homer, the seven sages, and from Archilochus and Euripides, and to whose
number these are added, Zeno, Democritus, and Xenophanes, say that they
are yet upon the inquiry after truth. These conclude that the others, who
think they have found it out, are infinitely deceived; and that it is too
daring a vanity in the second sort to determine that human reason is not
able to attain unto it; for this establishing a standard of our power, to
know and judge the difficulty of things, is a great and extreme knowledge,
of which they doubt whether man is capable:—
Nil sciri quisquis putat, id quoque nescit,
An sciri possit; quam se nil scire fatetur.
"He that says nothing can be known, o'erthrows
His own opinion, for he nothing knows,
So knows not that."
The ignorance that knows itself, judges and condemns itself, is not an
absolute ignorance; to be such, it must be ignorant of itself; so that the
profession of the Pyrrhonians is to waver, doubt, and inquire, not to make
themselves sure of, or responsible to themselves for any thing. Of the
three actions of the soul, imaginative, appetitive, and consentive, they
receive the two first; the last they kept ambiguous, without inclination
or approbation, either of one thing or another, so light as it is. Zeno
represented the motion of his imagination upon these divisions of the
faculties of the soul thus: "An open and expanded hand signified
appearance; a hand half shut, and the fingers a little bending, consent; a
clenched fist, comprehension; when with the left he yet thrust the right
fist closer, knowledge." Now this situation of their judgment upright and
inflexible, receiving all objects without application or consent, leads
them to their ataraxy, which is a peaceable condition of life, temperate,
and exempt from the agitations we receive by the impression of opinion and
knowledge that we think we have of things; whence spring fear, avarice,
envy, immoderate desires, ambition, pride, superstition, love of novelty,
rebellion, disobedience, obstinacy, and the greatest part of bodily ills;
nay, and by that they are exempt from the jealousy of their discipline;
for they debate after a very gentle manner; they fear no requital in their
disputes; when they affirm that heavy things descend they would be sorry
to be believed, and love tobe contradicted, to engender doubt and suspense
of judgment, which is their end. They only put forward their propositions
to contend with those they think we have in our belief. If you take their
arguments, they will as readily maintain the contrary; 'tis all one to
them, they have no choice. If you maintain that snow is black, they will
argue on the contrary that it is white; if you say it is neither the one
nor the other, they will maintain that it is both. If you hold, of certain
judgment, that you know nothing, they will maintain that you do. Yea, and
if by an affirmative axiom you assure them that you doubt, they will argue
against you that you doubt not; or that you cannot judge and determine
that you doubt. And by this extremity of doubt, which jostles itself, they
separate and divide themselves from many opinions, even of those they have
several ways maintained, both concerning doubt and ignorance. "Why shall
not they be allowed to doubt," say they, "as well as the dogmatists, one
of whom says green, another yellow? Can any thing be proposed to us to
grant, or deny, which it shall not be permitted to consider as ambiguous?"
And where others are carried away, either by the custom of their country,
or by the instruction of parents, or by accident, as by a tempest, without
judgment and without choice, nay, and for the most part before the age of
discretion, to such and such an opinion, to the sect whether Stoic or
Epicurean, with which they are prepossessed, enslaved, and fast bound, as
to a thing they cannot forsake: Ad quamcumque disciplinant, velut
tempestate, delati, ad earn, tanquam ad saxum, adhorescunt; "every one
cleaves to the doctrine he has happened upon, as to a rock against which
he has been thrown by tempest;" why shall not these likewise be permitted
to maintain their liberty, and consider things without obligation or
slavery? hoc liberiores et solutiores, quod integra illis est judicandi
potestas: "in this more unconstrained and free, because they have the
greater power of judging." Is it not of some advantage to be disengaged
from the necessity that curbs others? Is it not better to remain in
suspense than to entangle one's self in the innumerable errors that human
fancy has produced? Is it not much better to suspend one's persuasion than
to intermeddle with these wrangling and seditious divisions: "What shall I
choose?" "What you please, provided you will choose." A very foolish
answer; but such a one, nevertheless, as all dogmatism seems to point at,
and by which we are not permitted to be ignorant of what we are ignorant
of.
Take the most eminent side, that of the greatest reputation; it will never
be so sure that you shall not be forced to attack and contend with a
hundred and a hundred adversaries to defend it. Is it not better to keep
out of this hurly-burly? You are permitted to embrace Aristotle's opinions
of the immortality of the soul with as much zeal as your honour and life,
and to give the lie to Plato thereupon, and shall they be interdicted to
doubt him? If it be lawful for Pantius to maintain his opinion about
augury, dreams, oracles, vaticinations, of which the Stoics made no doubt
at all; why may not a wise man dare to do the same in all things that he
dared to do in those he had learned of his masters, established by the
common consent of the school, whereof he is a professor and a member? If
it be a child that judges, he knows not what it is; if a wise man, he is
prepossessed. They have reserved for themselves a marvellous advantage in
battle, having eased themselves of the care of defence. If you strike
them, they care not, provided they strike too, and they turn every thing
to their own use. If they overcome, your argument is lame; if you, theirs;
if they fall short, they verify ignorance; if you fall short, you do it;
if they prove that nothing is known, 'tis well; if they cannot prove it,
'tis also well: Ut quurn in eadem re paria contrariis in partibus
momenta inveniuntur, facilius ab utraque parte assertio sustineatur:
"That when like sentiments happen pro and con in the same
thing, the assent may on both sides be more easily suspended." And they
make account to find out, with much greater facility, why a thing is
false, than why 'tis true; that which is not, than that which is; and what
they do not believe, than what they do. Their way of speaking is: "I
assert nothing; it is no more so than so, or than neither one nor t'other;
I understand it not. Appearances are everywhere equal; the law of
speaking, pro or con, is the same. Nothing seems true, that
may not seem false." Their sacramental word is that is to say, "I hold, I
stir not." This is the burden of their song, and others of like stuff. The
effect of which is a pure, entire, perfect, and absolute suspension of
judgment. They make use of their reason to inquire and debate, but not to
fix and determine. Whoever shall imagine a perpetual confession of
ignorance, a judgment without bias, propension, or inclination, upon any
occasion whatever, conceives a true idea of Pyrrhonism. I express this
fancy as well as I can, by reason that many find it hard to conceive, and
the authors themselves represent it a little variously and obscurely.
As to what concerns the actions of life, they are in this of the common
fashion. They yield and give up themselves to their natural inclinations,
to the power and impulse of passions, to the constitution of laws and
customs, and to the tradition of arts; Non enim nos Deus ista scire,
sed tantummodo uti, voluit. "For God would not have us know, but only
use those things." They suffer their ordinary actions to be guided by
those things, without any dispute or judgment. For which reason I cannot
consent to what is said of Pyrrho, by those who represent him heavy and
immovable, leading a kind of savage and unsociable life, standing the
jostle of carts, going upon the edge of precipices, and refusing to
accommodate himself to the laws. This is to enhance upon his discipline;
he would never make himself a stock or a stone, he would show himself a
living man, discoursing, reasoning, enjoying all reasonable conveniences
and pleasures, employing and making use of all his corporal and spiritual
faculties in rule and reason. The fantastic, imaginary, and false
privileges that man had usurped of lording it, ordaining, and
establishing, he has utterly quitted and renounced. Yet there is no sect
but is constrained to permit her sage to follow several things not
comprehended, perceived, or consented to, if he means to live. And if he
goes to sea, he follows that design, not knowing whether his voyage shall
be successful or no; and only insists upon the tightness of the vessel,
the experience of the pilot, and the convenience of the season, and such
probable circumstances; after which he is bound to go, and suffer himself
to be governed by appearances, provided there be no express and manifest
contrariety in them. He has a body, he has a soul; the senses push them,
the mind spurs them on. And although he does not find in himself this
proper and singular sign of judging, and that he perceives that he ought
not to engage his consent, considering that there may be some false, equal
to these true appearances, yet does he not, for all that, fail of carrying
on the offices of his life with great liberty and convenience. How many
arts are there that profess to consist more in conjecture than knowledge;
that decide not on true and false, and only follow that which seems so!
There are, say they, true and false, and we have in us wherewith to seek
it; but not to make it stay when we touch it. We are much more prudent, in
letting ourselves be regulated by the order of the world, without inquiry.
A soul clear from prejudice has a marvellous advance towards tranquillity
and repose. Men that judge and control their judges, do never duly submit
to them.
How much more docile and easy to be governed, both by the laws of religion
and civil polity, are simple and incurious minds, than those over-vigilant
wits, that will still be prating of divine and human causes! There is
nothing in human invention that carries so great a show of likelihood and
utility as this; this presents man, naked and empty, confessing his
natural weakness, fit to receive some foreign force from above,
unfurnished of human, and therefore more apt to receive into him the
divine knowledge, making nought of his own judgment, to give more room to
faith; neither disbelieving nor establishing any dogma against common
observances; humble, obedient, disciplinable, and studious; a sworn enemy
of heresy; and consequently freeing himself from vain and irreligious
opinions, introduced by false sects. 'Tis a blank paper prepared to
receive such forms from the finger of God as he shall please to write upon
it. The more we resign and commit ourselves to God, and the more we
renounce ourselves, of the greater value we are. "Take in good part," says
Ecclesiastes, "the things that present themselves to thee, as they seem
and taste from hand to mouth; the rest is out of thy knowledge." Dominus
novit cogitationes hominum, quoniam van sunt: "The Lord knoweth the
hearts of men, that they are but vanity."
Thus we see that of the three general sects of philosophy, two make open
profession of doubt and ignorance; and in that of the Dogmatists, which is
the third, it is easy to discover that the greatest part of them only
assume this face of confidence and assurance that
they may produce the better effect; they have not so much thought to
establish any certainty for us, as to show us how far they have proceeded
in their search of truth: Quam docti jingunt magis quam nrunt:
"Which the learned rather feign than know." Timus, being to instruct
Socrates in what he knew of the gods, the world, and men, proposes to
speak to him as a man to a man; and that it is sufficient, if his reasons
are probable as those of another; for that exact reasons were neither in
his nor any other mortal hand; which one of his followers has thus
imitated: Ut potero, explicabo: nec tamen, ut Pythius Apollo, certa ut
sint et fixa qu dixero; sed, ut homunculus, probabilia conjectur
sequens: "I will, as well as I am able, explain; affirming, yet not as
the Pythian oracle, that what I say is fixed and certain, but like a mere
man, that follows probabilities by conjecture." And this, upon the natural
and common subject of the contempt of death; he has elsewhere translated
from the very words of Plato: Si forte, de Deorum natur ortuque mundi
disserentes, minus id quod habemiis in animo consequi-mur, haud erit
mirum; oquum est enim meminisse, et me, qui disseram, hominem esse, et
vos, qui judicetis, ut, si probabilia dicentur, nihil ultra requiratis?
"If perchance, when we discourse of the nature of God, and the world's
original, we cannot do it as we desire, it will be no great wonder. For it
is just you should remember that both I who speak and you who are to
judge, are men; so that if probable things are delivered, you shall
require and expect no more." Aristotle ordinarily heaps up a great number
of other men's opinions and beliefs, to compare them with his own, and to
let us see how much he has gone beyond them, and how much nearer he
approaches to the likelihood of truth; for truth is not to be judged by
the authority and testimony of others; which made Epicurus religiously
avoid quoting them in his writings. This is the prince of all dogmatists,
and yet we are told by him that the more we know the more we have room for
doubt. In earnest, we sometimes see him shroud and muffle up himself in so
thick and so inextricable an obscurity that we know not what to make of
his advice; it is, in effect, a Pyrrhonism under a resolutive form. Hear
Cicero's protestation, who expounds to us another's fancy by his own: Qui
requirunt quid de quque re ipsi sentiamus, curiosius id faciunt quam
necesse est,... Hoc in philosophi ratio, contra omnia disserendi,
nuttamque rem aperte judicandi, profecta a Socrate, repetita ab Arcesila,
conjirmata a Gameade, usqu ad nostram viget cetatem..........Hi sumus,
qui omnibus veris falsa quodam adjuncta esse dicamus, tanta similitudine,
ut in iis nulla insit certe judicandi et assentiendi nota. "They who
desire to know what we think of every thing are therein more inquisitive
than is necessary. This practice in philosophy of disputing against every
thing, and of absolutely concluding nothing, begun by Socrates, repeated
by Arcesilaus, and confirmed by Cameades, has continued in use even to our
own times. We are they who declare that there is so great a mixture of
things false amongst all that are true, and they so resemble one another,
that there can be in them no certain mark to direct us either to judge or
assent." Why hath not Aristotle only, but most of the philosophers,
affected difficulty, if not to set a greater value upon the vanity of the
subject, and amuse the curiosity of our minds by giving them this hollow
and fleshless bone to pick? Clitomachus affirmed "That he could never
discover by Carneades's writings what opinion he was of." This was it that
made Epicurus affect to be abstruse, and that procured Heraclitus the
epithet of [—Greek—] Difficulty is a coin the learned make use
of, like jugglers, to conceal the vanity of their art, and which human
sottishness easily takes for current pay.
Claras, ob obscuram linguam, magis inter manes...
Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque
Inversis qu sub verbis latitantia cemunt.
"Bombast and riddle best do puppies please,
For fools admire and love such things as these;
And a dull quibble, wrapt in dubious phrase,
Up to the height doth their wise wonder raise."
Cicero reprehends some of his friends for giving more of their time to the
study of astrology, logic, and geometry, than they were really worth;
saying that they were by these diverted from the duties of life, and more
profitable and proper studies. The Cyrenaick philosophers, in like manner,
despised physics and logic. Zeno, in the very beginning of the books of
the commonwealth, declared all the liberal arts of no use. Chrysippus said
"That what Plato and Aristotle had writ, concerning logic, they had only
done in sport, and by way of exercise;" and could not believe that they
spoke in earnest of so vain a thing. Plutarch says the same of
metaphysics. And Epicurus would have said as much of rhetoric, grammar,
poetry, mathematics, and, natural philosophy excepted, of all the
sciences; and Socrates of them all, excepting that which treats of manners
and of life. Whatever any one required to be instructed in, by him, he
would ever, in the first place, demand an account of the conditions of his
life present and past, which he examined and judged, esteeming all other
learning subsequent to that and supernumerary: Parum mihi placeant e
littero quo ad virtutem doctoribus nihil pro-fuerunt. "That learning
is in small repute with me which nothing profited the teachers themselves
to virtue." Most of the arts have been in like manner decried by the same
knowledge; but they did not consider that it was from the purpose to
exercise their wits in those very matters wherein there was no solid
advantage.
As to the rest, some have looked upon Plato as a dogmatist, others as a
doubter, others in some things the one, and in other things the other.
Socrates, the conductor of his dialogues, is eternally upon questions and
stirring up disputes, never determining, never satisfying, and professes
to have no other science but that of opposing himself. Homer, their
author, has equally laid the foundations of all the sects of philosophy,
to show how indifferent it was which way we should choose. 'Tis said that
ten several sects sprung from Plato; yet, in my opinion, never did any
instruction halt and stumble, if his does not.
Socrates said that midwives, in taking upon them the trade of helping
others to bring forth, left the trade of bringing forth themselves; and
that by the title of a wise man or sage, which the gods had conferred upon
him, he was disabled, in his virile and mental love, of the faculty of
bringing forth, contenting himself to help and assist those that could; to
open their nature, anoint the passes, and facilitate their birth; to judge
of the infant, baptize, nourish, fortify, swath, and circumcise it,
exercising and employing his understanding in the perils and fortunes of
others.
It is so with the most part of this third sort of authors, as the ancients
have observed in the writings of Anaxagoras, Democritus, Parmenides,
Xenophanes, and others. They have a way of writing, doubtful in substance
and design, rather inquiring than teaching, though they mix their style
with some dogmatical periods. Is not the same thing seen in Seneca and
Plutarch? How many contradictions are there to be found if a man pry
narrowly into them! So many that the reconciling lawyers ought first to
reconcile them every one to themselves. Plato seems to have affected this
method of philosophizing in dialogues; to the end that he might with
greater decency, from several mouths, deliver the diversity and variety of
his own fancies. It is as well to treat variously of things as to treat of
them conformably, and better, that is to say, more copiously and with
greater profit. Let us take example from ourselves: judgments are the
utmost point of all dogmatical and determinative speaking; and yet those
arrets that our parliaments give the people, the most exemplary of
them, and those most proper to nourish in them the reverence due to that
dignity, principally through the sufficiency of the persons acting, derive
their beauty not so much from the conclusion, which with them is quotidian
and common to every judge, as from the dispute and heat of divers and
contrary arguments that the matter of law and equity will permit And the
largest field for reprehension that some philosophers have against others
is drawn from the diversities and contradictions wherein every one of them
finds himself perplexed, either on purpose to show the vacillation of the
human mind concerning every thing, or ignorantly compelled by the
volubility and incomprehensibility of all matter; which is the meaning of
the maxim—"In a slippery and sliding place let us suspend our
belief;" for, as Euripides says,—
"God's various works perplex the thoughts of men."
Like that which Empedocles, as if transported with a divine fury, and
compelled by truth, often strewed here and there in his writings: "No, no,
we feel nothing, we see nothing; all things are concealed from us; there
is not one thing of which we can positively say what it is;" according to
the divine saying: Cogitationes mortalium timid, et incert
adinventiones nostro et providentice. "For the thoughts of mortal men
are doubtful; and our devices are but uncertain." It is not to be thought
strange if men, despairing to overtake what they hunt after, have not
however lost the pleasure of the chase; study being of itself so pleasant
an employment; and so pleasant that amongst the pleasures, the Stoics
forbid that also which proceeds from the exercise of the mind, will have
it curbed, and find a kind of intemperance in too much knowledge.
Democritus having eaten figs at his table that tasted of honey, fell
presently to considering with himself whence they should derive this
unusual sweetness; and to be satisfied in it, was about to rise from the
table to see the place whence the figs had been gathered; which his maid
observing, and having understood the cause, smilingly told him that "he
need not trouble himself about that, for she had put them into a vessel in
which there had been honey." He was vexed at this discovery, and that she
had deprived him of the occasion of this inquiry, and robbed his curiosity
of matter to work upon: "Go thy way," said he, "thou hast done me an
injury; but, for all that, I will seek out the cause as if it were
natural;" and would willingly have found out some true reason for a false
and imaginary effect. This story of a famous and great philosopher very
clearly represents to us that studious passion that puts us upon the
pursuit of things, of the acquisition of which we despair. Plutarch gives
a like example of some one who would not be satisfied in that whereof he
was in doubt, that he might not lose the pleasure of inquiring into it;
like the other who would not that his physician should allay the thirst of
his fever, that he might not lose the pleasure of quenching it by
drinking. Satius est supervacua discere, quam nihil. "'Tis better
to learn more than necessary than nothing at all." As in all sorts of
feeding, the pleasure of eating is very often single and alone, and that
what we take, which is acceptable to the palate, is not always nourishing
or wholesome; so that which our minds extract from science does not cease
to be pleasant, though there be nothing in it either nutritive or
healthful. Thus they say: "The consideration of nature is a diet proper
for our minds, it raises and elevates us, makes us disdain low and
terrestrial things, by comparing them with those that are celestial and
high. The mere inquisition into great and occult things is very pleasant,
even to those who acquire no other benefit than the reverence and fear of
judging it." This is what they profess. The vain image of this sickly
curiosity is yet more manifest in this other example which they so often
urge. "Eudoxus wished and begged of the gods that he might once see the
sun near at hand, to comprehend the form, greatness, and beauty of it;
even though he should thereby be immediately burned." He would at the
price of his life purchase a knowledge, of which the use and possession
should at the same time be taken from him; and for this sudden and
vanishing knowledge lose all the other knowledge he had in present, or
might afterwards have acquired.
I cannot easily persuade myself that Epicurus, Plato, and Pytagoras, have
given us their atom, idea and numbers, for current pay. They were too wise
to establish their articles of faith upon things so disputable and
uncertain. But in that obscurity and ignorance in which the world then
was, every one of these great men endeavoured to present some kind of
image or reflection of light, and worked their brains for inventions that
might have a pleasant and subtle appearance; provided that, though false,
they might make good their ground against those that would oppose them. Unicuique
ista pro ingenio finguntur, non ex scienti vi. "These things every
one fancies according to his wit, and not by any power of knowledge."
One of the ancients, who was reproached, "That he professed philosophy, of
which he nevertheless in his own judgment made no great account," made
answer, "That this was truly to philosophize."
They wished to consider all, to balance every thing, and found that an
employment well suited to our natural curiosity. Some things they wrote
for the benefit of public society, as their religions; and for that
consideration it was but reasonable that they should not examine public
opinions to the quick, that they might not disturb the common obedience to
the laws and customs of their country.
Plato treats of this mystery with a raillery manifest enough; for where he
writes according to his own method he gives no certain rule. When he plays
the legislator he borrows a magisterial and positive style, and boldly
there foists in his most fantastic inventions, as fit to persuade the
vulgar, as impossible to be believed by himself; knowing very well how fit
we are to receive all sorts of impressions, especially the most immoderate
and preposterous; and yet, in his Laws, he takes singular care that
nothing be sung in public but poetry, of which the fiction and fabulous
relations tend to some advantageous end; it being so easy to imprint all
sorts of phantasms in human minds, that it were injustice not to feed them
rather with profitable untruths than with untruths that are unprofitable
and hurtful. He says very roundly, in his Republic, "That it is
often necessary, for the benefit of men, to deceive them." It is very easy
to distinguish that some of the sects have more followed truth, and the
others utility, by which the last have gained their reputation. 'Tis the
misery of our condition that often that which presents itself to our
imagination for the truest does not appear the most useful to life. The
boldest sects, as the Epicurean, Pyrrhonian, and the new Academic, are yet
constrained to submit to the civil law at the end of the account.
There are other subjects that they have tumbled and tossed about, some to
the right and others to the left, every one endeavouring, right or wrong,
to give them some kind of colour; for, having found nothing so abstruse
that they would not venture to speak of, they are very often forced to
forge weak and ridiculous conjectures; not that they themselves looked
upon them as any foundation, or establishing any certain truth, but merely
for exercise. Non tam id sensisse quod dicerent, quam exercere ingnia
materio difficultate videntur voluisse. "They seem not so much
themselves to have believed what they said, as to have had a mind to
exercise their wits in the difficulty of the matter." And if we did not
take it thus, how should we palliate so great inconstancy, variety, and
vanity of opinions, as we see have been produced by those excellent and
admirable men? As, for example, what can be more vain than to imagine, to
guess at God, by our analogies and conjectures? To direct and govern him
and the world by our capacities and our laws? And to serve ourselves, at
the expense of the divinity, with what small portion of capacity he has
been pleased to impart to our natural condition; and because we cannot
extend our sight to his glorious throne, to have brought him down to our
corruption and our miseries?
Of all human and ancient opinions concerning religion, that seems to me
the most likely and most excusable, that acknowledged God as an
incomprehensible power, the original and preserver of all things, all
goodness, all perfection, receiving and taking in good part the honour and
reverence that man paid him, under what method, name, or ceremonies soever—
Jupiter omnipotens, rerum, regumque, demque,
Progenitor, genitrixque.
"Jove, the almighty, author of all things,
The father, mother, of both gods and kings."
This zeal has universally been looked upon from heaven with a gracious
eye. All governments have reaped fruit from their devotion; impious men
and actions have everywhere had suitable events. Pagan histories
acknowledge dignity, order, justice, prodigies, and oracles, employed for
their profit and instruction in their fabulous religions; God, through his
mercy, vouchsafing, by these temporal benefits, to cherish the tender
principles of a kind of brutish knowledge that natural reason gave them of
him, through the deceiving images of their dreams. Not only deceiving and
false, but impious also and injurious, are those that man has forged from
his own invention: and of all the religions that St. Paul found in repute
at Athens, that which they had dedicated "to the unknown God" seemed to
him the most to be excused.
Pythagoras shadowed the truth a little more closely, judging that the
knowledge of this first cause and being of beings ought to be indefinite,
without limitation, without declaration; that it was nothing else than the
extreme effort of our imagination towards perfection, every one amplifying
the idea according to the talent of his capacity. But if Numa attempted to
conform the devotion of his people to this project; to attach them to a
religion purely mental, without any prefixed object and material mixture,
he undertook a thing of no use; the human mind could never support itself
floating in such an infinity of inform thoughts; there is required some
certain image to be presented according to its own model. The divine
majesty has thus, in some sort, suffered himself to be circumscribed in
corporal limits for our advantage. His supernatural and celestial
sacraments have signs of our earthly condition; his adoration is by
sensible offices and words; for 'tis man that believes and prays. I shall
omit the other arguments upon this subject; but a man would have much ado
to make me believe that the sight of our crucifixes, that the picture of
our Saviour's passion, that the ornaments and ceremonious motions of our
churches, that the voices accommodated to the devotion of our thoughts,
and that emotion of the senses, do not warm the souls of the people with a
religious passion of very advantageous effect.
Of those to whom they have given a body, as necessity required in that
universal blindness, I should, I fancy, most incline to those who adored
the sun:—
La Lumire commune,
L'oil du monde; et si Dieu au chef porte des yeux,
Les rayons du soleil sont ses yeulx radieux,
Qui donnent vie touts, nous maintiennent et gardent,
Et les faictsdes humains en ce monde regardent:
Ce beau, ce grand soleil qui nous faict les saisons,
Selon qu'il entre ou sort de ses douze maisons;
Qui remplit l'univers de ses vertus cognues;
Qui d'un traict de ses yeulx nous dissipe les nues;
L'esprit, l'ame du monde, ardent et flamboyant,
En la course d'un jour tout le Ciel tournoyant;
Plein d'immense grandeur, rond, vagabond, et ferme;
Lequel tient dessoubs luy tout le monde pour terme:
En repos, sans repos; oysif, et sans sjour;
Fils aisn de nature, et le pre du jour:
"The common light that equal shines on all,
Diffused around the whole terrestrial ball;
And, if the almighty Ruler of the skies
Has eyes, the sunbeams are his radiant eyes,
That life and safety give to young and old,
And all men's actions upon earth behold.
This great, this beautiful, the glorious sun,
Who makes their course the varied seasons run;
That with his virtues fills the universe,
And with one glance can sullen clouds disperse;
Earth's life and soul, that, flaming in his sphere,
Surrounds the heavens in one day's career;
Immensely great, moving yet firm and round,
Who the whole world below has made his bound;
At rest, without rest, idle without stay,
Nature's first son, and father of the day:"
forasmuch as, beside this grandeur and beauty of his, 'tis the only piece
of this machine that we discover at the remotest distance from us; and by
that means so little known that they were pardonable for entering into so
great admiration and reverence of it.
Thales, who first inquired into this sort of matter, believed God to be a
Spirit that made all things of water; Anaximander, that the gods were
always dying and entering into life again; and that there were an infinite
number of worlds; Anaximines, that the air was God, that he was procreate
and immense, always moving. Anaxagoras the first, was of opinion that the
description and manner of all things were conducted by the power and
reason of an infinite spirit. Alcmon gave divinity to the sun, moon, and
stars, and to the soul. Pythagoras made God a spirit, spread over the
nature of all things, whence our souls are extracted; Parmenides, a circle
surrounding the heaven, and supporting the world by the ardour of light.
Empedocles pronounced the four elements, of which all things are composed,
to be gods; Protagoras had nothing to say, whether they were or were not,
or what they were; Democritus was one while of opinion that the images and
their circuitions were gods; another while, the nature that darts out
those images; and then, our science and intelligence. Plato divides his
belief into several opinions; he says, in his Timus, that the
Father of the World cannot be named; in his Laws, that men are not to
inquire into his being; and elsewhere, in the very same books, he makes
the world, the heavens, the stars, the earth, and our souls, gods;
admitting, moreover, those which have been received by ancient institution
in every republic.
Xenophon reports a like perplexity in Socrates's doctrine; one while that
men are not to inquire into the form of God, and presently makes him
maintain that the sun is God, and the soul God; that there is but one God,
and then that there are many. Speusippus, the nephew of Plato, makes God a
certain power governing all things, and that he has a soul. Aristotle one
while says it is the spirit, and another the world; one while he gives the
world another master, and another while makes God the heat of heaven.
Zenocrates makes eight, five named amongst the planets; the sixth composed
of all the fixed stars, as of so many members; the seventh and eighth, the
sun and moon. Heraclides Ponticus does nothing but float in his opinion,
and finally deprives God of sense, and makes him shift from one form to
another, and at last says that it is heaven and earth. Theophrastus
wanders in the same irresolution amongst his fancies, attributing the
superintendency of the world one while to the understanding, another while
to heaven, and then to the stars. Strato says that 'tis nature, she having
the power of generation, augmentation, and diminution, without form and
sentiment Zeno says 'tis the law of nature, commanding good and
prohibiting evil; which law is an animal; and takes away the accustomed
gods, Jupiter, Juno, and Vesta. Diogenes Apolloniates, that 'tis air.
Zenophanes makes God round, seeing and hearing, not breathing, and having
nothing in common with human nature. Aristo thinks the form of God to be
incomprehensible, deprives him of sense, and knows not whether he be an
animal or something else; Cleanthes, one while supposes it to be reason,
another while the world, another the soul of nature, and then the supreme
heat rolling about, and environing all. Perseus, Zeno's disciple, was of
opinion that men have given the title of gods to such as have been useful,
and have added any notable advantage to human life, and even to profitable
things themselves. Chrysippus made a confused heap of all the preceding
theories, and reckons, amongst a thousand forms of gods that he makes, the
men also that have been deified. Diagoras and Theodoras flatly denied that
there were any gods at all. Epicurus makes the gods shining, transparent,
and perflable, lodged as betwixt two forts, betwixt two worlds, secure
from blows, clothed in a human figure, and with such members as we have;
which members are to them of no use:—
Ego Deum genus esse semper duxi, et dicam colitum;
Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus.
"I ever thought that gods above there were,
But do not think they care what men do here."
Trust to your philosophy, my masters; and brag that you have found the
bean in the cake when you see what a rattle is here with so many
philosophical heads! The perplexity of so many worldly forms has gained
this over me, that manners and opinions contrary to mine do not so much
displease as instruct me; nor so much make me proud as they humble me, in
comparing them. And all other choice than what comes from the express and
immediate hand of God seems to me a choice of very little privilege. The
policies of the world are no less opposite upon this subject than the
schools, by which we may understand that fortune itself is not more
variable and inconstant, nor more blind and inconsiderate, than our
reason. The things that are most unknown are most proper to be deified;
wherefore to make gods of ourselves, as the ancients did, exceeds the
extremest weakness of understanding. I would much rather have gone along
with those who adored the serpent, the dog, or the ox; forasmuch as their
nature and being is less known to us, and that we have more room to
imagine what we please of those beasts, and to attribute to them
extraordinary faculties. But to have made gods of our own condition, of
whom we ought to know the imperfections; and to have attributed to them
desire, anger, revenge, marriages, generation, alliances, love, jealousy,
our members and bones, our fevers and pleasures, our death and obsequies;
this must needs have proceeded from a marvellous inebriety of the human
understanding;
Qu procul usque adeo divino ab numine distant,
Inque Dem numro qu sint indigna videri;
"From divine natures these so distant are,
They are unworthy of that character."
Formo, otates, vestitus, omatus noti sunt; genera, conjugia,
cognationes, omniaque traducta ad similitudinem imbellitar tis humano: nam
et perturbatis animis inducuntur; accipimus enim deorurn cupiditates,
cegritudines, iracundias; "Their forms, ages, clothes, and ornaments
are known: their descents, marriages, and kindred, and all adapted to the
similitude of human weakness; for they are represented to us with anxious
minds, and we read of the lusts, sickness, and anger of the gods;" as
having attributed divinity not only to faith, virtue, honour, concord,
liberty, victory, and piety; but also to voluptuousness, fraud, death,
envy, old age, misery; to fear, fever, ill fortune, and other injuries of
our frail and transitory life:—
Quid juvat hoc, templis nostros inducere mores?
O curv in terris anim et colestium inanes!
"O earth-born souls! by earth-born passions led,
To every spark of heav'nly influence dead!
Think ye that what man values will inspire
In minds celestial the same base desire?"
The Egyptians, with an impudent prudence, interdicted, upon pain of
hanging, that any one should say that their gods, Serapis and Isis, had
formerly been men; and yet no one was ignorant that they had been such;
and their effigies, represented with the finger upon the mouth, signified,
says Varro, that mysterious decree to their priests, to conceal their
mortal original, as it must by necessary consequence cancel all the
veneration paid to them. Seeing that man so much desired to equal himself
to God, he had done better, says Cicero, to have attracted those divine
conditions to himself, and drawn them down hither below, than to send his
corruption and misery up on high; but, to take it right, he has several
ways done both the one and the other, with like vanity of opinion.
When philosophers search narrowly into the hierarchy of their gods, and
make a great bustle about distinguishing their alliances, offices, and
power, I cannot believe they speak as they think. When Plato describes
Pluto's orchard to us, and the bodily conveniences or pains that attend us
after the ruin and annihilation of our bodies, and accommodates them to
the feeling we have in this life:—
Secreti celant calles, et myrtea circum
Sylva tegit; cur non ips in morte relinquunt;
"In secret vales and myrtle groves they lie,
Nor do cares leave them even when they die."
when Mahomet promises his followers a Paradise hung with tapestry, gilded
and enamelled with gold and precious stones, furnished with wenches of
excelling beauty, rare wines, and delicate dishes; it is easily discerned
that these are deceivers that accommodate their promises to our
sensuality, to attract and allure us by hopes and opinions suitable to our
mortal appetites. And yet some amongst us are fallen into the like error,
promising to themselves after the resurrection a terrestrial and temporal
life, accompanied with all sorts of worldly conveniences and pleasures.
Can we believe that Plato, he who had such heavenly conceptions, and was
so well acquainted with the Divinity as thence to derive the name of the
Divine Plato, ever thought that the poor creature, man, had any thing in
him applicable to that incomprehensible power? and that he believed that
the weak holds we are able to take were capable, or the force of our
understanding sufficient, to participate of beatitude or eternal pains? We
should then tell him from human reason: "If the pleasures thou dost
promise us in the other life are of the same kind that I have enjoyed here
below, this has nothing in common with infinity; though all my five
natural senses should be even loaded with pleasure, and my soul full of
all the contentment it could hope or desire, we know what all this amounts
to, all this would be nothing; if there be any thing of mine there, there
is nothing divine; if this be no more than what may belong to our present
condition, it cannot be of any value. All contentment of mortals is
mortal. Even the knowledge of our parents, children, and friends, if that
can affect and delight us in the other world, if that still continues a
satisfaction to us there, we still remain in earthly and finite
conveniences. We cannot as we ought conceive the greatness of these high
and divine promises, if we could in any sort conceive them; to have a
worthy imagination of them we must imagine them unimaginable,
inexplicable, and incomprehensible, and absolutely another thing than
those of our miserable experience." "Eye hath not seen," saith St. Paul,
"nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man, the things
that God hath prepared for them that love him." And if, to render us
capable, our being were reformed and changed (as thou, Plato, sayest, by
thy purifications), it ought to be so extreme and total a change, that by
physical doctrine it be no more us;—
Hector erat tunc cum bello certabat; at ille
Tractus ab monio non erat Hector eqao;
He Hector was whilst he could fight, but when
Dragg'd by Achilles' steeds, no Hector then;
it must be something else that must receive these recompenses:—
Quod mutatur... dissolvitur; interit ergo;
Trajiciuntur enim partes, atque ordine migrant.
"Things changed dissolved are, and therefore die;
Their parts are mix'd, and from their order fly."
For in Pythagoras's metempsychosis, and the change of habitation that he
imagined in souls, can we believe that the lion, in whom the soul of Csar
is enclosed, does espouse Csar's passions, or that the lion is he? For if
it was still Csar, they would be in the right who, controverting this
opinion with Plato, reproach him that the son might be seen to ride his
mother transformed into a mule, and the like absurdities. And can we
believe that in the mutations that are made of the bodies of animals into
others of the same kind, the new comers are not other than their
predecessors? From the ashes of a phoenix, a worm, they say, is
engendered, and from that another phoenix; who can imagine that this
second phoenix is no other than the first? We see our silk-worms, as it
were, die and wither; and from this withered body a butterfly is produced;
and from that another worm; how ridiculous would it be to imagine that
this was still the first! That which once has ceased to be is no more:—
Nec, si materiam nostram collegerit tas
Post obitum, rursumque redegerit, ut sita nunc est,
Atque iterum nobis fuerint data lumina vit,
Pertineat quidquam tamen ad nos id quoque factum,
Interrupta semel cum sit repetentia nostra.
"Neither tho' time should gather and restore
Our matter to the form it was before,
And give again new light to see withal,
Would that new figure us concern at all;
Or we again ever the same be seen,
Our being having interrupted been."
And, Plato, when thou sayest in another place that it shall be the
spiritual part of man that will be concerned in the fruition of the
recompense of another life, thou tellest us a thing wherein there is as
little appearance of truth:—
Scilicet, avolsis radicibus, ut nequit ullam
Dispicere ipsa oculus rem, seorsum corpore toto;
"No more than eyes once from their optics torn,
Can ever after any thing discern;"
for, by this account, it would no more be man, nor consequently us, who
would be concerned in this enjoyment; for we are composed of two principal
essential parts, the separation of which is the death and ruin of our
being:—
Inter enim jecta est vital pausa, vageque
Deerrarunt passim motus ab sensibus omnes;
"When once that pause of life is come between,
'Tis just the same as we had never been;"
we cannot say that the man suffers when the worms feed upon his members,
and that the earth consumes them:—
Et nihil hoc ad nos, qui coltu conjugioque
Corporis atque anim consistimus uniter apti.
"What's that to us? for we are only we,
While soul and body in one frame agree."
Moreover, upon what foundation of their justice can the gods take notice
of or reward man after his death and virtuous actions, since it was
themselves that put them in the way and mind to do them? And why should
they be offended at or punish him for wicked ones, since themselves have
created in him so frail a condition, and when, with one glance of their
will, they might prevent him from falling? Might not Epicurus, with great
colour of human reason, object this to Plato, did he not often save
himself with this sentence: "That it is impossible to establish any thing
certain of the immortal nature by the mortal?" She does nothing but err
throughout, but especially when she meddles with divine things. Who does
more evidently perceive this than we? For although we have given her
certain and infallible principles; and though we have enlightened her
steps with the sacred lamp of truth that it has pleased God to communicate
to us; we daily see, nevertheless, that if she swerve never so little from
the ordinary path; and that she stray from, or wander out of the way set
out and beaten by the church, how soon she loses, confounds and fetters
herself, tumbling and floating in this vast, turbulent, and waving sea of
human opinions, without restraint, and without any determinate end; so
soon as she loses that great and common road, she enters into a labyrinth
of a thousand several paths.
Man cannot be any thing but what he is, nor imagine beyond the reach of
his capacity. "Tis a greater presumption," says Plutarch, "in them who are
but men to attempt to speak and discourse of the gods and demi-gods than
it is in a man utterly ignorant of music to give an opinion of singing; or
in a man who never saw a camp to dispute about arms and martial affairs,
presuming by some light conjecture to understand the effects of an art he
is totally a stranger to." Antiquity, I believe, thought to put a
compliment upon, and to add something to, the divine grandeur in
assimilating it to man, investing it with his faculties, and adorning it
with his ugly humours and most shameful necessities; offering it our
aliments to eat, presenting it with our dances, mummeries, and farces, to
divert it; with our vestments to cover it, and our houses to inhabit,
coaxing it with the odour of incense and the sounds of music, with
festoons and nosegays; and to accommodate it to our vicious passions,
flattering its justice with inhuman vengeance, and with the ruin and
dissipation of things by it created and preserved as Tiberius Sempronius,
who burnt the rich spoils and arms he had gained from the enemy in
Sardinia for a sacrifice to Vulcan; and Paulus milius, those of
Macedonia, to Mars and Minerva; and Alexander, arriving at the Indian
Ocean, threw several great vessels of gold into the sea, in honour of
Thetes; and moreover loading her altars with a slaughter not of innocent
beasts only, but of men also, as several nations, and ours among the rest,
were commonly used to do; and I believe there is no nation under the sun
that has not done the same:—
Sulmone creatos
Quatuor hc juvenes, totidem quos educat Ufens,
Viventes rapit, inferias quos immolet umbris.
"Four sons of Sulmo, four whom Ufens bred,
He took in flight, and living victims led,
To please the ghost of Pallas, and expire
In sacrifice before his fun'ral pyre."
The Get hold themselves to be immortal, and that their death is nothing
but a journey to their god Zamolxis. Every five years they dispatch some
one among them to him, to entreat of him such necessaries as they stand in
need of. This envoy is chosen by lot, and the form of dispatching him,
after he has been instructed by word of mouth what he is to deliver, is
that of the assistants, three hold up as many javelins, upon which the
rest throw his body with all their force. If he happen to be wounded in a
mortal part, and that he immediately dies, 'tis held a certain argument of
divine favour; but if he escapes, he is looked upon as a wicked and
execrable wretch, and another is dismissed after the same manner in his
stead. Amestris, the mother of Xerxes, being grown old, caused at once
fourteen young men, of the best families of Persia, to be buried alive,
according to the religion of the country, to gratify some infernal deity.
And even to this day the idols of Themixtitan are cemented with the blood
of little children, and they delight in no sacrifice but of these pure and
infantine souls; a justice thirsty of innocent blood:—
Tantum religio potuit suadere maloram.
"Such impious use was of religion made,
So many demon acts it could persuade."
The Carthaginians immolated their own children to Saturn; and those who
had none of their own bought of others, the father and mother being in the
mean time obliged to assist at the ceremony with a gay and contented
countenance.
It was a strange fancy to think to gratify the divine bounty with our
afflictions; like the Lacedemonians, who regaled their Diana with the
tormenting of young boys, whom they caused to be whipped for her sake,
very often to death. It was a savage humour to imagine to gratify the
architect by the subversion of his building, and to think to take away the
punishment due to the guilty by punishing the innocent; and that poor
Iphigenia, at the port of Aulis, should by her death and immolation
acquit, towards God, the whole army of the Greeks from all the crimes they
had committed;
Et casta inceste, nubendi tempore in ipso,
Hostia concideret mactatu mosta parentis;
"That the chaste virgin in her nuptial band
Should die by an unnat'ral father's hand;"
and that the two noble and generous souls of the two Decii, the father and
the son, to incline the favour of the gods to be propitious to the affairs
of Rome, should throw themselves headlong into the thickest of the enemy:
Quo fuit tanta deorum iniquitas, ut placari populo Romano non possent,
nisi tales viri occidissent? "How great an injustice in the gods was
it that they could not be reconciled to the people of Rome unless such men
perished!" To which may be added, that it is not for the criminal to cause
himself to be scourged according to his own measure nor at his own time,
but that it purely belongs to the judge, who considers nothing as
chastisements but the penalty that he appoints, and cannot call that
punishment which proceeds from the consent of him that suffers. The divine
vengeance presupposes an absolute dissent in us, both for its justice and
for our own penalty. And therefore it was a ridiculous humour of
Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, who, to interrupt the continued course of his
good fortune, and to balance it, went and threw the dearest and most
precious jewel he had into the sea, believing that by this voluntary and
antedated mishap he bribed and satisfied the revolution and vicissitude of
fortune; and she, to mock his folly, ordered it so that the same jewel
came again into his hands, found in the belly of a fish. And then to what
end were those tearings and dismemberments of the Corybantes, the Menades,
and, in our times, of the Mahometans, who slash their faces, bosoms, and
limbs, to gratify their prophet; seeing that the offence lies in the will,
not in the breast, eyes, genitals, roundness of form, the shoulders, or
the throat? Tantus est perturbto mentis, et sedibus suis pilso, furor,
ut sic dii placentur, quemadmodum ne homines quidem soviunt. "So great
is the fury and madness of troubled minds when once displaced from the
seat of reason, as if the gods should be appeased with what even men are
not so cruel as to approve." The use of this natural contexture has not
only respect to us, but also to the service of God and other men; 'tis as
unjust for us voluntarily to wound or hurt it as to kill ourselves upon
any pretence whatever; it seems to be great cowardice and treason to
exercise cruelty upon, and to destroy, the functions of the body that are
stupid and servile, to spare the soul the solicitude of governing them
according to reason: Ubi iratos deos timent, qui sic propitios habere
merentur? In regi libidinis voluptatem castrati sunt quidam; sed nemo
sibi, ne vir esset, jubente domino, mantis intulit. "Where are they so
afraid of the anger of the gods as to merit their favour at that rate?
Some, indeed, have been made eunuchs for the lust of princes: but no man
at his master's command has put his own hand to unman himself." So did
they fill their religion with several ill effects:—
Spius olim Religio peperit scelerosa atque impia facta.
"In elder times Religion did commit most fearful crimes."
Now nothing of ours can in any sort be compared or likened unto the divine
nature, which will not blemish and stain it with much imperfection.
How can that infinite beauty, power, and goodness, admit of any
correspondence or similitude to such abject things as we are, without
extreme wrong and manifest dishonour to his divine greatness? Infirmum
dei fortius est hominibs; et stultum dei sapientius est hominibus.
"For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is
stronger than men." Stilpo, the philosopher, being asked, "Whether the
gods were delighted with our adorations and sacrifices?"—"You are
indiscreet," answered he; "let us withdraw apart, if you would talk of
such things." Nevertheless, we prescribe him bounds, we keep his power
besieged by our reasons (I call our ravings and dreams reason, with the
dispensation of philosophy, which says, "That the wicked man, and even the
fool, go mad by reason, but a particular form of reason"), we would
subject him to the vain and feeble appearances of our understandings,—him
who has made both us and our knowledge. Because that nothing is made of
nothing, God therefore could not make the world without matter. What! has
God put into our hands the keys and most secret springs of his power? Is
he obliged not to exceed the limits of our knowledge? Put the case, O man!
that thou hast been able here to mark some footsteps of his effects; dost
thou therefore think that he has employed all he can, and has crowded all
his forms and ideas in this work? Thou seest nothing but the order and
revolution of this little cave in which thou art lodged, if, indeed, thou
dost see so much; whereas his divinity has an infinite jurisdiction
beyond. This part is nothing in comparison of the whole:—
Omnia cum colo, terrque, manque,
Nil sunt ad summam summal totius omnem.
"The earth, the sea, and skies, from pole to pole,
Are small, nay, nothing to the mighty whole."
'Tis a municipal law that thou allegest, thou knowest not what is
universal Tie thyself to that to which thou art subject, but not him; he
is not of thy brotherhood, thy fellow-citizen, or companion. If he has in
some sort communicated himself unto thee, 'tis not to debase himself unto
thy littleness, nor to make thee comptroller of his power; the human body
cannot fly to the clouds; rules are for thee. The sun runs every day his
ordinary course; the bounds of the sea and the earth cannot be confounded;
the water is unstable and without firmness; a wall, unless it be broken,
is impenetrable to a solid body; a man cannot preserve his life in the
flames; he cannot be both in heaven and upon earth, and corporally in a
thousand places at once. 'Tis for thee that he has made these rules; 'tis
thee that they concern; he has manifested to Christians that he has
enfranchised himself from them all when it pleased him. And, in truth,
why, almighty as he is, should he have limited his power within any
certain bounds? In favour of whom should he have renounced his privilege?
Thy reason has in no other thing more of likelihood and foundation than in
that wherein it persuades thee that there is a plurality of worlds:—
Terramque et solem, lunam, mare, estera quo rant,
Non esse unica, sed numro magis innumerali.
"That earth, sun, moon, sea, and the rest that are,
Not single, but innumerable were."
The most eminent minds of elder times believed it; and some of this age of
ours, compelled by the appearances of human reason, do the same; forasmuch
as in this fabric that we behold there is nothing single and one,
Cum in summ res nulla sit una,
Unica quo gignatur, et unica solaque crescat;
"Since nothing's single in this mighty place,
That can alone beget, alone increase;"
and that all the kinds are multiplied in some number; by which it seems
not to be likely that God should have made this work only without a
companion; and that the matter of this form should have been totally
drained in this individual.
Quare etiam atque etiam tales fateare necesse est
Esse alios alibi congressus materiali;
Qualis hic est, avido complexu quem tenet ther.
"Wherefore 'tis necessary to confess
That there must elsewhere be the like congress
Of the like matter, which the airy space
Holds fast within its infinite embrace."
Especially if it be a living creature, which its motions render so
credible that Plato affirms it, and that many of our people do either
confirm, or dare not deny it; no more than that ancient opinion that the
heavens, the stars, and other members of the world, are creatures composed
of body and soul, mortal in respect of their composition, but immortal by
the determination of the Creator. Now if there be many worlds, as
Democritus, Epicurus, and almost all philosophy has believed, what do we
know that the principles and rules of this of ours in like manner concern
the rest? They may peradventure have another form and another polity.
Epicurus supposes them either like or unlike. We see in this world an
infinite difference and variety, only by distance of places; neither com,
wine, nor any of our animals are to be seen in that new comer of the world
discovered by our fathers; 'tis all there another thing; and in times
past, do but consider in how many parts of the world they had no knowledge
either of Bacchus or Ceres. If Pliny and Herodotus are to be believed,
there are in certain places kinds of men very little resembling us,
mongrel and ambiguous forms, betwixt the human and brutal natures; there
are countries where men are bom without heads, having their mouth and eyes
in their breast; where they are all hermaphrodites; where they go on all
four; where they have but one eye in the forehead, and a head more like a
dog than like ours; where they are half fish the lower part, and live in
the water; where the women bear at five years old, and live but eight;
where the head and the skin of the forehead is so hard that a sword will
not touch it, but rebounds again; where men have no beards; nations that
know not the use of fire; others that eject seed of a black colour. What
shall we say of those that naturally change themselves into wolves, colts,
and then into men again? And if it be true, as Plutarch says, that in some
place of the Indies there are men without mouths, who nourish themselves
with the smell of certain odours, how many of our descriptions are false?
He is no longer risible, nor, perhaps, capable of reason and society. The
disposition and cause of our internal composition would then for the most
part be to no purpose, and of no use.
Moreover, how many things are there in our own knowledge that oppose those
fine rules we have cut out for and prescribe to nature? And yet we must
undertake to circumscribe thereto God himself! How many things do we call
miraculous, and contrary to nature? This is done by every nation and by
every man, according to the proportion of his ignorance. How many occult
properties and quintessences do we daily discover? For, for us to go
"according to nature," is no more but to go "according to our
understanding," as far as that is able to follow, and as far as we are
able to see into it; all beyond that is, forsooth, monstrous and
irregular. Now, by this account, all things shall be monstrous to the
wisest and most understanding men; for human reason has persuaded them
that there was no manner of ground nor foundation, not so much as to be
assured that snow is white, and Anaxagoras affirmed it to be black; if
there be any thing, or if there be nothing; if there be knowledge or
ignorance, which Metrodorus of Chios denied that man was able to
determine; or whether we live, as Euripides doubts whether the life we
live is life, or whether that we call death be not life, [—Greek—]
and not without some appearance. For why do we derive the title of being
from this instant, which is but a flash in the infinite course of an
eternal night, and so short an interruption of our perpetual and natural
condition, death possessing all the before and after this moment, and also
a good part of the moment itself. Others swear there is no motion at all,
as followers of Melissus, and that nothing stirs. For if there be but one,
neither can that spherical motion be of any use to him, nor motion from
one place to another, as Plato proves: "That there is neither generation
nor corruption in nature." Protagoras says that there is nothing in nature
but doubt; that a man may equally dispute of all things; and even of this,
whether a man can equally dispute of all things; Nausiphanes, that of
things which seem to be, nothing is more than it is not; that there is
nothing certain but uncertainty; Parmenides, that of that which seems,
there is no one thing in general; that there is but one thing; Zeno, that
one same is not, and that there is nothing; if there were one thing, it
would either be in another or in itself; if it be in another, they are
two; if it be in itself, they are yet two; the comprehending, and the
comprehended. According to these doctrines the nature of things is no
other than a shadow, either false or vain.
This way of speaking in a Christian man has ever seemed to me very
indiscreet and irreverent. "God cannot die; God cannot contradict himself;
God cannot do this or that." I do not like to have the divine power so
limited by the laws of men's mouths; and the idea which presents itself to
us in those propositions ought to be more religiously and reverently
expressed.
Our speaking has its failings and defects, as well as all the rest. Most
of the occasions of disturbance in the world are grammatical ones; our
suits only spring from disputes as to the interpretation of laws; and most
wars proceed from the inability of ministers clearly to express the
conventions and treaties of amity of princes. How many quarrels, and of
how great importance, has the doubt of the meaning of this syllable, hoc,*
created in the world? Let us take the clearest conclusion that logic
itself
* Montaigne here refers to the controversies between
the Catholics and Protestants about transubstantiation.
presents us withal; if you say, "It is fine weather," and that you say
true, it is then fine weather. Is not this a very certain form of
speaking? And yet it will deceive us; that it will do so, let us follow
the example: If you say, "I lie," if you say true, you do lie. The art,
the reason, and force of the conclusion of this, are the same with the
other, and yet we are gravelled. The Pyrrhonian philosophers, I see,
cannot express their general conception in any kind of speaking; for they
would require a new language on purpose; ours is all formed of affirmative
propositions, which are totally antarctic to them; insomuch that when they
say "I doubt," they are presently taken by the throat, to make them
confess that at least they know and are assured that they do doubt. By
which means they have been compelled to shelter themselves under this
medical comparison, without which their humour would be inexplicable: when
they pronounce, "I know not," or, "I doubt," they say that this
proposition carries off itself with the rest, no more nor less than
rhubarb, that drives out the ill humours, and carries itself off with
them. This fancy will be more certainly understood by interrogation: "What
do I know?" as I bear it with the emblem of a balance.
See what use they make of this irreverent way of speaking; in the present
disputes about our religion, if you press its adversaries too hard, they
will roundly tell you, "that it is not in the power of God to make it so,
that his body should be in paradise and upon earth, and in several places
at once." And see, too, what advantage the old scoffer made of this. "At
least," says he, "it is no little consolation to man to see that God
cannot do all things; for he cannot kill himself, though he would; which
is the greatest privilege we have in our condition; he cannot make mortal
immortal, nor revive the dead; nor make it so, that he who has lived has
not; nor that he who has had honours has not had them; having no other
right to the past than that of oblivion." And that the comparison of man
to God may yet be made out by jocose examples: "He cannot order it so,"
says he, "that twice ten shall not be twenty." This is what he says, and
what a Christian ought to take heed shall not escape his lips. Whereas, on
the contrary, it seems as if men studied this foolish daring of language,
to reduce God to their own measure:—
Cras vel atr Nube polum, Pater, occupato,
Vel sole puro; non tamen irritum
Quodcumque retro est efficiet, neque
Diffinget infectumque reddet
Quod fugiens semel hora vexit.
"To-morrow, let it shine or rain,
Yet cannot this the past make vain:
Nor uncreate and render void
That which was yesterday enjoyed."
When we say that the infinity of ages, as well past as to come, are but
one instant with God; that his goodness, wisdom, and power are the same
with his essence; our mouths speak it, but our understandings apprehend it
not; and yet, such is our vain opinion of ourselves, that we must make the
Divinity to pass through our sieve; and thence proceed all the dreams and
errors with which the world abounds, whilst we reduce and weigh in our
balance a thing so far above our poise. Mirum quo procdat improbitas
cordis humani, parvulo aliquo intritata successu. "'Tis wonderful to
what the wickedness of man's heart will proceed, if elevated with the
least success." How magisterially and insolently does Epicurus reprove the
Stoics, for maintaining that the truly good and happy being appertained
only to God, and that the wise man had nothing but a shadow and
resemblance of it! How temerariously have they bound God to destiny (a
thing which, by my consent, none that bears the name of a Christian shall
ever do again)! and Thales, Plato, and Pythagoras have enslaved him to
necessity. This arrogance of attempting to discover God with our eyes has
been the cause that an eminent person among us has attributed to the
Divinity a corporal form; and is the reason of what happens to us every
day, of attributing to God important events, by a particular assignment.
Because they weigh with us, they conclude that they also weigh with him,
and that he has a more intent and vigilant regard to them than to others
of less moment to us or of ordinary course: Magna Dii curant, parva
negligunt: "The gods are concerned at great matters, but slight the
small." Listen to him; he will clear this to you by his reason: Nec in
regnis quidem reges omnia minima curant: "Neither indeed do kings in
their administration take notice of all the least concerns." As if to that
King of kings it were more or less to subvert a kingdom, or to move the
leaf of a tree; or as if his providence acted after another manner in
inclining the event of a battle than in the leap of a flea. The hand of
his government is laid upon every thing after the same manner, with the
same power and order; our interest does nothing towards it; our
inclinations and measures sway nothing with him. Deus ita artifex
magnus in magnis, ut minor non sit in parvis: "God is so great an
artificer in great things, that he is no less in the least" Our arrogancy
sets this blasphemous comparison ever before us. Because our employments
are a burden to us, Strato has courteously been pleased to exempt the gods
from all offices, as their priests are; he makes nature produce and
support all things; and with her weights and motions make up the several
parts of the world, discharging human nature from the awe of divine
judgments: Quod beatum terumque sit, id nec habere negotii quicquam,
nec exhibere alteri: "What is blessed and eternal has neither any
business itself nor gives any to another." Nature will that in like things
there should be a like relation. The infinite number of mortals,
therefore, concludes a like number of immortals; the infinite things that
kill and destroy presupposes as many that preserve and profit. As the
souls of the gods, without tongue, eye, or ear, do every one of them feel
amongst themselves what the other feels, and judge our thoughts; so the
souls of men, when at liberty and loosed from the body, either by sleep or
some ecstacy, divine, foretell, and see things, which, whilst joined to
the body, they could not see. "Men," says St. Paul, "professing themselves
to be wise, they become fools; and change the glory of the uncorruptible
God into an image made like corruptible man." Do but take notice of the
juggling in the ancient deifications. After the great and stately pomp of
the funeral, so soon as the fire began to mount to the top of the pyramid,
and to catch hold of the couch where the body lay, they at the same time
turned out an eagle, which flying upward, signified that the soul went
into Paradise. We have a thousand medals, and particularly of the worthy
Faustina, where this eagle is represented carrying these deified souls to
heaven with their heels upwards. 'Tis pity that we should fool ourselves
with our own fopperies and inventions,
Quod finxere, timent,
"They fear their own inventions,"
like children who are frighted with the same face of their playfellow,
that they themselves have smeared and smutted. Quasi quicquam
infelicius sit homine, cui sua figmenta dominantur:
"As if any thing could be more unhappy than man, who is insulted over by
his own imagination." 'Tis far from honouring him who made us, to honour
him that we have made. Augustus had more temples than Jupiter, served with
as much religion and belief of miracles. The Thracians, in return of the
benefits they had received from Agesilaus, came to bring him word that
they had canonized him: "Has your nation," said he to them, "the power to
make gods of whom they please? Pray first deify some one amongst
yourselves, and when I shall see what advantage he has by it, I will thank
you for your offer." Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm,
and yet he will be making gods by dozens. Hear Trismegistus in praise of
our sufficiency: "Of all the wonderful things, it surmounts all wonder
that man could find out the divine nature and make it." And take here the
arguments of the school of philosophy itself:—
Nosse cui divos et coli munina soli,
Aut soli nescire, datum.
"To whom to know the deities of heaven,
Or know he knows them not, alone 'tis given."
"If there is a God, he is a living creature; if he be a living creature,
he has sense; and if he has sense, he is subject to corruption. If he be
without a body he is without a soul, and consequently without action; and
if he has a body, it is perishable." Is not here a triumph? we are
incapable of having made the world; there must then be some more excellent
nature that has put a hand to the work. It were a foolish and ridiculous
arrogance to esteem ourselves the most perfect thing of the universe.
There must then be something that is better, and that must be God. When
you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is
the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for rats. And
this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not
reason to believe that it is the residence of some possessor, who is much
greater than we? Is not the most supreme always the most worthy? but we
are in the lowest form. Nothing without a soul and without reason can
produce a living creature capable of reason. The world produces us, the
world then has soul and reason. Every part of us is less than we. We are
part of the world, the world therefore is endued with wisdom and reason,
and that more abundantly than we. 'Tis a fine thing to have a great
government; the government of the world then appertains to some happy
nature. The stars do us no harm; they are then full of goodness. We have
need of nourishment; then so have the gods also, and feed upon the vapours
of the earth. Worldly goods are not goods to God; therefore they are not
goods to us; offending and being offended are equally testimonies of
imbecility; 'tis therefore folly to fear God. God is good by his nature;
man by his industry, which is more. The divine and human wisdom have no
other distinction, but that the first is eternal; but duration is no
accession to wisdom, therefore we are companions. We have life, reason,
and liberty; we esteem goodness, charity, and justice; these qualities are
then in him. In conclusion, building and destroying, the conditions of the
Divinity, are forged by man, according as they relate to himself. What a
pattern, and what a model! let us stretch, let us raise and swell human
qualities as much as we please; puff up thyself, poor man, yet more and
more, and more:—
Non, si tu ruperis, inquit.
"Not if thou burst," said he.
Profecto non Deum, quern cogitare non possunt, sed semetip pro illo
cogitantes, non ilium, sed seipsos, non illi, sed sibi comparant?
"Certainly they do not imagine God, whom they cannot imagine; but they
imagine themselves in his stead; they do not compare him, but themselves,
not to him, but to themselves." In natural things the effects do but half
relate to their causes. What's this to the purpose? His condition is above
the order of nature, too elevated, too remote, and too mighty, to permit
itself to be bound and fettered by our conclusions. 'Tis not through
ourselves that we arrive at that place; our ways lie too low. We are no
nearer heaven on the top of Mount Cenis than at the bottom of the sea;
take the distance with your astrolabe. They debase God even to the carnal
knowledge of women, to so many times, and so many generations. Paulina,
the wife of Satuminus, a matron of great reputation at Rome, thinking she
lay with the god Serapis, found herself in the arms of an amoroso of hers,
through the panderism of the priests of his temple. Varro, the most subtle
and most learned of all the Latin authors, in his book of theology,
writes, that the sexton of Hercules's temple, throwing dice with one hand
for himself, and with the other for Hercules, played after that manner
with him for a supper and a wench; if he won, at the expense of the
offerings; if he lost, at his own. The sexton lost, and paid the supper
and the wench. Her name was Laurentina, who saw by night this god in her
arms, who moreover told her, that the first she met the next day, should
give her a heavenly reward; which proved to be Taruncius, a rich young
man, who took her home to his house, and in time left her his inheritrix.
She, in her turn, thinking to do a thing that would be pleasing to the
god, left the people of Rome heirs to her; and therefore had divine
honours attributed to her. As if it had not been sufficient that Plato was
originally descended from the gods by a double line, and that he had
Neptune for the common father of his race, it was certainly believed at
Athens, that Aristo, having a mind to enjoy the fair Perictione, could
not, and was warned by the god Apollo, in a dream, to leave her unpolluted
and untouched, till she should first be brought to bed. These were the
father and mother of Plato. How many ridiculous stories are there of like
cuckoldings, committed by the gods against poor mortal men! And how many
husbands injuriously scandaled in favour of the children! In the Mahometan
religion there are Merlins enough found by the belief of the people; that
is to say, children without fathers, spiritual, divinely conceived in the
wombs of virgins, and carry names that signify so much in their language.
We are to observe that to every thing nothing is more dear and estimable
than its being (the lion, the eagle the dolphin, prize nothing above their
own kind); and that every thing assimilates the qualities of all other
things to its own proper qualities, which we may indeed extend or
contract, but that's all; for beyond that relation and principle our
imagination cannot go, can guess at nothing else, nor possibly go out
thence, nor stretch beyond it; whence spring these ancient conclusions: of
all forms the most beautiful is that of man; therefore God must be of that
form. No one can be happy without virtue, nor virtue be without reason,
and reason cannot inhabit anywhere but in a human shape; God is therefore
clothed in a human figure. Ita est informatum et anticipatum mentibus
nostris, ut homini, quum de Deo cogitet, forma occurrat hu-mana. "It
is so imprinted in our minds, and the fancy is so prepossessed with it,
that when a man thinks of God, a human figure ever presents itself to the
imagination." Therefore it was that Xenophanes pleasantly said, "That if
beasts frame any gods to themselves, as 'tis likely they do, they make
them certainly such as themselves are, and glorify themselves in it, as we
do. For why may not a goose say thus; "All the parts of the universe I
have an interest in; the earth serves me to walk upon; the sun to light
me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by
the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof
looks upon so favourably as me; I am the darling of nature! Is it not man
that keeps, lodges, and serves me? 'Tis for me that he both sows and
grinds; if he eats me he does the same by his fellow-men, and so do I the
worms that kill and devour him." As much might be said by a crane, and
with greater confidence, upon the account of the liberty of his flight,
and the possession of that high and beautiful region. Tam blanda
conciliatrix, et tam sui est lena ipsa natura. "So flattering and
wheedling a bawd is nature to herself."
Now by the same consequence, the destinies are then for us; for us the
world; it shines it thunders for us; creator and creatures, all are for
us; ''tis the mark and point to which the universality of things aims.
Look into the records that philosophy has kept for two thousand years and
more, of the affairs of heaven; the gods all that while have neither acted
nor spoken but for man. She does not allow them any other consultation or
occupation. See them here against us in war:—
Domitosque Hercule manu
Telluris juvenes, unde periculum
Fulgens contre mu it domus
Saturai veteris.
"The brawny sons of earth, subdu'd by hand
Of Hercules on the Phlegran strand,
Where the rude shock did such an uproar make,
As made old Saturn's sparkling palace shake."
And here you shall see them participate of our troubles, to make a return
for our having so often shared in theirs:—
Neptunus muros, magnoque emota tridenti
Fundamenta quatit, totamque sedibus urbem
Emit: hie Juno Scas svissima portas Prima tenet.
"Amidst that smother Neptune holds his place,
Below the walls' foundation drives his mace,
And heaves the city from its solid base.
See where in arms the cruel Juno stands,
Full in the Scan gate."
The Caunians, jealous of the authority of their own proper gods, armed
themselves on the days of their devotion, and through the whole of their
precincts ran cutting and slashing the air with their swords, by that
means to drive away and banish all foreign gods out of their territory.
Their powers are limited according that the plague, that the scurf, that
the phthisic; one cures one sort of itch, another another: Adeo minimis
etiam rebus prava religio inserit Deos? "At such a rate does false
religion create gods for the most contemptible uses." This one makes
grapes grow, that onions; this has the presidence over lechery, that over
merchandise; for every sort of artisan a god; this has his province and
reputation in the east; that his in the west:—
"Here lay her armour, here her chariot stood."
O sancte Apollo, qui umbilicum certum terrarum obtines!
"O sacred Phoebus, who with glorious ray,
From the earth's centre, dost thy light display."
Pallada Cecropid, Minola Creta Dianam,
Vulcanum tellus Hypsipylea colit,
Junonem Sparte, Pelopeladesque Mycen;
Pinigerum Fauni Mnalis ora caput;
Mars Latio venerandus.
"Th' Athenians Pallas, Cynthia Crete adore,
Vulcan is worshipped on the Lemnian shore.
Proud Juno's altars are by Spartans fed,
Th' Arcadians worship Faunus, and 'tis said
To Mars, by Italy, is homage paid."
to our necessity; this cures horses, that men,
Hic illius arma, Hic currus fuit.
This has only one town or family in his possession; that lives alone; that
in company, either voluntary or upon necessity:—
Junctaque sunt magno templa nepotis avo.
"And temples to the nephew joined are,
To those were reared to the great-grandfather."
In here are some so wretched and mean (for the number amounts to six and
thirty thousand) that they must pack five or six together, to produce one
ear of corn, and thence take their several names; three to a door—that
of the plank, that of the hinge, and that of the threshold. Four to a
child—protectors of his swathing-clouts, his drink, meat, and
sucking. Some certain, some uncertain and doubtful, and some that are not
yet entered Paradise:—
Quos, quoniam coli nondum dignamur honore,
Quas dedimus cert terras habitare sinanras:
"Whom, since we yet not worthy think of heaven,
We suffer to possess the earth we've given."
There are amongst them physicians, poets, and civilians. Some of a mean
betwixt the divine and human nature; mediators betwixt God and us, adorned
with a certain second and diminutive sort of adoration; infinite in titles
and offices; some good; others ill; some old and decrepit, and some that
are mortal. For Chrysippus was of opinion that in the last conflagration
of the world all the gods were to die but Jupiter. Man makes a thousand
pretty societies betwixt God and him; is he not his countryman?
Jovis incunabula Creten.
"Crete, the cradle of Jupiter."
And this is the excuse that, upon consideration of this subject, Scvola,
a high priest, and Varro, a great theologian in their times, make us:
"That it is necessary that the people should be ignorant of many things
that are true, and believe many things that are false." Quum veritatem
qua liberetur inquirat credatur ei expedire quod fallitur. "Seeing he
inquires into the truth, by which he would be made free, 'tis fit he
should be deceived." Human eyes cannot perceive things but by the forms
they know; and we do not remember what a leap miserable Phton took for
attempting to guide his father's horses with a mortal hand. The mind of
man falls into as great a depth, and is after the same manner bruised and
shattered by his own rashness. If you ask of philosophy of what matter the
heavens and the sun are? what answer will she return, if not that it is
iron, or, with Anaxagoras, stone, or some other matter that she makes use
of? If a man inquire of Zeno what nature is? "A fire," says he, "an
artisan, proper for generation, and regularly proceeding." Archimedes,
master of that science which attributes to itself the precedency before
all others for truth and certainty; "the sun," says he, "is a god of
red-hot iron." Was not this a fine imagination, extracted from the
inevitable necessity of geometrical demonstrations? Yet not so inevitable
and useful but that Socrates thought it was enough to know so much of
geometry only as to measure the land a man bought or sold; and that
Polynus, who had been a great and famous doctor in it, despised it, as
full of falsity and manifest vanity, after he had once tasted the delicate
fruits of the lozelly gardens of Epicurus. Socrates in Xenophon,
concerning this affair, says of Anaxagoras, reputed by antiquity learned
above all others in celestial and divine matters, "That he had cracked his
brain, as all other men do who too immoderately search into knowledges
which nothing belong to them:" when he made the sun to be a burning stone,
he did not consider that a stone does not shine in the fire; and, which is
worse, that it will there consume; and in making the sun and fire one,
that fire does not turn the complexions black in shining upon them; that
we are able to look fixedly upon fire; and that fire kills herbs and
plants. 'Tis Socrates's opinion, and mine too, that the best judging of
heaven is not to judge of it at all. Plato having occasion, in his Timous,
to speak of the demons, "This undertaking," says he, "exceeds my ability."
We are therefore to believe those ancients who said they were begotten by
them; 'tis against all reason to refuse a man's faith to the children of
the gods, though what they say should not be proved by any necessary or
probable reasons; seeing they engage to speak of domestic and familiar
things.
Let us see if we have a little more light in the knowledge of human and
natural things. Is it not a ridiculous attempt for us to forge for those
to whom, by our own confession, our knowledge is not able to attain,
another body, and to lend a false form of our own invention; as is
manifest in this motion of the planets; to which, seeing our wits cannot
possibly arrive, nor conceive their natural conduct, we lend them
material, heavy, and substantial springs of our own by which to move:—
Temo aureus, aurea summ
Curvatura rot, radiorum argenteus ordo.
"Gold was the axle, and the beam was gold;
The wheels with silver spokes on golden circles roll'd."
You would say that we had had coachmakers, carpenters, and painters, that
went up on high to make engines of various motions, and to range the
wheelwork and interfacings of the heavenly bodies of differing colours
about the axis of necessity, according to Plato:—
Mundus domus est maxima rerum,
Quam quinque altiton fragmine zon
Cingunt, per quam limbus pictus bis sex signis
Stellimicantibus, altus in obliquo there, lun
Bigas acceptat.
"The world's a mansion that doth all things hold,
Which thundering zones, in number five, enfold,
Through which a girdle, painted with twelve signs,
And that with sparkling constellations, shines,
In heaven's arch marks the diurnal course
For the sun's chariot and his fiery horse."
These are all dreams and fanatic follies. Why will not nature please for
once to lay open her bosom to us, and plainly discover to us the means and
conduct of her movements, and prepare our eyes to see them? Good God, what
abuse, what mistakes should we discover in our poor science! I am mistaken
if that weak knowledge of ours holds any one thing as it really is, and I
shall depart hence more ignorant of all other things than my own
ignorance.
Have I not read in Plato this divine saying, that "nature is nothing but
enigmatic poesy!" As if a man might perhaps see a veiled and shady
picture, breaking out here and there with an infinite variety of false
lights to puzzle our conjectures: Latent ista omnia crassis occullata
et circumfusa tenebris; ut nulla acies humani ingenii tanta sit, qu
penetrare in coelum, terram intrare, possit. "All those things lie
concealed and involved in so dark an obscurity that no point of human wit
can be so sharp as to pierce heaven or penetrate the earth." And certainly
philosophy is no other than sophisticated poetry. Whence do the ancient
writers extract their authorities but from the poets? and the first of
them were poets themselves, and writ accordingly. Plato is but a poet
unripped. Timon calls him, insultingly, "a monstrous forger of miracles."
All superhuman sciences make use of the poetic style. Just as women make
use of teeth of ivory where the natural are wanting, and instead of their
true complexion make one of some artificial matter; as they stuff
themselves out with cotton to appear plump, and in the sight of every one
do paint, patch, and trick up themselves with a false and borrowed beauty;
so does science (and even our law itself has, they say, legitimate
fictions, whereon it builds the truth of its justice); she gives us in
presupposition, and for current pay, things which she herself informs us
were invented; for these epicycles, eccentrics, and concentrics,
which astrology makes use of to carry on the motions of the stars, she
gives us for the best she could invent upon that subject; as also, in all
the rest, philosophy presents us not that which really is, or what she
really believes, but what she has contrived with the greatest and most
plausible likelihood of truth, and the quaintest invention. Plato, upon
the discourse of the state of human bodies and those of beasts, says, "I
should know that what I have said is truth, had I the confirmation of an
oracle; but this I will affirm, that what I have said is the most likely
to be true of any thing I could say."
'Tis not to heaven only that art sends her ropes, engines, and wheels; let
us consider a little what she says of us ourselves, and of our contexture.
There is not more retrogradation, trepidation, accession, recession, and
astonishment, in the stars and celestial bodies, than they have found out
in this poor little human body. In earnest, they have good reason, upon
that very account, to call it the little world, so many tools and parts
have they employed to erect and build it. To assist the motions they see
in man, and the various functions that we find in ourselves, in how many
parts have they divided the soul, in how many places lodged it? in how
many orders have they divided, and to how many stories have they raised
this poor creature, man, besides those that are natural and to be
perceived? And how many offices and vocations have they assigned him? They
make it an imaginary public thing. 'Tis a subject that they hold and
handle; and they have full power granted to them to rip, place, displace,
piece, and stuff it, every one according to his own fancy, and yet they
possess it not They cannot, not in reality only, but even in dreams, so
govern it that there will not be some cadence or sound that will escape
their architecture, as enormous as it is, and botched with a thousand
false and fantastic patches. And it is not reason to excuse them; for
though we are satisfied with painters when they paint heaven, earth, seas,
mountains, and remote islands, that they give us some slight mark of them,
and, as of things unknown, are content with a faint and obscure
description; yet when they come and draw us after life, or any other
creature which is known and familiar to us, we then require of them a
perfect and exact representation of lineaments and colours, and despise
them if they fail in it.
I am very well pleased with the Milesian girl, who observing the
philosopher Thales to be always contemplating the celestial arch, and to
have his eyes ever gazing upward, laid something in his way that he might
stumble over, to put him in mind that it would be time to take up his
thoughts about things that are in the clouds when he had provided for
those that were under his feet. Doubtless she advised him well, rather to
look to himself than to gaze at heaven; for, as Democritus says, by the
mouth of Cicero,—
Quod est ante pedes, nemo spectat: coeli scrutantur plagas.
"No man regards what is under his feet;
They are always prying towards heaven."
But our condition will have it so, that the knowledge of what we have in
hand is as remote from us, and as much above the clouds, as that of the
stars. As Socrates says, in Plato, "That whoever meddles with philosophy
may be reproached as Thales was by the woman, that he sees nothing of that
which is before him. For every philosopher is ignorant of what his
neighbour does; aye, and of what he does himself, and is ignorant of what
they both are, whether beasts or men."
Those people, who find Sebond's arguments too weak, that are ignorant of
nothing, that govern the world, that know all,—
Qu mare compescant caus; quid temperet annum;
Stell sponte su, jussve, vagentur et errent;
Quid premat obscurum lun, quid profrt orbem;
Quid velit et posait rerum concordia discors;
"What governs ocean's tides,
And through the various year the seasons guides;
Whether the stars by their own proper force,
Or foreign power, pursue their wand'ring course;
Why shadows darken the pale queen of night;
Whence she renews her orb and spreads her light;—
What nature's jarring sympathy can mean;"
have they not sometimes in their writings sounded the difficulties they
have met with of knowing their own being? We see very well that the finger
moves, that the foot moves, that some parts assume a voluntary motion of
themselves without our consent, and that others work by our direction;
that one sort of apprehension occasions blushing; another paleness; such
an imagination works upon the spleen only, another upon the brain; one
occasions laughter, another tears; another stupefies and astonishes all
our senses, and arrests the motion of all our members; at one object the
stomach will rise, at another a member that lies something lower; but how
a spiritual impression should make such a breach into a massy and solid
subject, and the nature of the connection and contexture of these
admirable springs and movements, never yet man knew: Omnia incerta
ratione, et in natur majestate abdita. "All uncertain in reason, and
concealed in the majesty of nature," says Pliny. And St Augustin, Modus
quo corporibus adhorent spiritus.... omnino minis est, nec comprehendi ab
homine potest; et hoc ipse homo est, "The manner whereby souls adhere
to bodies is altogether wonderful, and cannot be conceived by man, and yet
this is man." And yet it is not so much as doubted; for the opinions of
men are received according to the ancient belief, by authority and upon
trust, as if it were religion and law. 'Tis received as gibberish which is
commonly spoken; this truth, with all its clutter of arguments and proofs,
is admitted as a firm and solid body, that is no more to be shaken, no
more to be judged of; on the contrary, every one, according to the best of
his talent, corroborates and fortifies this received belief with the
utmost power of his reason, which is a supple utensil, pliable, and to be
accommodated to any figure; and thus the world comes to be filled with
lies and fopperies. The reason that men doubt of divers things is that
they never examine common impressions; they do not dig to the root, where
the faults and defects lie; they only debate upon the branches; they do
not examine whether such and such a thing be true, but if it has been so
and so understood; it is not inquired into whether Galen has said any
thing to purpose, but whether he has said so or so. In truth it was very
good reason that this curb to the liberty of our judgments and that
tyranny over our opinions, should be extended to the schools and arts. The
god of scholastic knowledge is Aristotle; 'tis irreligion to question any
of his decrees, as it was those of Lucurgus at Sparta; his doctrine is a
magisterial law, which, peradventure, is as false as another. I do not
know why I should not as willingly embrace either the ideas of Plato, or
the atoms of Epicurus, or the plenum or vacuum of Leucippus and
Democritus, or the water of Thales, or the infinity of nature of
Anaximander, or the air of Diogenes, or the numbers and symmetry of
Pythagoras, or the infinity of Parmenides, or the One of Musus, or the
water and fire of Apollodorus, or the similar parts of Anaxagoras, or the
discord and friendship of Empedocles, or the fire of Heraclitus, or any
other opinion of that infinite confusion of opinions and determinations,
which this fine human reason produces by its certitude and
clearsightedness in every thing it meddles withal, as I should the opinion
of Aristotle upon this subject of the principles of natural things; which
principles he builds of three pieces—matter, form, and privation.
And what can be more vain than to make inanity itself the cause of the
production of things? Privation is a negative; of what humour could he
then make the cause and original of things that are? And yet that were not
to be controverted but for the exercise of logic; there is nothing
disputed therein to bring it into doubt, but to defend the author of the
school from foreign objections; his authority is the non-ultra, beyond
which it is not permitted to inquire.
It is very easy, upon approved foundations, to build whatever we please;
for, according to the law and ordering of this beginning, the other parts
of the structure are easily carried on without any failure. By this way we
find our reason well-grounded, and discourse at a venture; for our masters
prepossess and gain beforehand as much room in our belief as is necessary
towards concluding afterwards what they please, as geometricians do by
their granted demands, the consent and approbation we allow them giving
them wherewith to draw us to the right and left, and to whirl us about at
their pleasure. Whatever springs from these presuppositions is our master
and our God; he will take the level of his foundations so ample and so
easy that by them he may mount us up to the clouds, if he so please. In
this practice and negotiation of science we have taken the saying of
Pythagoras, "That every expert person ought to be believed in his own art"
for current pay. The logician refers the signification of words to the
grammarians; the rhetorician borrows the state of arguments from the
logician; the poet his measure from the musician: the geometrician his
proportions from the arithmetician, and the metaphysicians take physical
conjectures for their foundations; for every science has its principle
presupposed, by which human judgment is everywhere kept in check. If you
come to rush against the bar where the principal error lies, they have
presently this sentence in their mouths, "That there is no disputing with
persons who deny principles." Now men can have no principles if not
revealed to them by the divinity; of all the rest the beginning, the
middle, and the end, is nothing but dream and vapour. To those that
contend upon presupposition we must, on the contrary, presuppose to them
the same axiom upon which the dispute is. For every human presupposition
and declaration has as much authority one as another, if reason do not
make the difference. Wherefore they are all to be put into the balance,
and first the generals and those that tyrannize over us. The persuasion of
certainty is a certain testimony of folly and extreme incertainty; and
there are not a more foolish sort of men, nor that are less philosophers,
than the Philodoxes of Plato; we must inquire whether fire be hot? whether
snow be white? if there be any such things as hard or soft within our
knowledge?
And as to those answers of which they make old stories, as he that doubted
if there was any such thing as heat, whom they bid throw himself into the
fire; and he that denied the coldness of ice, whom they bid to put ice
into his bosom;—they are pitiful things, unworthy of the profession
of philosophy. If they had let us alone in our natural being, to receive
the appearance of things without us, according as they present themselves
to us by our senses, and had permitted us to follow our own natural
appetites, governed by the condition of our birth, they might then have
reason to talk at that rate; but 'tis from them we have learned to make
ourselves judges of the world; 'tis from them that we derive this fancy,
"That human reason is controller-general of all that is without and within
the roof of heaven; that comprehends every thing, that can do every thing;
by the means of which every thing is known and understood." This answer
would be good among the cannibals, who enjoy the happiness of a long,
quiet, and peaceable life, without Aristotle's precepts, and without the
knowledge of the name of physics; this answer would perhaps be of more
value and greater force than all those they borrow from their reason and
invention; of this all animals, and all where the power of the law of
nature is yet pure and simple, would be as capable as we, but as for them
they have renounced it. They need not tell us, "It is true, for you see
and feel it to be so;" they must tell me whether I really feel what I
think I do; and if I do feel it, they must then tell me why I feel it, and
how, and what; let them tell me the name, original, the parts and
junctures of heat and cold, the qualities of the agent and patient; or let
them give up their profession, which is not to admit or approve of any
thing but by the way of reason; that is their test in all sorts of essays;
but, certainly, 'tis a test full of falsity, error, weakness, and defect.
Which way can we better prove it than by itself? If we are not to believe
her when speaking of herself, she can hardly be thought fit to judge of
foreign things; if she know any thing, it must at least be her own being
and abode; she is in the soul, and either a part or an effect of it; for
true and essential reason, from which we by a false colour borrow the
name, is lodged in the bosom of the Almighty; there is her habitation and
recess; 'tis thence that she imparts her rays, when God is pleased to
impart any beam of it to mankind, as Balias issued from her father's head,
to communicate herself to the world.
Now let us see what human reason tells us of herself and of the soul, not
of the soul in general, of which almost all philosophy makes the celestial
and first bodies participants; nor of that which Thales attributed to
things which themselves are reputed inanimate, lead thereto by the
consideration of the loadstone; but of that which appertains to us, and
that we ought the best to know:—
Ignoratur enim, qu sit natura animai;
Nata sit; an, contra, nascentibus insinuetur;
Et simnl intereat nobiscum morte dirempta;
An tenebras Orci visat, vastasque lacunas,
An pecudes alias divinitns insinuet se.
"For none the nature of the soul doth know,
Whether that it be born with us, or no;
Or be infused into us at our birth,
And dies with us when we return to earth,
Or then descends to the black shades below,
Or into other animals does go."
Crates and Dicarchus were of opinion that there was no soul at all, but
that the body thus stirs by a natural motion; Plato, that it was a
substance moving of itself; Thales, a nature without repose; Aedepiades,
an exercising of the senses; Hesiod and Anaximander, a thing composed of
earth and water; Parmenides, of earth and fire; Empedocles, of blood:—
Sanguineam vomit ille animam;
"He vomits up his bloody soul."
Posidonius, Cleanthes, and Galen, that it was heat or a hot complexion—
Igneus est ollis vigor, et colestis origo;
"Their vigour of fire and of heavenly race."
Hippocrates, a spirit diffused all over the body; Varro, that it was an
air received at the mouth, heated in the lungs, moistened in the heart,
and diffused throughout the whole body; Zeno, the quintessence of the four
elements; Heraclides Ponticus, that it was the light; Zenocrates and the
Egyptians, a mobile number; the Chaldeans, a virtue without any
determinate form:—
Habitum quemdam vitalem corporis esse,
Harmoniam Grci quam dicunt.
"A certain vital habit in man's frame,
Which harmony the Grecian sages name."
Let us not forget Aristotle, who held the soul to be that which naturally
causes the body to move, which he calls entelechia, with as cold an
invention as any of the rest; for he neither speaks of the essence, nor of
the original, nor of the nature of the soul, but only takes notice of the
effect Lactantius, Seneca, and most of the Dogmatists, have confessed that
it was a thing they did not understand; after all this enumeration of
opinions, Harum sententiarum quo vera sit, Deus aliquis viderit:
"Of these opinions which is the true, let some god determine," says
Cicero. "I know by myself," says St Bernard, "how incomprehensible God is,
seeing I cannot comprehend the parts of my own being."
Heraclitus, who was of opinion that every being was full of souls and
demons, did nevertheless maintain that no one could advance so far towards
the knowledge of the soul as ever to arrive at it; so profound was the
essence of it.
Neither is there less controversy and debate about seating of it.
Hippocrates and Hierophilus place it in the ventricle of the brain;
Democritus and Aristotle throughout the whole body;—
Ut bona spe valetudo cum dicitur esse
Corporis, et non est tamen hc pars ulla ralentis;
"As when the body's health they do it call,
When of a sound man, that's no part at all."
Epicurus in the stomach;
Hic exsultat enim pavor ac metus;
Hc loca circum Ltiti mulcent.
"For this the seat of horror is and fear,
And joys in turn do likewise triumph here."
The Stoics, about and within the heart; Erasistratus, adjoining the
membrane of the epicranium; Empedocles, in the blood; as also Moses, which
was the reason why he interdicted eating the blood of beasts, because the
soul is there seated; Galen thought that every part of the body had its
soul; Strato has placed it betwixt the eyebrows; Qu facie quidem sit
animus, aut ubi habitet, ne quorendum quidem est: "What figure the
soul is of, or what part it inhabits, is not to be inquired into," says
Cicero. I very willingly deliver this author to you in his own words; for
should I alter eloquence itself? Besides, it were but a poor prize to
steal the matter of his inventions; they are neither very frequent, nor of
any great weight, and sufficiently known. But the reason why Chrysippus
argues it to be about the heart, as all the rest of that sect do, is not
to be omitted; "It is," says he, "because when we would affirm any things
we lay our hand upon our breasts; and when we would pronounce y, which
signifies I, we let the lower jaw fall towards the stomach." This place
ought not to be passed over without a remark upon the vanity of so great a
man; for besides that these considerations are infinitely light in
themselves, the last is only a proof to the Greeks that they have their
souls lodged in that part. No human judgment is so sprightly and vigilant
that it does not sometimes sleep. Why do we fear to say? The Stoics, the
fathers of human prudence, think that the soul of a man, crushed under a
ruin, long labours and strives to get out, like a mouse caught in a trap,
before it can disengage itself from the burden. Some hold that the world
was made to give bodies, by way of punishment, to the spirits fallen, by
their own fault, from the purity wherein they had been created, the first
creation having been incorporeal; and that, according as they are more or
less depraved from their spirituality, so are they more or less jocundly
or dully incorporated; and that thence proceeds all the variety of so much
created matter. But the spirit that for his punishment was invested with
the body of the sun must certainly have a very rare and particular measure
of change.
The extremities of our perquisition do all fall into astonishment and
blindness; as Plutarch says of the testimony of histories, that, according
to charts and maps, the utmost bounds of known r countries are taken up
with marshes, impenetrable forests, deserts, and uninhabitable places;
this is the reason why the most gross and childish ravings were most found
in those authors who treat of the most elevated subjects, and proceed the
furthest in them, losing themselves in their own curiosity and
presumption. The beginning and end of knowledge are equally foolish;
observe to what a pitch Plato flies in his poetic clouds; do but take
notice there of the gibberish of the gods; but what did he dream of when
he defined a man to be "a two-legged animal without feathers: giving those
who had a mind to deride him a pleasant occasion; for, having pulled a
capon alive, they went about calling it the man of Plato."
And what did the Epicureans think of, out of what simplicity did they
first imagine that their atoms that they said were bodies having
some weight, and a natural motion downwards, had made the world; till they
were put in mind, by their adversaries, that, according to this
description, it was impossible they should unite and join to one another,
their fall being so direct and perpendicular, and making so many parallel
lines throughout? Wherefore there was a necessity that they should since
add a fortuitous and sideways motion, and that they should moreover
accoutre their atoms with hooked tails, by which they might unite and
cling to one another. And even then do not those that attack them upon
this second consideration put them hardly to it? "If the atoms have by
chance formed so many sorts of figures, why did it never fall out that
they made a house or a shoe? Why at the same rate should we not believe
that an infinite number of Greek letters, strewed all over a certain
place, might fall into the contexture of the Iliad?"—"Whatever
is capable of reason," says Zeno, "is better than that which is not
capable; there is nothing better than the world; the world is therefore
capable of reason." Cotta, by this way of argumentation, makes the world a
mathematician; 'and tis also made a musician and an organist by this other
argumentation of Zeno: "The whole is more than a part; we are capable of
wisdom, and are part of the world; therefore the world is wise." There are
infinite like examples, not only of arguments that are false in
themselves, but silly ones, that do not hold in themselves, and that
accuse their authors not so much of ignorance as imprudence, in the
reproaches the philosophers dash one another in the teeth withal, upon
their dissensions in their sects and opinions.
Whoever should bundle up a lusty faggot of the fooleries of human wisdom
would produce wonders. I willingly muster up these few for a pattern, by a
certain meaning not less profitable to consider than the most sound and
moderate instructions. Let us judge by these what opinion we are to have
of man, of his sense and reason, when in these great persons that have
raised human knowledge so high, so many gross mistakes and manifest errors
are to be found.
For my part, I am apt to believe that they have treated of knowledge
casually, and like a toy, with both hands; and have contended about reason
as of a vain and frivolous instrument, setting on foot all sorts of
fancies and inventions, sometimes more sinewy, and sometimes weaker. This
same Plato, who defines man as if he were a cock, says elsewhere, after
Socrates, "That he does not, in truth, know what man is, and that he is a
member of the world the hardest to understand." By this variety and
instability of opinions, they tacitly lead us, as it were by the hand, to
this resolution of their irresolution. They profess not always to deliver
their opinions barefaced and apparent to us; they have one while disguised
them in the fabulous shadows of poetry, and at another in some other
vizor; for our imperfection carries this also along with it, that crude
meat is not always proper for our stomachs; we must dry, alter, and mix
it; they do the same; they sometimes conceal their real opinions and
judgments, and falsify them to accommodate themselves to the public use.
They will not make an open profession of ignorance, and of the imbecility
of human reason, that they may not fright children; but they sufficiently
discover it to us under the appearance of a troubled and inconstant
science.
I advised a person in Italy, who had a great mind to speak Italian, that
provided he only had a desire to make himself understood, without being
ambitious in any other respect to excel, that he should only make use of
the first word that came to the tongue's end, whether Latin, French,
Spanish, or Gascon, and that, by adding the Italian termination, he could
not fail of hitting upon some idiom of the country, either Tuscan, Roman,
Venetian, Piedmontese, or Neapolitan, and so fall in with some one of
those many forms. I say the same of Philosophy; she has so many faces, so
much variety, and has said so many things, that all our dreams and ravings
are there to be found. Human fancy can conceive nothing good or bad that
is not there: Nihil tam absurde did potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo
philosophorum. "Nothing can be said so absurd, that has not been said
before by some of the philosophers." And I am the more willing to expose
my whimsies to the public; forasmuch as, though they are spun out of
myself, and without any pattern, I know they will be found related to some
ancient humour, and some will not stick to say, "See whence he took it!"
My manners are natural, I have not called in the assistance of any
discipline to erect them; but, weak as they are, when it came into my head
to lay them open to the world's view, and that to expose them to the light
in a little more decent garb I went to adorn them with reasons and
examples, it was a wonder to myself accidentally to find them conformable
to so many philosophical discourses and examples. I never knew what
regimen my life was of till it was near worn out and spent; a new figure—an
unpremeditated and accidental philosopher.
But to return to the soul. Inasmuch as Plato has placed reason in the
brain, anger in the heart, and concupiscence in the liver; 'tis likely
that it was rather an interpretation of the movements of
the soul, than that he intended a division and separation of it, as of a
body, into several members. And the most likely of their opinions is that
'tis always a soul, that by its faculty, reasons, remembers, comprehends,
judges, desires, and exercises all its other operations by divers
instruments of the body; as the pilot guides his ship according to his
experience, one while straining or slacking the cordage, one while
hoisting the mainyard, or removing the rudder, by one and the same power
carrying on several effects; and that it is lodged in the brain; which
appears in that the wounds and accidents that touch that part do
immediately offend the faculties of the soul; and 'tis not incongruous
that it should thence diffuse itself through the other parts of the body
Medium non deserit unquam
Coeli Phoebus iter; radiis tamen omnia lustrt.
"Phoebus ne'er deviates from the zodiac's way;
Yet all things doth illustrate with his ray."
As the sun sheds from heaven its light and influence, and fills the world
with them:—
Ctera pars animas, per totum dissita corpus,
Paret, et ad numen mentis momenque movetur.
"The other part o' th' soul diffus'd all o'er
The body, does obey the reason's lore."
Some have said that there was a general soul, as it were a great body,
whence all the particular souls were extracted, and thither again return,
always restoring themselves to that universal matter:—
Deum namque ire per omnes
Terrasque, tractusque maris, columque profundum;
Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum,
Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas:
Scilicet hue reddi deinde, ac resoluta referri
Omnia; nec morti esse locum:
"For God goes forth, and spreads throughout the whole
Heaven, earth, and sea, the universal soul;
Each at its birth, from him all beings share,
Both man and brute, the breath of vital air;
To him return, and, loos'd from earthly chain,
Fly whence they sprung, and rest in God again,
Spurn at the grave, and, fearless of decay,
Dwell in high heaven, and star th' ethereal way."
Others, that they only rejoined and reunited themselves to it; others,
that they were produced from the divine substance; others, by the angels
of fire and air; others, that they were from all antiquity; and some that
they were created at the very point of time the bodies wanted them; others
make them to descend from the orb of the moon, and return thither; the
generality of the ancients believed that they were begotten from father to
son, after a like manner, and produced with all other natural things;
taking their argument from the likeness of children to their fathers;
Instillata patris virtus tibi;
Fortes creantur fortibus, et bonis;
"Thou hast thy father's virtues with his blood:
For still the brave spring from the brave and good;"
and that we see descend from fathers to their children not only bodily
marks, but moreover a resemblance of humours, complexions, and
inclinations of the soul:—
Denique cur acris violentia triste leonum
Seminium sequitur? dolus vulpibus, et fuga, cervis
A patribus datur, et patrius pavor incitt artus?
Si non certa suo quia semine seminioque
Vis animi pariter crescit cum corpore toto.
"For why should rage from the fierce lion's seed,
Or from the subtle fox's craft, proceed;
Or why the tim'rous and flying hart
His fear and trembling to his race impart;
But that a certain force of mind does grow,
And still increases as the bodies do?"
That thereupon the divine justice is grounded, punishing in the children
the faults of their fathers; forasmuch as the contagion of paternal vices
is in some sort imprinted in the soul of children, and that the ill
government of their will extends to them; moreover, that if souls had any
other derivation than a natural consequence, and that they had been some
other thins out of the body, they would retain some memory of their first
being, the natural faculties that are proper to them of discoursing,
reasoning, and remembering, being considered:—
Si in corpus nascentibus insinuatur,
Cur super anteactam tatem meminisse nequimus,
Nec vestigia gestarum rerum ulla tenemus?
"For at our birth if it infused be,
Why do we then retain no memory
Of our foregoing life, and why no more
Remember any thing we did before?"
for, to make the condition of our souls such as we would have it to be, we
must suppose them all-knowing, even in their natural simplicity and
purity; by these means they had been such, being free from the prison of
the body, as well before they entered into it, as we hope they shall be
after they are gone out of it; and from this knowledge it should follow
that they should remember, being got in the body, as Plato said, "That
what we learn is no other than a remembrance of what we knew before;" a
thing which every one by experience may maintain to be false. Forasmuch,
in the first place, as that we do not justly remember any thing but what
we have been taught, and that if the memory did purely perform its office
it would at least suggest to us something more than what we have learned.
Secondly, that which she knew being in her purity, was a true knowledge,
knowing things as they are by her divine intelligence; whereas here we
make her receive falsehood and vice when we instruct her; wherein she
cannot employ her reminiscence, that image and conception having never
been planted in her. To say that the corporal prison does in such sort
suffocate her natural faculties, that they are there utterly extinct, is
first contrary to this other belief of acknowledging her power to be so
great, and the operations of it that men sensibly perceive in this life so
admirable, as to have thereby concluded that divinity and eternity past,
and the immortality to come:—
Nam si tantopere est anirai mutata potestas,
Omnia ut actarum exciderit retinentia rerum,
Non, ut opinor, ea ab letho jam longior errat.
"For if the mind be changed to that degree
As of past things to lose all memory,
So great a change as that, I must confess,
Appears to me than death but little less."
Furthermore, 'tis here with us, and not elsewhere, that the force and
effects of the soul ought to be considered; all the rest of her
perfections are vain and useless to her; 'tis by her present condition
that all her immortality is to be rewarded and paid, and of the life of
man only that she is to render an account It had been injustice to have
stripped her of her means and powers; to have disarmed her in order, in
the time of her captivity and imprisonment in the flesh, of her weakness
and infirmity in the time wherein she was forced and compelled, to pass an
infinite and perpetual sentence and condemnation, and to insist upon the
consideration of so short a time, peradventure but an hour or two, or at
the most but a century, which has no more proportion with infinity than an
instant; in this momentary interval to ordain and definitively to
determine of her whole being; it were an unreasonable disproportion, too,
to assign an eternal recompense in consequence of so short a life. Plato,
to defend himself from this inconvenience, will have future payments
limited to the term of a hundred years, relatively to human duration; and
of us ourselves there are enough who have given them temporal limits. By
this they judged that the generation of the soul followed the common
condition of human things, as also her life, according to the opinion of
Epicurus and Democritus, which has been the most received; in consequence
of these fine appearances that they saw it bom, and that, according as the
body grew more capable, they saw it increase in vigour as the other did;
that its feebleness in infancy was very manifest, and in time its better
strength and maturity, and after that its declension and old age, and at
last its decrepitude:—
Gigni pariter cum corpore, et una
Crescere sentimus, pariterque senescere mentem.
"Souls with the bodies to be born we may
Discern, with them t' increase, with them decay."
They perceived it to be capable of divers passions, and agitated with
divers painful motions, whence it fell into lassitude and uneasiness;
capable of alteration and change, of cheerfulness, of stupidity and
languor, and subject to diseases and injuries, as the stomach or the foot;
Mentem sanari, corpus ut grum,
Ceraimus, et flecti medicin posse videmus;
"Sick minds, as well as bodies, we do see
By Med'cine's virtue oft restored to be;"
dazzled and intoxicated with the fumes of wine, jostled from her seat by
the vapours of a burning fever, laid asleep by the application of some
medicaments, and roused by others,—
Corpoream naturam animi esse necesse est,
Corporeis quoniam telis ictuque laborat;
"There must be of necessity, we find,
A nature that's corporeal of the mind,
Because we evidently see it smarts
And wounded is with shafts the body darts;"
they saw it astonished and overthrown in all its faculties through the
mere bite of a mad dog, and in that condition to have no stability of
reason, no sufficiency, no virtue, no philosophical resolution, no
resistance that could exempt it from the subjection of such accidents; the
slaver of a contemptible cur shed upon the hand of Socrates, to shake all
his wisdom and all his great and regulated imaginations, and so to
annihilate them, ad that there remained no trace of his former knowledge,—
Vis.... animal Conturbatur, et.... divisa seorsum
Disjectatur, eodem illo distracta veneno;
"The power of the soul's disturbed; and when
That once is but sequestered from her, then
By the same poison 'tis dispersed abroad;"
and this poison to find no more resistance in that great soul than in an
infant of four years old; a poison sufficient to make all philosophy, if
it were incarnate, become furious and mad; insomuch that Cato, who ever
disdained death and fortune, could not endure the sight of a
looking-glass, or of water, overwhelmed with horror and affright at the
thought of falling, by the contagion of a mad dog, into the disease called
by physicians hydrophobia:—
Vis morbi distracta per artus
Turbat agens animam, spumantes quore salso
Ventorum ut validis fervescunt viribus und.
"Throughout the limbs diffused, the fierce disease
Disturbs the soul, as in the briny seas,
The foaming waves to swell and boil we see,
Stirred by the wind's impetuosity."
Now, as to this particular, philosophy has sufficiently armed man to
encounter all other accidents either with patience, or, if the search of
that costs too dear, by an infallible defeat, in totally depriving himself
of all sentiment; but these are expedients that are only of use to a soul
being itself, and in its full power, capable of reason and deliberation;
but not at all proper for this inconvenience, where, in a philosopher, the
soul becomes the soul of a madman, troubled, overturned, and lost; which
many occasions may produce, as a too vehement agitation that any violent
passion of the soul may beget in itself; or a wound in a certain part of
the person, or vapours from the stomach, any of which may stupefy the
understanding and turn the brain.
Morbis in corporis avius errat
Spe animus; dementit enim, deliraque fatur;
Interdumque gravi lethargo fertur in altum
ternumque soporem, oculis mi tuque cadenti:
"For when the body's sick, and ill at ease,
The mind doth often share in the disease;
Wonders, grows wild, and raves, and sometimes by
A heavy and a stupid lethargy,
Is overcome and cast into a deep,
A most profound and everlasting sleep."
The philosophers, methinks, have not much touched this string, no more
than another of equal importance; they have this dilemma continually in
their mouths, to console our mortal condition: "The soul is either mortal
or immortal; if mortal, it will suffer no pain; if immortal, it will
change for the better."—They never touch the other branch, "What if
she change for the worse?" and leave to the poets the menaces of future
torments. But thereby they make themselves a good game. These are two
omissions that I often meet with in their discourses. I return to the
first.
This soul loses the use of the sovereign stoical good, so constant and so
firm. Our fine human wisdom must here yield, and give up her arms. As to
the rest, they also considered, by the vanity of human reason, that the
mixture and association of two so contrary things as the mortal and the
immortal, was unimaginable:—
Quippe etenim mortale terao jungere, et una
Consentire putare, et fungi mutua posse,
Desipere est. Quid enim diversius esse putandum est,
Aut magis inter se disjunctum discrepitansque,
Quam, mortale quod est, immortali atque perenni
Junctum, in concilio, svas tolerare procellas?
"The mortal and th' eternal, then, to blend,
And think they can pursue one common end,
Is madness: for what things more diff'rent are.
Distinct in nature, and disposed to jar?
How can it then be thought that these should bear,
When thus conjoined, of harms an equal share?"
Moreover, they perceived the soul tending towards death as well as the
body:—
Simul ovo fessa fatiscit:
"Fatigued together with the weight of years:"
which, according to Zeno, the image of sleep does sufficiently demonstrate
to us; for he looks upon it "as a fainting and fall of the soul, as well
as of the body:" Contrahi animum et quasi labi putat atque decidere:
and, what they perceived in some, that the soul maintained its force and
vigour to the last gasp of life, they attributed to the variety of
diseases, as it is observable in men at the last extremity, that some
retain one sense, and some another; one the hearing, and another the
smell, without any manner of defect or alteration; and that there is not
so universal a deprivation that some parts do not remain vigorous and
entire:—
Non alio pacto, quam si, pes cum dolet gri,
In nullo caput interea sit forte dolore.
"So, often of the gout a man complains,
Whose head is, at the same time, free from pains."
The sight of our judgment is, to truth, the same that the owl's eyes are
to the splendour of the sun, says Aristotle. By what can we better
convince him, than by so gross blindness in so apparent a light? For the
contrary opinion of the immortality of the soul, which, Cicero says, was
first introduced, according to the testimony of books at least, by
Pherecydes
Syrius, in the time of King Tullus (though some attribute it to Thales,
and others to others), 'tis the part of human science that is treated of
with the greatest doubt and
reservation. The most positive dogmatists are fain, in this point
principally, to fly to the refuge of the Academy. No one doubts what
Aristotle has established upon this subject, no more than all the ancients
in general, who handle it with a wavering belief: Rem gratissimam
promittentium magis quam probantium: "A thing more acceptable in the
promisors than the provers." He conceals himself in clouds of words of
difficult, unintelligible sense, and has left to those of his sect as
great a dispute about his judgment as about the matter itself.
Two things rendered this opinion plausible to them; one, that, without the
immortality of souls, there would be nothing whereon to ground the vain
hopes of glory, which is a consideration of wonderful
repute in the world; the other, that it is a very profitable impression,
as Plato says, that vices, when they escape the discovery and cognizance
of human justice, are still within the reach of the divine, which will
pursue them even after the death of the guilty. Man is excessively
solicitous to prolong his being, and has to the utmost of his power
provided for it; there are monuments for the conservation of the body, and
glory to preserve the name. He has employed all his wit and opinion to the
rebuilding of himself, impatient of his fortune, and to prop himself by
his inventions. The soul, by reason of its anxiety and impotence, being
unable to stand by itself, wanders up and down to seek out consolations,
hopes, and foundations, and alien circumstances, to which she adheres and
fixes; and how light or fantastic soever invention delivers them to her,
relies more willingly, and with greater assurance, upon them than upon
herself. But 'tis wonderful to observe how the most constant and obstinate
maintainers of this just and clear persuasion of the immortality of the
soul fall short, and how weak their arguments are, when they go about to
prove it by human reason: Somnia sunt non docentis, sed optantis:
"They are dreams, not of the teacher, but wisher," says one of the
ancients. By which testimony man may know that he owes the truth he
himself finds out to fortune and accident; since that even then, when it
is fallen into his hand, he has not wherewith to hold and maintain it, and
that his reason has not force to make use of it. All things produced by
our own meditation and understanding, whether true or false, are subject
to incertitude and controversy. 'Twas for the chastisement of our pride,
and for the instruction of our miserable condition and incapacity, that
God wrought the perplexity and confusion of the tower of Babel. Whatever
we undertake without his assistance, whatever we see without the lamp of
his grace, is but vanity and folly. We corrupt the very essence of truth,
which is uniform and constant, by our weakness, when fortune puts it into
our possession. What course soever man takes of himself, God still permits
it to come to the same confusion, the image whereof he so lively
represents to us in the just chastisement wherewith he crushed Nimrod's
presumption, and frustrated the vain attempt of his proud structure; Perdam
sapientiam sapientium, et prudentiam prudentium reprobabo. "I will
destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the
understanding of the prudent." The diversity of idioms and tongues, with
which he disturbed this work, what are they other than this infinite and
perpetual alteration and discordance of opinions and reasons, which
accompany and confound the vain building of human wisdom, and to very good
effect too; for what would hold us, if we had but the least grain of
knowledge? This saint has very much obliged me: Ipsa veritatis
occultatio ant humili-tatis exercitatio est, aut elationis attritio
"The very concealment of the truth is either an exercise of humility or a
quelling of presumption." To what a pitch of presumption and insolence do
we raise our blindness and folly!
But to return to my subject. It was truly very good reason that we should
be beholden to God only, and to the favour of his grace, for the truth of
so noble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of
immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beatitude. Let us
ingenuously confess that God alone has dictated it to us, and faith; for
'tis no lesson of nature and our own reason. And whoever will inquire into
his own being and power, both within and without, without this divine
privilege; whoever shall consider man impartially, and without flattery,
will see in him no efficacy or faculty that relishes of any thing but
death and earth. The more we give and confess to owe and render to God, we
do it with the greater Christianity. That which this Stoic philosopher
says he holds from the fortuitous consent of the popular voice; had it not
been better that he had held it from God? Cum de animarum otemitate
disserimus, non leve momentum apud nos habet consensus hominum aut
timentium inferos, aut colentium. Utor hc public persuasione. "When
we discourse of the immortality of souls, the consent of men that either
fear or adore the infernal powers, is of no small advantage. I make use of
this public persuasion." Now the weakness of human arguments upon this
subject is particularly manifested by the fabulous circumstances they have
superadded as consequences of this opinion, to find out of what condition
this immortality of ours was. Let us omit the Stoics, (usuram nobis
largiuntur tanquam cornicibus; diu mansuros aiunt animos; semper, negant.
"They give us a long life, as also they do to crows; they say our soul
shall continue long, but that it shall continue always they deny,") who
give to souls a life after this, but finite. The most universal and
received fancy, and that continues down to our times in various places, is
that of which they make Pythagoras the author; not that he was the
original inventor, but because it received a great deal of weight and
repute by the authority of his approbation: "That souls, at their
departure out of us, did nothing but shift from one body to another, from
a lion to a horse, from a horse to a king, continually travelling at this
rate from habitation to habitation;" and he himself said that he
remembered he had been tha-lides, since that Euphorbus, afterwards
Hermotimus, and, finally, from Pyrrhus was passed into Pythagoras; having
a memory of himself of two hundred and six years. And some have added that
these very souls sometimes mount up to heaven, and come down again:—
O pater, aime aliquas ad colum hinc ire putandum est
Sublimes animas, iterumque ad tarda reverti
Corpora? Qu lucis miseris tam dira cupido?
"O, father, is it then to be conceiv'd
That any of these spirits, so sublime,
Should hence to the celestial regions climb,
And thence return to earth to reassume
Their sluggish bodies rotting in a tomb?
For wretched life whence does such fondness come?"
Origen makes them eternally to go and come from a better to a worse
estate. The opinion that Varro mentions is that, after four hundred and
forty years' revolution, they should be reunited to their first bodies;
Chrysippus held that this would happen after a certain space of time
unknown and unlimited. Plato, who professes to have embraced this belief
from Pindar and the ancient poets, that we are to undergo infinite
vicissitudes of mutation, for which the soul is prepared, having neither
punishment nor reward in the other world but what is temporal, as its life
here is but temporal, concludes that it has a singular knowledge of the
affairs of heaven, of hell, of the world, through all which it has passed,
repassed, and made stay in several voyages, are matters for her memory.
Observe her progress elsewhere: "The soul that has lived well is reunited
to the stars to which it is assigned; that which has lived ill removes
into a woman, and if it do not there reform, is again removed into a beast
of condition suitable to its vicious manners, and shall see no end of its
punishments till it be returned to its natural constitution, and that it
has, by the force of reason, purged itself from those gross, stupid, and
elementary qualities it was polluted with." But I will not omit the
objection the Epicureans make against this transmigration from one body to
another; 'tis a pleasant one; they ask what expedient would be found out
if the number of the dying should chance to be greater than that of those
who are coming into the world. For the souls, turned out of their old
habitation, would scuffle and crowd which should first get possession of
their new lodging; and they further demand how they shall pass away their
time, whilst waiting till new quarters are made ready for them? Or, on the
contrary, if more animals should be born than die, the body, they say,
would be but in an ill condition whilst waiting for a soul to be infused
into it; and it would fall out that some bodies would die before they had
been alive.
Denique comrabia ad Veneris, partusque ferarum
Esse animas prsto, deridiculum esse videtur;
Et spectare immortales mortalia membra
Innumero numro, certareque prproperanter
Inter se, qu prima potissimaq insinueter.
"Absurd to think that whilst wild beasts beget,
Or bear their young, a thousand souls do wait,
Expect the falling body, fight and strive
Which first shall enter in and make it live."
Others have arrested the soul in the body of the deceased, with it to
animate serpents, worms, and other beasts, which are said to be bred out
of the corruption of our members, and even out of our ashes; others divide
them into two parts, the one mortal, the other immortal; others make it
corporeal, and nevertheless immortal. Some make it immortal, without
sense or knowledge. There are others, even among ourselves, who have
believed that devils were made of the souls of the damned; as Plutarch
thinks that gods were made of those that were saved; for there are few
things which that author is so positive in as he is in this; maintaining
elsewhere a doubtful and ambiguous way of expression. "We are told," says
he, "and steadfastly should believe, that the souls of virtuous men, both
according to nature and the divine justice, become saints, and from saints
demigods, and from demigods, after they are perfectly, as in sacrifices of
purgation, cleansed and purified, being delivered from all passibility and
all mortality, they become, not by any civil decree, but in real truth,
and according to all probability of reason, entire and perfect gods, in
receiving a most happy and glorious end." But who desires to see him—him,
who is yet the most sober and moderate of the whole gang of philosophers,
lay about him with greater boldness, and relate his miracles upon this
subject, I refer him to his treatise of the Moon, and of the
Demon of Socrates, where he may, as evidently as in any other place
whatever, satisfy himself that the mysteries of philosophy have many
strange things in common with those of poetry; human understanding losing
itself in attempting to sound and search all things to the bottom; even as
we, tired and worn out with a long course of life, return to infancy and
dotage. See here the fine and certain instructions which we extract from
human knowledge concerning the soul.
Neither is there less temerity in what they teach us touching our corporal
parts. Let us choose out one or two examples; for otherwise we should lose
ourselves in this vast and troubled ocean of medical errors. Let us first
know whether, at least, they agree about the matter whereof men produce
one another; for as to their first production it is no wonder if, in a
thing so high and so long since past, human understanding finds itself
puzzled and perplexed. Archelaus, the physician, whose disciple and
favourite Socrates was, according to Aristoxenus, said that both men and
beasts were made of a lacteous slime, expressed by the heat of the earth;
Pythagoras says that our seed is the foam or cream of our better blood;
Plato, that it is the distillation of the marrow of the backbone; raising
his argument from this, that that part is first sensible of being weary of
the work; Alcmeon, that it is part of the substance of the brain, and that
it is so, says he, is proved by the weakness of the eyes in those who are
immoderate in that exercise; Democritus, that it is a substance extracted
from the whole mass of the body; Epicurus, an extract from soul and body;
Aristotle, an excrement drawn from the aliment of the blood, the last
which is diffused over our members; others, that it is a blood concocted
and digested by the heat of the genitals, which they judge, by reason that
in excessive endeavours a man voids pure blood; wherein there seems to be
more likelihood, could a man extract any appearance from so infinite a
confusion. Now, to bring this seed to do its work, how many contrary
opinions do they set on foot? Aristotle and Democritus are of opinion that
women have no sperm, and that 'tis nothing but a sweat that they distil in
the heat of pleasure and motion, and that contributes nothing at all to
generation. Galen, on the contrary, and his followers, believe that
without the concurrence of seeds there can be no generation. Here are the
physicians, the philosophers, the lawyers, and divines, by the ears with
our wives about the dispute, "For what term women carry their fruit?" and
I, for my part, by the example of myself, stick with those that maintain a
woman goes eleven months with child. The world is built upon this
experience; there is no so commonplace a woman that cannot give her
judgment in all these controversies; and yet we cannot agree.
Here is enough to verify that man is no better instructed in the knowledge
of himself, in his corporal than in his spiritual part We have proposed
himself to himself, and his reason to his reason, to see what she could
say. I think I have sufficiently demonstrated how little she understands
herself in herself; and who understands not himself in himself, in what
can he? Quasi vero mensuram ullius rei possit agere, qui sui nesciat.
"As if he could understand the measure of any other thing, that knows not
his own." In earnest, Protagoras told us a pretty flam in making man the
measure of all things, that never knew so much as his own; and if it be
not he, his dignity will not permit that any other creature should have
this advantage; now he being so contrary in himself, and one judgment so
incessantly subverting another, this favourable proposition was but a
mockery, which induced us necessarily to conclude the nullity of the
compass and the compasser. When Thales reputes the knowledge of man very
difficult for man to comprehend, he at the same time gives him to
understand that all other knowledge is impossible.
You,* for whom I have taken the pains, contrary to my custom, to write so
long a discourse, will not refuse to support your Sebond by the ordinary
forms of arguing, wherewith you are every day instructed, and in this will
exercise both your wit and learning; for this last fencing trick is never
to be made use of but as an extreme remedy; 'tis a desperate thrust,
wherein you are to quit your own arms to make your adversary abandon his;
and a secret sleight, which must be very rarely, and then very reservedly,
put in practice. 'Tis great temerity to lose yourself that you may destroy
another; you must not die to be revenged, as Gobrias did; for, being
closely grappled in combat with a lord of Persia, Darius coming in sword
in hand, and fearing to strike lest he should kill Gobrias, he called out
to him boldly to fall on,
* The author, as we have already mentioned, is addressing
Margaret de Valois.
though he should run them both through at once. I have known desperate
weapons, and conditions of single combat, and wherein he that offered them
put himself and his adversary upon terms of inevitable death to them both,
censured for unjust. The Portuguese, in the Indian Sea, took certain Turks
prisoners, who, impatient of their captivity, resolved, and it succeeded,
by striking the nails of the ship one against another, and making a spark
to fall into the barrels of powder that were set in the place where they
were guarded, to blow up and reduce themselves, their masters, and the
vessel to ashes. We here touch the out-plate and utmost limits of
sciences, wherein the extremity is vicious, as in virtue. Keep yourselves
in the common road; it is not good to be so subtle and cunning. Remember
the Tuscan proverb:—
Chi troppo s'assottiglia, si scavezza.
"Who makes himself too wise, becomes a fool."
I advise you that, in all your opinions and discourses, as well as in your
manners and all other things, you keep yourself moderate and temperate,
and avoid novelty; I am an enemy to all extravagant ways. You, who by the
authority of your grandeur, and yet more by the advantages which those
qualities give you that are more your own, may with the twinkle of an eye
command whom you please, ought to have given this charge to some one who
made profession of letters, who might after a better manner have proved
and illustrated these things to you. But here is as much as you will stand
in need of.
Epicurus said of the laws, "That the worst were so necessary for us that
without them men would devour one another." And Plato affirms, "That
without laws we should live like beasts." Our wit is a wandering,
dangerous, and temerarious utensil; it is hard to couple any order or
measure to it; in those of our own time, who are endued with any rare
excellence above others, or any extraordinary vivacity of understanding,
we see them almost all lash out into licentiousness of opinions and
manners; and 'tis almost a miracle to find one temperate and sociable.
'Tis all the reason in the world to limit human wit within the strictest
limits imaginable; in study, as in all the rest, we ought to have its
steps and advances numbered and fixed, and that the limits of its
inquisition be bounded by art. It is curbed and fettered by religions,
laws, customs, sciences, precepts, mortal and immortal penalties. And yet
we see that it escapes from all these bonds by its volubility and
dissolution; *tis a vain body which has nothing to lay hold on or to
seize; a various and difform body, incapable of being either bound or
held. In earnest, there are few souls so regular, firm, and well
descended, as are to be trusted with their own conduct, and that can with
moderation, and without temerity, sail in the liberty of their own
judgments, beyond the common and received opinions; *tis more expedient to
put them under pupilage. Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor,
if he knows not how to use it discreetly; and there is not a beast to whom
a headboard is more justly to be given, to keep his looks down and before
his feet, and to hinder him from wandering here and there out of the
tracks which custom and the laws have laid before him. And therefore it
will be better for you to keep yourself in the beaten path, let it be what
it will, than to fly out at a venture with this unbridled liberty. But if
any of these new doctors will pretend to be ingenious in your presence, at
the expense both of your soul and his own, to avoid this dangerous plague,
which is every day laid in your way to infect you, this preservative, in
the extremest necessity, will prevent the danger and hinder the contagion
of this poison from offending either you or your company.
The liberty, then, and frolic forwardness of these ancient wits produced
in philosophy and human sciences several sects of different opinions,
every one undertaking to judge and make choice of what he would stick to
and maintain. But now that men go all one way, Qui certis quibusdam
destinatisque sententiis addicti et consecrati sunt, ut etiam, qu non
probant, cogantur defendere, "Who are so tied and obliged to certain
opinions that they are bound to defend even those they do not approve,"
and that we receive the arts by civil authority and decree, so that the
schools have but one pattern, and a like circumscribed institution and
discipline, we no more take notice what the coin weighs, and is really
worth, but every one receives it according to the estimate that common
approbation and use puts upon it; the alloy is not questioned, but how
much it is current for. In like manner all things pass; we take physic as
we do geometry; and tricks of hocus-pocus, enchantments, and love-spells,
the correspondence of the souls of the dead, prognostications,
domifications, and even this ridiculous pursuit of the philosophers'
stone, all things pass for current pay, without any manner of scruple or
contradiction. We need to know no more but that Mars' house is in the
middle of the triangle of the hand, that of Venus in the thumb, and that
of Mercury in the little finger; that when the table-line cuts the
tubercle of the forefinger 'tis a sign of cruelty, that when it falls
short of the middle finger, and that the natural median-line makes an
angle with the vital in the same side, 'tis a sign of a miserable death;
that if in a woman the natural line be open, and does not close the angle
with the vital, this denotes that she shall not be very chaste. I leave
you to judge whether a man qualified with such knowledge may not pass with
reputation and esteem in all companies.
Theophrastus said that human knowledge, guided by the senses, might judge
of the causes of things to a certain degree; but that being arrived to
first and extreme causes, it must stop short and retire, by reason either
of its own infirmity or the difficulty of things. 'Tis a moderate and
gentle opinion, that our own understandings may conduct us to the
knowledge of some things, and that it has certain measures of power,
beyond which 'tis temerity to employ it; this opinion is plausible, and
introduced by men of well composed minds, but 'tis hard to limit our wit,
which is curious and greedy, and will no more stop at a thousand than at
fifty paces; having experimentally found that, wherein one has failed, the
other has hit, and that what was unknown to one age, the age following has
explained; and that arts and sciences are not cast in a mould, but are
formed and perfected by degrees, by often handling and polishing, as bears
leisurely lick their cubs into form; what my force cannot discover, I do
not yet desist to sound and to try; and by handling and kneading this new
matter over and over again, by turning and heating it, I lay open to him
that shall succeed me, a kind of facility to enjoy it more at his ease,
and make it more maniable and supple for him,
Ut hymettia sole
Cera remollescit, tractataque poll ice multas
Vertitur in facies, ipsoque fit utilis usu;
"As wax doth softer in the sun become,
And, tempered 'twixt the finger and the thumb,
Will varions forms, and several shapes admit,
Till for the present use 'tis rendered fit;"
as much will the second do for the third; which is the cause that the
difficulty ought not to make me despair, and my own incapacity as little;
for 'tis nothing but my own.
Man is as capable of all things as of some; and if he confesses, as
Theophrastus says, the ignorance of first causes, let him at once
surrender all the rest of his knowledge; if he is defective in foundation,
his reason is aground; disputation and inquiry have no other aim nor stop
but principles; if this aim do not stop his career, he runs into an
infinite irresolution. Non potest aliud alio magis minusve comprehendi,
quoniam omnium rerum una est dejinitio comprehendendi:
"One thing can no more or less be comprehended than another, because the
definition of comprehending all things is the same." Now 'tis very likely
that, if the soul knew any thing, it would in the first place know itself;
and if it knew any thing out of itself, it would be its own body and case,
before any thing else. If we see the gods of physic to this very day
debating about our anatomy,
Mulciber in Trojam, pro Troj stabat Apollo;
"Vulcan against, for Troy Apollo stood;"
when are we to expect that they will be agreed? We are nearer neighbours
to ourselves than whiteness to snow, or weight to stones. If man do not
know himself, how should he know his force and functions? It is not,
perhaps, that we have not some real knowledge in us; but 'tis by chance;
forasmuch as errors are received into our soul by the same way, after the
same manner, and by the same conduct, it has not wherewithal to
distinguish them, nor wherewithal to choose the truth from falsehood.
The Academics admitted a certain partiality of judgment, and thought it
too crude to say that it was not more likely to say that snow was white
than black; and that we were no more assured of the motion of a stone,
thrown by the hand, than of that of the eighth sphere. And to avoid this
difficulty and strangeness, that can in truth hardly lodge in our
imagination, though they concluded that we were in no sort capable of
knowledge, and that truth is engulfed in so profound an abyss as is not to
be penetrated by human sight; yet they acknowledged some things to be more
likely than others, and received into their judgment this faculty, that
they had a power to incline to one appearance more than another, they
allowed him this propension, interdicting all resolution. The Pyrrhonian
opinion is more bold, and also somewhat more likely; for this academic
inclination, and this propension to one proposition rather than another,
what is it other than a recognition of some more apparent truth in this
than in that? If our understanding be capable of the form, lineaments,
port, and face of truth, it might as well see it entire as by halves,
springing and imperfect This appearance of likelihood, which makes them
rather take the left hand than the right, augments it; multiply this ounce
of verisimilitude that turns the scales to a hundred, to a thousand,
ounces; it will happen in the end that the balance will itself end the
controversy, and determine one choice, one entire truth. But why do they
suffer themselves to incline to and be swayed by verisimilitude, if they
know not the truth? How should they know the similitude of that whereof
they do not know the essence? Either we can absolutely judge, or
absolutely we cannot If our intellectual and sensible faculties are
without foot or foundation, if they only pull and drive, 'tis to no
purpose that we suffer our judgments to be carried away with any part of
their operation, what appearance soever they may seem to present us; and
the surest and most happy seat of our understanding would be that where it
kept itself temperate, upright, and inflexible, without tottering, or
without agitation: Inter visa, vera aut falsa, ad animi assensum, nihil
interest: "Amongst things that seem, whether true or false, it
signifies nothing to the assent of the mind." That things do not lodge in
us in their form and essence, and do not there make their entry by their
own force and authority, we sufficiently see; because, if it were so, we
should receive them after the same manner; wine would have the same relish
with the sick as with the healthful; he who has his finger chapt or
benumbed would find the same hardness in wood or iron that he handles that
another does; foreign subjects then surrender themselves to our mercy, and
are seated in us as we please. Now if on our part we received any thing
without alteration, if human grasp were capable and strong enough to seize
on truth by our own means, these means being common to all men, this truth
would be conveyed from hand to hand, from one to another; and at least
there would be some one thing to be found in the world, amongst so many as
there are, that would be believed by men with an universal consent; but
this, that there is no one proposition that is not debated and
controverted amongst us, or that may not be, makes it very manifest that
our natural judgment does not very clearly discern what it embraces; for
my judgment cannot make my companions approve of what it approves; which
is a sign that I seized it by some other means than by a natural power
that is in me and in all other men.
Let us lay aside this infinite confusion of opinions, which we see even
amongst the philosophers themselves, and this perpetual and universal
dispute about the knowledge of things; for this is truly presupposed, that
men, I mean the most knowing, the best bom, and of the best parts, are not
agreed about any one thing, not that heaven is over our heads; for they
that doubt of every thing, do also doubt of that; and they who deny that
we are able to comprehend any thing, say that we have not comprehended
that the heaven is over our heads, and these two opinions are, without
comparison, the stronger in number.
Besides this infinite diversity and division, through the trouble that our
judgment gives ourselves, and the incertainty that every one is sensible
of in himself, 'tis easy to perceive that its seat is very unstable and
insecure. How variously do we judge of things?—How often do we alter
our opinions? What I hold and believe to-day I hold and believe with my
whole belief; all my instruments and engines seize and take hold of this
opinion, and become responsible to me for it, at least as much as in them
lies; I could not embrace nor conserve any truth with greater confidence
and assurance than I do this; I am wholly and entirely possessed with it;
but has it not befallen me, not only once, but a hundred, a thousand
times, every day, to have embraced some other thing with all the same
instruments, and in the same condition, which I have since judged to be
false? A man must at least become wise at his own expense; if I have often
found myself betrayed under this colour; if my touch proves commonly
false, and my balance unequal and unjust, what assurance can I now have
more than at other times? Is it not stupidity and madness to suffer myself
to be so often deceived by my guide? Nevertheless, let fortune remove and
shift us five hundred times from place to place, let her do nothing but
incessantly empty and fill into our belief, as into a vessel, other and
other opinions; yet still the present and the last is the certain and
infallible one; for this we must abandon goods, honour, life, health, and
all.
Posterior.... res ilia reperta
Perdit, et immutat sensus ad pristina qnqne.
"The last things we find out are always best,
And make us to disrelish all the rest."
Whatever is preached to us, and whatever we learn, we should still
remember that it is man that gives and man that receives; 'tis a mortal
hand that presents it to us; 'tis a mortal hand that accepts it The things
that come to us from heaven have the sole right and authority of
persuasion, the sole mark of truth; which also we do not see with our own
eyes, nor receive by our own means; that great and sacred image could not
abide in so wretched a habitation if God for this end did not prepare it,
if God did not by his particular and supernatural grace and favour fortify
and reform it. At least our frail and defective condition ought to make us
behave ourselves with more reservedness and moderation in our innovations
and changes; we ought to remember that, whatever we receive into the
understanding, we often receive things that are false, and that it is by
the same instruments that so often give themselves the lie and are so
often deceived.
Now it is no wonder they should so often contradict themselves, being so
easy to be turned and swayed by very light occurrences. It is certain that
our apprehensions, our judgment, and the faculties of the soul in general,
suffer according to the movements and alterations of the body, which
alterations are continual. Are not our minds more sprightly, ou memories
more prompt and quick, and our thoughts more lively, in health than in
sickness? Do not joy and gayety make us receive subjects that present
themselves to our souls quite otherwise than care and melancholy? Do you
believe that Catullus's verses, or those of Sappho, please an old doting
miser as they do a vigorous, amorous young man? Cleomenes, the son of
Anexandridas, being sick, his friends reproached him that he had humours
and whimsies that were new and unaccustomed; "I believe it," said he;
"neither am I the same man now as when I am in health; being now another
person, my opinions and fancies are also other than they were before." In
our courts of justice this word is much in use, which is spoken of
criminals when they find the judges in a good humour, gentle, and mild, Gaudeat
de bon fortun ; "Let him rejoice in his good fortune;" for it is
most certain that men's judgments are sometimes more prone to
condemnation, more sharp and severe, and at others more facile, easy, and
inclined to excuse; he that carries with him from his house the pain of
the gout, jealousy, or theft by his man, having his whole soul possessed
with anger, it is not to be doubted but that his judgment will lean this
way. That venerable senate of the Areopagites used to hear and determine
by night, for fear lest the sight of the parties might corrupt their
justice. The very air itself, and the serenity of heaven, will cause some
mutation in us, according to these verses in Cicero:—
Tales sunt hominnm mentes, quali pater ipse
Jupiter auctifer lustravit lampade terras.
"Men's minds are influenc'd by th' external air,
Dark or serene, as days are foul or fair."
'Tis not only fevers, debauches, and great accidents, that overthrow our
judgments,—the least things in the world will do it; and we are not
to doubt, though we may not be sensible of it, that if a continued fever
can overwhelm the soul, a tertian will in some proportionate measure alter
it; if an apoplexy can stupefy and totally extinguish the sight of our
understanding, we are not to doubt but that a great cold will dazzle it;
and consequently there is hardly one single hour in a man's whole life
wherein our judgment is in its due place and right condition, our bodies
being subject to so many continual mutations, and stuffed with so many
several sorts of springs, that I believe the physicians, that it is hard
but that there must be always some one or other out of order.
As to what remains, this malady does not very easily discover itself,
unless it be extreme and past remedy; forasmuch as reason goes always
lame, halting, and that too as well with falsehood as with truth; and
therefore 'tis hard to discover her deviations and mistakes. I always call
that appearance of meditation which every one forges in himself reason;
this reason, of the condition of which there may be a hundred contrary
ones about one and the same subject, is an instrument of lead and of wax,
ductile, pliable, and accommodate to all sorts of biases, and to all
measures; so that nothing remains but the art and skill how to turn and
mould it. How uprightly soever a judge may mean, if he does not look well
to himself, which few care to do, his inclination to friendship, to
relationship, to beauty or revenge, and not only things of that weight,
but even the fortuitous instinct that makes us favour one thing more than
another, and that, without reason's permission, puts the choice upon us in
two equal subjects, or some shadow of like vanity, may insensibly
insinuate into his judgment the recommendation or disfavour of a cause,
and make the balance dip.
I, that watch myself as narrowly as I can, and that have my eyes
continually bent upon myself, like one that has no great business to do
elsewhere,
Quis sub Arcto Rex gelid metuatur or,
Quid Tyridatem terreat, unice Securus,
"I care not whom the northern clime reveres,
Or what's the king that Tyridates fears,"
dare hardly tell the vanity and weakness I find in myself My foot is so
unstable and unsteady, I find myself so apt to totter and reel, and my
sight so disordered, that, fasting, I am quite another man than when full;
if health and a fair day smile upon me, I am a very affable, good-natured
man; if a corn trouble my toe, I am sullen, out of humour, and not to be
seen. The same pace of a horse seems to me one while hard, and another
easy; and the same way one while shorter, and another longer; and the same
form one while more, another less agreeable: I am one while for doing
every thing, and another for doing nothing at all; and what pleases me now
would be a trouble to me at another time. I have a thousand senseless and
casual actions within myself; either I am possessed by melancholy or
swayed by choler; now by its own private authority sadness predominates in
me, and by and by, I am as merry as a cricket. When I take a book in hand
I have then discovered admirable graces in such and such passages, and
such as have struck my soul; let me light upon them at another time, I may
turn and toss, tumble and rattle the leaves to no purpose; 'tis then to me
an inform and undiscovered mass. Even in my own writings I do not always
find the air of my first fancy; I know not what I would have said, and am
often put to it to correct and pump for a new sense, because I have lost
the first that was better. I do nothing but go and come; my judgment does
not always advance—it floats and roams:—
Velut minuta magno
Deprensa navis in mari vesaniente vento.
"Like a small bark that's tost upon the main.
When winds tempestuous heave the liquid plain."
Very often, as I am apt to do, having for exercise taken to maintain an
opinion contrary to my own, my mind, bending and applying itself that way,
does so engage me that way that I no more discern the reason of my former
belief, and forsake it I am, as it were, misled by the side to which I
incline, be it what it will, and carried away by my own weight. Every one
almost would say the same of himself, if he considered himself as I do.
Preachers very well know that the emotions which steal upon them in
speaking animate them towards belief; and that in passion we are more warm
in the defence of our proposition, take ourselves a deeper impression of
it, and embrace it with greater vehemence and approbation than we do in
our colder and more temperate state. You only give your counsel a simple
brief of your cause; he returns you a dubious and uncertain answer, by
which you find him indifferent which side he takes. Have you feed him well
that he may relish it the better, does he begin to be really concerned,
and do you find him interested and zealous in your quarrel? his reason and
learning will by degrees grow hot in your cause; behold an apparent and
undoubted truth presents itself to his understanding; he discovers a new
light in your business, and does in good earnest believe and persuade
himself that it is so. Nay, I do not know whether the ardour that springs
from spite and obstinacy, against the power and violence of the magistrate
and danger, or the interest of reputation, may not have made some men,
even at the stake, maintain the opinion for which, at liberty, and amongst
friends, they would not have burned a finger. The shocks and jostles that
the soul receives from the body's passions can do much in it, but its own
can do a great deal more; to which it is so subjected that perhaps it may
be made good that it has no other pace and motion but from the breath of
those winds, without the agitation of which it would be becalmed and
without action, like a ship in the middle of the sea, to which the winds
hare denied their assistance. And whoever should maintain this, siding
with the Peripatetics, would do us no great wrong, seeing it is very well
known that the greatest and most noble actions of the soul proceed from,
and stand in need of, this impulse of the passions. Valour, they say,
cannot be perfect without the assistance of anger; Semper Ajax fortis,
fortissimus tamen in furore; "Ajax was always brave, but most when in
a fury:" neither do we encounter the wicked and the enemy vigorously
enough if we be not angry; nay, the advocate, it is said, is to inspire
the judges with indignation, to obtain justice.
Irregular desires moved Themistocles, and Demosthenes, and have pushed on
the philosophers to watching, fasting, and pilgrimages; and lead us to
honour, learning, and health, which are all very useful ends. And this
meanness of soul, in suffering anxiety and trouble, serves to breed
remorse and repentance in the conscience, and to make us sensible of the
scourge of God, and politic correction for the chastisement of our
offences; compassion is a spur to clemency; and the prudence of preserving
and governing ourselves is roused by our fear; and how many brave actions
by ambition! how many by presumption! In short, there is no brave and
spiritual virtue without some irregular agitation. May not this be one of
the reasons that moved the Epicureans to discharge God from all care and
solicitude of our affairs; because even the effects of his goodness could
not be exercised in our behalf without disturbing its repose, by the means
of passions which are so many spurs and instruments pricking on the soul
to virtuous actions; or have they thought otherwise, and taken them for
tempests, that shamefully hurry the soul from her tranquillity? Ut
maris tranquillitas intettigitur, null, ne minima quidem, aura fluctus
commovente: Sic animi quietus et placatus status cemitur, quum perturbatis
nulla est, qua moveri queat.. "As it is understood to be a calm sea
when there is not the least breath of air stirring; so the state of the
soul is discerned to be quiet and appeased when there is no perturbation
to move it."
What varieties of sense and reason, what contrariety of imaginations does
the diversity of our passions inspire us with! What assurance then can we
take of a thing so mobile and unstable, subject by its condition to the
dominion of trouble, and never going other than a forced and borrowed
pace? If our judgment be in the power even of sickness and perturbation;
if it be from folly and rashness that it is to receive the impression of
things, what security can we expect from it?
Is it not a great boldness in philosophy to believe that men perform the
greatest actions, and nearest approaching the Divinity, when they are
furious, mad, and beside themselves? We better ourselves by the privation
of our reason, and drilling it. The two natural ways to enter into the
cabinet of the gods, and there to foresee the course of destiny, are fury
and sleep.
This is pleasant to consider; by the dislocation that passions cause in
our reason, we become virtuous; by its extirpation, occasioned by madness
or the image of death, we become diviners and prophets. I was never so
willing to believe philosophy in any thing as this. 'Tis a pure enthusiasm
wherewith sacred truth has inspired the spirit of philosophy, which makes
it confess, contrary to its own proposition, that the most calm, composed,
and healthful estate ef the soul that philosophy can seat it in is not its
best condition; our waking is more a sleep than sleep itself, our wisdom
less wise than folly; our dreams are worth more than our meditation; and
the worst place we can take is in ourselves. But does not philosophy think
that we are wise enough to consider that the voice that the spirit utters,
when dismissed from man, so clear-sighted, so great, and so perfect, and
whilst it is in man so terrestrial, ignorant, and dark, is a voice
proceeding from the spirit of dark, terrestrial, and ignorant man, and for
this reason a voice not to be trusted and believed?
I, being of a soft and heavy complexion, have no great experience of these
vehement agitations, the most of which surprise the soul on a sudden,
without giving it leisure to recollect itself. But the passion that is
said to be produced by idleness in the hearts of young men, though it
proceed leisurely, and with a measured progress, does evidently manifest,
to those who have tried to oppose its power, the violence our judgment
suffers in this alteration and conversion. I have formerly attempted to
withstand and repel it; for I am so far from being one of those that
invite vices, that I do not so much as follow them, if they do not haul me
along; I perceived it to spring, grow, and increase, in spite of my
resistance; and at last, living and seeing as I was, wholly to seize and
possess me. So that, as if rousing from drunkenness, the images of things
began to appear to me quite other than they used to be; I evidently saw
the advantages of the object I desired, grow, and increase, and expand by
the influence of my imagination, and the difficulties of my attempt to
grow more easy and smooth; and both my reason and conscience to be laid
aside; but this fire being evaporated in an instant, as from a flash of
lightning, I was aware that my soul resumed another kind of sight, another
state, and another judgment; the difficulties of retreat appeared great
and invincible, and the same things had quite another taste and aspect
than the heat of desire had presented them to me; which of the two most
truly? Pyrrho knows nothing about it. We are never without sickness. Agues
have their hot and cold fits; from the effects of an ardent passion we
fall again to shivering; as much as I had advanced, so much I retired:—
Qualis ubi alterno procurrens gurgite pontus,
Nunc ruit ad terras, scopulosque superjacit undam
Spumeus, extremamque sinu perfundit arenam;
Nunc rapidus retro, atque stu revoluta resorbens
Saxa, fugit, littusque vado labente relihquit.
"So swelling surges, with a thundering roar,
Driv'n on each others' backs, insult the shore,
Bound o'er the rocks, encroach upon the land,
And far upon the beach heave up the sand;
Then backward rapidly they take their way,
Repulsed from upper ground, and seek the sea."
Now, from the knowledge of this volubility of mine, I have accidentally
begot in myself a certain constancy of opinions, and have not much altered
those that were first and natural in me; for what appearance soever there
may be in novelty, I do not easily change, for fear of losing by the
bargain; and, as I am not capable of choosing, I take other men's choice,
and keep myself in the station wherein God has placed me; I could not
otherwise keep myself from perpetual rolling. Thus have I, by the grace of
God, preserved myself entire, without anxiety or trouble of conscience, in
the ancient faith of our religion, amidst so many sects and divisions as
our age has produced. The writings of the ancients, the best authors I
mean, being full and solid, tempt and carry me which way almost they will;
he that I am reading seems always to have the most force; and I find that
every one in his turn is in the right, though they contradict one another.
The facility that good wits have of rendering every thing likely they
would recommend, and that nothing is so strange to which they do not
undertake to give colour enough to deceive such simplicity as mine, this
evidently shows the weakness of their testimony. The heavens and the stars
have been three thousand years in motion; all the world were of that
belief till Cleanthes the Samian, or, according to Theophrastus, Nicetas
of Syracuse, took it into his head to maintain that it was the earth that
moved, turning about its axis by the oblique circle of the zodiac. And
Copernicus has in our times so grounded this doctrine that it very
regularly serves to all astrological consequences; what use can we make of
this, if not that we ought not much to care which is the true opinion? And
who knows but that a third, a thousand years hence, may over throw the two
former.
Sic volvenda tas commutt tempora rerum:
Quod fuit in pretio, fit nullo denique honore;
Porro aliud succedit, et e contemptibus exit,
Inque dies magis appetitur, floretque repertum
Laudibus, et miro est mortales inter honore.
"Thus ev'ry thing is changed in course of time,
What now is valued passes soon its prime;
To which some other thing, despised before,
Succeeds, and grows in vogue still more and more;
And once received, too faint all praises seem,
So highly it is rais'd in men's esteem."
So that when any new doctrine presents itself to us, we have great reason
to mistrust, and to consider that, before that was set on foot, the
contrary had been generally received; and that, as that has been
overthrown by this, a third invention, in time to come, may start up which
may damn the second. Before the principles that Aristotle introduced were
in reputation, other principles contented human reason, as these satisfy
us now. What patent have these people, what particular privilege, that the
career of our invention must be stopped by them, and that the possession
of our whole future belief should belong to them? They are no more exempt
from being thrust out of doors than their predecessors were. When any one
presses me with a new argument, I ought to believe that what I cannot
answer another can; for to believe all likelihoods that a man cannot
confute is great simplicity; it would by that means come to pass that all
the vulgar (and we are all of the vulgar) would have their belief as
tumable as a weathercock; for their souls, being so easy to be imposed
upon, and without any resistance, must of force incessantly receive other
and other impressions, the last still effacing all footsteps of that which
went before. He that finds himself weak ought to answer, according to
practice, that he will speak with his counsel, or refer himself to the
wiser, from whom he received his instruction. How long is it that physic
has been practised in the world? 'Tis said that a new comer, called
Paracelsus, changes and overthrows the whole order of ancient rules, and
maintains that, till now, it has been of no other use but to kill men. I
believe he will easily make this good, but I do not think it were wisdom
to venture my life in making trial of his own experience. We are not to
believe every one, says the precept, because every one can say all things.
A man of this profession of novelties and physical reformations not long
since told me that all the ancients were notoriously mistaken in the
nature and motions of the winds, which he would evidently demonstrate to
me if I would give him the hearing. After I had with some patience heard
his arguments, which were all full of likelihood of truth: "What, then,"
said I, "did those that sailed according to Theophrastus make way
westward, when they had the prow towards the east? did they go sideward or
backward?" "That's fortune," answered he, "but so it is that they were
mistaken." I replied that I had rather follow effects than reason. Now
these are things that often interfere with one another, and I have been
told that in geometry (which pretends to have gained the highest point of
certainty of all science) there are inevitable demonstrations found which
subvert the truth of all experience; as Jacques Pelletier told me, at my
own house, that he had found out two lines stretching themselves one
towards the other to meet, which nevertheless he affirmed, though extended
to infinity, could never arrive to touch one another. And the Pyrrhonians
make no other use of their arguments and their reason than to ruin the
appearance of experience; and 'tis a wonder how far the suppleness of our
reason has followed them in this design of controverting the evidence of
effects; for they affirm that we do not move, that we do not speak, and
that there is neither weight nor heat, with the same force of argument
that we affirm the most likely things. Ptolemy, who was a great man, had
established the bounds of this world of ours; all the ancient philosophers
thought they had the measure of it, excepting some remote isles that might
escape their knowledge; it had been Pyrrhonism, a thousand years ago, to
doubt the science of cosmography, and the opinions that every one had
received from it; it was heresy to admit the antipodes; and behold, in
this age of ours, there is an infinite extent of terra firma discovered,
not an island or single country, but a division of the world, nearly equal
in greatness to that we knew before. The geographers of our time stick not
to assure us that now all is found; all is seen:—
Nam quod adest prosto, placet, et pollere videtur;
"What's present pleases, and appears the best;"
but it remains to be seen whether, as Ptolemy was therein formerly
deceived upon the foundation of his reason, it were not very foolish to
trust now in what these people say? And whether it is not more likely that
this great body, which we call the world, is not quite another thing than
what we imagine.
Plato says that it changes countenance in all respects; that the heavens,
the stars, and the sun, have all of them sometimes motions retrograde to
what we see, changing east into west The Egyptian priests told Herodotus
that from the time of their first king, which was eleven thousand and odd
years since (and they showed him the effigies of all their kings in
statues taken from the life), the sun had four times altered his course;
that the sea and the earth did alternately change into one another; that
the beginning of the world is undetermined; Aristotle and Cicero both say
the same; and some amongst us are of opinion that it has been from all
eternity, is mortal, and renewed again by several vicissitudes; calling
Solomon and Isaiah to witness; to evade those oppositions, that God has
once been a creator without a creature; that he has had nothing to do,
that he got rid of that idleness by putting his hand to this work; and
that consequently he is subject to change. In the most famous of the Greek
schools the world is taken for a god, made by another god greater than he,
and composed of a body, and a soul fixed in his centre, and dilating
himself by musical numbers to his circumference; divine, infinitely happy,
and infinitely great, infinitely wise and eternal; in him are other gods,
the sea, the earth, the stars, who entertain one another with an
harmonious and perpetual agitation and divine dance, sometimes meeting,
sometimes retiring from one another; concealing and discovering
themselves; changing their order, one while before, and another behind.
Heraclitus was positive that the world was composed of fire; and, by the
order of destiny, was one day to be enflamed and consumed in fire, and
then to be again renewed. And Apuleius says of men: Sigillatim
mortales, cunctim perpetui. "That they are mortal in particular, and
immortal in general." Alexander writ to his mother the narration of an
Egyptian priest, drawn from their monuments, testifying the antiquity of
that nation to be infinite, and comprising the birth and progress of other
countries. Cicero and Diodorus say that in their time the Chaldees kept a
register of four hundred thousand and odd years, Aristotle, Pliny, and
others, that Zoroaster flourished six thousand years before Plato's time.
Plato says that they of the city of Sais have records in writing of eight
thousand years; and that the city of Athens was built a thousand years
before the said city of Sais; Epicurus, that at the same time things are
here in the posture we see, they are alike and in the same manner in
several other worlds; which he would have delivered with greater
assurance, had he seen the similitude and concordance of the new
discovered world of the West Indies with ours, present and past, in so
many strange examples.
In earnest, considering what is come to our knowledge from the course of
this terrestrial polity, I have often wondered to see in so vast a
distance of places and times such a concurrence of so great a number of
popular and wild opinions, and of savage manners and beliefs, which by no
means seem to proceed from our natural meditation. The human mind is a
great worker of miracles! But this relation has, moreover, I know not what
of extraordinary in it; 'tis found to be in names, also, and a thousand
other things; for they found nations there (that, for aught we know, never
heard of us) where circumcision was in use; where there were states and
great civil governments maintained by women only, without men; where our
fasts and Lent were represented, to which was added abstinence from women;
where our crosses were several ways in repute; here they were made use of
to honour and adorn their sepultures, there they were erected, and
particularly that of St Andrew, to protect themselves from nocturnal
visions, and to lay upon the cradles of infants against enchantments;
elsewhere there was found one of wood, of very great height, which was
adored for the god of rain, and this a great way in the interior; there
was seen an express image of our penance priests, the use of mitres, the
celibacy of priests, the art of divination by the entrails of sacrificed
beasts, abstinence from all sorts of flesh and fish in their diet, the
manner of priests officiating in a particular and not a vulgar language;
and this fancy, that the first god was driven away by a second, his
younger brother; that they were created with all sorts of necessaries and
conveniences, which have since been in a degree taken from them for their
sins, their territory changed, and their natural condition made worse;
that they were of old overwhelmed by the inundation of water from heaven;
that but few families escaped, who retired into caves on high mountains,
the mouths of which they stopped so that the waters could not get in,
having shut up, together with themselves, several sorts of animals; that
when they perceived the rain to cease they sent out dogs, which returning
clean and wet, they judged that the water was not much abated; afterwards
sending out others, and seeing them return dirty, they issued out to
repeople the world, which they found only full of serpents. In one place
we met with the belief of a day of judgment; insomuch that they were
marvellously displeased at the Spaniards for discomposing the bones of the
dead, in rifling the sepultures for riches, saying that those bones so
disordered could not easily rejoin; the traffic by exchange, and no other
way; fairs and markets for that end; dwarfs and deformed people for the
ornament of the tables of princes; the use of falconry, according to the
nature of their hawks; tyrannical subsidies; nicety in gardens; dancing,
tumbling tricks, music of instruments, coats of arms, tennis-courts, dice
and lotteries, wherein they are sometimes so eager and hot as to stake
themselves and their liberty; physic, no otherwise than by charms; the way
of writing in cypher; the belief of only one first man, the father of all
nations; the adoration of one God, who formerly lived a man in perfect
virginity, fasting, and penitence, preaching the laws of nature, and the
ceremonies of religion, and that vanished from the world without a natural
death; the theory of giants; the custom of making themselves drunk with
their beverages, and drinking to the utmost; religious ornaments painted
with bones and dead men's skulls; surplices, holy water sprinkled; wives
and servants, who present themselves with emulation, burnt and interred
with the dead husband or master; a law by which the eldest succeeds to all
the estate, no part being left for the younger but obedience; the custom
that, upon promotion to a certain office of great authority, the promoted
is to take upon him a new name, and to leave that which he had before;
another to strew lime upon the knee of the new-born child, with these
words:
"From dust thou earnest, and to dust thou must return;" as also the art of
augury. The vain shadows of our religion, which are observable in some of
these examples, are testimonies of its dignity and divinity. It is not
only in some sort insinuated into all the infidel nations on this side of
the world, by a certain imitation, but in these barbarians also, as by a
common and supernatural inspiration; for we find there the belief of
purgatory, but of a new form; that which we give to the fire they give to
the cold, and imagine that souls are purged and punished by the rigour of
an excessive coldness. And this example puts me in mind of another
pleasant diversity; for as there were there some people who delighted to
unmuffle the ends of their instruments, and clipped off the prepuce after
the Mahometan and Jewish manner; there were others who made so great
conscience of laying it bare, that they carefully pursed it up with little
strings to keep that end from peeping into the air; and of this other
diversity, that whereas we, to honour kings and festivals, put on the best
clothes we have; in some regions, to express their disparity and
submission to their king, his subjects present themselves before him in
their vilest habits, and entering his palace, throw some old tattered
garment over their better apparel, to the end that all the lustre and
ornament may solely be in him. But to proceed:—
If nature enclose within the bounds of her ordinary progress the beliefs,
judgments, and opinions of men, as well as all other things; if they have
their revolution, their season, their birth and death, like cabbage
plants; if the heavens agitate and rule them at their pleasure, what
magisterial and permanent authority do we attribute to them? If we
experimentally see that the form of our beings depends upon the air, upon
the climate, and upon the soil, where we are bom, and not only the colour,
the stature, the complexion, and the countenances, but moreover the very
faculties of the soul itself: Et plaga codi non solum ad robor corporum,
sed etiam anirum facit: "The climate is of great efficacy, not only to the
strength of bodies, but to that of souls also," says Vegetius; and that
the goddess who founded the city of Athens chose to situate it in a
temperature of air fit to make men prudent, as the Egyptian priests told
Solon: Athenis tenue colum; ex quo etiam acutiores putantur Attici;
crassum Thebis; itaque pingues Thebani, et valentes: "The air of
Athens is subtle and thin; whence also the Athenians are reputed to be
more acute; and at Thebes more gross and thick; wherefore the Thebans are
looked upon as more heavy-witted and more strong." In such sort that, as
fruits and animals grow different, men are also more or less warlike,
just, temperate, and docile; here given to wine, elsewhere to theft or
uncleanness; here inclined to superstition, elsewhere to unbelief; in one
place to liberty, in another to servitude; capable of one science or of
one art, dull or ingenious, obedient or mutinous, good or bad, according
as the place where they are seated inclines them; and assume a new
complexion, if removed, like trees, which was the reason why Cyrus would
not grant the Persians leave to quit their rough and craggy country to
remove to another more pleasant and even, saying, that fertile and tender
soils made men effeminate and soft. If we see one while one art and one
belief flourish, and another while another, through some celestial
influence; such an age to produce such natures, and to incline mankind to
such and such a propension, the spirits of men one while gay and another
gray, like our fields, what becomes of all those fine prerogatives we so
soothe ourselves withal? Seeing that a wise man may be mistaken, and a
hundred men and a hundred nations, nay, that even human nature itself, as
we believe, is many ages wide in one thing or another, what assurances
have we that she should cease to be mistaken, or that in this very age of
ours she is not so?
Methinks that amongst other testimonies of our imbecility, this ought not
to be forgotten, that man cannot, by his own wish and desire, find out
what he wants; that not in fruition only, but in imagination and wish, we
cannot agree about what we would have to satisfy and content us. Let us
leave it to our own thought to cut out and make up at pleasure; it cannot
so much as covet what is proper for it, and satisfy itself:—
Quid enim ratione timemus,
Aut cupimus? Quid tain dextro pede concipis, ut te
Conatus non poniteat, votique peracti?
"For what, with reason, do we speak or shun,
What plan, how happily soe'r begun,
That, when achieved, we do not wish undone?"
And therefore it was that Socrates only begged of the gods that they would
give him what they knew to be best for him; and the private and public
prayer of the Lacedemonians was simply for good and useful things,
referring the choice and election of them to the discretion of the Supreme
Power:—
Conjugium petimus, partumqu uxoris; at illis
Notum, qui pueri, qualisque futura sit uxor:
"We ask for Wives and children; they above
Know only, when we have them, what they'll prove;"
and Christians pray to God, "Thy will be done," that they may not fall
into the inconvenience the poet feigns of King Midas. He prayed to the
gods that all he touched might be turned into gold; his prayer was heard;
his wine was gold, his bread was gold, the feathers of his bed, his shirt,
his clothes, were all gold, so that he found himself overwhelmed with the
fruition of his desire, and endowed with an intolerable benefit, and was
fain to unpray his prayers.
Attonitus novitate mali, divesque, miserque,
Effugere optt opes, et, qu modo voverat, odit.
"Astonished at the strangeness of the ill,
To be so rich, yet miserable still;
He wishes now he could his wealth evade,
And hates the thing for which before he prayed."
To instance in myself: being young, I desired of fortune, above all
things, the order of St. Michael, which was then the utmost distinction of
honour amongst the French nobles, and very rare. She pleasantly gratified
my longing; instead of raising me, and lifting me up from my own place to
attain to it, she was much kinder to me; for she brought it so low, and
made it so cheap, that it stooped down to my shoulders, and lower. Cleobis
and Bito, Trophonius and Agamedes, having requested, the first of their
goddess, the last of their god, a recompense worthy of their piety, had
death for a reward; so differing from ours are heavenly opinions
concerning what is fit for us. God might grant us riches, honours, life,
and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us
is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of
sickness, instead of a cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me
consolata sunt. "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it
by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns
what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good
part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand
Si consilium vis:
Permittee ipsis expendere numinibus, quid
Conveniat nobis, rebusque sit utile nostris...
Carior est illis homo quam sibi;
"If thou'lt be rul'd, to th' gods thy fortunes trust,
Their thoughts are wise, their dispensations just.
What best may profit or delight they know,
And real good, for fancied bliss, bestow;
With eyes of pity, they our frailties scan,
More dear to them, than to himself, is man;"
for to require of him honours and commands, is to require 'that he may
throw you into a battle, set you upon a cast at dice, or something of the
like nature, whereof the issue is to you unknown, and the fruit doubtful.
There is no dispute so sharp and violent amongst the philosophers, as
about the question of the sovereign good of man; whence, by the
calculation of Varro, rose two hundred and eighty-eight sects. Qui
autem de summo bono dissentit, de tot philosophies ratione disputt.
"For whoever enters into controversy concerning the supreme good, disputes
upon the whole matter of philosophy."
Trs mihi conviv prope dissentire videntur,
Poscentes vario mul turn divers a palato;
Quid dem? Quid non dem? Renuis tu quod jubet alter;
Quod petis, id sane est invisum acidumque duobus;
"I have three guests invited to a feast,
And all appear to have a different taste;
What shall I give them? What shall I refuse?
What one dislikes the other two shall choose;
And e'en the very dish you like the best
Is acid or insipid to the rest:"
nature should say the same to their contests and debates. Some say that
our well-being lies in virtue, others in pleasure, others in submitting to
nature; one in knowledge, another in being exempt from pain, another in
not suffering ourselves to be carried away by appearances; and this fancy
seems to have some relation to that of the ancient Pythagoras,
Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici,
Solaque, qu possit facere et servare beatum:
"Not to admire's the only art I know
Can make us happy, and can keep us so;"
which is the drift of the Pyrrhonian sect; Aristotle attributes the
admiring nothing to magnanimity; and Arcesilaus said, that constancy and a
right inflexible state of judgment were the true good, and consent and
application the sin and evil; and there, it is true, in being thus
positive, and establishing a certain axiom, he quitted Pyrrhonism; for
the' Pyrrhonians, when they say that ataraxy, which is the immobility of
judgment, is the sovereign good, do not design to speak it affirmatively;
but that the same motion of soul which makes them avoid precipices, and
take shelter from the cold, presents them such a fancy, and makes them
refuse another.
How much do I wish that, whilst I live, either some other or Justus
Lipsius, the most learned man now living, of a most polite and judicious
understanding, truly resembling my Turnebus, had both the will and health,
and leisure sufficient, carefully and conscientiously to collect into a
register, according to their divisions and classes, as many as are to be
found, of the opinions of the ancient philosophers, about the subject of
our being and manners, their controversies, the succession and reputation
of sects; with the application of the lives of the authors and their
disciples to their own precepts, in memorable accidents, and upon
exemplary occasions. What a beautiful and useful work that would be!
As to what remains, if it be from ourselves that we are to extract the
rules of our manners, upon what a confusion do we throw ourselves! For
that which our reason advises us to, as the most likely, is generally for
every one to obey the laws of his country, as was the advice of Socrates,
inspired, as he says, by a divine counsel; and by that, what would it say,
but that our duty has no other rule but what is accidental? Truth ought to
have a like and universal visage; if man could know equity and justice
that had a body and a true being, he would not fetter it to the conditions
of this country or that; it would not be from the whimsies of the Persians
or Indians that virtue would receive its form. There is nothing more
subject to perpetual agitation than the laws; since I was born, I have
known those of the English, our neighbours, three or four times changed,
not only in matters of civil regimen, which is the only thing wherein
constancy may be dispensed with, but in the most important subject that
can be, namely, religion, at which I am the more troubled and ashamed,
because it is a nation with whom those of my province have formerly had so
great familiarity and acquaintance, that there yet remains in my house
some footsteps of our ancient kindred; and here with us at home, I have
known a thing that was capital to become lawful; and we that hold of
others are likewise, according to the chance of war, in a possibility of
being one day found guilty of high-treason, both divine and human, should
the justice of our arms fall into the power of injustice, and, after a few
years' possession, take a quite contrary being. How could that ancient god
more clearly accuse the ignorance of human knowledge concerning the divine
Being, and give men to understand that their religion was but a thing of
their own contrivance, useful as a bond to their society, than declaring
as he did to those who came to his tripod for instruction, that every
one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he
chanced to be? O God, what infinite obligation have we to the bounty of
our sovereign Creator, for having disabused our belief from these
wandering and arbitrary devotions, and for having seated it upon the
eternal foundation of his holy word? But what then will philosophers say
to us in this necessity? "That we follow the laws of our country;" that is
to say, this floating sea of the opinions of a republic, or a prince, that
will paint out justice for me in as many colours, and form it as many ways
as there are changes of passions in themselves; I cannot suffer my
judgment to be so flexible. What kind of virtue is that which I see one
day in repute, and that to-morrow shall be in none, and which the crossing
of a river makes a crime? What sort of truth can that be, which these
mountains limit to us, and make a lie to all the world beyond them?
But they are pleasant, when, to give some certainty to the laws, they say,
that there are some firm, perpetual, and immovable, which they call
natural, that are imprinted in human kind by the condition of their own
proper being; and of these some reckon three, some four, some more, some
less; a sign that it is a mark as doubtful as the rest Now they are so
unfortunate, (for what can I call it else but misfortune that, of so
infinite a number of laws, there should not be found one at least that
fortune and the temerity of chance has suffered to be universally received
by the consent of all nations?) they are, I say, so miserable, that of
these three or four select laws, there is not so much as one that is not
contradicted and disowned, not only by one nation, but by many. Now, the
only likely sign, by which they can argue or infer some natural laws, is
the universality of approbation; for we should, without doubt, follow with
a common consent that which nature had truly ordained us; and not only
every nation, but every private man, would resent the force and violence
that any one should do him who would tempt him to any thing contrary to
this law. But let them produce me one of this condition. Proctagoras and
Aristo gave no other essence to the justice of laws than the authority and
opinion of the legislator; and that, these laid aside, the honest and the
good lost their qualities, and remained empty names of indifferent things;
Thrasymachus, in Plato, is of opinion that there is no other right but the
convenience of the superior. There is not any thing wherein the world is
so various as in laws and customs; such a thing is abominable here which
is elsewhere in esteem, as in Lacedemon dexterity in stealing; marriages
between near relations, are capitally interdicted amongst us; they are
elsewhere in honour:—
Gentes esse ferantur,
In quibus et nato genitrix, et nata parenti
Jungitur, et pietas geminato crescit amore;
"There are some nations in the world, 'tis said,
Where fathers daughters, sons their mothers wed;
And their affections thereby higher rise,
More firm and constant by these double ties;"
the murder of infants, the murder of fathers, the community of wives,
traffic of robberies, license in all sorts of voluptuousness; in short,
there is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some
nation or other.
It is credible that there are natural laws for us, as we see them in other
creatures; but they are lost in us, this fine human reason everywhere so
insinuating itself to govern and command, as to shuffle and confound the
face of things, according to its own vanity and inconstancy: Nihil
itaque amplius nostrum est; quod nostrum dico, artis est: "Therefore
nothing is any more truly ours; what we call ours belongs to art."
Subjects have divers lustres and divers considerations, and thence the
diversity of opinions principally proceeds; one nation considers a subject
in one aspect, and stops there: another takes it in a different point of
view.
There is nothing of greater horror to be imagined than for a man to eat
his father; and yet the people, whose ancient custom it was so to do,
looked upon it as a testimony of piety and affection, seeking thereby to
give their progenitors the most worthy and honourable sepulture; storing
up in themselves, and as it were in their own marrow, the bodies and
relics of their fathers; and in some sort regenerating them by
transmutation into their living flesh, by means of nourishment and
digestion. It is easy to consider what a cruelty and abomination it must
have appeared to men possessed and imbued with this snperstition to throw
their fathers' remains to the corruption of the earth, and the nourishment
of beasts and worms.
Lycurgus considered in theft the vivacity, diligence, boldness, and
dexterity of purloining any thing from our neighbours, and the benefit
that redounded to the public that every one should look more narrowly to
the conservation of what was his own; and believed that, from this double
institution of assaulting and defending, advantage was to be made for
military discipline (which was the principal science and virtue to which
he would inure that nation), of greater consideration than the disorder
and injustice of taking another man's goods.
Dionysius, the tyrant, offered Plato a robe of the Persian fashion, long,
damasked, and perfumed; Plato refused it, saying, "That being born a man,
he would not willingly dress himself in women's clothes;" but Aristippus
accepted it with this answer, "That no accoutrement could corrupt a chaste
courage." His friends reproaching him with meanness of spirit, for laying
it no more to heart that Dionysius had spit in his face, "Fishermen," said
he, "suffer themselves to be drenched with the waves of the sea from head
to foot to catch a gudgeon." Diogenes was washing cabbages, and seeing him
pass by, "If thou couldst live on cabbage," said he, "thou wouldst not
fawn upon a tyrant;" to whom Aristippus replied, "And if thou knewest how
to live amongst men, thou wouldst not be washing cabbages." Thus reason
finds appearances for divers effects; 'tis a pot with two ears that a man
may take by the right or left:—
Bellum, o terra hospita, portas:
Bello armantur eqni; bellum hc armenta minantur.
Sed tamen idem olim curru succedere sueti
Quadrupedes, et frena jugo concordia ferre;
Spes est pacis.
"War, war is threatened from this foreign ground
(My father cried), where warlike steeds are found.
Yet, since reclaimed, to chariots they submit,
And bend to stubborn yokes, and champ the bit,
Peace may succeed to war."
Solon, being lectured by his friends not to shed powerless and
unprofitable tears for the death of his son, "It is for that reason that I
the more justly shed them," said he, "because they are powerless and
unprofitable." Socrates's wife exasperated her grief by this circumstance:
"Oh, how unjustly do these wicked judges put him to death!" "Why," replied
he, "hadst thou rather they should execute me justly?" We have our ears
bored; the Greeks looked upon that as a mark of slavery. We retire in
private to enjoy our wives; the Indians do it in public. The Scythians
immolated strangers in their temples; elsewhere temples were a refuge:—
Inde furor vulgi, quod numina vicinorum
Odit quisque locus, cum solos credat habendos
Esse deos, quos ipse colit.
"Thus 'tis the popular fury that creates
That all their neighbours' gods each nation hates;
Each thinks its own the genuine; in a word,
The only deities to be adored."
I have heard of a judge who, coming upon a sharp conflict betwixt Bartolus
and Aldus, and some point controverted with many contrarieties, writ in
the margin of his book, "a question for a friend;" that is to say, that
truth was there so controverted and disputed that in a like cause he might
favour which of the parties he thought fit 'Twas only for want of wit that
he did not write "a question for a friend" throughout. The advocates and
judges of our times find bias enough in all causes to accommodate them to
what they themselves think fit. In so infinite a science, depending upon
the authority of so many opinions, and so arbitrary a subject, it cannot
be but that of necessity an extreme confusion of judgments must arise;
there is hardly any suit so clear wherein opinions do not very much
differ; what one court has determined one way another determines quite
contrary, and itself contrary to that at another time. Of which we see
very frequent examples, owing to that practice admitted amongst us, and
which is a marvellous blemish to the ceremonious authority and lustre of
our justice, of not abiding by one sentence, but running from judge to
judge, and court to court, to decide one and the same cause.
As to the liberty of philosophical opinions concerning vice and virtue,
'tis not necessary to be insisted upon; therein are found many opinions
that are better concealed than published to weak minds. Arcesilaus said,
"That in venery it was no matter where, or with whom, it was committed:"
Et obsccenas voluptates, si natura requirit, non genere, aut loco, aut
ordine, sed forma, otate, jigur, metiendas Epicurus putat.... ne amores
quidem sanctos a sapiente alienos esse arbitrantur.... Queeramus, ad quam
usque otatem juvenes amandi sint. "And obscene pleasures, if nature
requires them," Epicurus thinks, "are not to be measured either by race,
kind, place, or rank, but by age, shape, and beauty.... Neither are sacred
loves thought to be foreign to wise men;... we are to inquire till what
age young men are to be loved." These last two stoical quotations, and the
reproach that Dicarchus threw into the teeth of Plato himself, upon this
account, show how much the soundest philosophy indulges licenses and
excesses very remote from common custom.
Laws derive their authority from possession and custom. 'Tis dangerous to
trace them back to their beginning; they grow great, and ennoble
themselves, like our rivers, by running on; but follow them upward to
their source, 'tis but a little spring, scarce discernable,
that swells thus, and thus fortifies itself by growing old. Do but consult
the ancient considerations that gave the first motion to this famous
torrent, so full of dignity, awe, and reverence, you will find them so
light and weak that it is no wonder if these people, who weigh and reduce
every thing to reason, and who admit nothing by authority, or upon trust,
have their judgments often very remote, and differing from those of the
public. It is no wonder if people, who take their pattern from the first
image of nature, should in most of their opinions swerve from the common
path; as, for example, few amongst them would have approved of the strict
conditions of our marriages, and most of them have been for having wives
in common, and without obligation; they would refuse our ceremonies.
Chrysippus said, "That a philosopher would make a dozen somersaults, aye,
and without his breeches, for a dozen of olives." That philosopher would
hardly have advised Clisthenes to have refused Hippoclides the fair
Agarista his daughter, for having seen him stand on his head upon a table.
Metrocles somewhat indiscreetly broke wind backwards while in disputation,
in the presence of a great auditory in his school, and kept himself hid in
his own house for shame, till Crates coming to visit him, and adding to
his consolations and reasons the example of his own liberty, by falling to
try with him who should sound most, cured him of that scruple, and withal
drew him to his own stoical sect, more free than that more reserved one of
the Peripatetics, of which he had been till then. That which we call
decency, not to dare to do that in public which is decent enough to do in
private, the Stoics call foppery; and to mince it, and to be so modest as
to conceal and disown what nature, custom, and our desires publish and
proclaim of our actions, they reputed a vice. The other thought it was to
undervalue the mysteries of Venus to draw them out of the private oratory,
to expose them to the view of the people; and that to bring them out from
behind the curtain was to debase them. Modesty is a thing of weight;
secrecy, reservation, and circumspection, are parts of esteem. Pleasure
did very ingeniously when, under the mask of virtue, she sued not to be
prostituted in the open streets, trodden under foot, and exposed to the
public view, wanting the dignity and convenience of her private cabinets.
Hence some say that to put down public stews is not only to disperse
fornication into all places, that was confined to one, but moreover, by
the difficulty, to incite wild and idle people to this vice:—
Mochus es Aufidi, qui vir,
Scvine, fuisti:
Rivalis fuerat qui tuus, ille vir est.
Cur alina placet tibi, qu tua non placet uxor?
Numquid securus non potes arrigere?
This experience diversifies itself in a thousand examples:—
Nullus in urbe fuit tot, qui tangere vellet
Uxorem gratis, Cciliane, tuam,
Dum licuit: sed nunc, positis custodibus, ingens
Turba fututorum est. Ingeniosus homo es.
A philosopher being taken in the very act, and asked what he was doing,
coldly replied, "I am planting man;" no more blushing to be so caught than
if they had found him planting garlic.
It is, I suppose, out of tenderness and respect to the natural modesty of
mankind that a great and religious author is of opinion that this act is
so necessarily obliged to privacy and shame that he cannot persuade
himself there could be any absolute performance in those impudent embraces
of the Cynics, but that they contented themselves to represent lascivious
gestures only, to maintain the impudence of their school's profession; and
that, to eject what shame had withheld and restrained, it was afterward
necessary for them to withdraw into the shade. But he had not thoroughly
examined their debauches; for Diogenes, playing the beast with himself in
public, wished, in the presence of all that saw him, that he could fill
his belly by that exercise. To those who asked him why he did not find out
a more commodious place to eat in than in the open street, he made answer,
"Because I am hungry in the open street." The women philosophers who mixed
with their sect, mixed also with their persons, in all places, without
reservation; and Hipparchia was not received into Crates's society, but
upon condition that she should, in all things, follow the practice and
customs of his rule. These philosophers set a great price upon virtue, and
renounce all other discipline but the moral; and yet, in all their
actions, they attributed the sovereign authority to the election of their
sage, and above the laws; and gave no other curb to voluptuousness but
moderation only, and the conservation of the liberty of others.
Heraclitus and Protagoras, forasmuch as wine seemed bitter to the sick,
and pleasant to the sound, the rudder crooked in the water, and straight
when out, and such like contrary appearances as are found in subjects,
argued thence that all subjects had, in themselves, the causes of these
appearances; and there was some bitterness in the wine which had some
sympathy with the sick man's taste, and the rudder some bending quality
sympathizing with him that looks upon it in the water; and so of all the
rest; which is to say, that all is in all things, and, consequently,
nothing in any one; for, where all is, there is nothing.
This opinion put me in mind of the experience we have that there is no
sense or aspect of any thing, whether bitter or sweet, straight or
crooked, that the human mind does not find out in the writings it
undertakes to tumble over. Into the cleanest, purest, and most perfect
words that can possibly be, how many lies and falsities have we suggested!
What heresy has not there found ground and testimony sufficient to make
itself embraced and defended! 'Tis for this that the authors of such
errors will never depart from proof of the testimony of the interpretation
of words. A person of dignity, who would approve to me, by authority, the
search of the philosopher's stone, wherein he was head over ears engaged,
lately alleged to me at least five or six passages of the Bible upon
which, he said, he first founded his attempt, for the discharge of his
conscience (for he is a divine); and, in truth, the idea was not only
pleasant, but, moreover, very well accommodated to the defence of this
fine science.
By this way the reputation of divining fables is acquired. There is no
fortune-teller, if we have this authority, but, if a man will take the
pains to tumble and toss, and narrowly to peep into all the folds and
glosses of his words, he may make him, like the Sibyls, say what he will.
There are so many ways of interpretation that it will be hard but that,
either obliquely or in a direct line, an ingenious wit will find out, in
every subject, some air that will serve for his purpose; therefore we find
a cloudy and ambiguous style in so frequent and ancient use. Let the
author but make himself master of that, to busy posterity about his
predictions, which not only his own parts, but the accidental favour of
the matter itself, may do for him; and, as to the rest, express himself,
whether after a foolish or a subtle manner, somewhat obscurely or
contradictorily, 'tis no matter;—a number of wits, shaking and
sifting him, will bring out a great many several forms, either according
to his meaning, or collateral, or contrary, to it, which will all redound
to his honour; he will see himself enriched by the means of his disciples,
like the regents of colleges by their pupils yearly presents. This it is
which has given reputation to many things of no worth at all; that has
brought several writings in vogue, and given them the fame of containing
all sorts of matter can be desired; one and the same thing receiving a
thousand and a thousand images and various considerations; nay, as many as
we please.
Is it possible that Homer could design to say all that we make him say,
and that he designed so many and so various figures, as that the divines,
law-givers, captains, philosophers, and all sorts of men who treat of
sciences, how variously and opposite soever, should indifferently quote
him, and support their arguments by his authority, as the sovereign lord
and master of all offices, works, and artisans, and counsellor-general of
all enterprises? Whoever has had occasion for oracles and predictions has
there found sufficient to serve his turn. 'Tis a wonder how many and how
admirable concurrences an intelligent person, and a particular friend of
mine, has there found out in favour of our religion; and cannot easily be
put out of the conceit that it was Homer's design; and yet he is as well
acquainted with this author as any man whatever of his time. And what he
has found in favour of our religion there, very many anciently have found
in favour of theirs. Do but observe how Plato is tumbled and tossed about;
every one ennobling his own opinions by applying him to himself, and
making him take what side they please. They draw him in, and engage him in
all the new opinions the world receives; and make him, according to the
different course of things, differ from himself; every one makes him
disavow, according to his own sense, the manners and customs lawful in his
age, because they are unlawful in ours; and all this with vivacity and
power, according to the force and sprightliness of the wit of the
interpreter. From the same foundation that Heraclitus and this sentence of
his had, "that all things had in them those forms that we discern,"
Democritus drew quite a contrary conclusion,—"that objects have in
them nothing that we discern in them;" and because honey is sweet to one
and bitter to another, he thence argued that it was neither sweet nor
bitter. The Pyrrhonians would say that they knew not whether it is sweet
or bitter, or whether the one or the other, or both; for these always
gained the highest point of dubitation. The Cyrenaics held that nothing
was perceptible from without, and that that only was perceptible that
inwardly touched us, as pain and pleasure; acknowledging neither sound nor
colour, but certain affections only that we receive from them; and that
man's judgment had no other seat Protagoras believed that "what seems true
to every one, is true to every one." The Epicureans lodged all judgment in
the senses, and in the knowledge of things, and in pleasure. Plato would
have the judgment of truth, and truth itself, derived from opinions and
the senses, to belong to the wit and cogitation.
This discourse has put me upon the consideration of the senses, in which
lies the greatest foundation and Prof of our ignorance. Whatsoever is
known, is doubtless known by the faculty of the knower; for, seeing the
judgment proceeds from the operation of him that judges, 'tis reason that
this operation be performed by his means and will, not by the constraint
of another; as it would happen if we knew things by the power, and
according to the law of their essence. Now all knowledge is conveyed to us
by the senses; they are our masters:—
Via qua munita fidei
Proxima fert humanum in pectus, templaque mentis;
"It is the surest path that faith can find
By which to enter human heart and mind."
Science begins by them, and is resolved into them. After all, we should
know no more than a stone if we did not know there is sound, odour, light,
taste, measure, weight, softness, hardness, sharpness, colour, smoothness,
breadth, and depth; these are the platforms and principles of the
structure of all our knowledge; and, according to some, science is nothing
else but sense. He that could make me contradict the senses, would have me
by the throat; he could not make me go further back. The senses are the
beginning and the end of human knowledge:—
Invenies primis ab sensibns esse creatam
Notitiam veil; neque sensus posse refelli....
Quid majore fide porro, quam sensus, haberi Debet?
"Of truth, whate'er discoveries are made,
Are by the senses to us first conveyed;
Nor will one sense be baffled; for on what
Can we rely more safely than on that?"
Let us attribute to them the least we can, we must, however, of necessity
grant them this, that it is by their means and mediation that all our
instruction is directed. Cicero says, that Chrysippus having attempted to
extenuate the force and virtue of the senses, presented to himself
arguments and so vehement oppositions to the contrary that he could not
satisfy himself therein; whereupon Cameades, who maintained the contrary
side, boasted that he would make use of the very words and arguments of
Chrysippus to controvert and confute him, and therefore thus cried out
against him: "O miserable! thy force has destroyed thee." There can be
nothing absurd to a greater degree than to maintain that fire does not
warm, that light does not shine, and that there is no weight nor solidity
in iron, which are things conveyed to us by the senses; neither is there
belief nor knowledge in man that can be compared to that for certainty.
The first consideration I have upon the subject of the senses is that I
make a doubt whether or no man be furnished with all natural senses. I see
several animals who live an entire and perfect life, some without sight,
others without hearing; who knows whether to us also one, two, three, or
many other senses may not be wanting? For if any one be wanting, our
examination cannot discover the defect. 'Tis the privilege of the senses
to be the utmost limit of our discovery; there is nothing beyond them that
can assist us in exploration, not so much as one sense in the discovery of
another:—
An poterunt oculos aures reprehendere? an aures
Tactus an hunc porro tactum sapor argnet oris?
An confutabunt nares, oculive revincent?
"Can ears the eyes, the touch the ears, correct?
Or is that touch by tasting to be check'd?
Or th' other senses, shall the nose or eyes
Confute in their peculiar faculties?"
They all make the extremest limits of our ability:—
Seorsum cuique potestas Divisa est, sua vis cuique est,
"Each has its power distinctly and alone,
And every sense's power is its own."
It is impossible to make a man naturally blind conceive that he does not
see; impossible to make him desire sight, or to regret his defect; for
which reason we ought not to derive any assurance from the soul's being
contented and satisfied with those we have; considering that it cannot be
sensible herein of its infirmity and imperfection, if there be any such
thing. It is impossible to say any thing to this blind man, either by
reasoning, argument, or similitude, that can possess his imagination with
any apprehension of light, colour, or sight; there's nothing remains
behind that can push on the senses to evidence. Those that are born blind,
whom we hear wish they could see, it is not that they understand what they
desire; they have learned from us that they want something; that there is
something to be desired that we have, which they can name indeed and speak
of its effect and consequences; but yet they know not what it is, nor
apprehend it at all.
I have seen a gentleman of a good family who was born blind, or at least
blind from such an age that he knows not what sight is; who is so little
sensible of his defect that he makes use as we do of words proper for
seeing, and applies them after a manner wholly particular and his own.
They brought him a child to which he was god-father, which, having taken
into his arms, "Good God," said he, "what a fine child! How beautiful to
look upon! what a pretty face it has!" He will say, like one of us, "This
room has a very fine prospect;—it is clear weather;—the sun
shines bright." And moreover, being that hunting, tennis, and butts are
our exercises, and he has heard so, he has taken a liking to them, will
ride a-hunting, and believes he has as good share of the sport as we have;
and will express himself as angry or pleased as the best of us all, and
yet knows nothing of it but by the ear. One cries out to him, "Here's a
hare!" when he is upon some even plain where he may safely ride; and
afterwards, when they tell him, "The hare is killed," he will be as
overjoyed and proud of it as he hears others say they are. He will take a
tennis-ball in his left hand and strike it away with the racket; he will
shoot with a harquebuss at random, and is contented with what his people
tell him, that he is over, or wide.
Who knows whether all human kind commit not the like absurdity, for want
of some sense, and that through this default the greatest part of the face
of things is concealed from us? What do we know but that the difficulties
which we find in several works of nature proceed hence; and that several
effects of animals, which exceed our capacity, are not produced by faculty
of some sense that we are defective in? and whether some of them have not
by this means a life more full and entire than ours? We seize an apple
with all our senses; we there find redness, smoothness, odour, and
sweetness; but it may have other virtues besides these, as to heat or
binding, which no sense of ours can have any reference unto. Is it not
likely that there are sensitive faculties in nature that are fit to judge
of and to discern those which we call the occult properties in several
things, as for the loadstone to attract iron; and that the want of such
faculties is the cause that we are ignorant of the true essence of such
things? 'Tis perhaps some particular sense that gives cocks to understand
what hour it is at midnight, and when it grows to be towards day, and that
makes them crow accordingly; that teaches chickens, before they have any
experience of the matter, to fear a sparrow-hawk, and not a goose or a
peacock, though birds of a much larger size; that cautions them against
the hostile quality the cat has against them, and makes them not to fear a
dog; to arm themselves against the mewing, a kind of flattering voice, of
the one, and not against the barking, a shrill and threatening voice, of
the other; that teaches wasps, ants, and rats, to fall upon the best pear
and the best cheese before they have tasted them, and inspires the stag,
elephant, and serpent, with the knowledge of a certain herb proper for
their cure. There is no sense that has not a mighty dominion, and that
does not by its power introduce an infinite number of knowledges. If we
were defective in the intelligence of sounds, of harmony, and of the
voice, it would cause an unimaginable confusion in all the rest of our
science; for, besides what belongs to the proper effect of every sense,
how many arguments, consequences, and conclusions do we draw to other
things, by comparing one sense with another? Let an understanding man
imagine human nature originally produced without the sense of seeing, and
consider what ignorance and trouble such a defect would bring upon him,
what a darkness and blindness in the soul; he will then see by that of how
great importance to the knowledge of truth the privation of such another
sense, or of two or three, should we be so deprived, would be. We have
formed a truth by the consultation and concurrence of our five senses; but
perhaps we should have the consent and contribution of eight or ten to
make a certain discovery of it in its essence.
The sects that controvert the knowledge of man do it principally by the
uncertainty and weakness of our senses; for since all knowledge is by
their means and mediation conveyed unto us, if they fail in their report,
if they corrupt or alter what they bring us from without, if the light
which by them creeps into the soul be obscured in the passage, we have
nothing else to hold by. From this extreme difficulty all these fancies
proceed: "That every subject has in itself all we there find. That it has
nothing in it of what we think we there find;" and that of the Epicureans,
"That the sun is no bigger than 'tis judged by our sight to be:—"
Quidquid id est, nihilo fertur majore figura,
Quam nostris oculis quam cemimus, esse videtur:
"But be it what it will in our esteems,
It is no bigger than to us it seems:"
that the appearances which represent a body great to him that is near, and
less to him that is more remote, are both true:—
Nee tamen hic oculos falli concedimus hilum....
Proinde animi vitium hoc oculis adfingere noli:
"Yet that the eye's deluded we deny;
Charge not the mind's faults, therefore, on the eye:"
"and, resolutely, that there is no deceit in the senses; that we are to
lie at their mercy, and seek elsewhere reasons to excuse the difference
and contradictions we there find, even to the inventing of lies and other
flams, if it come to that, rather than accuse the senses." Timagoras vowed
that, by pressing or turning his eye, he could never perceive the light of
the candle to double, and that the seeming so proceeded from the vice of
opinion, and not from the instrument. The most absurd of all absurdities,
with the Epicureans, is to deny the force and effect of the senses:—
Proinde, quod in quoquo est his visum tempore, verum est
Et, si non potuit ratio dissolvere causam,
Cur ea, qu fuerint juxtim quadrata, procul sint
Visa rotunda; tamen prstat rationis egentem
Beddere mendose causas utriusque figur,
Quam manibus manifesta suis emittere ququam,
Et violare fidem primam, et convellere tota
Fundamenta, quibus nixatur vita salusque:
Non modo enim ratio ruat omnis, vita quoque ipsa
Concidat extemplo, nisi credere sensibus ausis,
Procipitesque locos vitare, et ctera, qu sint
In genere hoc fugienda.
"That what we see exists I will maintain,
And if our feeble reason can't explain
Why things seem square when they are very near,
And at a greater distance round appear;
'Tis better yet, for him that's at a pause,
'T' assign to either figure a false cause,
Than shock his faith, and the foundations rend
On which our safety and our life depend:
For reason not alone, but life and all,
Together will with sudden ruin fall;
Unless we trust our senses, nor despise
To shun the various dangers that arise."
This so desperate and unphilosophical advice expresses only this,—that
human knowledge cannot support itself but by reason unreasonable, foolish,
and mad; but that it is yet better that man, to set a greater value upon
himself, make use of any other remedy, how fantastic soever, than to
confess his necessary ignorance—a truth so disadvantageous to him.
He cannot avoid owning that the senses are the sovereign lords of his
knowledge; but they are uncertain, and falsifiable in all circumstances;
'tis there that he is to fight it out to the last; and if his just forces
fail him, as they do, to supply that defect with obstinacy, temerity, and
impudence. In case what the Epicureans say be true, viz: "that we have no
knowledge if the senses' appearances be false;" and if that also be true
which the Stoics say, "that the appearances of the senses are so false
that they can furnish us with no manner of knowledge," we shall conclude,
to the disadvantage of these two great dogmatical sects, that there is no
science at all.
As to the error and uncertainty of the operation of the senses, every one
may furnish himself with as many examples as he pleases; so ordinary are
the faults and tricks they put upon us. In the echo of a valley the sound
of a trumpet seems to meet us, which comes from a place behind:—
Exstantesque procul medio de gurgite montes,
Classibus inter qnos liber patet exitus, idem
Apparent, et longe divolsi licet, ingens
Insula conjunctis tamen ex his ana videtur...
Et fugere ad puppim colies campique videntur,
Qnos agimns proter navim, velisque volamus....
Ubi in medio nobis equus acer obhsit
Flamine, equi corpus transversum ferre videtur
Vis, et in adversum flumen contrudere raptim.
"And rocks i' th' seas that proudly raise their head,
Though far disjoined, though royal navies spread,
Their sails between; yet if from distance shown,
They seem an island all combin'd in one.
Thus ships, though driven by a prosperous gale,
Seem fix'd to sailors; those seem under sail
That ride at anchor safe; and all admire,
As they row by, to see the rocks retire.
Thus, when in rapid streams my horse hath stood,
And I look'd downward on the rolling flood;
Though he stood still, I thought he did divide
The headlong streams, and strive against the tide,
And all things seem'd to move on every side."
Take a musket-ball under the forefinger, the middle finger being lapped
over it, it feels so like two that a man will have much ado to persuade
himself there is but one; the end of the two fingers feeling each of them
one at the same time; for that the senses are very often masters of our
reason, and constrain it to receive impressions which it judges and knows
to be false, is frequently seen. I set aside the sense of feeling, that
has its functions nearer, more lively, and substantial, that so often, by
the effects of the pains it helps the body to, subverts and overthrows all
those fine Stoical resolutions, and compels him to cry out of his belly,
who has resolutely established this doctrine in his soul—"That the
colic, and all other pains and diseases, are indifferent things, not
having the power to abate any thing of the sovereign felicity wherein the
wise man is seated by his virtue." There is no heart so effeminate that
the rattle and sound of our drums and trumpets will not inflame with
courage; nor so sullen that the harmony of our music will not rouse and
cheer; nor so stubborn a soul that will not feel itself struck with some
reverence in considering the gloomy vastness of our churches, the variety
of ornaments, and order of our ceremonies; and in hearing the solemn music
of our organs, and the grace and devout harmony of our voices. Even those
that come in with contempt feel a certain shivering in their hearts, and
something of dread that makes them begin to doubt their opinions. For my
part I do not think myself strong enough to hear an ode of Horace or
Catullus sung by a beautiful young mouth without emotion; and Zeno had
reason to say "that the voice was the flower of beauty." One would once
make me believe that a certain person, whom all we Frenchmen know, had
imposed upon me in repeating some verses that he had made; that they were
not the same upon paper that they were in the air; and that my eyes would
make a contrary judgment to my ears; so great a power has pronunciation to
give fashion and value to works that are left to the efficacy and
modulation of the voice. And therefore Philoxenus was not so much to
blame, hearing one giving an ill accent to some composition of his, in
spurning and breaking certain earthen vessels of his, saying, "I break
what is thine, because thou corruptest what is mine." To what end did
those men who have, with a firm resolution, destroyed themselves, turn
away their faces that they might not see the blow that was by themselves
appointed? And that those who, for their health, desire and command
incisions to be made, and cauteries to be applied to them, cannot endure
the sight of the preparations, instruments, and operations of the surgeon,
being that the sight is not in any way to participate in the pain? Are not
these proper examples to verify the authority the senses have over the
imagination? 'Tis to much purpose that we know these tresses were borrowed
from a page or a lackey; that this rouge came from Spain, and this
pearl-powder from the Ocean Sea. Our sight will, nevertheless, compel us
to confess their subject more agreeable and more lovely against all
reason; for in this there is nothing of its own:—
Auferinrar cultu; gemmis, auroque teguntur
Crimina; pars minima est ipsa puella sni.
Spe, ubi sit quod ames, inter tarn multa requiras:
Decipit hac oculos gide dives Amor.
"By dress we're won; gold, gems, and rich brocades
Make up the pageant that your heart invades;
In all that glittering figure which you see,
The far least part of her own self is she;
In vain for her you love amidst such cost
You search, the mistress in such dress is lost."
What a strange power do the poets attribute to the senses, that make
Narcissus so desperately in love with his own shadow,
Cunctaque miratur, quibus est mirabilis ipse;
Se cupit imprudens, et, qui probat, ipse probatur;
Dumque petit, petitur; pariterque accendit, et ardet:
"Admireth all; for which to be admired;
And inconsiderately himself desir'd.
The praises which he gives his beauty claim'd,
Who seeks is sought, th' inflamer is inflam'd:"
and Pygmalion's judgment so troubled by the impression of the sight of his
ivory statue that he loves and adores it as if it were a living woman!
Oscnla dat, reddique putat: sequi turque, tenetque,
Et credit tactis digitos insidere membris;
Et metuit, pressos veniat ne livor in artus.
"He kisses, and believes he's kissed again;
Seizes, and 'twixt his arms his love doth strain,
And thinks the polish'd ivory thus held
Doth to his fingers amorous pressure yield,
And has a timorous fear, lest black and blue
Should in the parts with ardour press'd ensue."
Put a philosopher into a cage of small thin set bars of iron, hang him on
the top of the high tower of Notre Dame at Paris; he will see, by manifest
reason, that he cannot possibly fall, and yet he will find (unless he has
been used to the plumber's trade) that he cannot help but the sight of the
excessive height will fright and astound him; for we have enough to do to
assure ourselves in the galleries of our steeples, if they are made with
open work, although they are of stone; and some there are that cannot
endure so much as to think of it. Let there be a beam thrown over betwixt
these two towers, of breadth sufficient to walk upon, there is no
philosophical wisdom so firm that can give us the courage to walk over it
as we should do upon the ground. I have often tried this upon our
mountains in these parts; and though I am one who am not the most subject
to be afraid, I was not able to endure to look into that infinite depth
without horror and trembling, though I stood above my length from the edge
of the precipice, and could not have fallen unless I would. Where I also
observed that, what height soever the precipice was, provided there were
some tree, or some jutting out of a rock, a little to support and divide
the sight, it a little eases our fears, and gives greater assurance; as if
they were things by which in falling we might have some relief; but that
direct precipices we are not to look upon without being giddy; Ut
despici vine vertigine timid ocvlorum animique non possit: "'To that
one cannot look without dizziness;" which is a manifest imposture of the
sight. And therefore it was that that fine philosopher put out his own
eyes, to free the soul from being diverted by them, and that he might
philosophize at greater liberty; but, by the same rule, he should have
dammed up his ears, that Theophrastus says are the most dangerous
instruments about us for receiving violent impressions to alter and
disturb us; and, finally, should have deprived himself of all his other
senses, that is to say, of his life and being; for they have all the power
to command our soul and reason: Fit etiam sope specie qudam, sope
vocum gravitate et cantibus, ut pettantur animi vehementius; sope etiam
cura et timor, "For it often falls out that the minds are more
vehemently struck by some sight, by the quality and sound of the voice, or
by singing; and ofttimes also by grief and fear." Physicians hold that
there are certain complexions that are agitated by the same sounds and
instruments even to fury. I have seen some who could not hear a bone
gnawed under the table without impatience; and there is scarce any man who
is not disturbed at the sharp and shrill noise that the file makes in
grating upon the iron; as also to hear chewing near them, or to hear any
one speak who has an impediment in the throat or nose, will move some
people even to anger and hatred. Of what use was that piping prompter of
Gracchus, who softened, raised, and moved his master's voice whilst he
declaimed at Rome, if the movements and quality of the sound had not the
power to move and alter the judgments of the auditory? In earnest, there
is wonderful reason to keep such a clutter about the firmness of this fine
piece, that suffers itself to be turned and twined by the motion and
accidents of so light a wind.
The same cheat that the senses put upon our understanding they have in
turn put upon them; the soul also some times has its revenge; they lie and
contend which should most deceive one another. What we see and hear when
we are transported with passion, we neither see nor hear as it is:—
Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere Thebas.
"Thebes seems two cities, and the sun two suns."
The object that we love appears to us more beautiful than it really is;
Multimodis igitur pravas turpesque videmus
Esse in deliciis, summoque in honore vigere;
"Hence 'tis that ugly things in fancied dress
Seem gay, look fair to lovers' eyes, and please;"
and that we hate more ugly; to a discontented and afflicted man the light
of the day seems dark and overcast. Our senses are not only depraved, but
very often stupefied by the passions of the soul; how many things do we
see that we do not take notice of, if the mind be occupied with other
thoughts?
In rebus quoque apertis noscere possis,
Si non advertas animum, proinde esse quasi omni
Tempore semot fuerint, longeque remot:
"Nay, even in plainest things, unless the mind
Take heed, unless she sets herself to find,
The thing no more is seen, no more belov'd,
Than if the most obscure and most remov'd:"
it would appear that the soul retires within, and amuses the powers of the
senses. And so both the inside and the outside of man is full of infirmity
and falsehood.
They who have compared our lives to a dream were, perhaps, more in the
right than they were aware of. When we dream, the soul lives, works, and
exercises all its faculties, neither more nor less than when awake; but
more largely and obscurely, yet not so much, neither, that the difference
should be as great as betwixt night and the meridian brightness of the
sun, but as betwixt night and shade; there she sleeps, here she slumbers;
but, whether more or less, 'tis still dark, and Cimmerian darkness. We
wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so clearly in my sleep; but
as to my being awake, I never found it clear enough and free from clouds;
moreover, sleep, when it is profound, sometimes rocks even dreams
themselves asleep; but our waking is never so sprightly that it rightly
purges and dissipates those whimsies, which are waking dreams, and worse
than dreams. Our reason and soul receiving those fancies and opinions that
come in dreams, and authorizing the actions of our dreams with the like
approbation that they do those of the day, wherefore do we not doubt
whether our thought, our action, is not another sort of dreaming, and our
waking a certain kind of sleep?
If the senses be our first judges, it is not ours that we are alone to
consult; for, in this faculty, beasts have as great, or greater, than we;
it is certain that some of them have the sense of hearing more quick than
man; others that of seeing, others that of feeling, others that of touch
and taste. Democritus said, that the gods and brutes had the sensitive
faculties more perfect than man. But betwixt the effects of their senses
and ours the difference is extreme. Our spittle cleanses and dries up our
wounds; it kills the serpent:—
Tantaque in his rebas distantia differitasque est,
Ut quod aliis cibus est, aliis fuat acre venenum.
Spe etenim serpens, hominis contacta saliv,
Disperit, ac sese mandendo conficit ipsa:
"And in those things the difference is so great
That what's one's poison is another's meat;
For serpents often have been seen, 'tis said,
When touch'd with human spittle, to go mad,
And bite themselves to death:"
what quality shall we attribute to our spittle? as it affects ourselves,
or as it affects the serpent? By which of the two senses shall we prove
the true essence that we seek for?
Pliny says there are certain sea-hares in the Indies that are poison to
us, and we to them; insomuch that, with the least touch, we kill them.
Which shall be truly poison, the man or the fish? Which shall we believe,
the fish of the man, or the man of the fish? One quality of the air
infects a man, that does the ox no harm; some other infects the ox, but
hurts not the man. Which of the two shall, in truth and nature, be the
pestilent quality? To them who have the jaundice, all things seem yellow
and paler than to us:—
Lurida prterea fiunt, qucunque tuentur Arquati.
"Besides, whatever jaundic'd eyes do view
Looks pale as well as those, and yellow too."
They who are troubled with the disease that the physicians call
hyposphagma—which is a suffusion of blood under the skin—see
all things red and bloody. What do we know but that these humours, which
thus alter the operations of sight, predominate in beasts, and are usual
with them? for we see some whose eyes are yellow, like us who have the
jaundice; and others of a bloody colour; 'tis likely that the colours of
objects seem other to them than to us. Which of the two shall make a right
judgment? for it is not said that the essence of things has a relation to
man only; hardness, whiteness, depth, and sharpness, have reference to the
service and knowledge of animals as well as to us, and nature has equally
designed them for their use. When we press down the eye, the body that we
look upon we perceive to be longer and more extended;—many beasts
have their eyes so pressed down; this length, therefore, is perhaps the
true form of that body, and not that which our eyes give it in the usual
state. If we close the lower part of the eye things appear double to us:—
Bina lucemarum fiorentia lumina flammis...
Et duplices hominum facis, et corpora bina.
"One lamp seems double, and the men appear
Each on two bodies double heads to bear."
If our ears be hindered, or the passage stopped with any thing, we receive
the sound quite otherwise than we usually do; animals, likewise, who have
either the ears hairy, or but a very little hole instead of an ear, do
not, consequently, hear as we do, but receive another kind of sound. We
see at festivals and theatres that, opposing a painted glass of a certain
colour to the light of the flambeaux, all things in the place appear to us
green, yellow, or violet:—
Et vulgo faciunt id lutea russaque vela,
Et ferrugina, cum, magnis intenta theatris,
Per malos vulgata trabesque, trementia pendent;
Namque ibi consessum caveai subter, et omnem
Scenai speciem, patrum, matrumque, deorumque
Inficiunt, coguntque suo volitare colore:
"Thus when pale curtains, or the deeper red,
O'er all the spacious theatre are spread,
Which mighty masts and sturdy pillars bear,
And the loose curtains wanton in the air;
Whole streams of colours from the summit flow,
The rays divide them in their passage through,
And stain the scenes, and men, and gods below:"
'tis likely that the eyes of animals, which we see to be of divers
colours, produce the appearance of bodies the same with their eyes.
We should, therefore, to make a right judgment of the oppositions of the
senses, be first agreed with beasts, and secondly amongst ourselves; which
we by no means are, but enter into dispute every time that one hears,
sees, or tastes something otherwise than another does, and contests, as
much as upon any other thing, about the diversity of the images that the
senses represent to us. A child, by the ordinary rule of nature, hears,
sees, and talks otherwise than a man of thirty years old; and he than one
of threescore. The senses are, in some, more obscure and dusky, and more
open and quick in others. We receive things variously, according as we
are, and according as they appear to us. Those rings which are cut out in
the form of feathers, which are called endless feathers, no eye can
discern their size, or can keep itself from the deception that on one side
they enlarge, and on the other contract, and come So a point, even when
the ring is being turned round the finger; yet, when you feel them, they
seem all of an equal size. Now, our perception being so uncertain and so
controverted, it is no more a wonder if we are told that we may declare
that snow appears white to us; but that to affirm that it is in its own
essence really so is more than we are able to justify; and, this
foundation being shaken, all the knowledge in the world must of necessity
fall to ruin. What! do our senses themselves hinder one another? A picture
seems raised and embossed to the sight; in the handling it seems flat to
the touch. Shall we say that musk, which delights the smell, and is
offensive to the taste, is agreeable or no? There are herbs and unguents
proper for one part o the body, that are hurtful to another; honey is
pleasant to the taste, but offensive to the sight. They who, to assist
their lust, used in ancient times to make use of magnifying-glasses to
represent the members they were to employ bigger, by that ocular tumidity
to please themselves the more; to which of their senses did they give the
prize,—whether to the sight, that represented the members as large
and great as they would desire, or to the feeling, which represented them
little and contemptible? Are they our senses that supply the subject with
these different conditions, and have the subjects themselves,
nevertheless, but one? As we see in the bread we eat, it is nothing but
bread, but, by being eaten, it becomes bones, blood, flesh, hair; and
nails:—
Ut cibus in membra atque artus cum diditur omnes,
Disperit,, atque aliam naturam sufficit ex se;
"As meats, diffus'd through all the members, lose
Their former state, and different things compose;"
the humidity sucked up by the root of a tree becomes trunk, leaf, and
fruit; and the air, being but one, is modulated, in a trumpet, to a
thousand sorts of sounds; are they our senses, I would fain know, that, in
like manner, form these subjects into so many divers qualities, or have
they them really such in themselves? And upon this doubt what can we
determine of their true essence? Moreover, since the accidents of disease,
of raving, or sleep, make things appear otherwise to us than they do to
the healthful, the wise, and those that are awake, is it not likely that
our right posture of health and understanding, and our natural humours,
have, also, wherewith to give a being to things that have a relation to
their own condition, and accommodate them to themselves, as well as when
they are disordered;—that health is as capable of giving them an
aspect as sickness? Why has not the temperate a certain form of objects
relative to it, as well as the intemperate? and why may it not as well
stamp it with its own character as the other? He whose mouth is out of
taste, says the wine is flat; the healthful man commends its flavour, and
the thirsty its briskness. Now, our condition always accommodating things
to itself, and transforming them according to its own posture, we cannot
know what things truly are in themselves, seeing that nothing comes to us
but what is falsified and altered by the senses. Where the compass, the
square, and the rule, are crooked, all propositions drawn thence, and all
buildings erected by those guides, must, of necessity, be also defective;
the uncertainty of our senses renders every thing uncertain that they
produce:—
Denique ut in fabric, si prava est rgula prima,
Normaque si fallax rectis regionibus exit,
Et libella aliqu si ex parte claudicat hilum;
Omnia mendose fieri, atque obstipa necessum est,
Prava, cubantia, prona, supina, atque absona tecta;
Jam ruere ut qudam videantux'velle, ruantque
Prodita judiciis fallacibus omnia primis;
Sic igitur ratio tibi reram prava necesse est,
Falsaque sit, falsis qucunque ab sensibus orta est.
"But lastly, as in building, if the line
Be not exact and straight, the rule decline,
Or level false, how vain is the design!
Uneven, an ill-shap'd and tottering wall
Must rise; this part must sink, that part must fall,
Because the rules were false that fashion'd all;
Thus reason's rules are false if all commence
And rise from failing and from erring sense."
As to what remains, who can be fit to judge of and to determine those
differences? As we say in controversies of religion that we must have a
judge neither inclining to the one side nor the other, free from all
choice and affection, which cannot be amongst Christians, just so it falls
out in this; for if he be old he cannot judge of the sense of old age,
being himself a party in the case; if young, there is the same exception;
if healthful, sick, asleep, or awake, he is still the same incompetent
judge. We must have some one exempt from all these propositions, as of
things indifferent to him; and by this rule we must have a judge that
never was.
To judge of the appearances that we receive of subjects, we ought t have a
deciding instrument; to verify this instrument we must have demonstration;
to verify this demonstration an instrument; and here we are round again
upon the wheel, and no further advanced. Seeing the senses cannot
determine our dispute, being full of uncertainty themselves, it must then
be reason that must do it; but no reason can be erected upon any other
foundation than that of another reason; and so we run back to all
infinity. Our fancy does not apply itself to things that are strange, but
is conceived by the mediation of the senses; and the senses do not
comprehend a foreign subject, but only their own passions; by which means
fancy and appearance are no part of the subject, but only of the passion
and sufferance of sense; which passion and subject are different things;
wherefore whoever judges by appearances judges by another thing than the
subject. And to say that the passions of the senses convey to the soul the
quality of foreign subjects by resemblance, how can the soul and
understanding be assured of this resemblance, having of itself no commerce
with foreign subjects? As they who never knew Socrates cannot, when they
see his picture, say it is like him. Now, whoever would, notwithstanding,
judge by appearances, if it be by all, it is impossible, because they
hinder one another by their contrarieties and discrepancies, as we by
experience see: shall some select appearances govern the rest? you must
verify this select by another select, the second by a third, and thus
there will never be any end to it. Finally, there is no constant
existence, neither of the objects' being nor our own; both we, and our
judgments, and all mortal things, are evermore incessantly running and
rolling; and consequently nothing certain can be established from the one
to the other, both the judging and the judged being in a continual motion
and mutation.
We have no communication with being, by reason that all human nature is
always in the middle, betwixt being bom and dying, giving but an obscure
appearance and shadow, a weak and uncertain opinion of itself; and if,
perhaps, you fix your thought to apprehend your being, it would be but
like grasping water; for the more you clutch your hand to squeeze and hold
what is in its own nature flowing, so much more you lose of what you would
grasp and hold. So, seeing that all things are subject to pass from one
change to another, reason, that there looks for a real substance, finds
itself deceived, not being able to apprehend any thing that is subsistent
and permanent, because that every thing is either entering into being, and
is not yet arrived at it, or begins to die before it is bom. Plato said,
that bodies had never any existence, but only birth; conceiving that Homer
had made the Ocean and Thetis father and mother of the gods, to show us
that all things are in a perpetual fluctuation, motion, and variation; the
opinion of all the philosophers, as he says, before his time, Parmenides
only excepted, who would not allow things to have motion, on the power
whereof he sets a mighty value. Pythagoras was of opinion that all matter
was flowing and unstable; the Stoics, that there is no time present, and
that what we call so is nothing but the juncture and meeting of the future
and the past; Heraclitus, that never any man entered twice into the same
river; Epichar-mus, that he who borrowed money but an hour ago does not
owe it now; and that he who was invited over-night to come the next day to
dinner comes nevertheless uninvited, considering that they are no more the
same men, but are become others; and that there could not a mortal
substance be found twice in the same condition; for, by the suddenness and
quickness of the change, it one while disperses, and another reunites; it
comes and goes after such a manner that what begins to be born never
arrives to the perfection of being, forasmuch as that birth is never
finished and never stays, as being at an end, but from the seed is
evermore changing and shifting one to another; as human seed is first in
the mother's womb made a formless embryo, after delivered thence a sucking
infant, afterwards it becomes a boy, then a youth, then a man, and at last
a decrepit old man; so that age and subsequent generation is always
destroying and spoiling that which went before:—
Mutt enira mundi naturam totius tas,
Ex alioque alius status excipere omnia debet;
Nec manet ulla sui similis res; omnia migrant,
Omnia commutt natura, et vertere cogit.
"For time the nature of the world translates,
And from preceding gives all things new states;
Nought like itself remains, but all do range,
And nature forces every thing to change."
"And yet we foolishly fear one kind of death, whereas we have already
passed, and do daily pass, so many others; for not only, as Heraclitus
said, the death of fire is generation of air, and the death of air
generation of water; but, moreover, we may more manifestly discern it in
ourselves; manhood dies, and passes away when age comes on; and youth is
terminated in the flower of age of a full-grown man, infancy in youth, and
the first age dies in infancy; yesterday died in to-day, and to-day will
die in to-morrow; and there is nothing that remains in the same state, or
that is always the same thing. And that it is so let this be the proof; if
we are always one and the same, how comes it to pass that we are now
pleased with one thing, and by and by with another? How comes it to pass
that we love or hate contrary things, that we praise or condemn them? How
comes it to pass that we have different affections, and no more retain the
same sentiment in the same thought? For it is not likely that without
mutation we should assume other passions; and, that which suffers mutation
does not remain the same, and if it be not the same it is not at all; but
the same that the being is does, like it, unknowingly change and alter;
becoming evermore another from another thing; and consequently the natural
senses abuse and deceive themselves, taking that which seems for that
which is, for want of well knowing what that which is, is. But what is it
then that truly is? That which is eternal; that is to say, that never had
beginning, nor never shall have ending, and to which time can bring no
mutation. For time is a mobile thine, and that appears as in a shadow,
with a matter evermore flowing and running, without ever remaining stable
and permanent; and to which belong those words, before and after, has
been, or shall be: which at the first sight, evidently show that it is
not a thing that is; for it were a great folly, and a manifest falsity, to
say that that is which is not et being, or that has already ceased to be.
And as to these words, present, instant, and now, by which it seems
that we principally support and found the intelligence of time, reason,
discovering, does presently destroy it; for it immediately divides and
splits it into the future and past, being of necessity to consider
it divided in two. The same happens to nature, that is measured, as to
time that measures it; for she has nothing more subsisting and permanent
than the other, but all things are either born, bearing, or dying. So that
it were sinful to say of God, who is he only who is, that he was, or
that he shall be ; for those are terms of declension, transmutation,
and vicissitude, of what cannot continue or remain in being; wherefore we
are to conclude that God alone is, not according to any measure of time,
but according to an immutable and an immovable eternity, not measured by
time, nor subject to any declension; before whom nothing was, and after
whom nothing shall be, either more new or more recent, but a real being,
that with one sole now fills the for ever, and that there is nothing that
truly is but he alone; without our being able to say, he has been, or
shall be; without beginning, and without end." To this so religious
conclusion of a pagan I shall only add this testimony of one of the same
condition, for the close of this long and tedious discourse, which would
furnish me with endless matter: "What a vile and abject thing," says he,
"is man, if he do not raise himself above humanity!" 'Tis a good word and
a profitable desire, but withal absurd; for to make the handle bigger than
the hand, the cubic longer than the arm, and to hope to stride further
than our legs can reach, is both impossible and monstrous; or that man
should rise above himself and humanity; for he cannot see but with his
eyes, nor seize but with his hold. He shall be exalted, if God will lend
him an extraordinary hand; he shall exalt himself, by abandoning and
renouncing his own proper means, and by suffering himself to be raised and
elevated by means purely celestial. It belongs to our Christian faith, and
not to the stoical virtue, to pretend to that divine and miraculous
metamorphosis.
CHAPTER XIII——OF JUDGING OF THE DEATH OF ANOTHER
When we judge of another's assurance in death, which, without doubt, is
the most remarkable action of human life, we are to take heed of one
thing, which is that men very hardly believe themselves to have arrived to
that period. Few men come to die in the opinion that it is their latest
hour; and there is nothing wherein the flattery of hope more deludes us;
It never ceases to whisper in our ears, "Others have been much sicker
without dying; your condition is not so desperate as 'tis thought; and, at
the worst, God has done other miracles." Which happens by reason that we
set too much value upon ourselves; it seems as if the universality of
things were in some measure to suffer by our dissolution, and that it
commiserates our condition, forasmuch as our disturbed sight represents
things to itself erroneously, and that we are of opinion they stand in as
much need of us as we do of them, like people at sea, to whom mountains,
fields, cities, heaven and earth are tossed at the same rate as they are:
"Provehimur portu, terraeque urbesque recedunt:"
["We sail out of port, and cities and lands recede."
—AEneid, iii. 72.]
Whoever saw old age that did not applaud the past and condemn the present
time, laying the fault of his misery and discontent upon the world and the
manners of men?
"Jamque caput quassans, grandis suspirat arator.
Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert
Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis,
Et crepat antiquum genus ut pietate repletum."
["Now the old ploughman, shaking his head, sighs, and compares
present times with past, often praises his parents' happiness, and
talks of the old race as full of piety."—Lucretius, ii. 1165.]
We will make all things go along with us; whence it follows that we
consider our death as a very great thing, and that does not so easily
pass, nor without the solemn consultation of the stars:
"Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes dens,"
["All the gods to agitation about one man."
—Seneca, Suasor, i. 4.]
and so much the more think it as we more value ourselves. "What, shall so
much knowledge be lost, with so much damage to the world, without a
particular concern of the destinies? Does so rare and exemplary a soul
cost no more the killing than one that is common and of no use to the
public? This life, that protects so many others, upon which so many other
lives depend, that employs so vast a number of men in his service, that
fills so many places, shall it drop off like one that hangs but by its own
simple thread? None of us lays it enough to heart that he is but one:
thence proceeded those words of Caesar to his pilot, more tumid than the
sea that threatened him:
"Italiam si coelo auctore recusas,
Me pete: sola tibi causa est haec justa timoris,
Vectorem non nosce tuum; perrumpe procellas,
Tutela secure mea."
["If you decline to sail to Italy under the God's protection, trust
to mine; the only just cause you have to fear is, that you do not
know your passenger; sail on, secure in my guardianship."
—Lucan, V. 579.]
And these:
"Credit jam digna pericula Caesar
Fatis esse suis; tantusne evertere, dixit,
Me superis labor est, parva quern puppe sedentem,
Tam magno petiere mari;"
["Caesar now deemed these dangers worthy of his destiny: 'What!'
said he, 'is it for the gods so great a task to overthrow me, that
they must be fain to assail me with great seas in a poor little
bark.'"—Lucan, v. 653.]
and that idle fancy of the public, that the sun bore on his face mourning
for his death a whole year:
"Ille etiam extincto miseratus Caesare Romam,
Cum caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit:"
["Caesar being dead, the sun in mourning clouds, pitying Rome,
clothed himself."—Virgil, Georg., i. 466.]
and a thousand of the like, wherewith the world suffers itself to be so
easily imposed upon, believing that our interests affect the heavens, and
that their infinity is concerned at our ordinary actions:
"Non tanta caelo societas nobiscum est, ut nostro
fato mortalis sit ille quoque siderum fulgor."
["There is no such alliance betwixt us and heaven, that the
brightness of the stars should be made also mortal by our death."
—Pliny, Nat. Hist., ii. 8.]
Now, to judge of constancy and resolution in a man who does not yet
believe himself to be certainly in danger, though he really is, is not
reason; and 'tis not enough that he die in this posture, unless he
purposely put himself into it for this effect. It commonly falls out in
most men that they set a good face upon the matter and speak with great
indifference, to acquire reputation, which they hope afterwards, living,
to enjoy. Of all whom I have seen die, fortune has disposed their
countenances and no design of theirs; and even of those who in ancient
times have made away with themselves, there is much to be considered
whether it were a sudden or a lingering death. That cruel Roman Emperor
would say of his prisoners, that he would make them feel death, and if any
one killed himself in prison, "That fellow has made an escape from me"; he
would prolong death and make it felt by torments:
"Vidimus et toto quamvis in corpore caeso
Nil anima lethale datum, moremque nefandae,
Durum saevitix, pereuntis parcere morti."
["We have seen in tortured bodies, amongst the wounds, none that
have been mortal, inhuman mode of dire cruelty, that means to kill,
but will not let men die."—Lucan, iv. i. 78.]
In plain truth, it is no such great matter for a man in health and in a
temperate state of mind to resolve to kill himself; it is very easy to
play the villain before one comes to the point, insomuch that
Heliogabalus, the most effeminate man in the world, amongst his lowest
sensualities, could forecast to make himself die delicately, when he
should be forced thereto; and that his death might not give the lie to the
rest of his life, had purposely built a sumptuous tower, the front and
base of which were covered with planks enriched with gold and precious
stones, thence to precipitate himself; and also caused cords twisted with
gold and crimson silk to be made, wherewith to strangle himself; and a
sword with the blade of gold to be hammered out to fall upon; and kept
poison in vessels of emerald and topaz wherewith to poison himself
according as he should like to choose one of these ways of dying:
"Impiger. . . ad letum et fortis virtute coacta."
["Resolute and brave in the face of death by a forced courage.
—"Lucan, iv. 798.]
Yet in respect of this person, the effeminacy of his preparations makes it
more likely that he would have thought better on't, had he been put to the
test. But in those who with greater resolution have determined to despatch
themselves, we must examine whether it were with one blow which took away
the leisure of feeling the effect for it is to be questioned whether,
perceiving life, by little and little, to steal away the sentiment of the
body mixing itself with that of the soul, and the means of repenting being
offered, whether, I say, constancy and obstinacy in so dangerous an
intention would have been found.
In the civil wars of Caesar, Lucius Domitius, being taken in the Abruzzi,
and thereupon poisoning himself, afterwards repented. It has happened in
our time that a certain person, being resolved to die and not having gone
deep enough at the first thrust, the sensibility of the flesh opposing his
arm, gave himself two or three wounds more, but could never prevail upon
himself to thrust home. Whilst Plautius Silvanus was upon his trial,
Urgulania, his grandmother, sent him a poniard with which, not being able
to kill himself, he made his servants cut his veins. Albucilla in Tiberius
time having, to kill himself, struck with too much tenderness, gave his
adversaries opportunity to imprison and put him to death their own way.'
And that great leader, Demosthenes, after his rout in Sicily, did the
same; and C. Fimbria, having struck himself too weakly, entreated his
servant to despatch him. On the contrary, Ostorius, who could not make use
of his own arm, disdained to employ that of his servant to any other use
but only to hold the poniard straight and firm; and bringing his throat to
it, thrust himself through. 'Tis, in truth, a morsel that is to be
swallowed without chewing, unless a man be thoroughly resolved; and yet
Adrian the emperor made his physician mark and encircle on his pap the
mortal place wherein he was to stab to whom he had given orders to kill
him. For this reason it was that Caesar, being asked what death he thought
to be the most desired, made answer, "The least premeditated and the
shortest."—[Tacitus, Annals, xvi. 15]— If Caesar dared to say
it, it is no cowardice in me to believe it." A short death," says Pliny,
"is the sovereign good hap of human life. "People do not much care to
recognise it. No one can say that he is resolute for death who fears to
deal with it and cannot undergo it with his eyes open: they whom we see in
criminal punishments run to their death and hasten and press their
execution, do it not out of resolution, but because they will not give
them selves leisure to consider it; it does not trouble them to be dead,
but to die:
"Emodi nolo, sed me esse mortem nihil astigmia:"
["I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead."
—Epicharmus, apud Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 8.]
'tis a degree of constancy to which I have experimented, that I can
arrive, like those who plunge into dangers, as into the sea, with their
eyes shut.
There is nothing, in my opinion, more illustrious in the life of Socrates,
than that he had thirty whole days wherein to ruminate upon the sentence
of his death, to have digested it all that time with a most assured hope,
without care, and without alteration, and with a series of words and
actions rather careless and indifferent than any way stirred or
discomposed by the weight of such a thought.
That Pomponius Atticus, to whom Cicero writes so often, being sick, caused
Agrippa, his son-in-law, and two or three more of his friends, to be
called to him, and told them, that having found all means practised upon
him for his recovery to be in vain, and that all he did to prolong his
life also prolonged and augmented his pain, he was resolved to put an end
both to the one and the other, desiring them to approve of his
determination, or at least not to lose their labour in endeavouring to
dissuade him. Now, having chosen to destroy himself by abstinence, his
disease was thereby cured: the remedy that he had made use of to kill
himself restored him to health. His physicians and friends, rejoicing at
so happy an event, and coming to congratulate him, found themselves very
much deceived, it being impossible for them to make him alter his purpose,
he telling them, that as he must one day die, and was now so far on his
way, he would save himself the labour of beginning another time. This man,
having surveyed death at leisure, was not only not discouraged at its
approach, but eagerly sought it; for being content that he had engaged in
the combat, he made it a point of bravery to see the end; 'tis far beyond
not fearing death to taste and relish it.
The story of the philosopher Cleanthes is very like this: he had his gums
swollen and rotten; his physicians advised him to great abstinence: having
fasted two days, he was so much better that they pronounced him cured, and
permitted him to return to his ordinary course of diet; he, on the
contrary, already tasting some sweetness in this faintness of his, would
not be persuaded to go back, but resolved to proceed, and to finish what
he had so far advanced.
Tullius Marcellinus, a young man of Rome, having a mind to anticipate the
hour of his destiny, to be rid of a disease that was more trouble to him
than he was willing to endure, though his physicians assured him of a
certain, though not sudden, cure, called a council of his friends to
deliberate about it; of whom some, says Seneca, gave him the counsel that
out of unmanliness they would have taken themselves; others, out of
flattery, such as they thought he would best like; but a Stoic said this
to him: "Do not concern thyself, Marcellinus, as if thou didst deliberate
of a thing of importance; 'tis no great matter to live; thy servants and
beasts live; but it is a great thing to die handsomely, wisely, and
firmly. Do but think how long thou hast done the same things, eat, drink,
and sleep, drink, sleep, and eat: we incessantly wheel in the same circle.
Not only ill and insupportable accidents, but even the satiety of living,
inclines a man to desire to die." Marcellinus did not stand in need of a
man to advise, but of a man to assist him; his servants were afraid to
meddle in the business, but this philosopher gave them to under stand that
domestics are suspected even when it is in doubt whether the death of the
master were voluntary or no; otherwise, that it would be of as ill example
to hinder him as to kill him, forasmuch as:
"Invitum qui servat, idem facit occidenti."
["He who makes a man live against his will, 'tis as cruel
as to kill him."—Horat., De Arte Poet., 467]
He then told Marcellinus that it would not be unbecoming, as what is left
on the tables when we have eaten is given to the attendants, so, life
being ended, to distribute something to those who have been our servants.
Now Marcellinus was of a free and liberal spirit; he, therefore, divided a
certain sum of money amongst his servants, and consoled them. As to the
rest, he had no need of steel nor of blood: he resolved to go out of this
life and not to run out of it; not to escape from death, but to essay it.
And to give himself leisure to deal with it, having forsaken all manner of
nourishment, the third day following, after having caused himself to be
sprinkled with warm water, he fainted by degrees, and not without some
kind of pleasure, as he himself declared.
In fact, such as have been acquainted with these faintings, proceeding
from weakness, say that they are therein sensible of no manner of pain,
but rather feel a kind of delight, as in the passage to sleep and best.
These are studied and digested deaths.
But to the end that Cato only may furnish out the whole example of virtue,
it seems as if his good with which the leisure to confront and struggle
with death, reinforcing his destiny had put his ill one into the hand he
gave himself the blow, seeing he had courage in the danger, instead of
letting it go less. And if I had had to represent him in his supreme
station, I should have done it in the posture of tearing out his bloody
bowels, rather than with his sword in his hand, as did the statuaries of
his time, for this second murder was much more furious than the first.
CHAPTER XIV——THAT OUR MIND HINDERS ITSELF
'Tis a pleasant imagination to fancy a mind exactly balanced betwixt two
equal desires: for, doubtless, it can never pitch upon either, forasmuch
as the choice and application would manifest an inequality of esteem; and
were we set betwixt the bottle and the ham, with an equal appetite to
drink and eat, there would doubtless be no remedy, but we must die of
thirst and hunger. To provide against this inconvenience, the Stoics, when
they are asked whence the election in the soul of two indifferent things
proceeds, and that makes us, out of a great number of crowns, rather take
one than another, they being all alike, and there being no reason to
incline us to such a preference, make answer, that this movement of the
soul is extraordinary and irregular, entering into us by a foreign,
accidental, and fortuitous impulse. It might rather, methinks, he said,
that nothing presents itself to us wherein there is not some difference,
how little soever; and that, either by the sight or touch, there is always
some choice that, though it be imperceptibly, tempts and attracts us; so,
whoever shall presuppose a packthread equally strong throughout, it is
utterly impossible it should break; for, where will you have the breaking
to begin? and that it should break altogether is not in nature. Whoever,
also, should hereunto join the geometrical propositions that, by the
certainty of their demonstrations, conclude the contained to be greater
than the containing, the centre to be as great as its circumference, and
that find out two lines incessantly approaching each other, which yet can
never meet, and the philosopher's stone, and the quadrature of the circle,
where the reason and the effect are so opposite, might, peradventure, find
some argument to second this bold saying of Pliny:
"Solum certum nihil esse certi,
et homine nihil miserius ant superbius."
["It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing
is more miserable or more proud than man."—Nat. Hist., ii. 7.]
CHAPTER XV——THAT OUR DESIRES ARE AUGMENTED BY DIFFICULTY
There is no reason that has not its contrary, say the wisest of the
philosophers. I was just now ruminating on the excellent saying one of the
ancients alleges for the contempt of life: "No good can bring pleasure,
unless it be that for the loss of which we are beforehand prepared."
"In aequo est dolor amissae rei, et timor amittendae,"
["The grief of losing a thing, and the fear of losing it,
are equal."—Seneca, Ep., 98.]
meaning by this that the fruition of life cannot be truly pleasant to us
if we are in fear of losing it. It might, however, be said, on the
contrary, that we hug and embrace this good so much the more earnestly,
and with so much greater affection, by how much we see it the less assured
and fear to have it taken from us: for it is evident, as fire burns with
greater fury when cold comes to mix with it, that our will is more
obstinate by being opposed:
"Si nunquam Danaen habuisset ahenea turris,
Non esses, Danae, de Jove facta parens;"
["If a brazen tower had not held Danae, you would not, Danae, have
been made a mother by Jove."—Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 27.]
and that there is nothing naturally so contrary to our taste as satiety
which proceeds from facility; nor anything that so much whets it as rarity
and difficulty:
"Omnium rerum voluptas ipso, quo debet fugare, periculo crescit."
["The pleasure of all things increases by the same danger that
should deter it."—Seneca, De Benef., vii. 9.]
"Galla, nega; satiatur amor, nisi gaudia torquent."
["Galla, refuse me; love is glutted with joys that are not attended
with trouble."—Martial, iv. 37.]
To keep love in breath, Lycurgus made a decree that the married people of
Lacedaemon should never enjoy one another but by stealth; and that it
should be as great a shame to take them in bed together as committing with
others. The difficulty of assignations, the danger of surprise, the shame
of the morning,
"Et languor, et silentium,
Et latere petitus imo Spiritus:"
["And languor, and silence, and sighs, coming from the innermost
heart."—Hor., Epod., xi. 9.]
these are what give the piquancy to the sauce. How many very wantonly
pleasant sports spring from the most decent and modest language of the
works on love? Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it is
much sweeter when it smarts and has the skin rippled. The courtesan Flora
said she never lay with Pompey but that she made him wear the prints of
her teeth.—[Plutarch, Life of Pompey, c. i.]
"Quod petiere, premunt arcte, faciuntque dolorem
Corporis, et dentes inlidunt saepe labellis . . .
Et stimuli subsunt, qui instigant laedere ad ipsum,
Quodcunque est, rabies unde illae germina surgunt."
["What they have sought they dress closely, and cause pain; on the
lips fix the teeth, and every kiss indents: urged by latent stimulus
the part to wound"—Lucretius, i. 4.]
And so it is in everything: difficulty gives all things their estimation;
the people of the march of Ancona more readily make their vows to St.
James, and those of Galicia to Our Lady of Loreto; they make wonderful
to-do at Liege about the baths of Lucca, and in Tuscany about those of
Aspa: there are few Romans seen in the fencing school of Rome, which is
full of French. That great Cato also, as much as us, nauseated his wife
whilst she was his, and longed for her when in the possession of another.
I was fain to turn out into the paddock an old horse, as he was not to be
governed when he smelt a mare: the facility presently sated him as towards
his own, but towards strange mares, and the first that passed by the pale
of his pasture, he would again fall to his importunate neighings and his
furious heats as before. Our appetite contemns and passes by what it has
in possession, to run after that it has not:
"Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat."
["He slights her who is close at hand, and runs after her
who flees from him."—Horace, Sat., i. 2, 108.]
To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to't:
"Nisi to servare puellam
Incipis, incipiet desinere esse mea:"
["Unless you begin to guard your mistress, she will soon begin
to be no longer mine."—Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 47.]
to give it wholly up to us is to beget in us contempt. Want and abundance
fall into the same inconvenience:
"Tibi quod superest, mihi quod desit, dolet."
["Your superfluities trouble you, and what I want
troubles me.—"Terence, Phoym., i. 3, 9.]
Desire and fruition equally afflict us. The rigors of mistresses are
troublesome, but facility, to say truth, still more so; forasmuch as
discontent and anger spring from the esteem we have of the thing desired,
heat and actuate love, but satiety begets disgust; 'tis a blunt, dull,
stupid, tired, and slothful passion:
"Si qua volet regnare diu, contemnat amantem."
["She who would long retain her power must use her lover ill."
—Ovid, Amor., ii. 19, 33]
"Contemnite, amantes:
Sic hodie veniet, si qua negavit heri."
["Slight your mistress; she will to-day come who denied you
yesterday.—"Propertius, ii. 14, 19.]
Why did Poppea invent the use of a mask to hide the beauties of her face,
but to enhance it to her lovers? Why have they veiled, even below the
heels, those beauties that every one desires to show, and that every one
desires to see? Why do they cover with so many hindrances, one over
another, the parts where our desires and their own have their principal
seat? And to what serve those great bastion farthingales, with which our
ladies fortify their haunches, but to allure our appetite and to draw us
on by removing them farther from us?
"Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri."
["She flies to the osiers, and desires beforehand to be seen going."
—Virgil, Eclog., iii. 65.]
"Interdum tunica duxit operta moram."
["The hidden robe has sometimes checked love."
—Propertius, ii. 15, 6.]
To what use serves the artifice of this virgin modesty, this grave
coldness, this severe countenance, this professing to be ignorant of
things that they know better than we who instruct them in them, but to
increase in us the desire to overcome, control, and trample underfoot at
pleasure all this ceremony and all these obstacles? For there is not only
pleasure, but, moreover, glory, in conquering and debauching that soft
sweetness and that childish modesty, and to reduce a cold and matronlike
gravity to the mercy of our ardent desires: 'tis a glory, say they, to
triumph over modesty, chastity, and temperance; and whoever dissuades
ladies from those qualities, betrays both them and himself. We are to
believe that their hearts tremble with affright, that the very sound of
our words offends the purity of their ears, that they hate us for talking
so, and only yield to our importunity by a compulsive force. Beauty, all
powerful as it is, has not wherewithal to make itself relished without the
mediation of these little arts. Look into Italy, where there is the most
and the finest beauty to be sold, how it is necessitated to have recourse
to extrinsic means and other artifices to render itself charming, and yet,
in truth, whatever it may do, being venal and public, it remains feeble
and languishing. Even so in virtue itself, of two like effects, we
notwithstanding look upon that as the fairest and most worthy, wherein the
most trouble and hazard are set before us.
'Tis an effect of the divine Providence to suffer the holy Church to be
afflicted, as we see it, with so many storms and troubles, by this
opposition to rouse pious souls, and to awaken them from that drowsy
lethargy wherein, by so long tranquillity, they had been immerged. If we
should lay the loss we have sustained in the number of those who have gone
astray, in the balance against the benefit we have had by being again put
in breath, and by having our zeal and strength revived by reason of this
opposition, I know not whether the utility would not surmount the damage.
We have thought to tie the nuptial knot of our marriages more fast and
firm by having taken away all means of dissolving it, but the knot of the
will and affection is so much the more slackened and made loose, by how
much that of constraint is drawn closer; and, on the contrary, that which
kept the marriages at Rome so long in honour and inviolate, was the
liberty every one who so desired had to break them; they kept their wives
the better, because they might part with them, if they would; and, in the
full liberty of divorce, five hundred years and more passed away before
any one made use on't.
"Quod licet, ingratum est; quod non licet, acrius urit."
["What you may, is displeasing; what is forbidden, whets the
appetite.—"Ovid, Amor., ii. 19.]
We might here introduce the opinion of an ancient upon this occasion,
"that executions rather whet than dull the edge of vices: that they do not
beget the care of doing well, that being the work of reason and
discipline, but only a care not to be taken in doing ill:"
"Latius excisae pestis contagia serpunt."
["The plague-sore being lanced, the infection spreads all the more."
—Rutilius, Itinerar. 1, 397.]
I do not know that this is true; but I experimentally know, that never
civil government was by that means reformed; the order and regimen of
manners depend upon some other expedient.
The Greek histories make mention of the Argippians, neighbours to Scythia,
who live without either rod or stick for offence; where not only no one
attempts to attack them, but whoever can fly thither is safe, by reason of
their virtue and sanctity of life, and no one is so bold as to lay hands
upon them; and they have applications made to them to determine the
controversies that arise betwixt men of other countries. There is a
certain nation, where the enclosures of gardens and fields they would
preserve, are made only of a string of cotton; and, so fenced, is more
firm and secure than by our hedges and ditches.
"Furem signata sollicitant . . .
aperta effractarius praeterit."
["Things sealed, up invite a thief: the housebreaker
passes by open doors."—Seneca, Epist., 68.]
Peradventure, the facility of entering my house, amongst other things, has
been a means to preserve it from the violence of our civil wars: defence
allures attempt, and defiance provokes an enemy. I enervated the soldiers'
design by depriving the exploit of danger and all manner of military
glory, which is wont to serve them for pretence and excuse: whatever is
bravely, is ever honourably, done, at a time when justice is dead. I
render them the conquest of my house cowardly and base; it is never shut
to any one that knocks; my gate has no other guard than a porter, and he
of ancient custom and ceremony; who does not so much serve to defend it as
to offer it with more decorum and grace; I have no other guard nor
sentinel than the stars. A gentleman would play the fool to make a show of
defence, if he be not really in a condition to defend himself. He who lies
open on one side, is everywhere so; our ancestors did not think of
building frontier garrisons. The means of assaulting, I mean without
battery or army, and of surprising our houses, increases every day more
and more beyond the means to guard them; men's wits are generally bent
that way; in invasion every one is concerned: none but the rich in
defence. Mine was strong for the time when it was built; I have added
nothing to it of that kind, and should fear that its strength might turn
against myself; to which we are to consider that a peaceable time would
require it should be dismantled. There is danger never to be able to
regain it, and it would be very hard to keep; for in intestine
dissensions, your man may be of the party you fear; and where religion is
the pretext, even a man's nearest relations become unreliable, with some
colour of justice. The public exchequer will not maintain our domestic
garrisons; they would exhaust it: we ourselves have not the means to do it
without ruin, or, which is more inconvenient and injurious, without
ruining the people. The condition of my loss would be scarcely worse. As
to the rest, you there lose all; and even your friends will be more ready
to accuse your want of vigilance and your improvidence, and your ignorance
of and indifference to your own business, than to pity you. That so many
garrisoned houses have been undone whereas this of mine remains, makes me
apt to believe that they were only lost by being guarded; this gives an
enemy both an invitation and colour of reason; all defence shows a face of
war. Let who will come to me in God's name; but I shall not invite them;
'tis the retirement I have chosen for my repose from war. I endeavour to
withdraw this corner from the public tempest, as I also do another corner
in my soul. Our war may put on what forms it will, multiply and diversify
itself into new parties; for my part, I stir not. Amongst so many
garrisoned houses, myself alone amongst those of my rank, so far as I
know, in France, have trusted purely to Heaven for the protection of mine,
and have never removed plate, deeds, or hangings. I will neither fear nor
save myself by halves. If a full acknowledgment acquires the Divine
favour, it will stay with me to the end: if not, I have still continued
long enough to render my continuance remarkable and fit to be recorded.
How? Why, there are thirty years that I have thus lived.
CHAPTER XVI——OF GLORY
There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice which denotes and
signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of the
substance; 'tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it. God,
who is all fulness in Himself and the height of all perfection, cannot
augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be augmented
and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His exterior
works: which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him, forasmuch as
He can have no accession of good, we attribute to His name, which is the
part out of Him that is nearest to us. Thus is it that to God alone glory
and honour appertain; and there is nothing so remote from reason as that
we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, being indigent and
necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having continual need
of amelioration, 'tis to that we ought to employ all our endeavour. We are
all hollow and empty; 'tis not with wind and voice that we are to fill
ourselves; we want a more solid substance to repair us: a man starving
with hunger would be very simple to seek rather to provide himself with a
gay garment than with a good meal: we are to look after that whereof we
have most need. As we have it in our ordinary prayers:
"Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus."
We are in want of beauty, health, wisdom, virtue, and such like essential
qualities: exterior ornaments should, be looked after when we have made
provision for necessary things. Divinity treats amply and more pertinently
of this subject, but I am not much versed in it.
Chrysippus and Diogenes were the earliest and firmest advocates of the
contempt of glory; and maintained that, amongst all pleasures, there was
none more dangerous nor more to be avoided than that which proceeds from
the approbation of others. And, in truth, experience makes us sensible of
many very hurtful treasons in it. There is nothing that so poisons princes
as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtain credit and
favour with them; nor panderism so apt and so usually made use of to
corrupt the chastity of women as to wheedle and entertain them with their
own praises. The first charm the Syrens made use of to allure Ulysses is
of this nature:
"Deca vers nous, deca, o tres-louable Ulysse,
Et le plus grand honneur don't la Grece fleurisse."
["Come hither to us, O admirable Ulysses, come hither, thou greatest
ornament and pride of Greece."—Homer, Odysseus, xii. 184.]
These philosophers said, that all the glory of the world was not worth an
understanding man's holding out his finger to obtain it:
"Gloria quantalibet quid erit, si gloria tantum est?"
["What is glory, be it as glorious as it may be, if it be no more
than glory?"—Juvenal, Sat., vii. 81.]
I say for it alone; for it often brings several commodities along with it,
for which it may justly be desired: it acquires us good-will, and renders
us less subject and exposed to insult and offence from others, and the
like. It was also one of the principal doctrines of Epicurus; for this
precept of his sect, Conceal thy life, that forbids men to encumber
themselves with public negotiations and offices, also necessarily
presupposes a contempt of glory, which is the world's approbation of those
actions we produce in public.—[Plutarch, Whether the saying, Conceal
thy life, is well said.]—He that bids us conceal ourselves, and to
have no other concern but for ourselves, and who will not have us known to
others, would much less have us honoured and glorified; and so advises
Idomeneus not in any sort to regulate his actions by the common reputation
or opinion, except so as to avoid the other accidental inconveniences that
the contempt of men might bring upon him.
These discourses are, in my opinion, very true and rational; but we are, I
know not how, double in ourselves, which is the cause that what we believe
we do not believe, and cannot disengage ourselves from what we condemn.
Let us see the last and dying words of Epicurus; they are grand, and
worthy of such a philosopher, and yet they carry some touches of the
recommendation of his name and of that humour he had decried by his
precepts. Here is a letter that he dictated a little before his last gasp:
"EPICUYUS TO HEYMACHUS, health.
"Whilst I was passing over the happy and last day of my life, I
write this, but, at the same time, afflicted with such pain in my
bladder and bowels that nothing can be greater, but it was
recompensed with the pleasure the remembrance of my inventions and
doctrines brought to my soul. Now, as the affection thou hast ever
from thy infancy borne towards me and philosophy requires, take upon
thee the protection of Metrodorus' children."
This is the letter. And that which makes me interpret that the pleasure he
says he had in his soul concerning his inventions, has some reference to
the reputation he hoped for thence after his death, is the manner of his
will, in which he gives order that Amynomachus and Timocrates, his heirs,
should, every January, defray the expense of the celebration of his
birthday as Hermachus should appoint; and also the expense that should be
made the twentieth of every moon in entertaining the philosophers, his
friends, who should assemble in honour of the memory of him and of
Metrodorus.—[Cicero, De Finibus, ii. 30.]
Carneades was head of the contrary opinion, and maintained that glory was
to be desired for itself, even as we embrace our posthumous issue for
themselves, having no knowledge nor enjoyment of them. This opinion has
not failed to be the more universally followed, as those commonly are that
are most suitable to our inclinations. Aristotle gives it the first place
amongst external goods; and avoids, as too extreme vices, the immoderate
either seeking or evading it. I believe that, if we had the books Cicero
wrote upon this subject, we should there find pretty stories; for he was
so possessed with this passion, that, if he had dared, I think he could
willingly have fallen into the excess that others did, that virtue itself
was not to be coveted, but upon the account of the honour that always
attends it:
"Paulum sepultae distat inertiae
Celata virtus:"
["Virtue concealed little differs from dead sloth."
—Horace, Od., iv. 9, 29.]
which is an opinion so false, that I am vexed it could ever enter into the
understanding of a man that was honoured with the name of philosopher.
If this were true, men need not be virtuous but in public; and we should
be no further concerned to keep the operations of the soul, which is the
true seat of virtue, regular and in order, than as they are to arrive at
the knowledge of others. Is there no more in it, then, but only slily and
with circumspection to do ill? "If thou knowest," says Carneades, "of a
serpent lurking in a place where, without suspicion, a person is going to
sit down, by whose death thou expectest an advantage, thou dost ill if
thou dost not give him caution of his danger; and so much the more because
the action is to be known by none but thyself." If we do not take up of
ourselves the rule of well-doing, if impunity pass with us for justice, to
how many sorts of wickedness shall we every day abandon ourselves? I do
not find what Sextus Peduceus did, in faithfully restoring the treasure
that C. Plotius had committed to his sole secrecy and trust, a thing that
I have often done myself, so commendable, as I should think it an
execrable baseness, had we done otherwise; and I think it of good use in
our days to recall the example of P. Sextilius Rufus, whom Cicero accuses
to have entered upon an inheritance contrary to his conscience, not only
not against law, but even by the determination of the laws themselves; and
M. Crassus and Hortensius, who, by reason of their authority and power,
having been called in by a stranger to share in the succession of a forged
will, that so he might secure his own part, satisfied themselves with
having no hand in the forgery, and refused not to make their advantage and
to come in for a share: secure enough, if they could shroud themselves
from accusations, witnesses, and the cognisance of the laws:
"Meminerint Deum se habere testem, id est (ut ego arbitror)
mentem suam."
["Let them consider they have God to witness, that is (as I
interpret it), their own consciences."—Cicero, De Offic., iii. 10.]
Virtue is a very vain and frivolous thing if it derive its recommendation
from glory; and 'tis to no purpose that we endeavour to give it a station
by itself, and separate it from fortune; for what is more accidental than
reputation?
"Profecto fortuna in omni re dominatur: ea res cunctas ex
libidine magis, quhm ex vero, celebrat, obscuratque."
["Fortune rules in all things; it advances and depresses things
more out of its own will than of right and justice."
—Sallust, Catilina, c. 8.]
So to order it that actions may be known and seen is purely the work of
fortune; 'tis chance that helps us to glory, according to its own
temerity. I have often seen her go before merit, and often very much
outstrip it. He who first likened glory to a shadow did better than he was
aware of; they are both of them things pre-eminently vain glory also, like
a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in length
infinitely exceeds it. They who instruct gentlemen only to employ their
valour for the obtaining of honour:
"Quasi non sit honestum, quod nobilitatum non sit;"
["As though it were not a virtue, unless celebrated"
—Cicero De Offic. iii. 10.]
what do they intend by that but to instruct them never to hazard
themselves if they are not seen, and to observe well if there be witnesses
present who may carry news of their valour, whereas a thousand occasions
of well-doing present themselves which cannot be taken notice of? How many
brave individual actions are buried in the crowd of a battle? Whoever
shall take upon him to watch another's behaviour in such a confusion is
not very busy himself, and the testimony he shall give of his companions'
deportment will be evidence against himself:
"Vera et sapiens animi magnitudo, honestum illud,
quod maxime naturam sequitur, in factis positum,
non in gloria, judicat."
["The true and wise magnanimity judges that the bravery which most
follows nature more consists in act than glory."
—Cicero, De Offic. i. 19.]
All the glory that I pretend to derive from my life is that I have lived
it in quiet; in quiet, not according to Metrodorus, or Arcesilaus, or
Aristippus, but according to myself. For seeing philosophy has not been
able to find out any way to tranquillity that is good in common, let every
one seek it in particular.
To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite grandeur of their renown
but to fortune? How many men has she extinguished in the beginning of
their progress, of whom we have no knowledge, who brought as much courage
to the work as they, if their adverse hap had not cut them off in the
first sally of their arms? Amongst so many and so great dangers I do not
remember I have anywhere read that Caesar was ever wounded; a thousand
have fallen in less dangers than the least of those he went through. An
infinite number of brave actions must be performed without witness and
lost, before one turns to account. A man is not always on the top of a
breach, or at the head of an army, in the sight of his general, as upon a
scaffold; a man is often surprised betwixt the hedge and the ditch; he
must run the hazard of his life against a henroost; he must dislodge four
rascally musketeers out of a barn; he must prick out single from his
party, and alone make some attempts, according as necessity will have it.
And whoever will observe will, I believe, find it experimentally true,
that occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous; and that
in the wars of our own times there have more brave men been lost in
occasions of little moment, and in the dispute about some little paltry
fort, than in places of greatest importance, and where their valour might
have been more honourably employed.
Who thinks his death achieved to ill purpose if he do not fall on some
signal occasion, instead of illustrating his death, wilfully obscures his
life, suffering in the meantime many very just occasions of hazarding
himself to slip out of his hands; and every just one is illustrious
enough, every man's conscience being a sufficient trumpet to him.
"Gloria nostra est testimonium conscientiae nostrae."
["For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience."
—Corinthians, i. I.]
He who is only a good man that men may know it, and that he may be the
better esteemed when 'tis known; who will not do well but upon condition
that his virtue may be known to men: is one from whom much service is not
to be expected:
"Credo ch 'el reste di quel verno, cose
Facesse degne di tener ne conto;
Ma fur fin' a quel tempo si nascose,
Che non a colpa mia s' hor 'non le conto
Perche Orlando a far l'opre virtuose
Piu ch'a narrar le poi sempre era pronto;
Ne mai fu alcun' de'suoi fatti espresso,
Se non quando ebbe i testimonii appresso."
["The rest of the winter, I believe, was spent in actions worthy of
narration, but they were done so secretly that if I do not tell them
I am not to blame, for Orlando was more bent to do great acts than
to boast of them, so that no deeds of his were ever known but those
that had witnesses."—Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, xi. 81.]
A man must go to the war upon the account of duty, and expect the
recompense that never fails brave and worthy actions, how private soever,
or even virtuous thoughts-the satisfaction that a well-disposed conscience
receives in itself in doing well. A man must be valiant for himself, and
upon account of the advantage it is to him to have his courage seated in a
firm and secure place against the assaults of fortune:
"Virtus, repulsaa nescia sordidx
Intaminatis fulget honoribus
Nec sumit, aut ponit secures
Arbitrio popularis aura."
["Virtue, repudiating all base repulse, shines in taintless
honours, nor takes nor leaves dignity at the mere will of the
vulgar."—Horace, Od., iii. 2, 17.]
It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part, but for
ourselves within, where no eyes can pierce but our own; there she defends
us from the fear of death, of pain, of shame itself: there she arms us
against the loss of our children, friends, and fortunes: and when
opportunity presents itself, she leads us on to the hazards of war:
"Non emolumento aliquo, sed ipsius honestatis decore."
["Not for any profit, but for the honour of honesty itself."
—Cicero, De Finib., i. 10.]
This profit is of much greater advantage, and more worthy to be coveted
and hoped for, than, honour and glory, which are no other than a
favourable judgment given of us.
A dozen men must be called out of a whole nation to judge about an acre of
land; and the judgment of our inclinations and actions, the most difficult
and most important matter that is, we refer to the voice and determination
of the rabble, the mother of ignorance, injustice, and inconstancy. Is it
reasonable that the life of a wise man should depend upon the judgment of
fools?
"An quidquam stultius, quam, quos singulos contemnas,
eos aliquid putare esse universes?"
["Can anything be more foolish than to think that those you despise
singly, can be anything else in general."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 36.]
He that makes it his business to please them, will have enough to do and
never have done; 'tis a mark that can never be aimed at or hit:
"Nil tam inaestimabile est, quam animi multitudinis."
["Nothing is to be so little understood as the minds of the
multitude."—Livy, xxxi. 34.]
Demetrius pleasantly said of the voice of the people, that he made no more
account of that which came from above than of that which came from below.
He [Cicero] says more:
"Ego hoc judico, si quando turpe non sit, tamen non
esse non turpe, quum id a multitudine laudatur."
["I am of opinion, that though a thing be not foul in itself,
yet it cannot but become so when commended by the multitude."
—Cicero, De Finib., ii. 15.]
No art, no activity of wit, could conduct our steps so as to follow so
wandering and so irregular a guide; in this windy confusion of the noise
of vulgar reports and opinions that drive us on, no way worth anything can
be chosen. Let us not propose to ourselves so floating and wavering an
end; let us follow constantly after reason; let the public approbation
follow us there, if it will; and as it wholly depends upon fortune, we
have no reason sooner to expect it by any other way than that. Even though
I would not follow the right way because it is right, I should, however,
follow it as having experimentally found that, at the end of the
reckoning, 'tis commonly the most happy and of greatest utility.
"Dedit hoc providentia hominibus munus,
ut honesta magis juvarent."
["This gift Providence has given to men, that honest things should
be the most agreeable."—Quintilian, Inst. Orat., i. 12.]
The mariner of old said thus to Neptune, in a great tempest: "O God, thou
wilt save me if thou wilt, and if thou choosest, thou wilt destroy me;
but, however, I will hold my rudder straight."—[Seneca, Ep., 85.]—
I have seen in my time a thousand men supple, halfbred, ambiguous, whom no
one doubted to be more worldly-wise than I, lose themselves, where I have
saved myself:
"Risi successus posse carere dolos."
["I have laughed to see cunning fail of success."
—Ovid, Heroid, i. 18.]
Paulus AEmilius, going on the glorious expedition of Macedonia, above all
things charged the people of Rome not to speak of his actions during his
absence. Oh, the license of judgments is a great disturbance to great
affairs! forasmuch as every one has not the firmness of Fabius against
common, adverse, and injurious tongues, who rather suffered his authority
to be dissected by the vain fancies of men, than to do less well in his
charge with a favourable reputation and the popular applause.
There is I know not what natural sweetness in hearing one's self
commended; but we are a great deal too fond of it:
"Laudari metuam, neque enim mihi cornea fibra est
Sed recti finemque extremumque esse recuso
Euge tuum, et belle."
["I should fear to be praised, for my heart is not made of horn;
but I deny that 'excellent—admirably done,' are the terms and
final aim of virtue."—Persius, i. 47.]
I care not so much what I am in the opinions of others, as what I am in my
own; I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing. Strangers see
nothing but events and outward appearances; everybody can set a good face
on the matter, when they have trembling and terror within: they do not see
my heart, they see but my countenance. One is right in decrying the
hypocrisy that is in war; for what is more easy to an old soldier than to
shift in a time of danger, and to counterfeit the brave when he has no
more heart than a chicken? There are so many ways to avoid hazarding a
man's own person, that we have deceived the world a thousand times before
we come to be engaged in a real danger: and even then, finding ourselves
in an inevitable necessity of doing something, we can make shift for that
time to conceal our apprehensions by setting a good face on the business,
though the heart beats within; and whoever had the use of the Platonic
ring, which renders those invisible that wear it, if turned inward towards
the palm of the hand, a great many would very often hide themselves when
they ought most to appear, and would repent being placed in so honourable
a post, where necessity must make them bold.
"Falsus honor juvat, et mendax infamia terret
Quem nisi mendosum et mendacem?"
["False honour pleases, and calumny affrights, the guilty
and the sick."—Horace, Ep., i. 16, 89.]
Thus we see how all the judgments that are founded upon external
appearances, are marvellously uncertain and doubtful; and that there is no
so certain testimony as every one is to himself. In these, how many
soldiers' boys are companions of our glory? he who stands firm in an open
trench, what does he in that more than fifty poor pioneers who open to him
the way and cover it with their own bodies for fivepence a day pay, do
before him?
"Non quicquid turbida Roma
Elevet, accedas; examenque improbum in illa
Castiges trutina: nec to quaesiveris extra."
["Do not, if turbulent Rome disparage anything, accede; nor correct
a false balance by that scale; nor seek anything beyond thyself."
—Persius, Sat., i. 5.]
The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths, we call making
them more great; we will have them there well received, and that this
increase turn to their advantage, which is all that can be excusable in
this design. But the excess of this disease proceeds so far that many
covet to have a name, be it what it will. Trogus Pompeius says of
Herostratus, and Titus Livius of Manlius Capitolinus, that they were more
ambitious of a great reputation than of a good one. This is very common;
we are more solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak; and it
is enough for us that our names are often mentioned, be it after what
manner it will. It should seem that to be known, is in some sort to have a
man's life and its duration in others' keeping. I, for my part, hold that
I am not, but in myself; and of that other life of mine which lies in the
knowledge of my friends, to consider it naked and simply in itself, I know
very well that I am sensible of no fruit nor enjoyment from it but by the
vanity of a fantastic opinion; and when I shall be dead, I shall be still
and much less sensible of it; and shall, withal, absolutely lose the use
of those real advantages that sometimes accidentally follow it.
I shall have no more handle whereby to take hold of reputation, neither
shall it have any whereby to take hold of or to cleave to me; for to
expect that my name should be advanced by it, in the first place, I have
no name that is enough my own; of two that I have, one is common to all my
race, and indeed to others also; there are two families at Paris and
Montpellier, whose surname is Montaigne, another in Brittany, and one in
Xaintonge, De La Montaigne. The transposition of one syllable only would
suffice so to ravel our affairs, that I shall share in their glory, and
they peradventure will partake of my discredit; and, moreover, my
ancestors have formerly been surnamed, Eyquem,—[Eyquem was the
patronymic.]—a name wherein a family well known in England is at
this day concerned. As to my other name, every one may take it that will,
and so, perhaps, I may honour a porter in my own stead. And besides,
though I had a particular distinction by myself, what can it distinguish,
when I am no more? Can it point out and favour inanity?
"Non levior cippus nunc imprimit ossa?
Laudat posteritas! Nunc non e manibus illis,
Nunc non a tumulo fortunataque favilla,
Nascentur violae?"
["Does the tomb press with less weight upon my bones? Do comrades
praise? Not from my manes, not from the tomb, not from the ashes
will violets grow."—Persius, Sat., i. 37.]
but of this I have spoken elsewhere. As to what remains, in a great battle
where ten thousand men are maimed or killed, there are not fifteen who are
taken notice of; it must be some very eminent greatness, or some
consequence of great importance that fortune has added to it, that
signalises a private action, not of a harquebuser only, but of a great
captain; for to kill a man, or two, or ten: to expose a man's self bravely
to the utmost peril of death, is indeed something in every one of us,
because we there hazard all; but for the world's concern, they are things
so ordinary, and so many of them are every day seen, and there must of
necessity be so many of the same kind to produce any notable effect, that
we cannot expect any particular renown from it:
"Casus multis hic cognitus, ac jam
Tritus, et a medio fortunae ductus acervo."
["The accident is known to many, and now trite; and drawn from the
midst of Fortune's heap."—Juvenal, Sat., xiii. 9.]
Of so many thousands of valiant men who have died within these fifteen
hundred years in France with their swords in their hands, not a hundred
have come to our knowledge. The memory, not of the commanders only, but of
battles and victories, is buried and gone; the fortunes of above half of
the world, for want of a record, stir not from their place, and vanish
without duration. If I had unknown events in my possession, I should think
with great ease to out-do those that are recorded, in all sorts of
examples. Is it not strange that even of the Greeks and Romans, with so
many writers and witnesses, and so many rare and noble exploits, so few
are arrived at our knowledge:
"Ad nos vix tenuis famx perlabitur aura."
["An obscure rumour scarce is hither come."—AEneid, vii. 646.]
It will be much if, a hundred years hence, it be remembered in general
that in our times there were civil wars in France. The Lacedaemonians,
entering into battle, sacrificed to the Muses, to the end that their
actions might be well and worthily written, looking upon it as a divine
and no common favour, that brave acts should find witnesses that could
give them life and memory. Do we expect that at every musket-shot we
receive, and at every hazard we run, there must be a register ready to
record it? and, besides, a hundred registers may enrol them whose
commentaries will not last above three days, and will never come to the
sight of any one. We have not the thousandth part of ancient writings;
'tis fortune that gives them a shorter or longer life, according to her
favour; and 'tis permissible to doubt whether those we have be not the
worst, not having seen the rest. Men do not write histories of things of
so little moment: a man must have been general in the conquest of an
empire or a kingdom; he must have won two-and-fifty set battles, and
always the weaker in number, as Caesar did: ten thousand brave fellows and
many great captains lost their lives valiantly in his service, whose names
lasted no longer than their wives and children lived:
"Quos fama obscura recondit."
["Whom an obscure reputation conceals."—AEneid, v. 302.]
Even those whom we see behave themselves well, three months or three years
after they have departed hence, are no more mentioned than if they had
never been. Whoever will justly consider, and with due proportion, of what
kind of men and of what sort of actions the glory sustains itself in the
records of history, will find that there are very few actions and very few
persons of our times who can there pretend any right. How many worthy men
have we known to survive their own reputation, who have seen and suffered
the honour and glory most justly acquired in their youth, extinguished in
their own presence? And for three years of this fantastic and imaginary
life we must go and throw away our true and essential life, and engage
ourselves in a perpetual death! The sages propose to themselves a nobler
and more just end in so important an enterprise:
"Recte facti, fecisse merces est: officii fructus,
ipsum officium est."
["The reward of a thing well done is to have done it; the fruit
of a good service is the service itself."—Seneca, Ep., 8.]
It were, peradventure, excusable in a painter or other artisan, or in a
rhetorician or a grammarian, to endeavour to raise himself a name by his
works; but the actions of virtue are too noble in themselves to seek any
other reward than from their own value, and especially to seek it in the
vanity of human judgments.
If this false opinion, nevertheless, be of such use to the public as to
keep men in their duty; if the people are thereby stirred up to virtue; if
princes are touched to see the world bless the memory of Trajan, and
abominate that of Nero; if it moves them to see the name of that great
beast, once so terrible and feared, so freely cursed and reviled by every
schoolboy, let it by all means increase, and be as much as possible nursed
up and cherished amongst us; and Plato, bending his whole endeavour to
make his citizens virtuous, also advises them not to despise the good
repute and esteem of the people; and says it falls out, by a certain
Divine inspiration, that even the wicked themselves oft-times, as well by
word as opinion, can rightly distinguish the virtuous from the wicked.
This person and his tutor are both marvellous and bold artificers
everywhere to add divine operations and revelations where human force is
wanting:
"Ut tragici poetae confugiunt ad deum,
cum explicare argumenti exitum non possunt:"
["As tragic poets fly to some god when they cannot explain
the issue of their argument."—Cicero, De Nat. Deor., i. 20.]
and peradventure, for this reason it was that Timon, railing at him,
called him the great forger of miracles. Seeing that men, by their
insufficiency, cannot pay themselves well enough with current money, let
the counterfeit be superadded. 'Tis a way that has been practised by all
the legislators: and there is no government that has not some mixture
either of ceremonial vanity or of false opinion, that serves for a curb to
keep the people in their duty. 'Tis for this that most of them have their
originals and beginnings fabulous, and enriched with supernatural
mysteries; 'tis this that has given credit to bastard religions, and
caused them to be countenanced by men of understanding; and for this, that
Numa and Sertorius, to possess their men with a better opinion of them,
fed them with this foppery; one, that the nymph Egeria, the other that his
white hind, brought them all their counsels from the gods. And the
authority that Numa gave to his laws, under the title of the patronage of
this goddess, Zoroaster, legislator of the Bactrians and Persians, gave to
his under the name of the God Oromazis: Trismegistus, legislator of the
Egyptians, under that of Mercury; Xamolxis, legislator of the Scythians,
under that of Vesta; Charondas, legislator of the Chalcidians, under that
of Saturn; Minos, legislator of the Candiots, under that of Jupiter;
Lycurgus, legislator of the Lacedaemonians, under that of Apollo; and
Draco and Solon, legislators of the Athenians, under that of Minerva. And
every government has a god at the head of it; the others falsely, that
truly, which Moses set over the Jews at their departure out of Egypt. The
religion of the Bedouins, as the Sire de Joinville reports, amongst other
things, enjoined a belief that the soul of him amongst them who died for
his prince, went into another body more happy, more beautiful, and more
robust than the former; by which means they much more willingly ventured
their lives:
"In ferrum mens prona viris, animaeque capaces
Mortis, et ignavum est rediturae parcere vitae."
["Men's minds are prone to the sword, and their souls able to bear
death; and it is base to spare a life that will be renewed."
—Lucan, i. 461.]
This is a very comfortable belief, however erroneous. Every nation has
many such examples of its own; but this subject would require a treatise
by itself.
To add one word more to my former discourse, I would advise the ladies no
longer to call that honour which is but their duty:
"Ut enim consuetudo loquitur, id solum dicitur
honestum, quod est populari fama gloriosum;"
["As custom puts it, that only is called honest which is
glorious by the public voice."—Cicero, De Finibus, ii. 15.]
their duty is the mark, their honour but the outward rind. Neither would I
advise them to give this excuse for payment of their denial: for I
presuppose that their intentions, their desire, and will, which are things
wherein their honour is not at all concerned, forasmuch as nothing thereof
appears without, are much better regulated than the effects:
"Qux quia non liceat, non facit, illa facit:"
["She who only refuses, because 'tis forbidden, consents."
—Ovid, Amor., ii. 4, 4.]
The offence, both towards God and in the conscience, would be as great to
desire as to do it; and, besides, they are actions so private and secret
of themselves, as would be easily enough kept from the knowledge of
others, wherein the honour consists, if they had not another respect to
their duty, and the affection they bear to chastity, for itself. Every
woman of honour will much rather choose to lose her honour than to hurt
her conscience.
CHAPTER XVII——OF PRESUMPTION
There is another sort of glory, which is the having too good an opinion of
our own worth. 'Tis an inconsiderate affection with which we flatter
ourselves, and that represents us to ourselves other than we truly are:
like the passion of love, that lends beauties and graces to the object,
and makes those who are caught by it, with a depraved and corrupt
judgment, consider the thing which they love other and more perfect than
it is.
I would not, nevertheless, for fear of failing on this side, that a man
should not know himself aright, or think himself less than he is; the
judgment ought in all things to maintain its rights; 'tis all the reason
in the world he should discern in himself, as well as in others, what
truth sets before him; if it be Caesar, let him boldly think himself the
greatest captain in the world. We are nothing but ceremony: ceremony
carries us away, and we leave the substance of things: we hold by the
branches, and quit the trunk and the body; we have taught the ladies to
blush when they hear that but named which they are not at all afraid to
do: we dare not call our members by their right names, yet are not afraid
to employ them in all sorts of debauchery: ceremony forbids us to express
by words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it: reason
forbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it. I find
myself here fettered by the laws of ceremony; for it neither permits a man
to speak well of himself, nor ill: we will leave her there for this time.
They whom fortune (call it good or ill) has made to, pass their lives in
some eminent degree, may by their public actions manifest what they are;
but they whom she has only employed in the crowd, and of whom nobody will
say a word unless they speak themselves, are to be excused if they take
the boldness to speak of themselves to such as are interested to know
them; by the example of Lucilius:
"Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim
Credebat libris, neque si male cesserat, usquam
Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit, ut omnis,
Votiva pateat veluri descripta tabella
Vita senis;"
["He formerly confided his secret thoughts to his books, as to tried
friends, and for good and evil, resorted not elsewhere: hence it
came to pass, that the old man's life is there all seen as on a
votive tablet."—Horace, Sat., ii. I, 30.]
he always committed to paper his actions and thoughts, and there portrayed
himself such as he found himself to be:
"Nec id Rutilio et Scauro citra fidem; aut obtrectationi fuit."
["Nor was this considered a breach of good faith or a disparagement
to Rutilius or Scaurus."—Tacitus, Agricola, c. I.]
I remember, then, that from my infancy there was observed in me I know not
what kind of carriage and behaviour, that seemed to relish of pride and
arrogance. I will say this, by the way, that it is not unreasonable to
suppose that we have qualities and inclinations so much our own, and so
incorporate in us, that we have not the means to feel and recognise them:
and of such natural inclinations the body will retain a certain bent,
without our knowledge or consent. It was an affectation conformable with
his beauty that made Alexander carry his head on one side, and caused
Alcibiades to lisp; Julius Caesar scratched his head with one finger,
which is the fashion of a man full of troublesome thoughts; and Cicero, as
I remember, was wont to pucker up his nose, a sign of a man given to
scoffing; such motions as these may imperceptibly happen in us. There are
other artificial ones which I meddle not with, as salutations and congees,
by which men acquire, for the most part unjustly, the reputation of being
humble and courteous: one may be humble out of pride. I am prodigal enough
of my hat, especially in summer, and never am so saluted but that I pay it
again from persons of what quality soever, unless they be in my own
service. I should make it my request to some princes whom I know, that
they would be more sparing of that ceremony, and bestow that courtesy
where it is more due; for being so indiscreetly and indifferently
conferred on all, it is thrown away to no purpose; if it be without
respect of persons, it loses its effect. Amongst irregular deportment, let
us not forget that haughty one of the Emperor Constantius, who always in
public held his head upright and stiff, without bending or turning on
either side, not so much as to look upon those who saluted him on one
side, planting his body in a rigid immovable posture, without suffering it
to yield to the motion of his coach, not daring so much as to spit, blow
his nose, or wipe his face before people. I know not whether the gestures
that were observed in me were of this first quality, and whether I had
really any occult proneness to this vice, as it might well be; and I
cannot be responsible for the motions of the body; but as to the motions
of the soul, I must here confess what I think of the matter.
This glory consists of two parts; the one in setting too great a value
upon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others.
As to the one, methinks these considerations ought, in the first place, to
be of some force: I feel myself importuned by an error of the soul that
displeases me, both as it is unjust, and still more as it is troublesome;
I attempt to correct it, but I cannot root it out; and this is, that I
lessen the just value of things that I possess, and overvalue things,
because they are foreign, absent, and none of mine; this humour spreads
very far. As the prerogative of the authority makes husbands look upon
their own wives with a vicious disdain, and many fathers their children;
so I, betwixt two equal merits, should always be swayed against my own;
not so much that the jealousy of my advancement and bettering troubles my
judgment, and hinders me from satisfying myself, as that of itself
possession begets a contempt of what it holds and rules. Foreign
governments, manners, and languages insinuate themselves into my esteem;
and I am sensible that Latin allures me by the favour of its dignity to
value it above its due, as it does with children, and the common sort of
people: the domestic government, house, horse, of my neighbour, though no
better than my own, I prize above my own, because they are not mine.
Besides that I am very ignorant in my own affairs, I am struck by the
assurance that every one has of himself: whereas there is scarcely
anything that I am sure I know, or that I dare be responsible to myself
that I can do: I have not my means of doing anything in condition and
ready, and am only instructed therein after the effect; as doubtful of my
own force as I am of another's. Whence it comes to pass that if I happen
to do anything commendable, I attribute it more to my fortune than
industry, forasmuch as I design everything by chance and in fear. I have
this, also, in general, that of all the opinions antiquity has held of men
in gross, I most willingly embrace and adhere to those that most contemn
and undervalue us, and most push us to naught; methinks, philosophy has
never so fair a game to play as when it falls upon our vanity and
presumption; when it most lays open our irresolution, weakness, and
ignorance. I look upon the too good opinion that man has of himself to be
the nursing mother of all the most false opinions, both public and
private. Those people who ride astride upon the epicycle of Mercury, who
see so far into the heavens, are worse to me than a tooth-drawer that
comes to draw my teeth; for in my study, the subject of which is man,
finding so great a variety of judgments, so profound a labyrinth of
difficulties, one upon another, so great diversity and uncertainty, even
in the school of wisdom itself, you may judge, seeing these people could
not resolve upon the knowledge of themselves and their own condition,
which is continually before their eyes, and within them, seeing they do
not know how that moves which they themselves move, nor how to give us a
description of the springs they themselves govern and make use of, how can
I believe them about the ebbing and flowing of the Nile? The curiosity of
knowing things has been given to man for a scourge, says the Holy
Scripture.
But to return to what concerns myself; I think it would be very difficult
for any other man to have a meaner opinion of himself; nay, for any other
to have a meaner opinion of me than of myself: I look upon myself as one
of the common sort, saving in this, that I have no better an opinion of
myself; guilty of the meanest and most popular defects, but not disowning
or excusing them; and I do not value myself upon any other account than
because I know my own value. If there be any vanity in the case, 'tis
superficially infused into me by the treachery of my complexion, and has
no body that my judgment can discern: I am sprinkled, but not dyed. For in
truth, as to the effects of the mind, there is no part of me, be it what
it will, with which I am satisfied; and the approbation of others makes me
not think the better of myself. My judgment is tender and nice, especially
in things that concern myself.
I ever repudiate myself, and feel myself float and waver by reason of my
weakness. I have nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment. My sight is
clear and regular enough, but, at working, it is apt to dazzle; as I most
manifestly find in poetry: I love it infinitely, and am able to give a
tolerable judgment of other men's works; but, in good earnest, when I
apply myself to it, I play the child, and am not able to endure myself. A
man may play the fool in everything else, but not in poetry;
"Mediocribus esse poetis
Non dii, non homines, non concessere columnae."
["Neither men, nor gods, nor the pillars (on which the poets
offered their writings) permit mediocrity in poets."
—Horace, De Arte Poet., 372.]
I would to God this sentence was written over the doors of all our
printers, to forbid the entrance of so many rhymesters!
"Verum
Nihil securius est malo poetae."
["The truth is, that nothing is more confident than a bad poet."
—Martial, xii. 63, 13.]
Why have not we such people?—[As those about to be mentioned.]—
Dionysius the father valued himself upon nothing so much as his poetry; at
the Olympic games, with chariots surpassing all the others in
magnificence, he sent also poets and musicians to present his verses, with
tent and pavilions royally gilt and hung with tapestry. When his verses
came to be recited, the excellence of the delivery at first attracted the
attention of the people; but when they afterwards came to poise the
meanness of the composition, they first entered into disdain, and
continuing to nettle their judgments, presently proceeded to fury, and ran
to pull down and tear to pieces all his pavilions: and, that his chariots
neither performed anything to purpose in the race, and that the ship which
brought back his people failed of making Sicily, and was by the tempest
driven and wrecked upon the coast of Tarentum, they certainly believed was
through the anger of the gods, incensed, as they themselves were, against
the paltry Poem; and even the mariners who escaped from the wreck seconded
this opinion of the people: to which also the oracle that foretold his
death seemed to subscribe; which was, "that Dionysius should be near his
end, when he should have overcome those who were better than himself,"
which he interpreted of the Carthaginians, who surpassed him in power; and
having war with them, often declined the victory, not to incur the sense
of this prediction; but he understood it ill; for the god indicated the
time of the advantage, that by favour and injustice he obtained at Athens
over the tragic poets, better than himself, having caused his own play
called the Leneians to be acted in emulation; presently after which
victory he died, and partly of the excessive joy he conceived at the
success.
[Diodorus Siculus, xv. 7.—The play, however, was called the
"Ransom of Hector." It was the games at which it was acted that
were called Leneian; they were one of the four Dionysiac festivals.]
What I find tolerable of mine, is not so really and in itself, but in
comparison of other worse things, that I see well enough received. I envy
the happiness of those who can please and hug themselves in what they do;
for 'tis an easy thing to be so pleased, because a man extracts that
pleasure from himself, especially if he be constant in his self-conceit. I
know a poet, against whom the intelligent and the ignorant, abroad and at
home, both heaven and earth exclaim that he has but very little notion of
it; and yet, for all that, he has never a whit the worse opinion of
himself; but is always falling upon some new piece, always contriving some
new invention, and still persists in his opinion, by so much the more
obstinately, as it only concerns him to maintain it.
My works are so far from pleasing me, that as often as I review them, they
disgust me:
"Cum relego, scripsisse pudet; quia plurima cerno,
Me quoque, qui feci, judice, digna lini."
["When I reperuse, I blush at what I have written; I ever see one
passage after another that I, the author, being the judge, consider
should be erased."—Ovid, De Ponto, i. 5, 15.]
I have always an idea in my soul, and a sort of disturbed image which
presents me as in a dream with a better form than that I have made use of;
but I cannot catch it nor fit it to my purpose; and even that idea is but
of the meaner sort. Hence I conclude that the productions of those great
and rich souls of former times are very much beyond the utmost stretch of
my imagination or my wish; their writings do not only satisfy and fill me,
but they astound me, and ravish me with admiration; I judge of their
beauty; I see it, if not to the utmost, yet so far at least as 'tis
possible for me to aspire. Whatever I undertake, I owe a sacrifice to the
Graces, as Plutarch says of some one, to conciliate their favour:
"Si quid enim placet,
Si quid dulce horninum sensibus influit,
Debentur lepidis omnia Gratiis."
["If anything please that I write, if it infuse delight into men's
minds, all is due to the charming Graces." The verses are probably
by some modern poet.]
They abandon me throughout; all I write is rude; polish and beauty are
wanting: I cannot set things off to any advantage; my handling adds
nothing to the matter; for which reason I must have it forcible, very
full, and that has lustre of its own. If I pitch upon subjects that are
popular and gay, 'tis to follow my own inclination, who do not affect a
grave and ceremonious wisdom, as the world does; and to make myself more
sprightly, but not my style more wanton, which would rather have them
grave and severe; at least if I may call that a style which is an inform
and irregular way of speaking, a popular jargon, a proceeding without
definition, division, conclusion, perplexed like that Amafanius and
Rabirius.—[Cicero, Acad., i. 2.]—I can neither please nor
delight, nor even tickle my readers: the best story in the world is
spoiled by my handling, and becomes flat; I cannot speak but in rough
earnest, and am totally unprovided of that facility which I observe in
many of my acquaintance, of entertaining the first comers and keeping a
whole company in breath, or taking up the ear of a prince with all sorts
of discourse without wearying themselves: they never want matter by reason
of the faculty and grace they have in taking hold of the first thing that
starts up, and accommodating it to the humour and capacity of those with
whom they have to do. Princes do not much affect solid discourses, nor I
to tell stories. The first and easiest reasons, which are commonly the
best taken, I know not how to employ: I am an ill orator to the common
sort. I am apt of everything to say the extremest that I know. Cicero is
of opinion that in treatises of philosophy the exordium is the hardest
part; if this be true, I am wise in sticking to the conclusion. And yet we
are to know how to wind the string to all notes, and the sharpest is that
which is the most seldom touched. There is at least as much perfection in
elevating an empty as in supporting a weighty thing. A man must sometimes
superficially handle things, and sometimes push them home. I know very
well that most men keep themselves in this lower form from not conceiving
things otherwise than by this outward bark; but I likewise know that the
greatest masters, and Xenophon and Plato are often seen to stoop to this
low and popular manner of speaking and treating of things, but supporting
it with graces which never fail them.
Farther, my language has nothing in it that is facile and polished; 'tis
rough, free, and irregular, and as such pleases, if not my judgment, at
all events my inclination, but I very well perceive that I sometimes give
myself too much rein, and that by endeavouring to avoid art and
affectation I fall into the other inconvenience:
"Brevis esse laboro,
Obscurus fio."
[ Endeavouring to be brief, I become obscure."
—Hor., Art. Poet., 25.]
Plato says, that the long or the short are not properties, that either
take away or give value to language. Should I attempt to follow the other
more moderate, united, and regular style, I should never attain to it; and
though the short round periods of Sallust best suit with my humour, yet I
find Caesar much grander and harder to imitate; and though my inclination
would rather prompt me to imitate Seneca's way of writing, yet I do
nevertheless more esteem that of Plutarch. Both in doing and speaking I
simply follow my own natural way; whence, peradventure, it falls out that
I am better at speaking than writing. Motion and action animate words,
especially in those who lay about them briskly, as I do, and grow hot. The
comportment, the countenance; the voice, the robe, the place, will set off
some things that of themselves would appear no better than prating.
Messalla complains in Tacitus of the straitness of some garments in his
time, and of the fashion of the benches where the orators were to declaim,
that were a disadvantage to their eloquence.
My French tongue is corrupted, both in the pronunciation and otherwise, by
the barbarism of my country. I never saw a man who was a native of any of
the provinces on this side of the kingdom who had not a twang of his place
of birth, and that was not offensive to ears that were purely French. And
yet it is not that I am so perfect in my Perigordin: for I can no more
speak it than High Dutch, nor do I much care. 'Tis a language (as the rest
about me on every side, of Poitou, Xaintonge, Angoumousin, Limousin,
Auvergne), a poor, drawling, scurvy language. There is, indeed, above us
towards the mountains a sort of Gascon spoken, that I am mightily taken
with: blunt, brief, significant, and in truth a more manly and military
language than any other I am acquainted with, as sinewy, powerful, and
pertinent as the French is graceful, neat, and luxuriant.
As to the Latin, which was given me for my mother tongue, I have by
discontinuance lost the use of speaking it, and, indeed, of writing it
too, wherein I formerly had a particular reputation, by which you may see
how inconsiderable I am on that side.
Beauty is a thing of great recommendation in the correspondence amongst
men; 'tis the first means of acquiring the favour and good liking of one
another, and no man is so barbarous and morose as not to perceive himself
in some sort struck with its attraction. The body has a great share in our
being, has an eminent place there, and therefore its structure and
composition are of very just consideration. They who go about to disunite
and separate our two principal parts from one another are to blame; we
must, on the contrary, reunite and rejoin them. We must command the soul
not to withdraw and entertain itself apart, not to despise and abandon the
body (neither can she do it but by some apish counterfeit), but to unite
herself close to it, to embrace, cherish, assist, govern, and advise it,
and to bring it back and set it into the true way when it wanders; in sum,
to espouse and be a husband to it, so that their effects may not appear to
be diverse and contrary, but uniform and concurring. Christians have a
particular instruction concerning this connection, for they know that the
Divine justice embraces this society and juncture of body and soul, even
to the making the body capable of eternal rewards; and that God has an eye
to the whole man's ways, and wills that he receive entire chastisement or
reward according to his demerits or merits. The sect of the Peripatetics,
of all sects the most sociable, attribute to wisdom this sole care equally
to provide for the good of these two associate parts: and the other sects,
in not sufficiently applying themselves to the consideration of this
mixture, show themselves to be divided, one for the body and the other for
the soul, with equal error, and to have lost sight of their subject, which
is Man, and their guide, which they generally confess to be Nature. The
first distinction that ever was amongst men, and the first consideration
that gave some pre-eminence over others, 'tis likely was the advantage of
beauty:
"Agros divisere atque dedere
Pro facie cujusque, et viribus ingenioque;
Nam facies multum valuit, viresque vigebant."
["They distributed and conferred the lands to every man according
to his beauty and strength and understanding, for beauty was much
esteemed and strength was in favour."—Lucretius, V. 1109.]
Now I am of something lower than the middle stature, a defect that not
only borders upon deformity, but carries withal a great deal of
inconvenience along with it, especially for those who are in office and
command; for the authority which a graceful presence and a majestic mien
beget is wanting. C. Marius did not willingly enlist any soldiers who were
not six feet high. The Courtier has, indeed, reason to desire a moderate
stature in the gentlemen he is setting forth, rather than any other, and
to reject all strangeness that should make him be pointed at. But if I
were to choose whether this medium must be rather below than above the
common standard, I would not have it so in a soldier. Little men, says
Aristotle, are pretty, but not handsome; and greatness of soul is
discovered in a great body, as beauty is in a conspicuous stature: the
Ethiopians and Indians, says he, in choosing their kings and magistrates,
had regard to the beauty and stature of their persons. They had reason;
for it creates respect in those who follow them, and is a terror to the
enemy, to see a leader of a brave and goodly stature march at the head of
a battalion:
"Ipse inter primos praestanti corpore Turnus
Vertitur arma, tenens, et toto vertice supra est."
["In the first rank marches Turnus, brandishing his weapon,
taller by a head than all the rest."—Virgil, AEneid, vii. 783.]
Our holy and heavenly king, of whom every circumstance is most carefully
and with the greatest religion and reverence to be observed, has not
himself rejected bodily recommendation,
"Speciosus forma prae filiis hominum."
["He is fairer than the children of men."—Psalm xiv. 3.]
And Plato, together with temperance and fortitude, requires beauty in the
conservators of his republic. It would vex you that a man should apply
himself to you amongst your servants to inquire where Monsieur is, and
that you should only have the remainder of the compliment of the hat that
is made to your barber or your secretary; as it happened to poor
Philopoemen, who arriving the first of all his company at an inn where he
was expected, the hostess, who knew him not, and saw him an unsightly
fellow, employed him to go help her maids a little to draw water, and make
a fire against Philopoemen's coming; the gentlemen of his train arriving
presently after, and surprised to see him busy in this fine employment,
for he failed not to obey his landlady's command, asked him what he was
doing there: "I am," said he, "paying the penalty of my ugliness." The
other beauties belong to women; the beauty of stature is the only beauty
of men. Where there is a contemptible stature, neither the largeness and
roundness of the forehead, nor the whiteness and sweetness of the eyes,
nor the moderate proportion of the nose, nor the littleness of the ears
and mouth, nor the evenness and whiteness of the teeth, nor the thickness
of a well-set brown beard, shining like the husk of a chestnut, nor curled
hair, nor the just proportion of the head, nor a fresh complexion, nor a
pleasing air of a face, nor a body without any offensive scent, nor the
just proportion of limbs, can make a handsome man. I am, as to the rest,
strong and well knit; my face is not puffed, but full, and my complexion
betwixt jovial and melancholic, moderately sanguine and hot,
"Unde rigent setis mihi crura, et pectora villis;"
["Whence 'tis my legs and breast bristle with hair."
—Martial, ii. 36, 5.]
my health vigorous and sprightly, even to a well advanced age, and rarely
troubled with sickness. Such I was, for I do not now make any account of
myself, now that I am engaged in the avenues of old age, being already
past forty:
"Minutatim vires et robur adultum
Frangit, et in partem pejorem liquitur aetas:"
["Time by degrees breaks our strength and makes us grow feeble.
—"Lucretius, ii. 1131.]
what shall be from this time forward, will be but a half-being, and no
more me: I every day escape and steal away from myself:
"Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes."
["Of the fleeting years each steals something from me."
—Horace, Ep., ii. 2.]
Agility and address I never had, and yet am the son of a very active and
sprightly father, who continued to be so to an extreme old age. I have
scarce known any man of his condition, his equal in all bodily exercises,
as I have seldom met with any who have not excelled me, except in running,
at which I was pretty good. In music or singing, for which I have a very
unfit voice, or to play on any sort of instrument, they could never teach
me anything. In dancing, tennis, or wrestling, I could never arrive to
more than an ordinary pitch; in swimming, fencing, vaulting, and leaping,
to none at all. My hands are so clumsy that I cannot even write so as to
read it myself, so that I had rather do what I have scribbled over again,
than take upon me the trouble to make it out. I do not read much better
than I write, and feel that I weary my auditors otherwise (I am) not a bad
clerk. I cannot decently fold up a letter, nor could ever make a pen, or
carve at table worth a pin, nor saddle a horse, nor carry a hawk and fly
her, nor hunt the dogs, nor lure a hawk, nor speak to a horse. In fine, my
bodily qualities are very well suited to those of my soul; there is
nothing sprightly, only a full and firm vigour: I am patient enough of
labour and pains, but it is only when I go voluntary to work, and only so
long as my own desire prompts me to it:
"Molliter austerum studio fallente laborem."
["Study softly beguiling severe labour."
—Horace, Sat., ii. 2, 12.]
otherwise, if I am not allured with some pleasure, or have other guide
than my own pure and free inclination, I am good for nothing: for I am of
a humour that, life and health excepted, there is nothing for which I will
bite my nails, and that I will purchase at the price of torment of mind
and constraint:
"Tanti mihi non sit opaci
Omnis arena Tagi, quodque in mare volvitur aurum."
["I would not buy rich Tagus sands so dear, nor all the gold that
lies in the sea."—Juvenal, Sat., iii. 54.]
Extremely idle, extremely given up to my own inclination both by nature
and art, I would as willingly lend a man my blood as my pains. I have a
soul free and entirely its own, and accustomed to guide itself after its
own fashion; having hitherto never had either master or governor imposed
upon me: I have walked as far as I would, and at the pace that best
pleased myself; this is it that has rendered me unfit for the service of
others, and has made me of no use to any one but myself.
Nor was there any need of forcing my heavy and lazy disposition; for being
born to such a fortune as I had reason to be contented with (a reason,
nevertheless, that a thousand others of my acquaintance would have rather
made use of for a plank upon which to pass over in search of higher
fortune, to tumult and disquiet), and with as much intelligence as I
required, I sought for no more, and also got no more:
"Non agimur tumidis velis Aquilone secundo,
Non tamen adversis aetatem ducimus Austris
Viribus, ingenio, specie, virtute, loco, re,
Extremi primorum, extremis usque priores."
["The northern wind does not agitate our sails; nor Auster trouble
our course with storms. In strength, talent, figure, virtue,
honour, wealth, we are short of the foremost, but before the last."
—Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 201.]
I had only need of what was sufficient to content me: which nevertheless
is a government of soul, to take it right, equally difficult in all sorts
of conditions, and that, of custom, we see more easily found in want than
in abundance: forasmuch, peradventure, as according to the course of our
other passions, the desire of riches is more sharpened by their use than
by the need of them: and the virtue of moderation more rare than that of
patience; and I never had anything to desire, but happily to enjoy the
estate that God by His bounty had put into my hands. I have never known
anything of trouble, and have had little to do in anything but the
management of my own affairs: or, if I have, it has been upon condition to
do it at my own leisure and after my own method; committed to my trust by
such as had a confidence in me, who did not importune me, and who knew my
humour; for good horsemen will make shift to get service out of a rusty
and broken-winded jade.
Even my infancy was trained up after a gentle and free manner, and exempt
from any rigorous subjection. All this has helped me to a complexion
delicate and incapable of solicitude, even to that degree that I love to
have my losses and the disorders wherein I am concerned, concealed from
me. In the account of my expenses, I put down what my negligence costs me
in feeding and maintaining it;
"Haec nempe supersunt,
Quae dominum fallunt, quae prosunt furibus."
["That overplus, which the owner knows not of,
but which benefits the thieves"—Horace, Ep., i. 645]
I love not to know what I have, that I may be less sensible of my loss; I
entreat those who serve me, where affection and integrity are absent, to
deceive me with something like a decent appearance. For want of constancy
enough to support the shock of adverse accidents to which we are subject,
and of patience seriously to apply myself to the management of my affairs,
I nourish as much as I can this in myself, wholly leaving all to fortune
"to take all things at the worst, and to resolve to bear that worst with
temper and patience"; that is the only thing I aim at, and to which I
apply my whole meditation. In a danger, I do not so much consider how I
shall escape it, as of how little importance it is, whether I escape it or
no: should I be left dead upon the place, what matter? Not being able to
govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them, if they will not
apply themselves to me. I have no great art to evade, escape from or force
fortune, and by prudence to guide and incline things to my own bias. I
have still less patience to undergo the troublesome and painful care
therein required; and the most uneasy condition for me is to be suspended
on urgent occasions, and to be agitated betwixt hope and fear.
Deliberation, even in things of lightest moment, is very troublesome to
me; and I find my mind more put to it to undergo the various tumblings and
tossings of doubt and consultation, than to set up its rest and to
acquiesce in whatever shall happen after the die is thrown. Few passions
break my sleep, but of deliberations, the least will do it. As in roads, I
preferably avoid those that are sloping and slippery, and put myself into
the beaten track how dirty or deep soever, where I can fall no lower, and
there seek my safety: so I love misfortunes that are purely so, that do
not torment and tease me with the uncertainty of their growing better; but
that at the first push plunge me directly into the worst that can be
expected
"Dubia plus torquent mala."
["Doubtful ills plague us worst."
—Seneca, Agamemnon, iii. 1, 29.]
In events I carry myself like a man; in conduct, like a child. The fear of
the fall more fevers me than the fall itself. The game is not worth the
candle. The covetous man fares worse with his passion than the poor, and
the jealous man than the cuckold; and a man ofttimes loses more by
defending his vineyard than if he gave it up. The lowest walk is the
safest; 'tis the seat of constancy; you have there need of no one but
yourself; 'tis there founded and wholly stands upon its own basis. Has not
this example of a gentleman very well known, some air of philosophy in it?
He married, being well advanced in years, having spent his youth in good
fellowship, a great talker and a great jeerer, calling to mind how much
the subject of cuckoldry had given him occasion to talk and scoff at
others. To prevent them from paying him in his own coin, he married a wife
from a place where any one finds what he wants for his money: "Good
morrow, strumpet"; "Good morrow, cuckold"; and there was not anything
wherewith he more commonly and openly entertained those who came to see
him than with this design of his, by which he stopped the private
chattering of mockers, and blunted all the point from this reproach.
As to ambition, which is neighbour, or rather daughter, to presumption,
fortune, to advance me, must have come and taken me by the hand; for to
trouble myself for an uncertain hope, and to have submitted myself to all
the difficulties that accompany those who endeavour to bring themselves
into credit in the beginning of their progress, I could never have done
it:
"Spem pretio non emo."
["I will not purchase hope with ready money," (or),
"I do not purchase hope at a price."
—Terence, Adelphi, ii. 3, 11.]
I apply myself to what I see and to what I have in my hand, and go not
very far from the shore,
"Alter remus aquas, alter tibi radat arenas:"
["One oar plunging into the sea, the other raking the sands."
—Propertius, iii. 3, 23.]
and besides, a man rarely arrives at these advancements but in first
hazarding what he has of his own; and I am of opinion that if a man have
sufficient to maintain him in the condition wherein he was born and
brought up, 'tis a great folly to hazard that upon the uncertainty of
augmenting it. He to whom fortune has denied whereon to set his foot, and
to settle a quiet and composed way of living, is to be excused if he
venture what he has, because, happen what will, necessity puts him upon
shifting for himself:
"Capienda rebus in malis praeceps via est:"
["A course is to be taken in bad cases." (or),
"A desperate case must have a desperate course."
—-Seneca, Agamemnon, ii. 1, 47.]
and I rather excuse a younger brother for exposing what his friends have
left him to the courtesy of fortune, than him with whom the honour of his
family is entrusted, who cannot be necessitous but by his own fault. I
have found a much shorter and more easy way, by the advice of the good
friends I had in my younger days, to free myself from any such ambition,
and to sit still:
"Cui sit conditio dulcis sine pulvere palmae:"
["What condition can compare with that where one has gained the
palm without the dust of the course."—Horace, Ep., i. I, 51.]
judging rightly enough of my own strength, that it was not capable of any
great matters; and calling to mind the saying of the late Chancellor
Olivier, that the French were like monkeys that swarm up a tree from
branch to branch, and never stop till they come to the highest, and there
shew their breech.
"Turpe est, quod nequeas, capiti committere pondus,
Et pressum inflexo mox dare terga genu."
["It is a shame to load the head so that it cannot bear the
burthen, and the knees give way."—Propertius, iii. 9, 5.]
I should find the best qualities I have useless in this age; the facility
of my manners would have been called weakness and negligence; my faith and
conscience, scrupulosity and superstition; my liberty and freedom would
have been reputed troublesome, inconsiderate, and rash. Ill luck is good
for something. It is good to be born in a very depraved age; for so, in
comparison of others, you shall be reputed virtuous good cheap; he who in
our days is but a parricide and a sacrilegious person is an honest man and
a man of honour:
"Nunc, si depositum non inficiatur amicus,
Si reddat veterem cum tota aerugine follem,
Prodigiosa fides, et Tuscis digna libellis,
Quaeque coronata lustrari debeat agna:"
["Now, if a friend does not deny his trust, but restores the old
purse with all its rust; 'tis a prodigious faith, worthy to be
enrolled in amongst the Tuscan annals, and a crowned lamb should be
sacrificed to such exemplary integrity."—Juvenal, Sat., xiii. 611.]
and never was time or place wherein princes might propose to themselves
more assured or greater rewards for virtue and justice. The first who
shall make it his business to get himself into favour and esteem by those
ways, I am much deceived if he do not and by the best title outstrip his
competitors: force and violence can do something, but not always all. We
see merchants, country justices, and artisans go cheek by jowl with the
best gentry in valour and military knowledge: they perform honourable
actions, both in public engagements and private quarrels; they fight
duels, they defend towns in our present wars; a prince stifles his special
recommendation, renown, in this crowd; let him shine bright in humanity,
truth, loyalty, temperance, and especially injustice; marks rare, unknown,
and exiled; 'tis by no other means but by the sole goodwill of the people
that he can do his business; and no other qualities can attract their
goodwill like those, as being of the greatest utility to them:
"Nil est tam populare, quam bonitas."
["Nothing is so popular as an agreeable manner (goodness)."
—Cicero, Pro Ligar., c. 12.]
By this standard I had been great and rare, just as I find myself now
pigmy and vulgar by the standard of some past ages, wherein, if no other
better qualities concurred, it was ordinary and common to see a man
moderate in his revenges, gentle in resenting injuries, religious of his
word, neither double nor supple, nor accommodating his faith to the will
of others, or the turns of the times: I would rather see all affairs go to
wreck and ruin than falsify my faith to secure them. For as to this new
virtue of feigning and dissimulation, which is now in so great credit, I
mortally hate it; and of all vices find none that evidences so much
baseness and meanness of spirit. 'Tis a cowardly and servile humour to
hide and disguise a man's self under a visor, and not to dare to show
himself what he is; 'tis by this our servants are trained up to treachery;
being brought up to speak what is not true, they make no conscience of a
lie. A generous heart ought not to belie its own thoughts; it will make
itself seen within; all there is good, or at least human. Aristotle
reputes it the office of magnanimity openly and professedly to love and
hate; to judge and speak with all freedom; and not to value the
approbation or dislike of others in comparison of truth. Apollonius said
it was for slaves to lie, and for freemen to speak truth: 'tis the chief
and fundamental part of virtue; we must love it for itself. He who speaks
truth because he is obliged so to do, and because it serves him, and who
is not afraid to lie when it signifies nothing to anybody, is not
sufficiently true. My soul naturally abominates lying, and hates the very
thought of it. I have an inward shame and a sharp remorse, if sometimes a
lie escapes me: as sometimes it does, being surprised by occasions that
allow me no premeditation. A man must not always tell all, for that were
folly: but what a man says should be what he thinks, otherwise 'tis
knavery. I do not know what advantage men pretend to by eternally
counterfeiting and dissembling, if not never to be believed when they
speak the truth; it may once or twice pass with men; but to profess the
concealing their thought, and to brag, as some of our princes have done,
that they would burn their shirts if they knew their true intentions,
which was a saying of the ancient Metellius of Macedon; and that they who
know not how to dissemble know not how to rule, is to give warning to all
who have anything to do with them, that all they say is nothing but lying
and deceit:
"Quo quis versutior et callidior est, hoc invisior et
suspectior, detracto opinione probitatis:"
["By how much any one is more subtle and cunning, by so much is he
hated and suspected, the opinion of his integrity being withdrawn."
—Cicero, De Off., ii. 9.]
it were a great simplicity in any one to lay any stress either on the
countenance or word of a man who has put on a resolution to be always
another thing without than he is within, as Tiberius did; and I cannot
conceive what part such persons can have in conversation with men, seeing
they produce nothing that is received as true: whoever is disloyal to
truth is the same to falsehood also.
Those of our time who have considered in the establishment of the duty of
a prince the good of his affairs only, and have preferred that to the care
of his faith and conscience, might have something to say to a prince whose
affairs fortune had put into such a posture that he might for ever
establish them by only once breaking his word: but it will not go so; they
often buy in the same market; they make more than one peace and enter into
more than one treaty in their lives. Gain tempts to the first breach of
faith, and almost always presents itself, as in all other ill acts,
sacrileges, murders, rebellions, treasons, as being undertaken for some
kind of advantage; but this first gain has infinite mischievous
consequences, throwing this prince out of all correspondence and
negotiation, by this example of infidelity. Soliman, of the Ottoman race,
a race not very solicitous of keeping their words or compacts, when, in my
infancy, he made his army land at Otranto, being informed that Mercurino
de' Gratinare and the inhabitants of Castro were detained prisoners, after
having surrendered the place, contrary to the articles of their
capitulation, sent orders to have them set at liberty, saying, that having
other great enterprises in hand in those parts, the disloyalty, though it
carried a show of present utility, would for the future bring on him a
disrepute and distrust of infinite prejudice.
Now, for my part, I had rather be troublesome and indiscreet than a
flatterer and a dissembler. I confess that there may be some mixture of
pride and obstinacy in keeping myself so upright and open as I do, without
any consideration of others; and methinks I am a little too free, where I
ought least to be so, and that I grow hot by the opposition of respect;
and it may be also, that I suffer myself to follow the propension of my
own nature for want of art; using the same liberty, speech, and
countenance towards great persons, that I bring with me from my own house:
I am sensible how much it declines towards incivility and indiscretion
but, besides that I am so bred, I have not a wit supple enough to evade a
sudden question, and to escape by some evasion, nor to feign a truth, nor
memory enough to retain it so feigned; nor, truly, assurance enough to
maintain it, and so play the brave out of weakness. And therefore it is
that I abandon myself to candour, always to speak as I think, both by
complexion and design, leaving the event to fortune. Aristippus was wont
to say, that the principal benefit he had extracted from philosophy was
that he spoke freely and openly to all.
Memory is a faculty of wonderful use, and without which the judgment can
very hardly perform its office: for my part I have none at all. What any
one will propound to me, he must do it piecemeal, for to answer a speech
consisting of several heads I am not able. I could not receive a
commission by word of mouth without a note-book. And when I have a speech
of consequence to make, if it be long, I am reduced to the miserable
necessity of getting by heart word for word, what I am to say; I should
otherwise have neither method nor assurance, being in fear that my memory
would play me a slippery trick. But this way is no less difficult to me
than the other; I must have three hours to learn three verses. And
besides, in a work of a man's own, the liberty and authority of altering
the order, of changing a word, incessantly varying the matter, makes it
harder to stick in the memory of the author. The more I mistrust it the
worse it is; it serves me best by chance; I must solicit it negligently;
for if I press it, 'tis confused, and after it once begins to stagger, the
more I sound it, the more it is perplexed; it serves me at its own hour,
not at mine.
And the same defect I find in my memory, I find also in several other
parts. I fly command, obligation, and constraint; that which I can
otherwise naturally and easily do, if I impose it upon myself by an
express and strict injunction, I cannot do it. Even the members of my
body, which have a more particular jurisdiction of their own, sometimes
refuse to obey me, if I enjoin them a necessary service at a certain hour.
This tyrannical and compulsive appointment baffles them; they shrink up
either through fear or spite, and fall into a trance. Being once in a
place where it is looked upon as barbarous discourtesy not to pledge those
who drink to you, though I had there all liberty allowed me, I tried to
play the good fellow, out of respect to the ladies who were there,
according to the custom of the country; but there was sport enough for
this pressure and preparation, to force myself contrary to my custom and
inclination, so stopped my throat that I could not swallow one drop, and
was deprived of drinking so much as with my meat; I found myself gorged,
and my, thirst quenched by the quantity of drink that my imagination had
swallowed. This effect is most manifest in such as have the most vehement
and powerful imagination: but it is natural, notwithstanding, and there is
no one who does not in some measure feel it. They offered an excellent
archer, condemned to die, to save his life, if he would show some notable
proof of his art, but he refused to try, fearing lest the too great
contention of his will should make him shoot wide, and that instead of
saving his life, he should also lose the reputation he had got of being a
good marksman. A man who thinks of something else, will not fail to take
over and over again the same number and measure of steps, even to an inch,
in the place where he walks; but if he made it his business to measure and
count them, he will find that what he did by nature and accident, he
cannot so exactly do by design.
My library, which is a fine one among those of the village type, is
situated in a corner of my house; if anything comes into my head that I
have a mind to search or to write, lest I should forget it in but going
across the court, I am fain to commit it to the memory of some other. If I
venture in speaking to digress never so little from my subject, I am
infallibly lost, which is the reason that I keep myself, in discourse,
strictly close. I am forced to call the men who serve me either by the
names of their offices or their country; for names are very hard for me to
remember. I can tell indeed that there are three syllables, that it has a
harsh sound, and that it begins or ends with such a letter; but that's
all; and if I should live long, I do not doubt but I should forget my own
name, as some others have done. Messala Corvinus was two years without any
trace of memory, which is also said of Georgius Trapezuntius. For my own
interest, I often meditate what a kind of life theirs was, and if, without
this faculty, I should have enough left to support me with any manner of
ease; and prying narrowly into it, I fear that this privation, if
absolute, destroys all the other functions of the soul:
"Plenus rimarum sum, hac atque iliac perfluo."
["I'm full of chinks, and leak out every way."
—Ter., Eunuchus, ii. 2, 23.]
It has befallen me more than once to forget the watchword I had three
hours before given or received, and to forget where I had hidden my purse;
whatever Cicero is pleased to say, I help myself to lose what I have a
particular care to lock safe up:
"Memoria certe non modo Philosophiam sed omnis
vitae usum, omnesque artes, una maxime continet."
["It is certain that memory contains not only philosophy,
but all the arts and all that appertain to the use of life."
—Cicero, Acad., ii. 7.]
Memory is the receptacle and case of science: and therefore mine being so
treacherous, if I know little, I cannot much complain. I know, in general,
the names of the arts, and of what they treat, but nothing more. I turn
over books; I do not study them. What I retain I no longer recognise as
another's; 'tis only what my judgment has made its advantage of, the
discourses and imaginations in which it has been instructed: the author,
place, words, and other circumstances, I immediately forget; and I am so
excellent at forgetting, that I no less forget my own writings and
compositions than the rest. I am very often quoted to myself, and am not
aware of it. Whoever should inquire of me where I had the verses and
examples, that I have here huddled together, would puzzle me to tell him,
and yet I have not borrowed them but from famous and known authors, not
contenting myself that they were rich, if I, moreover, had them not from
rich and honourable hands, where there is a concurrence of authority with
reason. It is no great wonder if my book run the same fortune that other
books do, if my memory lose what I have written as well as what I have
read, and what I give, as well as what I receive.
Besides the defect of memory, I have others which very much contribute to
my ignorance; I have a slow and heavy wit, the least cloud stops its
progress, so that, for example, I never propose to it any never so easy a
riddle that it could find out; there is not the least idle subtlety that
will not gravel me; in games, where wit is required, as chess, draughts,
and the like, I understand no more than the common movements. I have a
slow and perplexed apprehension, but what it once apprehends, it
apprehends well, for the time it retains it. My sight is perfect, entire,
and discovers at a very great distance, but is soon weary and heavy at
work, which occasions that I cannot read long, but am forced to have one
to read to me. The younger Pliny can inform such as have not experimented
it themselves, how important an impediment this is to those who devote
themselves to this employment.
There is no so wretched and coarse a soul, wherein some particular faculty
is not seen to shine; no soul so buried in sloth and ignorance, but it
will sally at one end or another; and how it comes to pass that a man
blind and asleep to everything else, shall be found sprightly, clear, and
excellent in some one particular effect, we are to inquire of our masters:
but the beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, and ready for
all things; if not instructed, at least capable of being so; which I say
to accuse my own; for whether it be through infirmity or negligence (and
to neglect that which lies at our feet, which we have in our hands, and
what nearest concerns the use of life, is far from my doctrine) there is
not a soul in the world so awkward as mine, and so ignorant of many common
things, and such as a man cannot without shame fail to know. I must give
some examples.
I was born and bred up in the country, and amongst husbandmen; I have had
business and husbandry in my own hands ever since my predecessors, who
were lords of the estate I now enjoy, left me to succeed them; and yet I
can neither cast accounts, nor reckon my counters: most of our current
money I do not know, nor the difference betwixt one grain and another,
either growing or in the barn, if it be not too apparent, and scarcely can
distinguish between the cabbage and lettuce in my garden. I do not so much
as understand the names of the chief instruments of husbandry, nor the
most ordinary elements of agriculture, which the very children know: much
less the mechanic arts, traffic, merchandise, the variety and nature of
fruits, wines, and viands, nor how to make a hawk fly, nor to physic a
horse or a dog. And, since I must publish my whole shame, 'tis not above a
month ago, that I was trapped in my ignorance of the use of leaven to make
bread, or to what end it was to keep wine in the vat. They conjectured of
old at Athens, an aptitude for the mathematics in him they saw ingeniously
bavin up a burthen of brushwood. In earnest, they would draw a quite
contrary conclusion from me, for give me the whole provision and
necessaries of a kitchen, I should starve. By these features of my
confession men may imagine others to my prejudice: but whatever I deliver
myself to be, provided it be such as I really am, I have my end; neither
will I make any excuse for committing to paper such mean and frivolous
things as these: the meanness of the subject compells me to it. They may,
if they please, accuse my project, but not my progress: so it is, that
without anybody's needing to tell me, I sufficiently see of how little
weight and value all this is, and the folly of my design: 'tis enough that
my judgment does not contradict itself, of which these are the essays.
"Nasutus sis usque licet, sis denique nasus,
Quantum noluerit ferre rogatus Atlas;
Et possis ipsum to deridere Latinum,
Non potes in nugas dicere plura mess,
Ipse ego quam dixi: quid dentem dente juvabit
Rodere? carne opus est, si satur esse velis.
Ne perdas operam; qui se mirantur, in illos
Virus habe; nos haec novimus esse nihil."
["Let your nose be as keen as it will, be all nose, and even a nose
so great that Atlas will refuse to bear it: if asked, Could you even
excel Latinus in scoffing; against my trifles you could say no more
than I myself have said: then to what end contend tooth against
tooth? You must have flesh, if you want to be full; lose not your
labour then; cast your venom upon those that admire themselves; I
know already that these things are worthless."—Mart., xiii. 2.]
I am not obliged not to utter absurdities, provided I am not deceived in
them and know them to be such: and to trip knowingly, is so ordinary with
me, that I seldom do it otherwise, and rarely trip by chance. 'Tis no
great matter to add ridiculous actions to the temerity of my humour, since
I cannot ordinarily help supplying it with those that are vicious.
I was present one day at Barleduc, when King Francis II., for a memorial
of Rene, king of Sicily, was presented with a portrait he had drawn of
himself: why is it not in like manner lawful for every one to draw himself
with a pen, as he did with a crayon? I will not, therefore, omit this
blemish though very unfit to be published, which is irresolution; a very
great effect and very incommodious in the negotiations of the affairs of
the world; in doubtful enterprises, I know not which to choose:
"Ne si, ne no, nel cor mi suona intero."
["My heart does not tell me either yes or no."—Petrarch.]
I can maintain an opinion, but I cannot choose one. By reason that in
human things, to what sect soever we incline, many appearances present
themselves that confirm us in it; and the philosopher Chrysippus said,
that he would of Zeno and Cleanthes, his masters, learn their doctrines
only; for, as to proofs and reasons, he should find enough of his own.
Which way soever I turn, I still furnish myself with causes, and
likelihood enough to fix me there; which makes me detain doubt and the
liberty of choosing, till occasion presses; and then, to confess the
truth, I, for the most part, throw the feather into the wind, as the
saying is, and commit myself to the mercy of fortune; a very light
inclination and circumstance carries me along with it.
"Dum in dubio est animus, paulo momento huc atque
Illuc impellitur."
["While the mind is in doubt, in a short time it is impelled this
way and that."—Terence, Andr., i. 6, 32.]
The uncertainty of my judgment is so equally balanced in most occurrences,
that I could willingly refer it to be decided by the chance of a die: and
I observe, with great consideration of our human infirmity, the examples
that the divine history itself has left us of this custom of referring to
fortune and chance the determination of election in doubtful things:
"Sors cecidit super Matthiam."
["The lot fell upon Matthew."—Acts i. 26.]
Human reason is a two-edged and dangerous sword: observe in the hands of
Socrates, her most intimate and familiar friend, how many several points
it has. I am thus good for nothing but to follow and suffer myself to be
easily carried away with the crowd; I have not confidence enough in my own
strength to take upon me to command and lead; I am very glad to find the
way beaten before me by others. If I must run the hazard of an uncertain
choice, I am rather willing to have it under such a one as is more
confident in his opinions than I am in mine, whose ground and foundation I
find to be very slippery and unsure.
Yet I do not easily change, by reason that I discern the same weakness in
contrary opinions:
"Ipsa consuetudo assentiendi periculosa
esse videtur, et lubrica;"
["The very custom of assenting seems to be dangerous
and slippery."—Cicero, Acad., ii. 21.]
especially in political affairs, there is a large field open for changes
and contestation:
"Justa pari premitur veluti cum pondere libra,
Prona, nec hac plus pane sedet, nec surgit ab illa."
["As a just balance, pressed with equal weight, neither dips
nor rises on either side."—Tibullus, iv. 41.]
Machiavelli's writings, for example, were solid enough for the subject,
yet were they easy enough to be controverted; and they who have done so,
have left as great a facility of controverting theirs; there was never
wanting in that kind of argument replies and replies upon replies, and as
infinite a contexture of debates as our wrangling lawyers have extended in
favour of long suits:
"Caedimur et totidem plagis consumimus hostem;"
["We are slain, and with as many blows kill the enemy" (or),
"It is a fight wherein we exhaust each other by mutual wounds."
—Horace, Epist., ii. 2, 97.]
the reasons have little other foundation than experience, and the variety
of human events presenting us with infinite examples of all sorts of
forms. An understanding person of our times says: That whoever would, in
contradiction to our almanacs, write cold where they say hot, and wet
where they say dry, and always put the contrary to what they foretell; if
he were to lay a wager, he would not care which side he took, excepting
where no uncertainty could fall out, as to promise excessive heats at
Christmas, or extremity of cold at Midsummer. I have the same opinion of
these political controversies; be on which side you will, you have as fair
a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so far as to
shock principles that are broad and manifest. And yet, in my conceit, in
public affairs, there is no government so ill, provided it be ancient and
has been constant, that is not better than change and alteration.
Our manners are infinitely corrupt, and wonderfully incline to the worse;
of our laws and customs there are many that are barbarous and monstrous
nevertheless, by reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the danger
of stirring things, if I could put something under to stop the wheel, and
keep it where it is, I would do it with all my heart:
"Numquam adeo foedis, adeoque pudendis
Utimur exemplis, ut non pejora supersint."
["The examples we use are not so shameful and foul
but that worse remain behind."—Juvenal, viii. 183.]
The worst thing I find in our state is instability, and that our laws, no
more than our clothes, cannot settle in any certain form. It is very easy
to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of
it: it is very easy to beget in a people a contempt of ancient
observances; never any man undertook it but he did it; but to establish a
better regimen in the stead of that which a man has overthrown, many who
have attempted it have foundered. I very little consult my prudence in my
conduct; I am willing to let it be guided by the public rule. Happy the
people who do what they are commanded, better than they who command,
without tormenting themselves as to the causes; who suffer themselves
gently to roll after the celestial revolution! Obedience is never pure nor
calm in him who reasons and disputes.
In fine, to return to myself: the only thing by which I something esteem
myself, is that wherein never any man thought himself to be defective; my
recommendation is vulgar, common, and popular; for who ever thought he
wanted sense? It would be a proposition that would imply a contradiction
in itself; 'tis a disease that never is where it is discerned; 'tis
tenacious and strong, but what the first ray of the patient's sight
nevertheless pierces through and disperses, as the beams of the sun do
thick and obscure mists; to accuse one's self would be to excuse in this
case, and to condemn, to absolve. There never was porter or the silliest
girl, that did not think they had sense enough to do their business. We
easily enough confess in others an advantage of courage, strength,
experience, activity, and beauty, but an advantage in judgment we yield to
none; and the reasons that proceed simply from the natural conclusions of
others, we think, if we had but turned our thoughts that way, we should
ourselves have found out as well as they. Knowledge, style, and such parts
as we see in others' works, we are soon aware of, if they excel our own:
but for the simple products of the understanding, every one thinks he
could have found out the like in himself, and is hardly sensible of the
weight and difficulty, if not (and then with much ado) in an extreme and
incomparable distance. And whoever should be able clearly to discern the
height of another's judgment, would be also able to raise his own to the
same pitch. So that it is a sort of exercise, from which a man is to
expect very little praise; a kind of composition of small repute. And,
besides, for whom do you write? The learned, to whom the authority
appertains of judging books, know no other value but that of learning, and
allow of no other proceeding of wit but that of erudition and art: if you
have mistaken one of the Scipios for another, what is all the rest you
have to say worth? Whoever is ignorant of Aristotle, according to their
rule, is in some sort ignorant of himself; vulgar souls cannot discern the
grace and force of a lofty and delicate style. Now these two sorts of men
take up the world. The third sort into whose hands you fall, of souls that
are regular and strong of themselves, is so rare, that it justly has
neither name nor place amongst us; and 'tis so much time lost to aspire
unto it, or to endeavour to please it.
'Tis commonly said that the justest portion Nature has given us of her
favours is that of sense; for there is no one who is not contented with
his share: is it not reason? whoever should see beyond that, would see
beyond his sight. I think my opinions are good and sound, but who does not
think the same of his own? One of the best proofs I have that mine are so
is the small esteem I have of myself; for had they not been very well
assured, they would easily have suffered themselves to have been deceived
by the peculiar affection I have to myself, as one that places it almost
wholly in myself, and do not let much run out. All that others distribute
amongst an infinite number of friends and acquaintance, to their glory and
grandeur, I dedicate to the repose of my own mind and to myself; that
which escapes thence is not properly by my direction:
"Mihi nempe valere et vivere doctus."
["To live and to do well for myself."
—Lucretius, v. 959.]
Now I find my opinions very bold and constant in condemning my own
imperfection. And, to say the truth, 'tis a subject upon which I exercise
my judgment as much as upon any other. The world looks always opposite; I
turn my sight inwards, and there fix and employ it. I have no other
business but myself, I am eternally meditating upon myself, considering
and tasting myself. Other men's thoughts are ever wandering abroad, if
they will but see it; they are still going forward:
"Nemo in sese tentat descendere;"
["No one thinks of descending into himself."
—Persius, iv. 23.]
for my part, I circulate in myself. This capacity of trying the truth,
whatever it be, in myself, and this free humour of not over easily
subjecting my belief, I owe principally to myself; for the strongest and
most general imaginations I have are those that, as a man may say, were
born with me; they are natural and entirely my own. I produced them crude
and simple, with a strong and bold production, but a little troubled and
imperfect; I have since established and fortified them with the authority
of others and the sound examples of the ancients, whom I have found of the
same judgment: they have given me faster hold, and a more manifest
fruition and possession of that I had before embraced. The reputation that
every one pretends to of vivacity and promptness of wit, I seek in
regularity; the glory they pretend to from a striking and signal action,
or some particular excellence, I claim from order, correspondence, and
tranquillity of opinions and manners:
"Omnino si quidquam est decorum, nihil est profecto magis, quam
aequabilitas universae vitae, tum singularum actionum, quam
conservare non possis, si, aliorum naturam imitans, omittas tuam."
["If anything be entirely decorous, nothing certainly can be more so
than an equability alike in the whole life and in every particular
action; which thou canst not possibly observe if, imitating other
men's natures, thou layest aside thy own."—Cicero, De Of., i. 31.]
Here, then, you see to what degree I find myself guilty of this first
part, that I said was the vice of presumption. As to the second, which
consists in not having a sufficient esteem for others, I know not whether
or no I can so well excuse myself; but whatever comes on't I am resolved
to speak the truth. And whether, peradventure, it be that the continual
frequentation I have had with the humours of the ancients, and the idea of
those great souls of past ages, put me out of taste both with others and
myself, or that, in truth, the age we live in produces but very
indifferent things, yet so it is that I see nothing worthy of any great
admiration. Neither, indeed, have I so great an intimacy with many men as
is requisite to make a right judgment of them; and those with whom my
condition makes me the most frequent, are, for the most part, men who have
little care of the culture of the soul, but that look upon honour as the
sum of all blessings, and valour as the height of all perfection.
What I see that is fine in others I very readily commend and esteem: nay,
I often say more in their commendation than I think they really deserve,
and give myself so far leave to lie, for I cannot invent a false subject:
my testimony is never wanting to my friends in what I conceive deserves
praise, and where a foot is due I am willing to give them a foot and a
half; but to attribute to them qualities that they have not, I cannot do
it, nor openly defend their imperfections. Nay, I frankly give my very
enemies their due testimony of honour; my affection alters, my judgment
does not, and I never confound my animosity with other circumstances that
are foreign to it; and I am so jealous of the liberty of my judgment that
I can very hardly part with it for any passion whatever. I do myself a
greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie. This
commendable and generous custom is observed of the Persian nation, that
they spoke of their mortal enemies and with whom they were at deadly war,
as honourably and justly as their virtues deserved.
I know men enough that have several fine parts; one wit, another courage,
another address, another conscience, another language: one science,
another, another; but a generally great man, and who has all these brave
parts together, or any one of them to such a degree of excellence that we
should admire him or compare him with those we honour of times past, my
fortune never brought me acquainted with; and the greatest I ever knew, I
mean for the natural parts of the soul, was Etienne De la Boetie; his was
a full soul indeed, and that had every way a beautiful aspect: a soul of
the old stamp, and that had produced great effects had his fortune been so
pleased, having added much to those great natural parts by learning and
study.
But how it comes to pass I know not, and yet it is certainly so, there is
as much vanity and weakness of judgment in those who profess the greatest
abilities, who take upon them learned callings and bookish employments as
in any other sort of men whatever; either because more is required and
expected from them, and that common defects are excusable in them, or
because the opinion they have of their own learning makes them more bold
to expose and lay themselves too open, by which they lose and betray
themselves. As an artificer more manifests his want of skill in a rich
matter he has in hand, if he disgrace the work by ill handling and
contrary to the rules required, than in a matter of less value; and men
are more displeased at a disproportion in a statue of gold than in one of
plaster; so do these when they advance things that in themselves and in
their place would be good; for they make use of them without discretion,
honouring their memories at the expense of their understandings, and
making themselves ridiculous by honouring Cicero, Galen, Ulpian, and St.
Jerome alike.
I willingly fall again into the discourse of the vanity of our education,
the end of which is not to render us good and wise, but learned, and she
has obtained it. She has not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and
prudence, but she has imprinted in us their derivation and etymology; we
know how to decline Virtue, if we know not how to love it; if we do not
know what prudence is really and in effect, and by experience, we have it
however by jargon and heart: we are not content to know the extraction,
kindred, and alliances of our neighbours; we desire, moreover, to have
them our friends and to establish a correspondence and intelligence with
them; but this education of ours has taught us definitions, divisions, and
partitions of virtue, as so many surnames and branches of a genealogy,
without any further care of establishing any familiarity or intimacy
betwixt her and us. It has culled out for our initiatory instruction not
such books as contain the soundest and truest opinions, but those that
speak the best Greek and Latin, and by their fine words has instilled into
our fancy the vainest humours of antiquity.
A good education alters the judgment and manners; as it happened to
Polemon, a lewd and debauched young Greek, who going by chance to hear one
of Xenocrates' lectures, did not only observe the eloquence and learning
of the reader, and not only brought away, the knowledge of some fine
matter, but a more manifest and more solid profit, which was the sudden
change and reformation of his former life. Whoever found such an effect of
our discipline?
"Faciasne, quod olim
Mutatus Polemon? ponas insignia morbi
Fasciolas, cubital, focalia; potus ut ille
Dicitur ex collo furtim carpsisse coronas,
Postquam est impransi correptus voce magistri?"
["Will you do what reformed Polemon did of old? will you lay aside
the joys of your disease, your garters, capuchin, muffler, as he in
his cups is said to have secretly torn off his garlands from his
neck when he heard what that temperate teacher said?"
—Horace, Sat., ii. 3, 253]
That seems to me to be the least contemptible condition of men, which by
its plainness and simplicity is seated in the lowest degree, and invites
us to a more regular course. I find the rude manners and language of
country people commonly better suited to the rule and prescription of true
philosophy, than those of our philosophers themselves:
"Plus sapit vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus est, sapit."
["The vulgar are so much the wiser, because they only know what
is needful for them to know."—Lactantms, Instit. Div., iii. 5.]
The most remarkable men, as I have judged by outward appearance (for to
judge of them according to my own method, I must penetrate a great deal
deeper), for soldiers and military conduct, were the Duc de Guise, who
died at Orleans, and the late Marshal Strozzi; and for men of great
ability and no common virtue, Olivier and De l'Hospital, Chancellors of
France. Poetry, too, in my opinion, has flourished in this age of ours; we
have abundance of very good artificers in the trade: D'Aurat, Beza,
Buchanan, L'Hospital, Montdore, Turnebus; as to the French poets, I
believe they raised their art to the highest pitch to which it can ever
arrive; and in those parts of it wherein Ronsard and Du Bellay excel, I
find them little inferior to the ancient perfection. Adrian Turnebus knew
more, and what he did know, better than any man of his time, or long
before him. The lives of the last Duke of Alva, and of our Constable de
Montmorency, were both of them great and noble, and that had many rare
resemblances of fortune; but the beauty and glory of the death of the
last, in the sight of Paris and of his king, in their service, against his
nearest relations, at the head of an army through his conduct victorious,
and by a sudden stroke, in so extreme old age, merits methinks to be
recorded amongst the most remarkable events of our times. As also the
constant goodness, sweetness of manners, and conscientious facility of
Monsieur de la Noue, in so great an injustice of armed parties (the true
school of treason, inhumanity, and robbery), wherein he always kept up the
reputation of a great and experienced captain.
I have taken a delight to publish in several places the hopes I have of
Marie de Gournay le Jars,
[She was adopted by him in 1588. See Leon Feugere's Mademoiselle
de Gournay: 'Etude sur sa Vie et ses Ouvrages'.]
my adopted daughter; and certainly beloved by me more than paternally, and
enveloped in my retirement and solitude as one of the best parts of my own
being: I have no longer regard to anything in this world but her. And if a
man may presage from her youth, her soul will one day be capable of very
great things; and amongst others, of the perfection of that sacred
friendship, to which we do not read that any of her sex could ever yet
arrive; the sincerity and solidity of her manners are already sufficient
for it, and her affection towards me more than superabundant, and such, in
short, as that there is nothing more to be wished, if not that the
apprehension she has of my end, being now five-and-fifty years old, might
not so much afflict her. The judgment she made of my first Essays, being a
woman, so young, and in this age, and alone in her own country; and the
famous vehemence wherewith she loved me, and desired my acquaintance
solely from the esteem she had thence of me, before she ever saw my face,
is an incident very worthy of consideration.
Other virtues have had little or no credit in this age; but valour is
become popular by our civil wars; and in this, we have souls brave even to
perfection, and in so great number that the choice is impossible to make.
This is all of extraordinary and uncommon grandeur that has hitherto
arrived at my knowledge.
CHAPTER XVIII——OF GIVING THE LIE
Well, but some one will say to me, this design of making a man's self the
subject of his writing, were indeed excusable in rare and famous men, who
by their reputation had given others a curiosity to be fully informed of
them. It is most true, I confess and know very well, that a mechanic will
scarce lift his eyes from his work to look at an ordinary man, whereas a
man will forsake his business and his shop to stare at an eminent person
when he comes into a town. It misbecomes any other to give his own
character, but him who has qualities worthy of imitation, and whose life
and opinions may serve for example: Caesar and Xenophon had a just and
solid foundation whereon to found their narrations, the greatness of their
own performances; and were to be wished that we had the journals of
Alexander the Great, the commentaries that Augustus, Cato, Sylla, Brutus,
and others left of their actions; of such persons men love and contemplate
the very statues even in copper and marble. This remonstrance is very
true; but it very little concerns me:
"Non recito cuiquam, nisi amicis, idque coactus;
Non ubivis, coramve quibuslibet, in medio qui
Scripta foro recitant, sunt multi, quique lavantes."
["I repeat my poems only to my friends, and when bound to do so;
not before every one and everywhere; there are plenty of reciters
in the open market-place and at the baths."—Horace, sat. i. 4, 73.]
I do not here form a statue to erect in the great square of a city, in a
church, or any public place:
"Non equidem hoc studeo, bullatis ut mihi nugis,
Pagina turgescat......
Secreti loquimur:"
["I study not to make my pages swell with empty trifles;
you and I are talking in private."—Persius, Sat., v. 19.]
'tis for some corner of a library, or to entertain a neighbour, a kinsman,
a friend, who has a mind to renew his acquaintance and familiarity with me
in this image of myself. Others have been encouraged to speak of
themselves, because they found the subject worthy and rich; I, on the
contrary, am the bolder, by reason the subject is so poor and sterile that
I cannot be suspected of ostentation. I judge freely of the actions of
others; I give little of my own to judge of, because they are nothing: I
do not find so much good in myself, that I cannot tell it without
blushing.
What contentment would it not be to me to hear any one thus relate to me
the manners, faces, countenances, the ordinary words and fortunes of my
ancestors? how attentively should I listen to it! In earnest, it would be
evil nature to despise so much as the pictures of our friends and
predecessors, the fashion of their clothes and arms. I preserve their
writing, seal, and a particular sword they wore, and have not thrown the
long staves my father used to carry in his hand, out of my closet.
"Paterna vestis, et annulus, tanto charior est
posteris, quanto erga parentes major affectus."
["A father's garment and ring is by so much dearer to his posterity,
as there is the greater affection towards parents."
—St. Aug., De Civat. Dei, i. 13.]
If my posterity, nevertheless, shall be of another mind, I shall be
avenged on them; for they cannot care less for me than I shall then do for
them. All the traffic that I have in this with the public is, that I
borrow their utensils of writing, which are more easy and most at hand;
and in recompense shall, peradventure, keep a pound of butter in the
market from melting in the sun:—[Montaigne semi-seriously speculates
on the possibility of his MS. being used to wrap up butter.]
"Ne toga cordyllis, ne penula desit olivis;
Et laxas scombris saepe dabo tunicas;"
["Let not wrappers be wanting to tunny-fish, nor olives;
and I shall supply loose coverings to mackerel."
—Martial, xiii. I, I.]
And though nobody should read me, have I wasted time in entertaining
myself so many idle hours in so pleasing and useful thoughts? In moulding
this figure upon myself, I have been so often constrained to temper and
compose myself in a right posture, that the copy is truly taken, and has
in some sort formed itself; painting myself for others, I represent myself
in a better colouring than my own natural complexion. I have no more made
my book than my book has made me: 'tis a book consubstantial with the
author, of a peculiar design, a parcel of my life, and whose business is
not designed for others, as that of all other books is. In giving myself
so continual and so exact an account of myself, have I lost my time? For
they who sometimes cursorily survey themselves only, do not so strictly
examine themselves, nor penetrate so deep, as he who makes it his
business, his study, and his employment, who intends a lasting record,
with all his fidelity, and with all his force: The most delicious
pleasures digested within, avoid leaving any trace of themselves, and
avoid the sight not only of the people, but of any other person. How often
has this work diverted me from troublesome thoughts? and all that are
frivolous should be reputed so. Nature has presented us with a large
faculty of entertaining ourselves alone; and often calls us to it, to
teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly and mostly
to ourselves. That I may habituate my fancy even to meditate in some
method and to some end, and to keep it from losing itself and roving at
random, 'tis but to give to body and to record all the little thoughts
that present themselves to it. I give ear to my whimsies, because I am to
record them. It often falls out, that being displeased at some action that
civility and reason will not permit me openly to reprove, I here disgorge
myself, not without design of public instruction: and also these poetical
lashes,
"Zon zur l'oeil, ion sur le groin,
Zon zur le dos du Sagoin,"
["A slap on his eye, a slap on his snout, a slap on Sagoin's
back."—Marot. Fripelippes, Valet de Marot a Sagoin.]
imprint themselves better upon paper than upon the flesh. What if I listen
to books a little more attentively than ordinary, since I watch if I can
purloin anything that may adorn or support my own? I have not at all
studied to make a book; but I have in some sort studied because I had made
it; if it be studying to scratch and pinch now one author, and then
another, either by the head or foot, not with any design to form opinions
from them, but to assist, second, and fortify those I already have
embraced. But whom shall we believe in the report he makes of himself in
so corrupt an age? considering there are so few, if, any at all, whom we
can believe when speaking of others, where there is less interest to lie.
The first thing done in the corruption of manners is banishing truth; for,
as Pindar says, to be true is the beginning of a great virtue, and the
first article that Plato requires in the governor of his Republic. The
truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man
persuades another man to believe; as we generally give the name of money
not only to pieces of the dust alloy, but even to the false also, if they
will pass. Our nation has long been reproached with this vice; for
Salvianus of Marseilles, who lived in the time of the Emperor Valentinian,
says that lying and forswearing themselves is with the French not a vice,
but a way of speaking. He who would enhance this testimony, might say that
it is now a virtue in them; men form and fashion themselves to it as to an
exercise of honour; for dissimulation is one of the most notable qualities
of this age.
I have often considered whence this custom that we so religiously observe
should spring, of being more highly offended with the reproach of a vice
so familiar to us than with any other, and that it should be the highest
insult that can in words be done us to reproach us with a lie. Upon
examination, I find that it is natural most to defend the defects with
which we are most tainted. It seems as if by resenting and being moved at
the accusation, we in some sort acquit ourselves of the fault; though we
have it in effect, we condemn it in outward appearance. May it not also be
that this reproach seems to imply cowardice and feebleness of heart? of
which can there be a more manifest sign than to eat a man's own words—nay,
to lie against a man's own knowledge? Lying is a base vice; a vice that
one of the ancients portrays in the most odious colours when he says,
"that it is to manifest a contempt of God, and withal a fear of men." It
is not possible more fully to represent the horror, baseness, and
irregularity of it; for what can a man imagine more hateful and
contemptible than to be a coward towards men, and valiant against his
Maker? Our intelligence being by no other way communicable to one another
but by a particular word, he who falsifies that betrays public society.
'Tis the only way by which we communicate our thoughts and wills; 'tis the
interpreter of the soul, and if it deceive us, we no longer know nor have
further tie upon one another; if that deceive us, it breaks all our
correspondence, and dissolves all the ties of government. Certain nations
of the newly discovered Indies (I need not give them names, seeing they
are no more; for, by wonderful and unheardof example, the desolation of
that conquest has extended to the utter abolition of names and the ancient
knowledge of places) offered to their gods human blood, but only such as
was drawn from the tongue and ears, to expiate for the sin of lying, as
well heard as pronounced. That good fellow of Greece—[Plutarch, Life
of Lysander, c. 4.]—said that children are amused with toys and men
with words.
As to our diverse usages of giving the lie, and the laws of honour in that
case, and the alteration they have received, I defer saying what I know of
them to another time, and shall learn, if I can, in the meanwhile, at what
time the custom took beginning of so exactly weighing and measuring words,
and of making our honour interested in them; for it is easy to judge that
it was not anciently amongst the Romans and Greeks. And it has often
seemed to me strange to see them rail at and give one another the lie
without any quarrel. Their laws of duty steered some other course than
ours. Caesar is sometimes called thief, and sometimes drunkard, to his
teeth. We see the liberty of invective they practised upon one another, I
mean the greatest chiefs of war of both nations, where words are only
revenged with words, and do not proceed any farther.
CHAPTER XIX——OF LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE
'Tis usual to see good intentions, if carried on without moderation, push
men on to very vicious effects. In this dispute which has at this time
engaged France in a civil war, the better and the soundest cause no doubt
is that which maintains the ancient religion and government of the
kingdom. Nevertheless, amongst the good men of that party (for I do not
speak of those who only make a pretence of it, either to execute their own
particular revenges or to gratify their avarice, or to conciliate the
favour of princes, but of those who engage in the quarrel out of true zeal
to religion and a holy desire to maintain the peace and government of
their country), of these, I say, we see many whom passion transports
beyond the bounds of reason, and sometimes inspires with counsels that are
unjust and violent, and, moreover, rash.
It is certain that in those first times, when our religion began to gain
authority with the laws, zeal armed many against all sorts of pagan books,
by which the learned suffered an exceeding great loss, a disorder that I
conceive to have done more prejudice to letters than all the flames of the
barbarians. Of this Cornelius Tacitus is a very good testimony; for though
the Emperor Tacitus, his kinsman, had, by express order, furnished all the
libraries in the world with it, nevertheless one entire copy could not
escape the curious examination of those who desired to abolish it for only
five or six idle clauses that were contrary to our belief.
They had also the trick easily to lend undue praises to all the emperors
who made for us, and universally to condemn all the actions of those who
were adversaries, as is evidently manifest in the Emperor Julian, surnamed
the Apostate,
[The character of the Emperor Julian was censured, when Montaigne
was at Rome in 1581, by the Master of the Sacred Palace, who,
however, as Montaigne tells us in his journal (ii. 35), referred it
to his conscience to alter what he should think in bad taste. This
Montaigne did not do, and this chapter supplied Voltaire with the
greater part of the praises he bestowed upon the Emperor.—Leclerc.]
who was, in truth, a very great and rare man, a man in whose soul
philosophy was imprinted in the best characters, by which he professed to
govern all his actions; and, in truth, there is no sort of virtue of which
he has not left behind him very notable examples: in chastity (of which
the whole of his life gave manifest proof) we read the same of him that
was said of Alexander and Scipio, that being in the flower of his age, for
he was slain by the Parthians at one-and-thirty, of a great many very
beautiful captives, he would not so much as look upon one. As to his
justice, he took himself the pains to hear the parties, and although he
would out of curiosity inquire what religion they were of, nevertheless,
the antipathy he had to ours never gave any counterpoise to the balance.
He made himself several good laws, and repealed a great part of the
subsidies and taxes levied by his predecessors.
We have two good historians who were eyewitnesses of his actions: one of
whom, Marcellinus, in several places of his history sharply reproves an
edict of his whereby he interdicted all Christian rhetoricians and
grammarians to keep school or to teach, and says he could wish that act of
his had been buried in silence: it is probable that had he done any more
severe thing against us, he, so affectionate as he was to our party, would
not have passed it over in silence. He was indeed sharp against us, but
yet no cruel enemy; for our own people tell this story of him, that one
day, walking about the city of Chalcedon, Maris, bishop of the place; was
so bold as to tell him that he was impious, and an enemy to Christ, at
which, they say, he was no further moved than to reply, "Go, poor wretch,
and lament the loss of thy eyes," to which the bishop replied again, "I
thank Jesus Christ for taking away my sight, that I may not see thy
impudent visage," affecting in that, they say, a philosophical patience.
But this action of his bears no comparison to the cruelty that he is said
to have exercised against us. "He was," says Eutropius, my other witness,
"an enemy to Christianity, but without putting his hand to blood." And, to
return to his justice, there is nothing in that whereof he can be accused,
the severity excepted he practised in the beginning of his reign against
those who had followed the party of Constantius, his predecessor. As to
his sobriety, he lived always a soldier-like life; and observed a diet and
routine, like one that prepared and inured himself to the austerities of
war. His vigilance was such, that he divided the night into three or four
parts, of which the least was dedicated to sleep; the rest was spent
either in visiting the state of his army and guards in person, or in
study; for amongst other rare qualities, he was very excellent in all
sorts of learning. 'Tis said of Alexander the Great, that being in bed,
for fear lest sleep should divert him from his thoughts and studies, he
had always a basin set by his bedside, and held one of his hands out with
a ball of copper in it, to the end, that, beginning to fall asleep, and
his fingers leaving their hold, the ball by falling into the basin, might
awake him. But the other had his soul so bent upon what he had a mind to
do, and so little disturbed with fumes by reason of his singular
abstinence, that he had no need of any such invention. As to his military
experience, he was excellent in all the qualities of a great captain, as
it was likely he should, being almost all his life in a continual exercise
of war, and most of that time with us in France, against the Germans and
Franks: we hardly read of any man who ever saw more dangers, or who made
more frequent proofs of his personal valour.
His death has something in it parallel with that of Epaminondas, for he
was wounded with an arrow, and tried to pull it out, and had done so, but
that, being edged, it cut and disabled his hand. He incessantly called out
that they should carry him again into the heat of the battle, to encourage
his soldiers, who very bravely disputed the fight without him, till night
parted the armies. He stood obliged to his philosophy for the singular
contempt he had for his life and all human things. He had a firm belief of
the immortality of souls.
In matter of religion he was wrong throughout, and was surnamed the
Apostate for having relinquished ours: nevertheless, the opinion seems to
me more probable, that he had never thoroughly embraced it, but had
dissembled out of obedience to the laws, till he came to the empire. He
was in his own so superstitious, that he was laughed at for it by those of
his own time, of the same opinion, who jeeringly said, that had he got the
victory over the Parthians, he had destroyed the breed of oxen in the
world to supply his sacrifices. He was, moreover, besotted with the art of
divination, and gave authority to all sorts of predictions. He said,
amongst other things at his death, that he was obliged to the gods, and
thanked them, in that they would not cut him off by surprise, having long
before advertised him of the place and hour of his death, nor by a mean
and unmanly death, more becoming lazy and delicate people; nor by a death
that was languishing, long, and painful; and that they had thought him
worthy to die after that noble manner, in the progress of his victories,
in the flower of his glory. He had a vision like that of Marcus Brutus,
that first threatened him in Gaul, and afterward appeared to him in Persia
just before his death. These words that some make him say when he felt
himself wounded: "Thou hast overcome, Nazarene"; or as others, "Content
thyself, Nazarene"; would hardly have been omitted, had they been
believed, by my witnesses, who, being present in the army, have set down
to the least motions and words of his end; no more than certain other
miracles that are reported about it.
And to return to my subject, he long nourished, says Marcellinus, paganism
in his heart; but all his army being Christians, he durst not own it. But
in the end, seeing himself strong enough to dare to discover himself, he
caused the temples of the gods to be thrown open, and did his uttermost to
set on foot and to encourage idolatry. Which the better to effect, having
at Constantinople found the people disunited, and also the prelates of the
church divided amongst themselves, having convened them all before him, he
earnestly admonished them to calm those civil dissensions, and that every
one might freely, and without fear, follow his own religion. Which he the
more sedulously solicited, in hope that this licence would augment the
schisms and factions of their division, and hinder the people from
reuniting, and consequently fortifying themselves against him by their
unanimous intelligence and concord; having experienced by the cruelty of
some Christians, that there is no beast in the world so much to be feared
by man as man; these are very nearly his words.
Wherein this is very worthy of consideration, that the Emperor Julian made
use of the same receipt of liberty of conscience to inflame the civil
dissensions that our kings do to extinguish them. So that a man may say on
one side, that to give the people the reins to entertain every man his own
opinion, is to scatter and sow division, and, as it were, to lend a hand
to augment it, there being no legal impediment or restraint to stop or
hinder their career; but, on the other side, a man may also say, that to
give the people the reins to entertain every man his own opinion, is to
mollify and appease them by facility and toleration, and to dull the point
which is whetted and made sharper by singularity, novelty, and difficulty:
and I think it is better for the honour of the devotion of our kings, that
not having been able to do what they would, they have made a show of being
willing to do what they could.
CHAPTER XX——THAT WE TASTE NOTHING PURE
The feebleness of our condition is such that things cannot, in their
natural simplicity and purity, fall into our use; the elements that we
enjoy are changed, and so 'tis with metals; and gold must be debased with
some other matter to fit it for our service. Neither has virtue, so simple
as that which Aristo, Pyrrho, and also the Stoics, made the end of life;
nor the Cyrenaic and Aristippic pleasure, been without mixture useful to
it. Of the pleasure and goods that we enjoy, there is not one exempt from
some mixture of ill and inconvenience:
"Medio de fonte leporum,
Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis fioribus angat."
["From the very fountain of our pleasure, something rises that is
bitter, which even in flowers destroys."—Lucretius, iv. 1130.]
Our extremest pleasure has some sort of groaning and complaining in it;
would you not say that it is dying of pain? Nay, when we frame the image
of it in its full excellence, we stuff it with sickly and painful epithets
and qualities, languor, softness, feebleness, faintness, 'morbidezza': a
great testimony of their consanguinity and consubstantiality. The most
profound joy has more of severity than gaiety, in it. The highest and
fullest contentment offers more of the grave than of the merry:
"Ipsa felicitas, se nisi temperat, premit."
["Even felicity, unless it moderate itself, oppresses?"
—Seneca, Ep. 74.]
Pleasure chews and grinds us; according to the old Greek verse, which says
that the gods sell us all the goods they give us; that is to say, that
they give us nothing pure and perfect, and that we do not purchase but at
the price of some evil.
Labour and pleasure, very unlike in nature, associate, nevertheless, by I
know not what natural conjunction. Socrates says, that some god tried to
mix in one mass and to confound pain and pleasure, but not being able to
do it; he bethought him at least to couple them by the tail. Metrodorus
said, that in sorrow there is some mixture of pleasure. I know not whether
or no he intended anything else by that saying; but for my part, I am of
opinion that there is design, consent, and complacency in giving a man's
self up to melancholy. I say, that besides ambition, which may also have a
stroke in the business, there is some shadow of delight and delicacy which
smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of melancholy. Are there
not some constitutions that feed upon it?
"Est quaedam flere voluptas;"
["'Tis a certain kind of pleasure to weep."
—Ovid, Trist., iv. 3, 27.]
and one Attalus in Seneca says, that the memory of our lost friends is as
grateful to us, as bitterness in wine, when too old, is to the palate:
"Minister vetuli, puer, Falerni
Inger' mi calices amariores"—
["Boy, when you pour out old Falernian wine, the bitterest put
into my bowl."—Catullus, xxvii. I.]
and as apples that have a sweet tartness.
Nature discovers this confusion to us; painters hold that the same motions
and grimaces of the face that serve for weeping; serve for laughter too;
and indeed, before the one or the other be finished, do but observe the
painter's manner of handling, and you will be in doubt to which of the two
the design tends; and the extreme of laughter does at last bring tears:
"Nullum sine auctoramento malum est."
["No evil is without its compensation."—Seneca, Ep., 69.]
When I imagine man abounding with all the conveniences that are to be
desired (let us put the case that all his members were always seized with
a pleasure like that of generation, in its most excessive height) I feel
him melting under the weight of his delight, and see him utterly unable to
support so pure, so continual, and so universal a pleasure. Indeed, he is
running away whilst he is there, and naturally makes haste to escape, as
from a place where he cannot stand firm, and where he is afraid of
sinking.
When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue I
have has in it some tincture of vice; and I am afraid that Plato, in his
purest virtue (I, who am as sincere and loyal a lover of virtue of that
stamp as any other whatever), if he had listened and laid his ear close to
himself and he did so no doubt—would have heard some jarring note of
human mixture, but faint and only perceptible to himself. Man is wholly
and throughout but patch and motley. Even the laws of justice themselves
cannot subsist without mixture of injustice; insomuch that Plato says,
they undertake to cut off the hydra's head, who pretend to clear the law
of all inconveniences:
"Omne magnum exemplum habet aliquid ex iniquo,
quod contra singulos utilitate publics rependitur,"
["Every great example has in it some mixture of injustice, which
recompenses the wrong done to particular men by the public utility."
—Annals, xiv. 44.]
says Tacitus.
It is likewise true, that for the use of life and the service of public
commerce, there may be some excesses in the purity and perspicacity of our
minds; that penetrating light has in it too much of subtlety and
curiosity: we must a little stupefy and blunt them to render them more
obedient to example and practice, and a little veil and obscure them, the
better to proportion them to this dark and earthly life. And therefore
common and less speculative souls are found to be more proper for and more
successful in the management of affairs, and the elevated and exquisite
opinions of philosophy unfit for business. This sharp vivacity of soul,
and the supple and restless volubility attending it, disturb our
negotiations. We are to manage human enterprises more superficially and
roughly, and leave a great part to fortune; it is not necessary to examine
affairs with so much subtlety and so deep: a man loses himself in the
consideration of many contrary lustres, and so many various forms:
"Volutantibus res inter se pugnantes, obtorpuerunt.... animi."
["Whilst they considered of things so indifferent in themselves,
they were astonished, and knew not what to do."—Livy, xxxii. 20.]
'Tis what the ancients say of Simonides, that by reason his imagination
suggested to him, upon the question King Hiero had put to him—[What
God was.—Cicero, De Nat. Deor., i. 22.]—(to answer which he
had had many days for thought), several sharp and subtle considerations,
whilst he doubted which was the most likely, he totally despaired of the
truth.
He who dives into and in his inquisition comprehends all circumstances and
consequences, hinders his election: a little engine well handled is
sufficient for executions, whether of less or greater weight. The best
managers are those who can worst give account how they are so; while the
greatest talkers, for the most part, do nothing to purpose; I know one of
this sort of men, and a most excellent discourser upon all sorts of good
husbandry, who has miserably let a hundred thousand livres yearly revenue
slip through his hands; I know another who talks, who better advises than
any man of his counsel, and there is not in the world a fairer show of
soul and understanding than he has; nevertheless, when he comes to the
test, his servants find him quite another thing; not to make any mention
of his misfortunes.
CHAPTER XXI——AGAINST IDLENESS
The Emperor Vespasian, being sick of the disease whereof he died, did not
for all that neglect to inquire after the state of the empire, and even in
bed continually despatched very many affairs of great consequence; for
which, being reproved by his physician, as a thing prejudicial to his
health, "An emperor," said he, "must die standing." A fine saying, in my
opinion, and worthy a great prince. The Emperor Adrian since made use of
the same words, and kings should be often put in mind of them, to make
them know that the great office conferred upon them of the command of so
many men, is not an employment of ease; and that there is nothing can so
justly disgust a subject, and make him unwilling to expose himself to
labour and danger for the service of his prince, than to see him, in the
meantime, devoted to his ease and frivolous amusement, and to be
solicitous of his preservation who so much neglects that of his people.
Whoever will take upon him to maintain that 'tis better for a prince to
carry on his wars by others, than in his own person, fortune will furnish
him with examples enough of those whose lieutenants have brought great
enterprises to a happy issue, and of those also whose presence has done
more hurt than good: but no virtuous and valiant prince can with patience
endure so dishonourable councils. Under colour of saving his head, like
the statue of a saint, for the happiness of his kingdom, they degrade him
from and declare him incapable of his office, which is military
throughout: I know one—[Probably Henry IV.]—who had much
rather be beaten, than to sleep whilst another fights for him; and who
never without jealousy heard of any brave thing done even by his own
officers in his absence. And Soliman I. said, with very good reason, in my
opinion, that victories obtained without the master were never complete.
Much more would he have said that that master ought to blush for shame, to
pretend to any share in the honour, having contributed nothing to the
work, but his voice and thought; nor even so much as these, considering
that in such work as that, the direction and command that deserve honour
are only such as are given upon the spot, and in the heat of the business.
No pilot performs his office by standing still. The princes of the Ottoman
family, the chiefest in the world in military fortune, have warmly
embraced this opinion, and Bajazet II., with his son, who swerved from it,
spending their time in science and other retired employments, gave great
blows to their empire; and Amurath III., now reigning, following their
example, begins to find the same. Was it not Edward III., King of England,
who said this of our Charles V.: "There never was king who so seldom put
on his armour, and yet never king who gave me so much to do." He had
reason to think it strange, as an effect of chance more than of reason.
And let those seek out some other to join with them than me, who will
reckon the Kings of Castile and Portugal amongst the warlike and
magnanimous conquerors, because at the distance of twelve hundred leagues
from their lazy abode, by the conduct of their captains, they made
themselves masters of both Indies; of which it has to be known if they
would have had even the courage to go and in person enjoy them.
The Emperor Julian said yet further, that a philosopher and a brave man
ought not so much as to breathe; that is to say, not to allow any more to
bodily necessities than what we cannot refuse; keeping the soul and body
still intent and busy about honourable, great, and virtuous things. He was
ashamed if any one in public saw him spit, or sweat (which is said by
some, also, of the Lacedaemonian young men, and which Xenophon says of the
Persian), forasmuch as he conceived that exercise, continual labour, and
sobriety, ought to have dried up all those superfluities. What Seneca says
will not be unfit for this place; which is, that the ancient Romans kept
their youth always standing, and taught them nothing that they were to
learn sitting.
'Tis a generous desire to wish to die usefully and like a man, but the
effect lies not so much in our resolution as in our good fortune; a
thousand have proposed to themselves in battle, either to overcome or to
die, who have failed both in the one and the other, wounds and
imprisonment crossing their design and compelling them to live against
their will. There are diseases that overthrow even our desires, and our
knowledge. Fortune ought not to second the vanity of the Roman legions,
who bound themselves by oath, either to overcome or die:
"Victor, Marce Fabi, revertar ex acie: si fallo, Jovem patrem,
Gradivumque Martem aliosque iratos invoco deos."
["I will return, Marcus Fabius, a conqueror, from the fight:
and if I fail, I invoke Father Jove, Mars Gradivus, and the
other angry gods."—Livy, ii. 45.]
The Portuguese say that in a certain place of their conquest of the
Indies, they met with soldiers who had condemned themselves, with horrible
execrations, to enter into no other composition but either to cause
themselves to be slain, or to remain victorious; and had their heads and
beards shaved in token of this vow. 'Tis to much purpose for us to hazard
ourselves and to be obstinate: it seems as if blows avoided those who
present themselves too briskly to them, and do not willingly fall upon
those who too willingly seek them, and so defeat them of their design.
Such there have been, who, after having tried all ways, not having been
able with all their endeavour to obtain the favour of dying by the hand of
the enemy, have been constrained, to make good their resolution of
bringing home the honour of victory or of losing their lives, to kill
themselves even in the heat of battle. Of which there are other examples,
but this is one: Philistus, general of the naval army of Dionysius the
younger against the Syracusans, presented them battle which was sharply
disputed, their forces being equal: in this engagement, he had the better
at the first, through his own valour: but the Syracusans drawing about his
gally to environ him, after having done great things in his own person to
disengage himself and hoping for no relief, with his own hand he took away
the life he had so liberally, and in vain, exposed to the enemy.
Mule Moloch, king of Fez, who lately won against Sebastian, king of
Portugal, the battle so famous for the death of three kings, and for the
transmission of that great kingdom to the crown of Castile, was extremely
sick when the Portuguese entered in an hostile manner into his dominions;
and from that day forward grew worse and worse, still drawing nearer to
and foreseeing his end; yet never did man better employ his own
sufficiency more vigorously and bravely than he did upon this occasion. He
found himself too weak to undergo the pomp and ceremony of entering. into
his camp, which after their manner is very magnificent, and therefore
resigned that honour to his brother; but this was all of the office of a
general that he resigned; all the rest of greatest utility and necessity
he most, exactly and gloriously performed in his own person; his body
lying upon a couch, but his judgment and courage upright and firm to his
last gasp, and in some sort beyond it. He might have wasted his enemy,
indiscreetly advanced into his dominions, without striking a blow; and it
was a very unhappy occurrence, that for want of a little life or somebody
to substitute in the conduct of this war and the affairs of a troubled
state, he was compelled to seek a doubtful and bloody victory, having
another by a better and surer way already in his hands. Notwithstanding,
he wonderfully managed the continuance of his sickness in consuming the
enemy, and in drawing them far from the assistance of the navy and the
ports they had on the coast of Africa, even till the last day of his life,
which he designedly reserved for this great battle. He arranged his
battalions in a circular form, environing the Portuguese army on every
side, which round circle coming to close in and to draw up close together,
not only hindered them in the conflict (which was very sharp through the
valour of the young invading king), considering that they had every way to
present a front, but prevented their flight after the defeat, so that
finding all passages possessed and shut up by the enemy, they were
constrained to close up together again:
"Coacerventurque non solum caede, sed etiam fuga,"
["Piled up not only in slaughter but in flight."]
and there they were slain in heaps upon one another, leaving to the
conqueror a very bloody and entire victory. Dying, he caused himself to be
carried and hurried from place to place where most need was, and passing
along the files, encouraged the captains and soldiers one after another;
but a corner of his main battalions being broken, he was not to be held
from mounting on horseback with his sword in his hand; he did his utmost
to break from those about him, and to rush into the thickest of the
battle, they all the while withholding him, some by the bridle, some by
his robe, and others by his stirrups. This last effort totally overwhelmed
the little life he had left; they again laid him upon his bed; but coming
to himself, and starting as it were out of his swoon, all other faculties
failing, to give his people notice that they were to conceal his death the
most necessary command he had then to give, that his soldiers might not be
discouraged (with the news) he expired with his finger upon his mouth, the
ordinary sign of keeping silence. Who ever lived so long and so far into
death? whoever died so erect, or more like a man?
The most extreme degree of courageously treating death, and the most
natural, is to look upon it not only without astonishment but without
care, continuing the wonted course of life even into it, as Cato did, who
entertained himself in study, and went to sleep, having a violent and
bloody death in his heart, and the weapon in his hand with which he was
resolved to despatch himself.
CHAPTER XXII——OF POSTING
I have been none of the least able in this exercise, which is proper for
men of my pitch, well-knit and short; but I give it over; it shakes us too
much to continue it long. I was at this moment reading, that King Cyrus,
the better to have news brought him from all parts of the empire, which
was of a vast extent, caused it to be tried how far a horse could go in a
day without baiting, and at that distance appointed men, whose business it
was to have horses always in readiness, to mount those who were despatched
to him; and some say, that this swift way of posting is equal to that of
the flight of cranes.
Caesar says, that Lucius Vibullius Rufus, being in great haste to carry
intelligence to Pompey, rode night and day, still taking fresh horses for
the greater diligence and speed; and he himself, as Suetonius reports,
travelled a hundred miles a day in a hired coach; but he was a furious
courier, for where the rivers stopped his way he passed them by swimming,
without turning out of his way to look for either bridge or ford. Tiberius
Nero, going to see his brother Drusus, who was sick in Germany, travelled
two hundred miles in four-and-twenty hours, having three coaches. In the
war of the Romans against King Antiochus, T. Sempronius Gracchus, says
Livy:
"Per dispositos equos prope incredibili celeritate
ab Amphissa tertio die Pellam pervenit."
["By pre-arranged relays of horses, he, with an almost incredible
speed, rode in three days from Amphissa to Pella."
—Livy, xxxvii. 7.]
And it appears that they were established posts, and not horses purposely
laid in upon this occasion.
Cecina's invention to send back news to his family was much more quick,
for he took swallows along with him from home, and turned them out towards
their nests when he would send back any news; setting a mark of some
colour upon them to signify his meaning, according to what he and his
people had before agreed upon.
At the theatre at Rome masters of families carried pigeons in their bosoms
to which they tied letters when they had a mind to send any orders to
their people at home; and the pigeons were trained up to bring back an
answer. D. Brutus made use of the same device when besieged in Modena, and
others elsewhere have done the same.
In Peru they rode post upon men, who took them upon their shoulders in a
certain kind of litters made for that purpose, and ran with such agility
that, in their full speed, the first couriers transferred their load to
the second without making any stop.
I understand that the Wallachians, the grand Signior's couriers, perform
wonderful journeys, by reason they have liberty to dismount the first
person they meet upon the road, giving him their own tired horses; and
that to preserve themselves from being weary, they gird themselves
straight about the middle with a broad girdle; but I could never find any
benefit from this.
CHAPTER XXIII——OF ILL MEANS EMPLOYED TO A GOOD END
There is wonderful relation and correspondence in this universal
government of the works of nature, which very well makes it appear that it
is neither accidental nor carried on by divers masters. The diseases and
conditions of our bodies are, in like manner, manifest in states and
governments; kingdoms and republics are founded, flourish, and decay with
age as we do. We are subject to a repletion of humours, useless and
dangerous: whether of those that are good (for even those the physicians
are afraid of; and seeing we have nothing in us that is stable, they say
that a too brisk and vigorous perfection of health must be abated by art,
lest our nature, unable to rest in any certain condition, and not having
whither to rise to mend itself, make too sudden and too disorderly a
retreat; and therefore prescribe wrestlers to purge and bleed, to qualify
that superabundant health), or else a repletion of evil humours, which is
the ordinary cause of sickness. States are very often sick of the like
repletion, and various sorts of purgations have commonly been applied.
Some times a great multitude of families are turned out to clear the
country, who seek out new abodes elsewhere and encroach upon others. After
this manner our ancient Franks came from the remotest part of Germany to
seize upon Gaul, and to drive thence the first inhabitants; so was that
infinite deluge of men made up who came into Italy under the conduct of
Brennus and others; so the Goths and Vandals, and also the people who now
possess Greece, left their native country to go settle elsewhere, where
they might have more room; and there are scarce two or three little
corners in the world that have not felt the effect of such removals. The
Romans by this means erected their colonies; for, perceiving their city to
grow immeasurably populous, they eased it of the most unnecessary people,
and sent them to inhabit and cultivate the lands conquered by them;
sometimes also they purposely maintained wars with some of their enemies,
not only to keep their own men in action, for fear lest idleness, the
mother of corruption, should bring upon them some worse inconvenience:
"Et patimur longae pacis mala; saevior armis
Luxuria incumbit."
["And we suffer the ills of a long peace; luxury is more pernicious
than war."—Juvenal, vi. 291.]
but also to serve for a blood-letting to their Republic, and a little to
evaporate the too vehement heat of their youth, to prune and clear the
branches from the stock too luxuriant in wood; and to this end it was that
they maintained so long a war with Carthage.
In the treaty of Bretigny, Edward III., king of England, would not, in the
general peace he then made with our king, comprehend the controversy about
the Duchy of Brittany, that he might have a place wherein to discharge
himself of his soldiers, and that the vast number of English he had
brought over to serve him in his expedition here might not return back
into England. And this also was one reason why our King Philip consented
to send his son John upon a foreign expedition, that he might take along
with him a great number of hot young men who were then in his pay.
There—are many in our times who talk at this rate, wishing that this
hot emotion that is now amongst us might discharge itself in some
neighbouring war, for fear lest all the peccant humours that now reign in
this politic body of ours may diffuse themselves farther, keep the fever
still in the height, and at last cause our total ruin; and, in truth, a
foreign is much more supportable than a civil war, but I do not believe
that God will favour so unjust a design as to offend and quarrel with
others for our own advantage:
"Nil mihi tam valde placeat, Rhamnusia virgo,
Quod temere invitis suscipiatur heris."
["Rhamnusian virgin, let nothing ever so greatly please me which is
taken without justice from the unwilling owners"
—Catullus, lxviii. 77.]
And yet the weakness of our condition often pushes us upon the necessity
of making use of ill means to a good end. Lycurgus, the most perfect
legislator that ever was, virtuous and invented this very unjust practice
of making the helots, who were their slaves, drunk by force, to the end
that the Spartans, seeing them so lost and buried in wine, might abhor the
excess of this vice. And yet those were still more to blame who of old
gave leave that criminals, to what sort of death soever condemned, should
be cut up alive by the physicians, that they might make a true discovery
of our inward parts, and build their art upon greater certainty; for, if
we must run into excesses, it is more excusable to do it for the health of
the soul than that of the body; as the Romans trained up the people to
valour and the contempt of dangers and death by those furious spectacles
of gladiators and fencers, who, having to fight it out to the last, cut,
mangled, and killed one another in their presence:
"Quid vesani aliud sibi vult ars impia ludi,
Quid mortes juvenum, quid sanguine pasta voluptas?"
["What other end does the impious art of the gladiators propose to
itself, what the slaughter of young men, what pleasure fed with
blood."—Prudentius, Contra Symmachum, ii. 643.]
and this custom continued till the Emperor Theodosius' time:
"Arripe dilatam tua, dux, in tempora famam,
Quodque patris superest, successor laudis habeto
Nullus in urbe cadat, cujus sit poena voluptas....
Jam solis contenta feris, infamis arena
Nulla cruentatis homicidia ludat in armis."
["Prince, take the honours delayed for thy reign, and be successor
to thy fathers; henceforth let none at Rome be slain for sport. Let
beasts' blood stain the infamous arena, and no more homicides be
there acted."—Prudentius, Contra Symmachum, ii. 643.]
It was, in truth, a wonderful example, and of great advantage for the
training up the people, to see every day before their eyes a hundred; two
hundred, nay, a thousand couples of men armed against one another, cut one
another to pieces with so great a constancy of courage, that they were
never heard to utter so much as one syllable of weakness or commiseration;
never seen to turn their backs, nor so much as to make one cowardly step
to evade a blow, but rather exposed their necks to the adversary's sword
and presented themselves to receive the stroke; and many of them, when
wounded to death, have sent to ask the spectators if they were satisfied
with their behaviour, before they lay down to die upon the place. It was
not enough for them to fight and to die bravely, but cheerfully too;
insomuch that they were hissed and cursed if they made any hesitation
about receiving their death. The very girls themselves set them on:
"Consurgit ad ictus,
Et, quoties victor ferrum jugulo inserit, illa
Delicias ait esse suas, pectusque jacentis
Virgo modesta jubet converso pollice rumpi."
["The modest virgin is so delighted with the sport, that she
applauds the blow, and when the victor bathes his sword in his
fellow's throat, she says it is her pleasure, and with turned thumb
orders him to rip up the bosom of the prostrate victim."
—Prudentius, Contra Symmachum, ii. 617.]
The first Romans only condemned criminals to this example: but they
afterwards employed innocent slaves in the work, and even freemen too, who
sold themselves to this purpose, nay, moreover, senators and knights of
Rome, and also women:
"Nunc caput in mortem vendunt, et funus arena,
Atque hostem sibi quisque parat, cum bella quiescunt."
["They sell themselves to death and the circus, and, since the wars
are ceased, each for himself a foe prepares."
—Manilius, Astron., iv. 225.]
"Hos inter fremitus novosque lusus....
Stat sexus rudis insciusque ferri,
Et pugnas capit improbus viriles;"
["Amidst these tumults and new sports, the tender sex, unskilled in
arms, immodestly engaged in manly fights."
—Statius, Sylv., i. 6, 51.]
which I should think strange and incredible, if we were not accustomed
every day to see in our own wars many thousands of men of other nations,
for money to stake their blood and their lives in quarrels wherein they
have no manner of concern.
CHAPTER XXIV——OF THE ROMAN GRANDEUR
I will only say a word or two of this infinite argument, to show the
simplicity of those who compare the pitiful greatness of these times with
that of Rome. In the seventh book of Cicero's Familiar Epistles (and let
the grammarians put out that surname of familiar if they please, for in
truth it is not very suitable; and they who, instead of familiar, have
substituted "ad Familiares," may gather something to justify them for so
doing out of what Suetonius says in the Life of Caesar, that there was a
volume of letters of his "ad Familiares ") there is one directed to
Caesar, then in Gaul, wherein Cicero repeats these words, which were in
the end of another letter that Caesar had written to him: "As to what
concerns Marcus Furius, whom you have recommended to me, I will make him
king of Gaul, and if you would have me advance any other friend of yours
send him to me." It was no new thing for a simple citizen of Rome, as
Caesar then was, to dispose of kingdoms, for he took away that of King
Deiotarus from him to give it to a gentleman of the city of Pergamus,
called Mithridates; and they who wrote his Life record several cities sold
by him; and Suetonius says, that he had once from King Ptolemy three
millions and six hundred thousand crowns, which was very like selling him
his own kingdom:
"Tot Galatae, tot Pontus, tot Lydia, nummis."
["So much for Galatia, so much for Pontus,
so much for Lydia."—Claudius in Eutrop., i. 203.]
Marcus Antonius said, that the greatness of the people of Rome was not so
much seen in what they took, as in what they gave; and, indeed, some ages
before Antonius, they had dethroned one amongst the rest with so wonderful
authority, that in all the Roman history I have not observed anything that
more denotes the height of their power. Antiochus possessed all Egypt, and
was, moreover, ready to conquer Cyprus and other appendages of that
empire: when being upon the progress of his victories, C. Popilius came to
him from the Senate, and at their first meeting refused to take him by the
hand, till he had first read his letters, which after the king had read,
and told him he would consider of them, Popilius made a circle about him
with his cane, saying:—"Return me an answer, that I may carry it
back to the Senate, before thou stirrest out of this circle." Antiochus,
astonished at the roughness of so positive a command, after a little
pause, replied, "I will obey the Senate's command." Then Popilius saluted
him as friend of the Roman people. To have renounced claim to so great a
monarchy, and a course of such successful fortune, from the effects of
three lines in writing! Truly he had reason, as he afterwards did, to send
the Senate word by his ambassadors, that he had received their order with
the same respect as if it had come from the immortal gods.
All the kingdoms that Augustus gained by the right of war, he either
restored to those who had lost them or presented them to strangers. And
Tacitus, in reference to this, speaking of Cogidunus, king of England,
gives us, by a marvellous touch, an instance of that infinite power: the
Romans, says he, were from all antiquity accustomed to leave the kings
they had subdued in possession of their kingdoms under their authority.
"Ut haberent instruments servitutis et reges."
["That they might have even kings to be their slaves."
—Livy, xlv. 13.]
'Tis probable that Solyman, whom we have seen make a gift of Hungary and
other principalities, had therein more respect to this consideration than
to that he was wont to allege, viz., that he was glutted and overcharged
with so many monarchies and so much dominion, as his own valour and that
of his ancestors had acquired.
CHAPTER XXV——NOT TO COUNTERFEIT BEING SICK
There is an epigram in Martial, and one of the very good ones—for he
has of all sorts—where he pleasantly tells the story of Caelius,
who, to avoid making his court to some great men of Rome, to wait their
rising, and to attend them abroad, pretended to have the gout; and the
better to colour this anointed his legs, and had them lapped up in a great
many swathings, and perfectly counterfeited both the gesture and
countenance of a gouty person; till in the end, Fortune did him the
kindness to make him one indeed:
"Quantum curs potest et ars doloris
Desiit fingere Caelius podagram."
["How great is the power of counterfeiting pain: Caelius has ceased
to feign the gout; he has got it."—Martial, Ep., vii. 39, 8.]
I think I have read somewhere in Appian a story like this, of one who to
escape the proscriptions of the triumvirs of Rome, and the better to be
concealed from the discovery of those who pursued him, having hidden
himself in a disguise, would yet add this invention, to counterfeit having
but one eye; but when he came to have a little more liberty, and went to
take off the plaster he had a great while worn over his eye, he found he
had totally lost the sight of it indeed, and that it was absolutely gone.
'Tis possible that the action of sight was dulled from having been so long
without exercise, and that the optic power was wholly retired into the
other eye: for we evidently perceive that the eye we keep shut sends some
part of its virtue to its fellow, so that it will swell and grow bigger;
and so inaction, with the heat of ligatures and, plasters, might very well
have brought some gouty humour upon the counterfeiter in Martial.
Reading in Froissart the vow of a troop of young English gentlemen, to
keep their left eyes bound up till they had arrived in France and
performed some notable exploit upon us, I have often been tickled with
this thought, that it might have befallen them as it did those others, and
they might have returned with but an eye a-piece to their mistresses, for
whose sakes they had made this ridiculous vow.
Mothers have reason to rebuke their children when they counterfeit having
but one eye, squinting, lameness, or any other personal defect; for,
besides that their bodies being then so tender, may be subject to take an
ill bent, fortune, I know not how, sometimes seems to delight in taking us
at our word; and I have heard several examples related of people who have
become really sick, by only feigning to be so. I have always used, whether
on horseback or on foot, to carry a stick in my hand, and even to affect
doing it with an elegant air; many have threatened that this fancy would
one day be turned into necessity: if so, I should be the first of my
family to have the gout.
But let us a little lengthen this chapter, and add another anecdote
concerning blindness. Pliny reports of one who, dreaming he was blind,
found himself so indeed in the morning without any preceding infirmity in
his eyes. The force of imagination might assist in this case, as I have
said elsewhere, and Pliny seems to be of the same opinion; but it is more
likely that the motions which the body felt within, of which physicians,
if they please, may find out the cause, taking away his sight, were the
occasion of his dream.
Let us add another story, not very improper for this subject, which Seneca
relates in one of his epistles: "You know," says he, writing to Lucilius,
"that Harpaste, my wife's fool, is thrown upon me as an hereditary charge,
for I have naturally an aversion to those monsters; and if I have a mind
to laugh at a fool, I need not seek him far; I can laugh at myself. This
fool has suddenly lost her sight: I tell you a strange, but a very true
thing she is not sensible that she is blind, but eternally importunes her
keeper to take her abroad, because she says the house is dark. That what
we laugh at in her, I pray you to believe, happens to every one of us: no
one knows himself to be avaricious or grasping; and, again, the blind call
for a guide, while we stray of our own accord. I am not ambitious, we say;
but a man cannot live otherwise at Rome; I am not wasteful, but the city
requires a great outlay; 'tis not my fault if I am choleric—if I
have not yet established any certain course of life: 'tis the fault of
youth. Let us not seek our disease out of ourselves; 'tis in us, and
planted in our bowels; and the mere fact that we do not perceive ourselves
to be sick, renders us more hard to be cured. If we do not betimes begin
to see to ourselves, when shall we have provided for so many wounds and
evils wherewith we abound? And yet we have a most sweet and charming
medicine in philosophy; for of all the rest we are sensible of no pleasure
till after the cure: this pleases and heals at once." This is what Seneca
says, that has carried me from my subject, but there is advantage in the
change.
CHAPTER XXVI——OF THUMBS
Tacitus reports, that amongst certain barbarian kings their manner was,
when they would make a firm obligation, to join their right hands close to
one another, and intertwist their thumbs; and when, by force of straining
the blood, it appeared in the ends, they lightly pricked them with some
sharp instrument, and mutually sucked them.
Physicians say that the thumbs are the master fingers of the hand, and
that their Latin etymology is derived from "pollere." The Greeks called
them 'Avtixeip', as who should say, another hand. And it seems that the
Latins also sometimes take it in this sense for the whole hand:
"Sed nec vocibus excitata blandis,
Molli pollici nec rogata, surgit."
["Neither to be excited by soft words or by the thumb."
—Mart., xii. 98, 8.]
It was at Rome a signification of favour to depress and turn in the
thumbs:
"Fautor utroque tuum laudabit pollice ludum:"
["Thy patron will applaud thy sport with both thumbs"
—Horace.]
and of disfavour to elevate and thrust them outward:
"Converso pollice vulgi,
Quemlibet occidunt populariter."
["The populace, with inverted thumbs, kill all that
come before them."—Juvenal, iii. 36]
The Romans exempted from war all such as were maimed in the thumbs, as
having no more sufficient strength to hold their weapons. Augustus
confiscated the estate of a Roman knight who had maliciously cut off the
thumbs of two young children he had, to excuse them from going into the
armies; and, before him, the Senate, in the time of the Italic war, had
condemned Caius Vatienus to perpetual imprisonment, and confiscated all
his goods, for having purposely cut off the thumb of his left hand, to
exempt himself from that expedition. Some one, I have forgotten who,
having won a naval battle, cut off the thumbs of all his vanquished
enemies, to render them incapable of fighting and of handling the oar. The
Athenians also caused the thumbs of the AEginatans to be cut off, to
deprive them of the superiority in the art of navigation.
In Lacedaemon, pedagogues chastised their scholars by biting their thumbs.
CHAPTER XXVII——COWARDICE THE MOTHER OF CRUELTY
I have often heard it said that cowardice is the mother of cruelty; and I
have found by experience that malicious and inhuman animosity and
fierceness are usually accompanied with feminine weakness. I have seen the
most cruel people, and upon frivolous occasions, apt to cry. Alexander,
the tyrant of Pheres, durst not be a spectator of tragedies in the
theatre, for fear lest his citizens should see him weep at the misfortunes
of Hecuba and Andromache, who himself without pity caused so many people
every day to be murdered. Is it not meanness of spirit that renders them
so pliable to all extremities? Valour, whose effect is only to be
exercised against resistance—
"Nec nisi bellantis gaudet cervice juvenci"—
["Nor delights in killing a bull unless he resists."
—Claudius, Ep. ad Hadrianum, v. 39.]
stops when it sees the enemy at its mercy; but pusillanimity, to say that
it was also in the game, not having dared to meddle in the first act of
danger, takes as its part the second, of blood and massacre. The murders
in victories are commonly performed by the rascality and hangers-on of an
army, and that which causes so many unheard of cruelties in domestic wars
is, that this canaille makes war in imbruing itself up to the elbows in
blood, and ripping up a body that lies prostrate at its feet, having no
sense of any other valour:
"Et lupus, et turpes instant morientibus ursi,
Et quaecunque minor nobilitate fera est:"
["Wolves and the filthy bears, and all the baser beasts,
fall upon the dying."—Ovid, Trist., iii. 5, 35.]
like cowardly dogs, that in the house worry and tear the skins of wild
beasts, they durst not come near in the field. What is it in these times
of ours that makes our quarrels mortal; and that, whereas our fathers had
some degrees of revenge, we now begin with the last in ours, and at the
first meeting nothing is to be said but, kill? What is this but cowardice?
Every one is sensible that there is more bravery and disdain in subduing
an enemy, than in cutting, his throat; and in making him yield, than in
putting him to the sword: besides that the appetite of revenge is better
satisfied and pleased because its only aim is to make itself felt: And
this is the reason why we do not fall upon a beast or a stone when they
hurt us, because they are not capable of being sensible of our revenge;
and to kill a man is to save him from the injury and offence we intend
him. And as Bias cried out to a wicked fellow, "I know that sooner or
later thou wilt have thy reward, but I am afraid I shall not see it";
—[Plutarch, on the Delay in Divine Justice, c. 2.]—and pitied
the Orchomenians that the penitence of Lyciscus for the treason committed
against them, came at a season when there was no one remaining alive of
those who had been interested in the offence, and whom the pleasure of
this penitence should affect: so revenge is to be pitied, when the person
on whom it is executed is deprived of means of suffering under it: for as
the avenger will look on to enjoy the pleasure of his revenge, so the
person on whom he takes revenge should be a spectator too, to be afflicted
and to repent. "He will repent it," we say, and because we have given him
a pistol-shot through the head, do we imagine he will repent? On the
contrary, if we but observe, we shall find, that he makes mouths at us in
falling, and is so far from penitency, that he does not so much as repine
at us; and we do him the kindest office of life, which is to make him die
insensibly, and soon: we are afterwards to hide ourselves, and to shift
and fly from the officers of justice, who pursue us, whilst he is at rest.
Killing is good to frustrate an offence to come, not to revenge one that
is already past; and more an act of fear than of bravery; of precaution
than of courage; of defence than of enterprise. It is manifest that by it
we lose both the true end of revenge and the care of our reputation; we
are afraid, if he lives he will do us another injury as great as the
first; 'tis not out of animosity to him, but care of thyself, that thou
gettest rid of him.
In the kingdom of Narsingah this expedient would be useless to us, where
not only soldiers, but tradesmen also, end their differences by the sword.
The king never denies the field to any who wish to fight; and when they
are persons of quality; he looks on, rewarding the victor with a chain of
gold,—for which any one who pleases may fight with him again, so
that, by having come off from one combat, he has engaged himself in many.
If we thought by virtue to be always masters of our enemies, and to
triumph over them at pleasure, we should be sorry they should escape from
us as they do, by dying: but we have a mind to conquer, more with safety
than honour, and, in our quarrel, more pursue the end than the glory.
Asnius Pollio, who, as being a worthy man, was the less to be excused,
committed a like, error, when, having written a libel against Plancus, he
forbore to publish it till he was dead; which is to bite one's thumb at a
blind man, to rail at one who is deaf, to wound a man who has no feeling,
rather than to run the hazard of his resentment. And it was also said of
him that it was only for hobgoblins to wrestle with the dead.
He who stays to see the author die, whose writings he intends to question,
what does he say but that he is weak in his aggressiveness? It was told to
Aristotle that some one had spoken ill of him: "Let him do more," said he;
"let him whip me too, provided I am not there."
Our fathers contented themselves with revenging an insult with the lie,
the lie with a box of the ear, and so forward; they were valiant enough
not to fear their adversaries, living and provoked we tremble for fear so
soon as we see them on foot. And that this is so, does not our noble
practice of these days, equally to prosecute to death both him that has
offended us and him we have offended, make it out? 'Tis also a kind of
cowardice that has introduced the custom of having seconds, thirds, and
fourths in our duels; they were formerly duels; they are now skirmishes,
rencontres, and battles. Solitude was, doubtless, terrible to those who
were the first inventors of this practice:
"Quum in se cuique minimum fiduciae esset,"
for naturally any company whatever is consolatory in danger. Third persons
were formerly called in to prevent disorder and foul play only, and to be
witness of the fortune of the combat; but now they have brought it to this
pass that the witnesses themselves engage; whoever is invited cannot
handsomely stand by as an idle spectator, for fear of being suspected
either of want of affection or of courage. Besides the injustice and
unworthiness of such an action, of engaging other strength and valour in
the protection of your honour than your own, I conceive it a disadvantage
to a brave man, and who wholly relies upon himself, to shuffle his fortune
with that of a second; every one runs hazard enough himself without
hazarding for another, and has enough to do to assure himself in his own
valour for the defence of his life, without intrusting a thing so dear in
a third man's hand. For, if it be not expressly agreed upon before to the
contrary, 'tis a combined party of all four, and if your second be killed,
you have two to deal withal, with good reason; and to say that it is foul
play, it is so indeed, as it is, well armed, to attack a man who has but
the hilt of a broken sword in his hand, or, clear and untouched, a man who
is desperately wounded: but if these be advantages you have got by
fighting, you may make use of them without reproach. The disparity and
inequality are only weighed and considered from the condition of the
combatants when they began; as to the rest, you must take your chance: and
though you had, alone, three enemies upon you at once, your two companions
being killed, you have no more wrong done you, than I should do in a
battle, by running a man through whom I should see engaged with one of our
own men, with the like advantage. The nature of society will have it so
that where there is troop against troop, as where our Duke of Orleans
challenged Henry, king of England, a hundred against a hundred; three
hundred against as many, as the Argians against the Lacedaemonians; three
to three, as the Horatii against the Curiatii, the multitude on either
side is considered but as one single man: the hazard, wherever there is
company, being confused and mixed.
I have a domestic interest in this discourse; for my brother, the Sieur de
Mattecoulom, was at Rome asked by a gentleman with whom he had no great
acquaintance, and who was a defendant challenged by another, to be his
second; in this duel he found himself matched with a gentleman much better
known to him. (I would fain have an explanation of these rules of honour,
which so often shock and confound those of reason.) After having
despatched his man, seeing the two principals still on foot and sound, he
ran in to disengage his friend. What could he do less? should he have
stood still, and if chance would have ordered it so, have seen him he was
come thither to defend killed before his face? what he had hitherto done
helped not the business; the quarrel was yet undecided. The courtesy that
you can, and certainly ought to shew to your enemy, when you have reduced
him to an ill condition and have a great advantage over him, I do not see
how you can do it, where the interest of another is concerned, where you
are only called in as an assistant, and the quarrel is none of yours: he
could neither be just nor courteous, at the hazard of him he was there to
serve. And he was therefore enlarged from the prisons of Italy at the
speedy and solemn request of our king. Indiscreet nation! we are not
content to make our vices and follies known to the world by report only,
but we must go into foreign countries, there to show them what fools we
are. Put three Frenchmen into the deserts of Libya, they will not live a
month together without fighting; so that you would say this peregrination
were a thing purposely designed to give foreigners the pleasure of our
tragedies, and, for the most part, to such as rejoice and laugh at our
miseries. We go into Italy to learn to fence, and exercise the art at the
expense of our lives before we have learned it; and yet, by the rule of
discipline, we should put the theory before the practice. We discover
ourselves to be but learners:
"Primitae juvenum miserae, bellique futuri
Dura rudimenta."
["Wretched the elementary trials of youth, and hard the
rudiments of approaching war."—Virgil, AEneid, xi. 156.]
I know that fencing is an art very useful to its end (in a duel betwixt
two princes, cousin-germans, in Spain, the elder, says Livy, by his skill
and dexterity in arms, easily overcoming the greater and more awkward
strength of the younger), and of which the knowledge, as I experimentally
know, has inspired some with courage above their natural measure; but this
is not properly valour, because it supports itself upon address, and is
founded upon something besides itself. The honour of combat consists in
the jealousy of courage, and not of skill; and therefore I have known a
friend of mine, famed as a great master in this exercise, in his quarrels
make choice of such arms as might deprive him of this advantage and that
wholly depended upon fortune and assurance, that they might not attribute
his victory rather to his skill in fencing than his valour. When I was
young, gentlemen avoided the reputation of good fencers as injurious to
them, and learned to fence with all imaginable privacy as a trade of
subtlety, derogating from true and natural valour:
"Non schivar non parar, non ritirarsi,
Voglion costor, ne qui destrezza ha parte;
Non danno i colpi or finti, or pieni, or scarsi!
Toglie l'ira a il furor l'uso de l'arte.
Odi le spade orribilmente utarsi
A mezzo il ferro; il pie d'orma non parte,
Sempre a il pie fermo, a la man sempre in moto;
Ne scende taglio in van, ne punta a voto."
["They neither shrank, nor vantage sought of ground,
They travers'd not, nor skipt from part to part,
Their blows were neither false, nor feigned found:
In fight, their rage would let them use no art.
Their swords together clash with dreadful sound,
Their feet stand fast, and neither stir nor start,
They move their hands, steadfast their feet remain.
Nor blow nor foin they strook, or thrust in vain."
—Tasso, Gierus. Lib., c. 12, st. 55, Fairfax's translation.]
Butts, tilting, and barriers, the feint of warlike fights, were the
exercises of our forefathers: this other exercise is so much the less
noble, as it only respects a private end; that teaches us to destroy one
another against law and justice, and that every way always produces very
ill effects. It is much more worthy and more becoming to exercise
ourselves in things that strengthen than that weaken our government and
that tend to the public safety and common glory. The consul, Publius
Rutilius, was the first who taught the soldiers to handle their arms with
skill, and joined art with valour, not for the rise of private quarrel,
but for war and the quarrels of the people of Rome; a popular and civil
defence. And besides the example of Caesar, who commanded his men to shoot
chiefly at the face of Pompey's soldiers in the battle of Pharsalia, a
thousand other commanders have also bethought them to invent new forms of
weapons and new ways of striking and defending, according as occasion
should require.
But as Philopoemen condemned wrestling, wherein he excelled, because the
preparatives that were therein employed were differing from those that
appertain to military discipline, to which alone he conceived men of
honour ought wholly to apply themselves; so it seems to me that this
address to which we form our limbs, those writhings and motions young men
are taught in this new school, are not only of no use, but rather contrary
and hurtful to the practice of fight in battle; and also our people
commonly make use of particular weapons, and peculiarly designed for duel;
and I have seen, when it has been disapproved, that a gentleman challenged
to fight with rapier and poignard appeared in the array of a man-at-arms,
and that another should take his cloak instead of his poignard. It is
worthy of consideration that Laches in Plato, speaking of learning to
fence after our manner, says that he never knew any great soldier come out
of that school, especially the masters of it: and, indeed, as to them, our
experience tells as much. As to the rest, we may at least conclude that
they are qualities of no relation or correspondence; and in the education
of the children of his government, Plato interdicts the art of boxing,
introduced by Amycus and Epeius, and that of wrestling, by Antaeus and
Cercyo, because they have another end than to render youth fit for the
service of war and contribute nothing to it. But I see that I have
somewhat strayed from my theme.
The Emperor Mauricius, being advertised by dreams and several prognostics,
that one Phocas, an obscure soldier, should kill him, questioned his
son-in-law, Philip, who this Phocas was, and what were his nature,
qualities, and manners; and so soon as Philip, amongst other things, had
told him that he was cowardly and timorous, the emperor immediately
concluded then that he was a murderer and cruel. What is it that makes
tyrants so sanguinary? 'Tis only the solicitude for their own safety, and
that their faint hearts can furnish them with no other means of securing
themselves than in exterminating those who may hurt them, even so much as
women, for fear of a scratch:
"Cuncta ferit, dum cuncta timer."
["He strikes at all who fears all."
—Claudius, in Eutrop., i. 182.]
The first cruelties are exercised for themselves thence springs the fear
of a just revenge, which afterwards produces a series of new cruelties, to
obliterate one another. Philip, king of Macedon, who had so much to do
with the people of Rome, agitated with the horror of so many murders
committed by his order, and doubting of being able to keep himself secure
from so many families, at divers times mortally injured and offended by
him, resolved to seize all the children of those he had caused to be
slain, to despatch them daily one after another, and so to establish his
own repose.
Fine matter is never impertinent, however placed; and therefore I, who
more consider the weight and utility of what I deliver than its order and
connection, need not fear in this place to bring in an excellent story,
though it be a little by-the-by; for when they are rich in their own
native beauty, and are able to justify themselves, the least end of a hair
will serve to draw them into my discourse.
Amongst others condemned by Philip, had been one Herodicus, prince of
Thessaly; he had, moreover, after him caused his two sons-in-law to be put
to death, each leaving a son very young behind him. Theoxena and Archo
were their two widows. Theoxena, though highly courted to it, could not be
persuaded to marry again: Archo married Poris, the greatest man among the
AEnians, and by him had a great many children, whom she, dying, left at a
very tender age. Theoxena, moved with a maternal charity towards her
nephews, that she might have them under her own eyes and in her own
protection, married Poris: when presently comes a proclamation of the
king's edict. This brave-spirited mother, suspecting the cruelty of
Philip, and afraid of the insolence of the soldiers towards these charming
and tender children was so bold as to declare hat she would rather kill
them with her own hands than deliver them. Poris, startled at this
protestation, promised her to steal them away, and to transport them to
Athens, and there commit them to the custody of some faithful friends of
his. They took, therefore, the opportunity of an annual feast which was
celebrated at AEnia in honour of AEneas, and thither they went. Having
appeared by day at the public ceremonies and banquet, they stole the night
following into a vessel laid ready for the purpose, to escape away by sea.
The wind proved contrary, and finding themselves in the morning within
sight of the land whence they had launched overnight, and being pursued by
the guards of the port, Poris perceiving this, laboured all he could to
make the mariners do their utmost to escape from the pursuers. But
Theoxena, frantic with affection and revenge, in pursuance of her former
resolution, prepared both weapons and poison, and exposing them before
them; "Go to, my children," said she, "death is now the only means of your
defence and liberty, and shall administer occasion to the gods to exercise
their sacred justice: these sharp swords, and these full cups, will open
you the way into it; courage, fear nothing! And thou, my son, who art the
eldest, take this steel into thy hand, that thou mayest the more bravely
die." The children having on one side so powerful a counsellor, and the
enemy at their throats on the other, run all of them eagerly upon what was
next to hand; and, half dead, were thrown into the sea. Theoxena, proud of
having so gloriously provided for the safety of her children, clasping her
arms with great affection about her husband's neck. "Let us, my friend,"
said she, "follow these boys, and enjoy the same sepulchre they do"; and
so, having embraced, they threw themselves headlong into the sea; so that
the ship was carried—back without the owners into the harbour.
Tyrants, at once both to kill and to make their anger felt, have employed
their capacity to invent the most lingering deaths. They will have their
enemies despatched, but not so fast that they may not have leisure to
taste their vengeance. And therein they are mightily perplexed; for if the
torments they inflict are violent, they are short; if long, they are not
then so painful as they desire; and thus plague themselves in choice of
the greatest cruelty. Of this we have a thousand examples in antiquity,
and I know not whether we, unawares, do not retain some traces of this
barbarity.
All that exceeds a simple death appears to me absolute cruelty. Our
justice cannot expect that he, whom the fear of dying by being beheaded or
hanged will not restrain, should be any more awed by the imagination of a
languishing fire, pincers, or the wheel. And I know not, in the meantime,
whether we do not throw them into despair; for in what condition can be
the soul of a man, expecting four-and-twenty hours together to be broken
upon a wheel, or after the old way, nailed to a cross? Josephus relates
that in the time of the war the Romans made in Judaea, happening to pass
by where they had three days before crucified certain Jews, he amongst
them knew three of his own friends, and obtained the favour of having them
taken down, of whom two, he says, died; the third lived a great while
after.
Chalcondylas, a writer of good credit, in the records he has left behind
him of things that happened in his time, and near him, tells us, as of the
most excessive torment, of that the Emperor Mohammed very often practised,
of cutting off men in the middle by the diaphragm with one blow of a
scimitar, whence it followed that they died as it were two deaths at once;
and both the one part, says he, and the other, were seen to stir and
strive a great while after in very great torment. I do not think there was
any great suffering in this motion the torments that are the most dreadful
to look on are not always the greatest to endure; and I find those that
other historians relate to have been practised by him upon the Epirot
lords, are more horrid and cruel, where they were condemned to be flayed
alive piecemeal, after so malicious a manner that they continued fifteen
days in that misery.
And these other two: Croesus, having caused a gentleman, the favourite of
his brother Pantaleon, to be seized, carried him into a fuller's shop,
where he caused him to be scratched and carded with the cards and combs
belonging to that trade, till he died. George Sechel, chief commander of
the peasants of Poland, who committed so many mischiefs under the title of
the Crusade, being defeated in battle and taken bu the Vayvode of
Transylvania, was three days bound naked upon the rack exposed to all
sorts of torments that any one could contrive against him: during which
time many other prisoners were kept fasting; in the end, he living and
looking on, they made his beloved brother Lucat, for whom alone he
entreated, taking on himself the blame of all their evil actions drink his
blood, and caused twenty of his most favoured captains to feed upon him,
tearing his flesh in pieces with their teeth, and swallowing the morsels.
The remainder of his body and his bowels, so soon as he was dead, were
boiled, and others of his followers compelled to eat them.
CHAPTER XXVIII——ALL THINGS HAVE THEIR SEASON
Such as compare Cato the Censor with the younger Cato, who killed himself,
compare two beautiful natures, much resembling one another. The first
acquired his reputation several ways, and excels in military exploits and
the utility of his public employments; but the virtue of the younger,
besides that it were blasphemy to compare any to it in vigour, was much
more pure and unblemished. For who could absolve that of the Censor from
envy and ambition, having dared to attack the honour of Scipio, a man in
goodness and all other excellent qualities infinitely beyond him or any
other of his time?
That which they, report of him, amongst other things, that in his extreme
old age he put himself upon learning the Greek tongue with so greedy an
appetite, as if to quench a long thirst, does not seem to me to make much
for his honour; it being properly what we call falling into second
childhood. All things have their seasons, even good ones, and I may say my
Paternoster out of time; as they accused T. Quintus Flaminius, that being
general of an army, he was seen praying apart in the time of a battle that
he won.
"Imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis."
["The wise man limits even honest things."—Juvenal, vi. 444]
Eudemonidas, seeing Xenocrates when very old, still very intent upon his
school lectures: "When will this man be wise," said he, "if he is yet
learning?" And Philopaemen, to those who extolled King Ptolemy for every
day inuring his person to the exercise of arms: "It is not," said he,
"commendable in a king of his age to exercise himself in these things; he
ought now really to employ them." The young are to make their
preparations, the old to enjoy them, say the sages: and the greatest vice
they observe in us is that our desires incessantly grow young again; we
are always re-beginning to live.
Our studies and desires should sometime be sensible of age; yet we have
one foot in the grave and still our appetites and pursuits spring every
day anew within us:
"Tu secanda marmora
Locas sub ipsum funus, et, sepulcri
Immemor, struis domos."
["You against the time of death have marble cut for use, and,
forgetful of the tomb, build houses."—Horace, Od., ii. 18, 17.]
The longest of my designs is not of above a year's extent; I think of
nothing now but ending; rid myself of all new hopes and enterprises; take
my last leave of every place I depart from, and every day dispossess
myself of what I have.
"Olim jam nec perit quicquam mihi, nec acquiritur....
plus superest viatici quam viae."
["Henceforward I will neither lose, nor expect to get: I have more
wherewith to defray my journey, than I have way to go." (Or):
"Hitherto nothing of me has been lost or gained; more remains to pay
the way than there is way."—Seneca, Ep., 77. (The sense seems to
be that so far he had met his expenses, but that for the future he
was likely to have more than he required.)]
"Vixi, et, quem dederat cursum fortuna, peregi."
["I have lived and finished the career Fortune placed before me."
—AEneid, iv. 653.]
'Tis indeed the only comfort I find in my old age, that it mortifies in me
several cares and desires wherewith my life has been disturbed; the care
how the world goes, the care of riches, of grandeur, of knowledge, of
health, of myself. There are men who are learning to speak at a time when
they should learn to be silent for ever. A man may always study, but he
must not always go to school what a contemptible thing is an old
Abecedarian!—[Seneca, Ep. 36]
"Diversos diversa juvant; non omnibus annis
Omnia conveniunt."
["Various things delight various men; all things are not
for all ages."—Gall., Eleg., i. 104.]
If we must study, let us study what is suitable to our present condition,
that we may answer as he did, who being asked to what end he studied in
his decrepit age, "that I may go out better," said he, "and at greater
ease." Such a study was that of the younger Cato, feeling his end
approach, and which he met with in Plato's Discourse of the Eternity of
the Soul: not, as we are to believe, that he was not long before furnished
with all sorts of provision for such a departure; for of assurance, an
established will and instruction, he had more than Plato had in all his
writings; his knowledge and courage were in this respect above philosophy;
he applied himself to this study, not for the service of his death; but,
as a man whose sleeps were never disturbed in the importance of such a
deliberation, he also, without choice or change, continued his studies
with the other accustomary actions of his life. The night that he was
denied the praetorship he spent in play; that wherein he was to die he
spent in reading. The loss either of life or of office was all one to him.
CHAPTER XXIX——OF VIRTUE
I find by experience, that there is a good deal to be said betwixt the
flights and emotions of the soul or a resolute and constant habit; and
very well perceive that there is nothing we may not do, nay, even to the
surpassing the Divinity itself, says a certain person, forasmuch as it is
more to render a man's self impassible by his own study and industry, than
to be so by his natural condition; and even to be able to conjoin to man's
imbecility and frailty a God-like resolution and assurance; but it is by
fits and starts; and in the lives of those heroes of times past there are
sometimes miraculous impulses, and that seem infinitely to exceed our
natural force; but they are indeed only impulses: and 'tis hard to
believe, that these so elevated qualities in a man can so thoroughly tinct
and imbue the soul that they should become ordinary, and, as it were,
natural in him. It accidentally happens even to us, who are but abortive
births of men, sometimes to launch our souls, when roused by the
discourses or examples of others, much beyond their ordinary stretch; but
'tis a kind of passion which pushes and agitates them, and in some sort
ravishes them from themselves: but, this perturbation once overcome, we
see that they insensibly flag and slacken of themselves, if not to the
lowest degree, at least so as to be no more the same; insomuch as that
upon every trivial occasion, the losing of a bird, or the breaking, of a
glass, we suffer ourselves to be moved little less than one of the common
people. I am of opinion, that order, moderation, and constancy excepted,
all things are to be done by a man that is very imperfect and defective in
general. Therefore it is, say the Sages, that to make a right judgment of
a man, you are chiefly to pry into his common actions, and surprise him in
his everyday habit.
Pyrrho, he who erected so pleasant a knowledge upon ignorance,
endeavoured, as all the rest who were really philosophers did, to make his
life correspond with his doctrine. And because he maintained the
imbecility of human judgment to be so extreme as to be incapable of any
choice or inclination, and would have it perpetually wavering and
suspended, considering and receiving all things as indifferent, 'tis said,
that he always comforted himself after the same manner and countenance: if
he had begun a discourse, he would always end what he had to say, though
the person he was speaking to had gone away: if he walked, he never
stopped for any impediment that stood in his way, being preserved from
precipices, collision with carts, and other like accidents, by the care of
his friends: for, to fear or to avoid anything, had been to shock his own
propositions, which deprived the senses themselves of all election and
certainty. Sometimes he suffered incision and cauteries with so great
constancy as never to be seen so much as to wince. 'Tis something to bring
the soul to these imaginations; 'tis more to join the effects, and yet not
impossible; but to conjoin them with such perseverance and constancy as to
make them habitual, is certainly, in attempts so remote from the common
usage, almost incredible to be done. Therefore it was, that being sometime
taken in his house sharply scolding with his sister, and being reproached
that he therein transgressed his own rules of indifference: "What!" said
he, "must this bit of a woman also serve for a testimony to my rules?"
Another time, being seen to defend himself against a dog: "It is," said
he, "very hard totally to put off man; and we must endeavour and force
ourselves to resist and encounter things, first by effects, but at least
by reason and argument."
About seven or eight years since, a husbandman yet living, but two leagues
from my house, having long been tormented with his wife's jealousy, coming
one day home from his work, and she welcoming him with her accustomed
railing, entered into so great fury that with a sickle he had yet in his
hand, he totally cut off all those parts that she was jealous of and threw
them in her face. And, 'tis said that a young gentleman of our nation,
brisk and amorous, having by his perseverance at last mollified the heart
of a fair mistress, enraged, that upon the point of fruition he found
himself unable to perform, and that,
"Nec viriliter
Iners senile penis extulit caput."
[(The 19th or 20th century translators leave this phrase
untranslated and with no explanation. D.W.)
—Tibullus, Priap. Carm., 84.]
as soon as ever he came home he deprived himself of the rebellious member,
and sent it to his mistress, a cruel and bloody victim for the expiation
of his offence. If this had been done upon mature consideration, and upon
the account of religion, as the priests of Cybele did, what should we say
of so high an action?
A few days since, at Bergerac, five leagues from my house, up the river
Dordogne, a woman having overnight been beaten and abused by her husband,
a choleric ill-conditioned fellow, resolved to escape from his ill-usage
at the price of her life; and going so soon as she was up the next morning
to visit her neighbours, as she was wont to do, and having let some words
fall in recommendation of her affairs, she took a sister of hers by the
hand, and led her to the bridge; whither being come, and having taken
leave of her, in jest as it were, without any manner of alteration in her
countenance, she threw herself headlong from the top into the river, and
was there drowned. That which is the most remarkable in this is, that this
resolution was a whole night forming in her head.
It is quite another thing with the Indian women for it being the custom
there for the men to have many wives, and the best beloved of them to kill
herself at her husband's decease, every one of them makes it the business
of her whole life to obtain this privilege and gain this advantage over
her companions; and the good offices they do their husbands aim at no
other recompense but to be preferred in accompanying him in death:
"Ubi mortifero jacta est fax ultima lecto,
Uxorum fusis stat pia turba comis
Et certamen habent lethi, quae viva sequatur
Conjugium: pudor est non licuisse mori.
Ardent victrices, et flammae pectora praebent,
Imponuntque suis ora perusta viris."
["For when they threw the torch on the funeral bed, the pious wives
with hair dishevelled, stand around striving, which, living, shall
accompany her spouse; and are ashamed that they may not die; they
who are preferred expose their breasts to the flame, and they lay
their scorched lips on those of their husbands."
—Propertius, iii. 13, 17.]
A certain author of our times reports that he has seen in those Oriental
nations this custom in practice, that not only the wives bury themselves
with their husbands, but even the slaves he has enjoyed also; which is
done after this manner: The husband being dead, the widow may if she will
(but few will) demand two or three months' respite wherein to order her
affairs. The day being come, she mounts on horseback, dressed as fine as
at her wedding, and with a cheerful countenance says she is going to sleep
with her spouse, holding a looking-glass in her left hand and an arrow in
the other. Being thus conducted in pomp, accompanied with her kindred and
friends and a great concourse of people in great joy, she is at last
brought to the public place appointed for such spectacles: this is a great
space, in the midst of which is a pit full of wood, and adjoining to it a
mount raised four or five steps, upon which she is brought and served with
a magnificent repast; which being done, she falls to dancing and singing,
and gives order, when she thinks fit, to kindle the fire. This being done,
she descends, and taking the nearest of her husband's relations by the
hand, they walk to the river close by, where she strips herself stark
naked, and having distributed her clothes and jewels to her friends,
plunges herself into the water, as if there to cleanse herself from her
sins; coming out thence, she wraps herself in a yellow linen of
five-and-twenty ells long, and again giving her hand to this kinsman of
her husband's, they return back to the mount, where she makes a speech to
the people, and recommends her children to them, if she have any. Betwixt
the pit and the mount there is commonly a curtain drawn to screen the
burning furnace from their sight, which some of them, to manifest the
greater courage, forbid. Having ended what she has to say, a woman
presents her with a vessel of oil, wherewith to anoint her head and her
whole body, which when done with she throws into the fire, and in an
instant precipitates herself after. Immediately, the people throw a good
many billets and logs upon her that she may not be long in dying, and
convert all their joy into sorrow and mourning. If they are persons of
meaner condition, the body of the defunct is carried to the place of
sepulture, and there placed sitting, the widow kneeling before him,
embracing the dead body; and they continue in this posture whilst the
people build a wall about them, which so soon as it is raised to the
height of the woman's shoulders, one of her relations comes behind her,
and taking hold of her head, twists her neck; so soon as she is dead, the
wall is presently raised up, and closed, and there they remain entombed.
There was, in this same country, something like this in their
gymnosophists; for not by constraint of others nor by the impetuosity of a
sudden humour, but by the express profession of their order, their custom
was, as soon as they arrived at a certain age, or that they saw themselves
threatened by any disease, to cause a funeral pile to be erected for them,
and on the top a stately bed, where, after having joyfully feasted their
friends and acquaintance, they laid them down with so great resolution,
that fire being applied to it, they were never seen to stir either hand or
foot; and after this manner, one of them, Calanus by name; expired in the
presence of the whole army of Alexander the Great. And he was neither
reputed holy nor happy amongst them who did not thus destroy himself,
dismissing his soul purged and purified by the fire, after having consumed
all that was earthly and mortal. This constant premeditation of the whole
life is that which makes the wonder.
Amongst our other controversies, that of 'Fatum' has also crept in; and to
tie things to come, and even our own wills, to a certain and inevitable
necessity, we are yet upon this argument of time past: "Since God foresees
that all things shall so fall out, as doubtless He does, it must then
necessarily follow, that they must so fall out": to which our masters
reply: "that the seeing anything come to pass, as we do, and as God
Himself also does (for all things being present with him, He rather sees,
than foresees), is not to compel an event: that is, we see because things
do fall out, but things do not fall out because we see: events cause
knowledge, but knowledge does not cause events. That which we see happen,
does happen; but it might have happened otherwise: and God, in the
catalogue of the causes of events which He has in His prescience, has also
those which we call accidental and voluntary, depending upon the liberty.
He has given our free will, and knows that we do amiss because we would do
so."
I have seen a great many commanders encourage their soldiers with this
fatal necessity; for if our time be limited to a certain hour, neither the
enemies' shot nor our own boldness, nor our flight and cowardice, can
either shorten or prolong our lives. This is easily said, but see who will
be so easily persuaded; and if it be so that a strong and lively faith
draws along with it actions of the same kind, certainly this faith we so
much brag of, is very light in this age of ours, unless the contempt it
has of works makes it disdain their company. So it is, that to this very
purpose the Sire de Joinville, as credible a witness as any other
whatever, tells us of the Bedouins, a nation amongst the Saracens, with
whom the king St. Louis had to do in the Holy Land, that they, in their
religion, so firmly believed the number of every man's days to be from all
eternity prefixed and set down by an inevitable decree, that they went
naked to the wars, excepting a Turkish sword, and their bodies only
covered with a white linen cloth: and for the greatest curse they could
invent when they were angry, this was always in their mouths: "Accursed be
thou, as he that arms himself for fear of death." This is a testimony of
faith very much beyond ours. And of this sort is that also that two friars
of Florence gave in our fathers' days. Being engaged in some controversy
of learning, they agreed to go both of them into the fire in the sight of
all the people, each for the verification of his argument, and all things
were already prepared, and the thing just upon the point of execution,
when it was interrupted by an unexpected accident.—[7th April 1498.
Savonarola issued the challenge. After many delays from demands and
counter-demands by each side as to the details of the fire, both parties
found that they had important business to transact in another county—both
just barely escaped assassination at the hands of the disappointed
spectators. D.W.]
A young Turkish lord, having performed a notable exploit in his own person
in the sight of both armies, that of Amurath and that of Huniades, ready
to join battle, being asked by Amurath, what in such tender and
inexperienced years (for it was his first sally into arms) had inspired
him with so brave a courage, replied, that his chief tutor for valour was
a hare. "For being," said he, "one day a hunting, I found a hare sitting,
and though I had a brace of excellent greyhounds with me, yet methought it
would be best for sureness to make use of my bow; for she sat very fair. I
then fell to letting fly my arrows, and shot forty that I had in my
quiver, not only without hurting, but without starting her from her form.
At last I slipped my dogs after her, but to no more purpose than I had
shot: by which I understood that she had been secured by her destiny; and,
that neither darts nor swords can wound without the permission of fate,
which we can neither hasten nor defer." This story may serve, by the way,
to let us see how flexible our reason is to all sorts of images.
A person of great years, name, dignity, and learning boasted to me that he
had been induced to a certain very important change in his faith by a
strange and whimsical incitation, and one otherwise so inadequate, that I
thought it much stronger, taken the contrary way: he called it a miracle,
and so I look upon it, but in a different sense. The Turkish historians
say, that the persuasion those of their nation have imprinted in them of
the fatal and unalterable prescription of their days, manifestly conduces
to the giving them great assurance in dangers. And I know a great prince
who makes very fortunate use of it, whether it be that he really believes
it, or that he makes it his excuse for so wonderfully hazarding himself:
let us hope Fortune may not be too soon weary of her favour to him.
There has not happened in our memory a more admirable effect of resolution
than in those two who conspired the death of the Prince of Orange.
[The first of these was Jehan de Jaureguy, who wounded the Prince
18th March 1582; the second, by whom the Prince was killed 10th July
1584., was Balthazar Gerard.]
'Tis marvellous how the second who executed it, could ever be persuaded
into an attempt, wherein his companion, who had done his utmost, had had
so ill success; and after the same method, and with the same arms, to go
attack a lord, armed with so recent a late lesson of distrust, powerful in
followers and bodily strength, in his own hall, amidst his guards, and in
a city wholly at his devotion. Assuredly, he employed a very resolute arm
and a courage enflamed with furious passion. A poignard is surer for
striking home; but by reason that more motion and force of hand is
required than with a pistol, the blow is more subject to be put by or
hindered. That this man did not run to a certain death, I make no great
doubt; for the hopes any one could flatter him withal, could not find
place in any sober understanding, and the conduct of his exploit
sufficiently manifests that he had no want of that, no more than of
courage. The motives of so powerful a persuasion may be diverse, for our
fancy does what it will, both with itself and us. The execution that was
done near Orleans—[The murder of the Duke of Guise by Poltrot.]—was
nothing like this; there was in this more of chance than vigour; the wound
was not mortal, if fortune had not made it so, and to attempt to shoot on
horseback, and at a great distance, by one whose body was in motion from
the motion of his horse, was the attempt of a man who had rather miss his
blow than fail of saving himself. This was apparent from what followed;
for he was so astonished and stupefied with the thought of so high an
execution, that he totally lost his judgment both to find his way to
flight and to govern his tongue. What needed he to have done more than to
fly back to his friends across the river? 'Tis what I have done in less
dangers, and that I think of very little hazard, how broad soever the
river may be, provided your horse have easy going in, and that you see on
the other side easy landing according to the stream. The other, —[Balthazar
Gerard.]—when they pronounced his dreadful sentence, "I was prepared
for this," said he, "beforehand, and I will make you wonder at my
patience."
The Assassins, a nation bordering upon Phoenicia,
[Or in Egypt, Syria, and Persia. Derivation of 'assassin' is from
Hassan-ben-Saba, one of their early leaders, and they had an
existence for some centuries. They are classed among the secret
societies of the Middle Ages. D.W.]
are reputed amongst the Mohammedans a people of very great devotion and
purity of manners. They hold that the nearest way to gain Paradise is to
kill some one of a contrary religion; which is the reason they have often
been seen, being but one or two, and without armour, to attempt against
powerful enemies, at the price of a certain death and without any
consideration of their own danger. So was our Raymond, Count of Tripoli,
assassinated (which word is derived from their name) in the heart of his
city,—[in 1151]—during our enterprises of the Holy War: and
likewise Conrad, Marquis of Monteferrat, the murderers at their execution
bearing themselves with great pride and glory that they had performed so
brave an exploit.
CHAPTER XXX——OF A MONSTROUS CHILD
This story shall go by itself; for I will leave it to physicians to
discourse of. Two days ago I saw a child that two men and a nurse, who
said they were the father, the uncle, and the aunt of it, carried about to
get money by showing it, by reason it was so strange a creature. It was,
as to all the rest, of a common form, and could stand upon its feet; could
go and gabble much like other children of the same age; it had never as
yet taken any other nourishment but from the nurse's breasts, and what, in
my presence, they tried to put into the mouth of it, it only chewed a
little and spat it out again without swallowing; the cry of it seemed
indeed a little odd and particular, and it was just fourteen months old.
Under the breast it was joined to another child, but without a head, and
which had the spine of the back without motion, the rest entire; for
though it had one arm shorter than the other, it had been broken by
accident at their birth; they were joined breast to breast, and as if a
lesser child sought to throw its arms about the neck of one something
bigger. The juncture and thickness of the place where they were conjoined
was not above four fingers, or thereabouts, so that if you thrust up the
imperfect child you might see the navel of the other below it, and the
joining was betwixt the paps and the navel. The navel of the imperfect
child could not be seen, but all the rest of the belly, so that all that
was not joined of the imperfect one, as arms, buttocks, thighs, and legs,
hung dangling upon the other, and might reach to the mid-leg. The nurse,
moreover, told us that it urined at both bodies, and that the members of
the other were nourished, sensible, and in the same plight with that she
gave suck to, excepting that they were shorter and less. This double body
and several limbs relating to one head might be interpreted a favourable
prognostic to the king,—[Henry III.]—of maintaining these
various parts of our state under the union of his laws; but lest the event
should prove otherwise, 'tis better to let it alone, for in things already
past there needs no divination,
"Ut quum facts sunt, tum ad conjecturam
aliqui interpretatione revocentur;"
["So as when they are come to pass, they may then by some
interpretation be recalled to conjecture"
—Cicero, De Divin., ii. 31.]
as 'tis said of Epimenides, that he always prophesied backward.
I have just seen a herdsman in Medoc, of about thirty years of age, who
has no sign of any genital parts; he has three holes by which he
incessantly voids his water; he is bearded, has desire, and seeks contact
with women.
Those that we call monsters are not so to God, who sees in the immensity
of His work the infinite forms that He has comprehended therein; and it is
to be believed that this figure which astonishes us has relation to some
other figure of the same kind unknown to man. From His all wisdom nothing
but good, common; and regular proceeds; but we do not discern the
disposition and relation:
"Quod crebro videt, non miratur, etiamsi,
cur fiat, nescit. Quod ante non vidit, id,
si evenerit, ostentum esse censet."
["What he often sees he does not admire, though he be ignorant how
it comes to pass. When a thing happens he never saw before, he
thinks that it is a portent."—Cicero, De Divin., ii. 22.]
Whatever falls out contrary to custom we say is contrary to nature, but
nothing, whatever it be, is contrary to her. Let, therefore, this
universal and natural reason expel the error and astonishment that novelty
brings along with it.
CHAPTER XXXI——OF ANGER
Plutarch is admirable throughout, but especially where he judges of human
actions. What fine things does he say in the comparison of Lycurgus and
Numa upon the subject of our great folly in abandoning children to the
care and government of their fathers? The most of our civil governments,
as Aristotle says, "leave, after the manner of the Cyclopes, to every one
the ordering of their wives and children, according to their own foolish
and indiscreet fancy; and the Lacedaemonian and Cretan are almost the only
governments that have committed the education of children to the laws. Who
does not see that in a state all depends upon their nurture and bringing
up? and yet they are left to the mercy of parents, let them be as foolish
and ill-conditioned as they may, without any manner of discretion."
Amongst other things, how often have I, as I have passed along our
streets, had a good mind to get up a farce, to revenge the poor boys whom
I have seen hided, knocked down, and miserably beaten by some father or
mother, when in their fury and mad with rage? You shall see them come out
with fire and fury sparkling in their eyes:
"Rabie jecur incendente, feruntur,
Praecipites; ut saxa jugis abrupta, quibus mons
Subtrahitur, clivoque latus pendente recedit,"
["They are headlong borne with burning fury as great stones torn
from the mountains, by which the steep sides are left naked and
bare."—Juvenal, Sat., vi. 647.]
(and according to Hippocrates, the most dangerous maladies are they that
disfigure the countenance), with a roaring and terrible voice, very often
against those that are but newly come from nurse, and there they are lamed
and spoiled with blows, whilst our justice takes no cognisance of it, as
if these maims and dislocations were not executed upon members of our
commonwealth:
"Gratum est, quod patria; civem populoque dedisti,
Si facis, ut patrix sit idoneus, utilis agris,
Utilis et bellorum et pacis rebus agendis."
["It is well when to thy country and the people thou hast given a
citizen, provided thou make fit for his country's service; useful to
till the earth, useful in affairs of war and peace"
—Juvenal, Sat., xiv. 70.]
There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgment
as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who should
condemn a criminal on the account of his own choler; why, then, should
fathers and pedagogues be any more allowed to whip and chastise children
in their anger? 'Tis then no longer correction, but revenge. Chastisement
is instead of physic to children; and would we endure a physician who
should be animated against and enraged at his patient?
We ourselves, to do well, should never lay a hand upon our servants whilst
our anger lasts. When the pulse beats, and we feel emotion in ourselves,
let us defer the business; things will indeed appear otherwise to us when
we are calm and cool. 'Tis passion that then commands, 'tis passion that
speaks, and not we. Faults seen through passion appear much greater to us
than they really are, as bodies do when seen through a mist. He who is
hungry uses meat; but he who will make use of chastisement should have
neither hunger nor thirst to it. And, moreover, chastisements that are
inflicted with weight and discretion are much better received and with
greater benefit by him who suffers; otherwise, he will not think himself
justly condemned by a man transported with anger and fury, and will allege
his master's excessive passion, his inflamed countenance, his unwonted
oaths, his emotion and precipitous rashness, for his own justification:
"Ora tument ira, nigrescunt sanguine venae,
Lumina Gorgoneo saevius igne micant."
["Their faces swell, their veins grow black with rage, and their
eyes sparkle with Gorgonian fire."—Ovid, De Art. Amandi, iii. 503.]
Suetonius reports that Caius Rabirius having been condemned by Caesar, the
thing that most prevailed upon the people (to whom he had appealed) to
determine the cause in his favour, was the animosity and vehemence that
Caesar had manifested in that sentence.
Saying is a different thing from doing; we are to consider the sermon
apart and the preacher apart. These men lent themselves to a pretty
business who in our times have attempted to shake the truth of our Church
by the vices of her ministers; she extracts her testimony elsewhere; 'tis
a foolish way of arguing and that would throw all things into confusion. A
man whose morals are good may have false opinions, and a wicked man may
preach truth, even though he believe it not himself. 'Tis doubtless a fine
harmony when doing and saying go together; and I will not deny but that
saying, when the actions follow, is not of greater authority and efficacy,
as Eudamidas said, hearing a philosopher talk of military affairs: "These
things are finely said, but he who speaks them is not to be believed for
his ears have never been used to the sound of the trumpet." And Cleomenes,
hearing an orator declaiming upon valour, burst out into laughter, at
which the other being angry; "I should," said he to him, "do the same if
it were a swallow that spoke of this subject; but if it were an eagle I
should willingly hear him." I perceive, methinks, in the writings of the
ancients, that he who speaks what he thinks, strikes much more home than
he who only feigns. Hear Cicero speak of the love of liberty: hear Brutus
speak of it, the mere written words of this man sound as if he would
purchase it at the price of his life. Let Cicero, the father of eloquence,
treat of the contempt of death; let Seneca do the same: the first
languishingly drawls it out so you perceive he would make you resolve upon
a thing on which he is not resolved himself; he inspires you not with
courage, for he himself has none; the other animates and inflames you. I
never read an author, even of those who treat of virtue and of actions,
that I do not curiously inquire what kind of a man he was himself; for the
Ephori at Sparta, seeing a dissolute fellow propose a wholesome advice to
the people, commanded him to hold his peace, and entreated a virtuous man
to attribute to himself the invention, and to propose it. Plutarch's
writings, if well understood, sufficiently bespeak their author, and so
that I think I know him even into his soul; and yet I could wish that we
had some fuller account of his life. And I am thus far wandered from my
subject, upon the account of the obligation I have to Aulus Gellius, for
having left us in writing this story of his manners, that brings me back
to my subject of anger. A slave of his, a vicious, ill-conditioned fellow,
but who had the precepts of philosophy often ringing in his ears, having
for some offence of his been stript by Plutarch's command, whilst he was
being whipped, muttered at first, that it was without cause and that he
had done nothing to deserve it; but at last falling in good earnest to
exclaim against and rail at his master, he reproached him that he was no
philosopher, as he had boasted himself to be: that he had often heard him
say it was indecent to be angry, nay, had written a book to that purpose;
and that the causing him to be so cruelly beaten, in the height of his
rage, totally gave the lie to all his writings; to which Plutarch calmly
and coldly answered, "How, ruffian," said he, "by what dost thou judge
that I am now angry? Does either my face, my colour, or my voice give any
manifestation of my being moved? I do not think my eyes look fierce, that
my countenance appears troubled, or that my voice is dreadful: am I red,
do I foam, does any word escape my lips I ought to repent? Do I start? Do
I tremble with fury? For those, I tell thee, are the true signs of anger."
And so, turning to the fellow that was whipping him, "Ply on thy work,"
said he, "whilst this gentleman and I dispute." This is his story.
Archytas Tarentinus, returning from a war wherein he had been
captain-general, found all things in his house in very great disorder, and
his lands quite out of tillage, through the ill husbandry of his receiver,
and having caused him to be called to him; "Go," said he, "if I were not
in anger I would soundly drub your sides." Plato likewise, being highly
offended with one of his slaves, gave Speusippus order to chastise him,
excusing himself from doing it because he was in anger. And Carillus, a
Lacedaemonian, to a Helot, who carried himself insolently towards him: "By
the gods," said he, "if I was not angry, I would immediately cause thee to
be put to death."
'Tis a passion that is pleased with and flatters itself. How often, being
moved under a false cause, if the person offending makes a good defence
and presents us with a just excuse, are we angry against truth and
innocence itself? In proof of which, I remember a marvellous example of
antiquity.
Piso, otherwise a man of very eminent virtue, being moved against a
soldier of his, for that returning alone from forage he could give him no
account where he had left a companion of his, took it for granted that he
had killed him, and presently condemned him to death. He was no sooner
mounted upon the gibbet, but, behold, his wandering companion arrives, at
which all the army were exceedingly glad, and after many embraces of the
two comrades, the hangman carried both the one and the other into Piso's
presence, all those present believing it would be a great pleasure even to
himself; but it proved quite contrary; for through shame and spite, his
fury, which was not yet cool, redoubled; and by a subtlety which his
passion suddenly suggested to him, he made three criminals for having
found one innocent, and caused them all to be despatched: the first
soldier, because sentence had passed upon him; the second, who had lost
his way, because he was the cause of his companion's death; and the
hangman, for not having obeyed the order which had been given him. Such as
have had to do with testy and obstinate women, may have experimented into
what a rage it puts them to oppose silence and coldness to their fury, and
that a man disdains to nourish their anger. The orator Celius was
wonderfully choleric by nature; and to one who supped in his company, a
man of a gentle and sweet conversation, and who, that he might not move
him, approved and consented to all he said; he, impatient that his
ill-humour should thus spend itself without aliment: "For the love of the
gods deny me something," said he, "that we may be two." Women, in like
manner, are only angry that others may be angry again, in imitation of the
laws of love. Phocion, to one who interrupted his speaking by injurious
and very opprobrious words, made no other return than silence, and to give
him full liberty and leisure to vent his spleen; which he having
accordingly done, and the storm blown over, without any mention of this
disturbance, he proceeded in his discourse where he had left off before.
No answer can nettle a man like such a contempt.
Of the most choleric man in France (anger is always an imperfection, but
more excusable in, a soldier, for in that trade it cannot sometimes be
avoided) I often say, that he is the most patient man that I know, and the
most discreet in bridling his passions; which rise in him with so great
violence and fury,
"Magno veluti cum flamma sonore
Virgea suggeritur costis undantis ahem,
Exsultantque aatu latices, furit intus aquae vis.
Fumidus atque alte spumis exuberat amnis,
Nec jam se capit unda; volat vapor ater ad auras;"
["When with loud crackling noise, a fire of sticks is applied to the
boiling caldron's side, by the heat in frisky bells the liquor
dances; within the water rages, and high the smoky fluid in foam
overflows. Nor can the wave now contain itself; the black steam
flies all abroad."—AEneid, vii. 462.]
that he must of necessity cruelly constrain himself to moderate it. And
for my part, I know no passion which I could with so much violence to
myself attempt to cover and conceal; I would not set wisdom at so high a
price; and do not so much consider what a man does, as how much it costs
him to do no worse.
Another boasted himself to me of the regularity and gentleness of his
manners, which are to truth very singular; to whom I replied, that it was
indeed something, especially m persons of so eminent a quality as himself,
upon whom every one had their eyes, to present himself always
well-tempered to the world; but that the principal thing was to make
provision for within and for himself; and that it was not in my opinion
very well to order his business outwardly well, and to grate himself
within, which I was afraid he did, in putting on and maintaining this mask
and external appearance.
A man incorporates anger by concealing it, as Diogenes told Demosthenes,
who, for fear of being seen in a tavern, withdrew himself the more
retiredly into it: "The more you retire backward, the farther you enter
in." I would rather advise that a man should give his servant a box of the
ear a little unseasonably, than rack his fancy to present this grave and
composed countenance; and had rather discover my passions than brood over
them at my own expense; they grow less inventing and manifesting
themselves; and 'tis much better their point should wound others without,
than be turned towards ourselves within:
"Omnia vitia in aperto leviora sunt: et tunc perniciosissima,
quum simulata sanitate subsident."
["All vices are less dangerous when open to be seen, and then most
pernicious when they lurk under a dissembled good nature."
—Seneca, Ep. 56]
I admonish all those who have authority to be angry in my family, in the
first place to manage their anger and not to lavish it upon every
occasion, for that both lessens the value and hinders the effect: rash and
incessant scolding runs into custom, and renders itself despised; and what
you lay out upon a servant for a theft is not felt, because it is the same
he has seen you a hundred times employ against him for having ill washed a
glass, or set a stool out of place. Secondly, that they be not angry to no
purpose, but make sure that their reprehension reach him with whom they
are offended; for, ordinarily, they rail and bawl before he comes into
their presence, and continue scolding an age after he is gone:
"Et secum petulans amentia certat:"
["And petulant madness contends with itself."
—Claudian in Eutrop., i. 237.]
they attack his shadow, and drive the storm in a place where no one is
either chastised or concerned, but in the clamour of their voice. I
likewise in quarrels condemn those who huff and vapour without an enemy:
those rhodomontades should be reserved to discharge upon the offending
party:
"Mugitus veluti cum prima in praelia taurus
Terrificos ciet, atque irasci in cornua tentat,
Arboris obnixus trunco, ventospue lacessit
Ictibus, et sparsa ad pugnum proludit arena."
["As when a bull to usher in the fight, makes dreadful bellowings,
and whets his horns against the trunk of a tree; with blows he beats
the air, and rehearses the fight by scattering the sand."
—AEneid, xii. 103.]
When I am angry, my anger is very sharp but withal very short, and as
private as I can; I lose myself indeed in promptness and violence, but not
in trouble; so that I throw out all sorts of injurious words at random,
and without choice, and never consider pertinently to dart my language
where I think it will deepest wound, for I commonly make use of no other
weapon than my tongue.
My servants have a better bargain of me in great occasions than in little;
the little ones surprise me; and the misfortune is, that when you are once
upon the precipice, 'tis no matter who gave you the push, you always go to
the bottom; the fall urges, moves, and makes haste of itself. In great
occasions this satisfies me, that they are so just every one expects a
reasonable indignation, and then I glorify myself in deceiving their
expectation; against these, I fortify and prepare myself; they disturb my
head, and threaten to transport me very far, should I follow them. I can
easily contain myself from entering into one of these passions, and am
strong enough, when I expect them, to repel their violence, be the cause
never so great; but if a passion once prepossess and seize me, it carries
me away, be the cause never so small. I bargain thus with those who may
contend with me when you see me moved first, let me alone, right or wrong;
I'll do the same for you. The storm is only begot by a concurrence of
angers, which easily spring from one another, and are not born together.
Let every one have his own way, and we shall be always at peace. A
profitable advice, but hard to execute. Sometimes also it falls out that I
put on a seeming anger, for the better governing of my house, without any
real emotion. As age renders my humours more sharp, I study to oppose
them, and will, if I can, order it so, that for the future I may be so
much the less peevish and hard to please, as I have more excuse and
inclination to be so, although I have heretofore been reckoned amongst
those who have the greatest patience.
A word more to conclude this argument. Aristotle says, that anger
sometimes serves for arms to virtue and valour. That is probable;
nevertheless, they who contradict him pleasantly answer, that 'tis a
weapon of novel use, for we move all other arms, this moves us; our hand
guides it not, 'tis it that guides our hand; it holds us, we hold not it.
CHAPTER XXXII——DEFENCE OF SENECA AND PLUTARCH
The familiarity I have with these two authors, and the assistance they
have lent to my age and to my book, wholly compiled of what I have
borrowed from them, oblige me to stand up for their honour.
As to Seneca, amongst a million of little pamphlets that those of the
so-called reformed religion disperse abroad for the defence of their cause
(and which sometimes proceed from so good a hand, that 'tis pity his pen
is not employed in a better subject), I have formerly seen one, that to
make up the parallel he would fain find out betwixt the government of our
late poor King Charles IX. and that of Nero, compares the late Cardinal of
Lorraine with Seneca; their fortunes, in having both of them been the
prime ministers in the government of their princes, and in their manners,
conditions, and deportments to have been very near alike. Wherein, in my
opinion, he does the said cardinal a very great honour; for though I am
one of those who have a very high esteem for his wit, eloquence, and zeal
to religion and the service of his king, and his good fortune to have
lived in an age wherein it was so novel, so rare, and also so necessary
for the public good to have an ecclesiastical person of such high birth
and dignity, and so sufficient and capable of his place; yet, to confess
the truth, I do not think his capacity by many degrees near to the other,
nor his virtue either so clean, entire, or steady as that of Seneca.
Now the book whereof I speak, to bring about its design, gives a very
injurious description of Seneca, having borrowed its approaches from Dion
the historian, whose testimony I do not at all believe for besides that he
is inconsistent, that after having called Seneca one while very wise, and
again a mortal enemy to Nero's vices, makes him elsewhere avaricious, an
usurer, ambitious, effeminate, voluptuous, and a false pretender to
philosophy, his virtue appears so vivid and vigorous in his writings, and
his vindication is so clear from any of these imputations, as of his
riches and extraordinarily expensive way of living, that I cannot believe
any testimony to the contrary. And besides, it is much more reasonable to
believe the Roman historians in such things than Greeks and foreigners.
Now Tacitus and the rest speak very honourably both of his life and death;
and represent him to us a very excellent and virtuous person in all
things; and I will allege no other reproach against Dion's report but
this, which I cannot avoid, namely, that he has so weak a judgment in the
Roman affairs, that he dares to maintain Julius Caesar's cause against
Pompey [And so does this editor. D.W.], and that of Antony against Cicero.
Let us now come to Plutarch: Jean Bodin is a good author of our times, and
a writer of much greater judgment than the rout of scribblers of his age,
and who deserves to be read and considered. I find him, though, a little
bold in this passage of his Method of history, where he accuses Plutarch
not only of ignorance (wherein I would have let him alone: for that is
beyond my criticism), but that he "often writes things incredible, and
absolutely fabulous ": these are his own words. If he had simply said,
that he had delivered things otherwise than they really are, it had been
no great reproach; for what we have not seen, we are forced to receive
from other hands, and take upon trust, and I see that he purposely
sometimes variously relates the same story; as the judgment of the three
best captains that ever were, given by Hannibal; 'tis one way in the Life
of Flammius, and another in that of Pyrrhus. But to charge him with having
taken incredible and impossible things for current pay, is to accuse the
most judicious author in the world of want of judgment. And this is his
example; "as," says he, "when he relates that a Lacedaemonian boy suffered
his bowels to be torn out by a fox-cub he had stolen, and kept it still
concealed under his coat till he fell down dead, rather than he would
discover his theft." I find, in the first place, this example ill chosen,
forasmuch as it is very hard to limit the power of the faculties of—the
soul, whereas we have better authority to limit and know the force of the
bodily limbs; and therefore, if I had been he, I should rather have chosen
an example of this second sort; and there are some of these less credible:
and amongst others, that which he refates of Pyrrhus, that "all wounded as
he was, he struck one of his enemies, who was armed from head to foot, so
great a blow with his sword, that he clave him down from his crown to his
seat, so that the body was divided into two parts." In this example I find
no great miracle, nor do I admit the excuse with which he defends
Plutarch, in having added these words, "as 'tis said," to suspend our
belief; for unless it be in things received by authority, and the
reverence to antiquity or religion, he would never have himself admitted,
or enjoined us to believe things incredible in themselves; and that these
words, "as 'tis said," are not put in this place to that effect, is easy
to be seen, because he elsewhere relates to us, upon this subject, of the
patience of the Lacedaemonian children, examples happening in his time,
more unlikely to prevail upon our faith; as what Cicero has also testified
before him, as having, as he says, been upon the spot: that even to their
times there were children found who, in the trial of patience they were
put to before the altar of Diana, suffered themselves to be there whipped
till the blood ran down all over their bodies, not only without crying
out, but without so much as a groan, and some till they there voluntarily
lost their lives: and that which Plutarch also, amongst a hundred other
witnesses, relates, that at a sacrifice, a burning coal having fallen into
the sleeve of a Lacedaemonian boy, as he was censing, he suffered his
whole arm to be burned, till the smell of the broiling flesh was perceived
by those present. There was nothing, according to their custom, wherein
their reputation was more concerned, nor for which they were to undergo
more blame and disgrace, than in being taken in theft. I am so fully
satisfied of the greatness of those people, that this story does not only
not appear to me, as to Bodin, incredible; but I do not find it so much as
rare and strange. The Spartan history is full of a thousand more cruel and
rare examples; and is; indeed, all miracle in this respect.
Marcellinus, concerning theft, reports that in his time there was no sort
of torments which could compel the Egyptians, when taken in this act,
though a people very much addicted to it, so much as to tell their name.
A Spanish peasant, being put to the rack as to the accomplices of the
murder of the Praetor Lucius Piso, cried out in the height of the torment,
"that his friends should not leave him, but look on in all assurance, and
that no pain had the power to force from him one word of confession,"
which was all they could get the first day. The next day, as they were
leading him a second time to another trial, strongly disengaging himself
from the hands of his guards, he furiously ran his head against a wall,
and beat out his brains.
Epicharis, having tired and glutted the cruelty of Nero's satellites, and
undergone their fire, their beating, their racks, a whole day together,
without one syllable of confession of her conspiracy; being the next day
brought again to the rack, with her limbs almost torn to pieces, conveyed
the lace of her robe with a running noose over one of the arms of her
chair, and suddenly slipping her head into it, with the weight of her own
body hanged herself. Having the courage to die in that manner, is it not
to be presumed that she purposely lent her life to the trial of her
fortitude the day before, to mock the tyrant, and encourage others to the
like attempt?
And whoever will inquire of our troopers the experiences they have had in
our civil wars, will find effects of patience and obstinate resolution in
this miserable age of ours, and amongst this rabble even more effeminate
than the Egyptians, worthy to be compared with those we have just related
of the Spartan virtue.
I know there have been simple peasants amongst us who have endured the
soles of their feet to be broiled upon a gridiron, their finger-ends to be
crushed with the cock of a pistol, and their bloody eyes squeezed out of
their heads by force of a cord twisted about their brows, before they
would so much as consent to a ransom. I have seen one left stark naked for
dead in a ditch, his neck black and swollen, with a halter yet about it
with which they had dragged him all night at a horse's tail, his body
wounded in a hundred places, with stabs of daggers that had been given
him, not to kill him, but to put him to pain and to affright him, who had
endured all this, and even to being speechless and insensible, resolved,
as he himself told me, rather to die a thousand deaths (as indeed, as to
matter of suffering, he had borne one) before he would promise anything;
and yet he was one of the richest husbandmen of all the country. How many
have been seen patiently to suffer themselves to be burnt and roasted for
opinions taken upon trust from others, and by them not at all understood?
I have known a hundred and a hundred women (for Gascony has a certain
prerogative for obstinacy) whom you might sooner have made eat fire than
forsake an opinion they had conceived in anger. They are all the more
exasperated by blows and constraint. And he that made the story of the
woman who, in defiance of all correction, threats, and bastinadoes, ceased
not to call her husband lousy knave, and who being plunged over head and
ears in water, yet lifted her hands above her head and made a sign of
cracking lice, feigned a tale of which, in truth, we every day see a
manifest image in the obstinacy of women. And obstinacy is the sister of
constancy, at least in vigour and stability.
We are not to judge what is possible and what is not, according to what is
credible and incredible to our apprehension, as I have said elsewhere and
it is a great fault, and yet one that most men are guilty of, which,
nevertheless, I do not mention with any reflection upon Bodin, to make a
difficulty of believing that in another which they could not or would not
do themselves. Every one thinks that the sovereign stamp of human nature
is imprinted in him, and that from it all others must take their rule; and
that all proceedings which are not like his are feigned and false. Is
anything of another's actions or faculties proposed to him? the first
thing he calls to the consultation of his judgment is his own example; and
as matters go with him, so they must of necessity do with all the world
besides dangerous and intolerable folly! For my part, I consider some men
as infinitely beyond me, especially amongst the ancients, and yet, though
I clearly discern my inability to come near them by a thousand paces, I do
not forbear to keep them in sight, and to judge of what so elevates them,
of which I perceive some seeds in myself, as I also do of the extreme
meanness of some other minds, which I neither am astonished at nor yet
misbelieve. I very well perceive the turns those great souls take to raise
themselves to such a pitch, and admire their grandeur; and those flights
that I think the bravest I could be glad to imitate; where, though I want
wing, yet my judgment readily goes along with them. The other example he
introduces of "things incredible and wholly fabulous," delivered by
Plutarch, is, that "Agesilaus was fined by the Ephori for having wholly
engrossed the hearts and affections of his citizens to himself alone." And
herein I do not see what sign of falsity is to be found: clearly Plutarch
speaks of things that must needs be better known to him than to us; and it
was no new thing in Greece to see men punished and exiled for this very
thing, for being too acceptable to the people; witness the Ostracism and
Petalism.—[Ostracism at Athens was banishment for ten years;
petalism at Syracuse was banishment for five years.]
There is yet in this place another accusation laid against Plutarch which
I cannot well digest, where Bodin says that he has sincerely paralleled
Romans with Romans, and Greeks amongst themselves, but not Romans with
Greeks; witness, says he, Demosthenes and Cicero, Cato and Aristides,
Sylla and Lysander, Marcellus and Pelopidas, Pompey and Agesilaus, holding
that he has favoured the Greeks in giving them so unequal companions. This
is really to attack what in Plutarch is most excellent and most to be
commended; for in his parallels (which is the most admirable part of all
his works, and with which, in my opinion, he is himself the most pleased)
the fidelity and sincerity of his judgments equal their depth and weight;
he is a philosopher who teaches us virtue. Let us see whether we cannot
defend him from this reproach of falsity and prevarication. All that I can
imagine could give occasion to this censure is the great and shining
lustre of the Roman names which we have in our minds; it does not seem
likely to us that Demosthenes could rival the glory of a consul,
proconsul, and proctor of that great Republic; but if a man consider the
truth of the thing, and the men in themselves, which is Plutarch's
chiefest aim, and will rather balance their manners, their natures, and
parts, than their fortunes, I think, contrary to Bodin, that Cicero and
the elder Cato come far short of the men with whom they are compared. I
should sooner, for his purpose, have chosen the example of the younger
Cato compared with Phocion, for in this couple there would have been a
more likely disparity, to the Roman's advantage. As to Marcellus, Sylla,
and Pompey, I very well discern that their exploits of war are greater and
more full of pomp and glory than those of the Greeks, whom Plutarch
compares with them; but the bravest and most virtuous actions any more in
war than elsewhere, are not always the most renowned. I often see the
names of captains obscured by the splendour of other names of less desert;
witness Labienus, Ventidius, Telesinus, and several others. And to take it
by that, were I to complain on the behalf of the Greeks, could I not say,
that Camillus was much less comparable to Themistocles, the Gracchi to
Agis and Cleomenes, and Numa to Lycurgus? But 'tis folly to judge, at one
view, of things that have so many aspects. When Plutarch compares them, he
does not, for all that, make them equal; who could more learnedly and
sincerely have marked their distinctions? Does he parallel the victories,
feats of arms, the force of the armies conducted by Pompey, and his
triumphs, with those of Agesilaus? "I do not believe," says he, "that
Xenophon himself, if he were now living, though he were allowed to write
whatever pleased him to the advantage of Agesilaus, would dare to bring
them into comparison." Does he speak of paralleling Lysander to Sylla.
"There is," says he, "no comparison, either in the number of victories or
in the hazard of battles, for Lysander only gained two naval battles."
This is not to derogate from the Romans; for having only simply named them
with the Greeks, he can have done them no injury, what disparity soever
there may be betwixt them and Plutarch does not entirely oppose them to
one another; there is no preference in general; he only compares the
pieces and circumstances one after another, and gives of every one a
particular and separate judgment. Wherefore, if any one could convict him
of partiality, he ought to pick out some one of those particular
judgments, or say, in general, that he was mistaken in comparing such a
Greek to such a Roman, when there were others more fit and better
resembling to parallel him to.
CHAPTER XXXIII——THE STORY OF SPURINA
Philosophy thinks she has not ill employed her talent when she has given
the sovereignty of the soul and the authority of restraining our appetites
to reason. Amongst which, they who judge that there is none more violent
than those which spring from love, have this opinion also, that they seize
both body and soul, and possess the whole man, so that even health itself
depends upon them, and medicine is sometimes constrained to pimp for them;
but one might, on the contrary, also say, that the mixture of the body
brings an abatement and weakening; for such desires are subject to
satiety, and capable of material remedies.
Many, being determined to rid their soul from the continual alarms of this
appetite, have made use of incision and amputation of the rebelling
members; others have subdued their force and ardour by the frequent
application of cold things, as snow and vinegar. The sackcloths of our
ancestors were for this purpose, which is cloth woven of horse hair, of
which some of them made shirts, and others girdles, to torture and correct
their reins. A prince, not long ago, told me that in his youth upon a
solemn festival in the court of King Francis I., where everybody was
finely dressed, he would needs put on his father's hair shirt, which was
still kept in the house; but how great soever his devotion was, he had not
patience to wear it till night, and was sick a long time after; adding
withal, that he did not think there could be any youthful heat so fierce
that the use of this recipe would not mortify, and yet perhaps he never
essayed the most violent; for experience shows us, that such emotions are
often seen under rude and slovenly clothes, and that a hair shirt does not
always render those chaste who wear it.
Xenocrates proceeded with greater rigour in this affair; for his
disciples, to make trial of his continency, having slipt Lais, that
beautiful and famous courtesan, into his bed, quite naked, excepting the
arms of her beauty and her wanton allurements, her philters, finding that,
in despite of his reason and philosophical rules, his unruly flesh began
to mutiny, he caused those members of his to be burned that he found
consenting to this rebellion. Whereas the passions which wholly reside in
the soul, as ambition, avarice, and the rest, find the reason much more to
do, because it cannot there be helped but by its own means; neither are
those appetites capable of satiety, but grow sharper and increase by
fruition.
The sole example of Julius Caesar may suffice to demonstrate to us the
disparity of these appetites; for never was man more addicted to amorous
delights than he: of which one testimony is the peculiar care he had of
his person, to such a degree, as to make use of the most lascivious means
to that end then in use, as to have all the hairs of his body twitched
off, and to wipe all over with perfumes with the extremest nicety. And he
was a beautiful person in himself, of a fair complexion, tall, and
sprightly, full faced, with quick hazel eyes, if we may believe Suetonius;
for the statues of him that we see at Rome do not in all points answer
this description. Besides his wives, whom he four times changed, without
reckoning the amours of his boyhood with Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, he
had the maidenhead of the renowned Cleopatra, queen of Egypt; witness the
little Caesario whom he had by her. He also made love to. Eunoe, queen of
Mauritania, and at Rome, to Posthumia, the wife of Servius Sulpitius; to
Lollia, the wife of Gabinius to Tertulla, the wife of Crassus, and even to
Mutia, wife to the great Pompey: which was the reason, the Roman
historians say, that she was repudiated by her husband, which Plutarch
confesses to be more than he knew; and the Curios, both father and son,
afterwards reproached Pompey, when he married Caesar's daughter, that he
had made himself son-in-law to a man who had made him cuckold, and one
whom he himself was wont to call AEgisthus. Besides all these, he
entertained Servilia, Cato's sister and mother to Marcus Brutus, whence,
every one believes, proceeded the great affection he had to Brutus, by
reason that he was born at a time when it was likely he might be his son.
So that I have reason, methinks, to take him for a man extremely given to
this debauch, and of very amorous constitution. But the other passion of
ambition, with which he was infinitely smitten, arising in him to contend
with the former, it was boon compelled to give way.
And here calling to mind Mohammed, who won Constantinople, and finally
exterminated the Grecian name, I do not know where these two were so
evenly balanced; equally an indefatigable lecher and soldier: but where
they both meet in his life and jostle one another, the quarrelling passion
always gets the better of the amorous one, and this though it was out of
its natural season never regained an absolute sovereignty over the other
till he had arrived at an extreme old age and unable to undergo the
fatigues of war.
What is related for a contrary example of Ladislaus, king of Naples, is
very remarkable; that being a great captain, valiant and ambitious, he
proposed to himself for the principal end of his ambition, the execution
of his pleasure and the enjoyment of some rare and excellent beauty. His
death sealed up all the rest: for having by a close and tedious siege
reduced the city of Florence to so great distress that the inhabitants
were compelled to capitulate about surrender, he was content to let them
alone, provided they would deliver up to him a beautiful maid he had heard
of in their city; they were forced to yield to it, and by a private injury
to avert the public ruin. She was the daughter of a famous physician of
his time, who, finding himself involved in so foul a necessity, resolved
upon a high attempt. As every one was lending a hand to trick up his
daughter and to adorn her with ornaments and jewels to render her more
agreeable to this new lover, he also gave her a handkerchief most richly
wrought, and of an exquisite perfume, an implement they never go without
in those parts, which she was to make use of at their first approaches.
This handkerchief, poisoned with his greatest art, coming to be rubbed
between the chafed flesh and open pores, both of the one and the other, so
suddenly infused the poison, that immediately converting their warm into a
cold sweat they presently died in one another's arms.
But I return to Caesar. His pleasures never made him steal one minute of
an hour, nor go one step aside from occasions that might any way conduce
to his advancement. This passion was so sovereign in him over all the
rest, and with so absolute authority possessed his soul, that it guided
him at pleasure. In truth, this troubles me, when, as to everything else,
I consider the greatness of this man, and the wonderful parts wherewith he
was endued; learned to that degree in all sorts of knowledge that there is
hardly any one science of which he has not written; so great an orator
that many have preferred his eloquence to that of Cicero, and he, I
conceive, did not think himself inferior to him in that particular, for
his two anti-Catos were written to counterbalance the elocution that
Cicero had expended in his Cato. As to the rest, was ever soul so
vigilant, so active, and so patient of labour as his? and, doubtless, it
was embellished with many rare seeds of virtue, lively, natural, and not
put on; he was singularly sober; so far from being delicate in his diet,
that Oppius relates, how that having one day at table set before him
medicated instead of common oil in some sauce, he ate heartily of it, that
he might not put his entertainer out of countenance. Another time he
caused his baker to be whipped for serving him with a finer than ordinary
sort of bread. Cato himself was wont to say of him, that he was the first
sober man who ever made it his business to ruin his country. And as to the
same Cato's calling, him one day drunkard, it fell out thus being both of
them in the Senate, at a time when Catiline's conspiracy was in question
of which was Caesar was suspected, one came and brought him a letter
sealed up. Cato believing that it was something the conspirators gave him
notice of, required him to deliver into his hand, which Caesar was
constrained to do to avoid further suspicion. It was by chance a
love-letter that Servilia, Cato's sister, had written to him, which Cato
having read, he threw it back to him saying, "There, drunkard." This, I
say, was rather a word of disdain and anger than an express reproach of
this vice, as we often rate those who anger us with the first injurious
words that come into our mouths, though nothing due to those we are
offended at; to which may be added that the vice with which Cato upbraided
him is wonderfully near akin to that wherein he had surprised Caesar; for
Bacchus and Venus, according to the proverb, very willingly agree; but to
me Venus is much more sprightly accompanied by sobriety. The examples of
his sweetness and clemency to those by whom he had been offended are
infinite; I mean, besides those he gave during the time of the civil wars,
which, as plainly enough appears by his writings, he practised to cajole
his enemies, and to make them less afraid of his future dominion and
victory. But I must also say, that if these examples are not sufficient
proofs of his natural sweetness, they, at least, manifest a marvellous
confidence and grandeur of courage in this person. He has often been known
to dismiss whole armies, after having overcome them, to his enemies,
without ransom, or deigning so much as to bind them by oath, if not to
favour him, at least no more to bear arms against him; he has three or
four times taken some of Pompey's captains prisoners, and as often set
them at liberty. Pompey declared all those to be enemies who did not
follow him to the war; he proclaimed all those to be his friends who sat
still and did not actually take arms against him. To such captains of his
as ran away from him to go over to the other side, he sent, moreover,
their arms, horses, and equipage: the cities he had taken by force he left
at full liberty to follow which side they pleased, imposing no other
garrison upon them but the memory of his gentleness and clemency. He gave
strict and express charge, the day of his great battle of Pharsalia, that,
without the utmost necessity, no one should lay a hand upon the citizens
of Rome. These, in my opinion, were very hazardous proceedings, and 'tis
no wonder if those in our civil war, who, like him, fight against the
ancient estate of their country, do not follow his example; they are
extraordinary means, and that only appertain to Caesar's fortune, and to
his admirable foresight in the conduct of affairs. When I consider the
incomparable grandeur of his soul, I excuse victory that it could not
disengage itself from him, even in so unjust and so wicked a cause.
To return to his clemency: we have many striking examples in the time of
his government, when, all things being reduced to his power, he had no
more written against him which he had as sharply answered: yet he did not
soon after forbear to use his interest to make him consul. Caius Calvus,
who had composed several injurious epigrams against him, having employed
many of his friends to mediate a reconciliation with him, Caesar
voluntarily persuaded himself to write first to him. And our good
Catullus, who had so rudely ruffled him under the name of Mamurra, coming
to offer his excuses to him, he made the same day sit at his table. Having
intelligence of some who spoke ill of him, he did no more, but only by a
public oration declare that he had notice of it. He still less feared his
enemies than he hated them; some conspiracies and cabals that were made
against his life being discovered to him, he satisfied himself in
publishing by proclamation that they were known to him, without further
prosecuting the conspirators.
As to the respect he had for his friends: Caius Oppius, being with him
upon a journey, and finding himself ill, he left him the only lodging he
had for himself, and lay all night upon a hard ground in the open air. As
to what concerns his justice, he put a beloved servant of his to death for
lying with a noble Roman's wife, though there was no complaint made. Never
had man more moderation in his victory, nor more resolution in his adverse
fortune.
But all these good inclinations were stifled and spoiled by his furious
ambition, by which he suffered himself to be so transported and misled
that one may easily maintain that this passion was the rudder of all his
actions; of a liberal man, it made him a public thief to supply this
bounty and profusion, and made him utter this vile and unjust saying,
"That if the most wicked and profligate persons in the world had been
faithful in serving him towards his advancement, he would cherish and
prefer them to the utmost of his power, as much as the best of men." It
intoxicated him with so excessive a vanity, as to dare to boast in the
presence of his fellow-citizens, that he had made the great commonwealth
of Rome a name without form and without body; and to say that his answers
for the future should stand for laws; and also to receive the body of the
Senate coming to him, sitting; to suffer himself to be adored, and to have
divine honours paid to him in his own presence. To conclude, this sole
vice, in my opinion, spoiled in him the most rich and beautiful nature
that ever was, and has rendered his name abominable to all good men, in
that he would erect his glory upon the ruins of his country and the
subversion of the greatest and most flourishing republic the world shall
ever see.
There might, on the contrary, many examples be produced of great men whom
pleasures have made to neglect the conduct of their affairs, as Mark
Antony and others; but where love and ambition should be in equal balance,
and come to jostle with equal forces, I make no doubt but the last would
win the prize.
To return to my subject: 'tis much to bridle our appetites by the argument
of reason, or, by violence, to contain our members within their duty; but
to lash ourselves for our neighbour's interest, and not only to divest
ourselves of the charming passion that tickles us, of the pleasure we feel
in being agreeable to others, and courted and beloved of every one, but
also to conceive a hatred against the graces that produce that effect, and
to condemn our beauty because it inflames others; of this, I confess, I
have met with few examples. But this is one. Spurina, a young man of
Tuscany:
"Qualis gemma micat, fulvum quae dividit aurum,
Aut collo decus, aut cupiti: vel quale per artem
Inclusum buxo aut Oricia terebintho
Lucet ebur,"
["As a gem shines enchased in yellow gold, or an ornament on the
neck or head, or as ivory has lustre, set by art in boxwood or
Orician ebony."—AEneid, x. 134.]
being endowed with a singular beauty, and so excessive, that the chastest
eyes could not chastely behold its rays; not contenting himself with
leaving so much flame and fever as he everywhere kindled without relief,
entered into a furious spite against himself and those great endowments
nature had so liberally conferred upon him, as if a man were responsible
to himself for the faults of others, and purposely slashed and disfigured,
with many wounds and scars, the perfect symmetry and proportion that
nature had so curiously imprinted in his face. To give my free opinion, I
more admire than honour such actions: such excesses are enemies to my
rules. The design was conscientious and good, but certainly a little
defective in prudence. What if his deformity served afterwards to make
others guilty of the sin of hatred or contempt; or of envy at the glory of
so rare a recommendation; or of calumny, interpreting this humour a mad
ambition! Is there any form from which vice cannot, if it will, extract
occasion to exercise itself, one way or another? It had been more just,
and also more noble, to have made of these gifts of God a subject of
exemplary regularity and virtue.
They who retire themselves from the common offices, from that infinite
number of troublesome rules that fetter a man of exact honesty in civil
life, are in my opinion very discreet, what peculiar sharpness of
constraint soever they impose upon themselves in so doing. 'Tis in some
sort a kind of dying to avoid the pain of living well. They may have
another reward; but the reward of difficulty I fancy they can never have;
nor, in uneasiness, that there can be anything more or better done than
the keeping oneself upright amid the waves of the world, truly and exactly
performing all parts of our duty. 'Tis, peradventure, more easy to keep
clear of the sex than to maintain one's self aright in all points in the
society of a wife; and a man may with less trouble adapt himself to entire
abstinence than to the due dispensation of abundance. Use, carried on
according to reason, has in it more of difficulty than abstinence;
moderation is a virtue that gives more work than suffering; the well
living of Scipio has a thousand fashions, that of Diogenes but one; this
as much excels the ordinary lives in innocence as the most accomplished
excel them in utility and force.
CHAPTER XXXIV——OBSERVATION ON THE MEANS TO CARRY ON A WAR
ACCORDING TO JULIUS CAESAR
'Tis related of many great leaders that they have had certain books in
particular esteem, as Alexander the Great, Homer; Scipio Africanus,
Xenophon; Marcus Brutus, Polybius; Charles V., Philip'de Comines; and 'tis
said that, in our times, Machiavelli is elsewhere still in repute; but the
late Marshal Strozzi, who had taken Caesar for his man, doubtless made the
best choice, seeing that it indeed ought to be the breviary of every
soldier, as being the true and sovereign pattern of the military art. And,
moreover, God knows with that grace and beauty he has embellished that
rich matter, with so pure, delicate, and perfect expression, that, in my
opinion, there are no writings in the world comparable to his, as to that
business.
I will set down some rare and particular passages of his wars that remain
in my memory.
His army, being in some consternation upon the rumour that was spread of
the great forces that king Juba was leading against him, instead of
abating the apprehension which his soldiers had conceived at the news and
of lessening to them the forces of the enemy, having called them all
together to encourage and reassure them, he took a quite contrary way to
what we are used to do, for he told them that they need no more trouble
themselves with inquiring after the enemy's forces, for that he was
certainly informed thereof, and then told them of a number much surpassing
both the truth and the report that was current in his army; following the
advice of Cyrus in Xenophon, forasmuch as the deception is not of so great
importance to find an enemy weaker than we expected, than to find him
really very strong, after having been made to believe that he was weak.
It was always his use to accustom his soldiers simply to obey, without
taking upon them to control, or so much as to speak of their captain's
designs, which he never communicated to them but upon the point of
execution; and he took a delight, if they discovered anything of what he
intended, immediately to change his orders to deceive them; and to that
purpose, would often, when he had assigned his quarters in a place, pass
forward and lengthen his day's march, especially if it was foul and rainy
weather.
The Swiss, in the beginning of his wars in Gaul, having sent to him to
demand a free passage over the Roman territories, though resolved to
hinder them by force, he nevertheless spoke kindly to the messengers, and
took some respite to return an answer, to make use of that time for the
calling his army together. These silly people did not know how good a
husband he was of his time: for he often repeats that it is the best part
of a captain to know how to make use of occasions, and his diligence in
his exploits is, in truth, unheard of and incredible.
If he was not very conscientious in taking advantage of an enemy under
colour of a treaty of agreement, he was as little so in this, that he
required no other virtue in a soldier but valour only, and seldom punished
any other faults but mutiny and disobedience. He would often after his
victories turn them loose to all sorts of licence, dispensing them for
some time from the rules of military discipline, saying withal that he had
soldiers so well trained up that, powdered and perfumed, they would run
furiously to the fight. In truth, he loved to have them richly armed, and
made them wear engraved, gilded, and damasked armour, to the end that the
care of saving it might engage them to a more obstinate defence. Speaking
to them, he called them by the name of fellow-soldiers, which we yet use;
which his successor, Augustus, reformed, supposing he had only done it
upon necessity, and to cajole those who merely followed him as volunteers:
"Rheni mihi Caesar in undis
Dux erat; hic socius; facinus quos inquinat, aequat:"
["In the waters of the Rhine Caesar was my general; here at Rome he
is my fellow. Crime levels those whom it polluted."
—Lucan, v. 289.]
but that this carriage was too mean and low for the dignity of an emperor
and general of an army, and therefore brought up the custom of calling
them soldiers only.
With this courtesy Caesar mixed great severity to keep them in awe; the
ninth legion having mutinied near Placentia, he ignominiously cashiered
them, though Pompey was then yet on foot, and received them not again to
grace till after many supplications; he quieted them more by authority and
boldness than by gentle ways.
In that place where he speaks of his, passage over the Rhine to Germany,
he says that, thinking it unworthy of the honour of the Roman people to
waft over his army in vessels, he built a bridge that they might pass over
dry-foot. There it was that he built that wonderful bridge of which he
gives so particular a description; for he nowhere so willingly dwells upon
his actions as in representing to us the subtlety of his inventions in
such kind of handiwork.
I have also observed this, that he set a great value upon his exhortations
to the soldiers before the fight; for where he would show that he was
either surprised or reduced to a necessity of fighting, he always brings
in this, that he had not so much as leisure to harangue his army. Before
that great battle with those of Tournay, "Caesar," says he, "having given
order for everything else, presently ran where fortune carried him to
encourage his people, and meeting with the tenth legion, had no more time
to say anything to them but this, that they should remember their wonted
valour; not to be astonished, but bravely sustain the enemy's encounter;
and seeing the enemy had already approached within a dart's cast, he gave
the signal for battle; and going suddenly thence elsewhere, to encourage
others, he found that they were already engaged." Here is what he tells us
in that place. His tongue, indeed, did him notable service upon several
occasions, and his military eloquence was, in his own time, so highly
reputed, that many of his army wrote down his harangues as he spoke them,
by which means there were volumes of them collected that existed a long
time after him. He had so particular a grace in speaking, that his
intimates, and Augustus amongst others, hearing those orations read, could
distinguish even to the phrases and words that were not his.
The first time that he went out of Rome with any public command, he
arrived in eight days at the river Rhone, having with him in his coach a
secretary or two before him who were continually writing, and him who
carried his sword behind him. And certainly, though a man did nothing but
go on, he could hardly attain that promptitude with which, having been
everywhere victorious in Gaul, he left it, and, following Pompey to
Brundusium, in eighteen days' time he subdued all Italy; returned from
Brundusium to Rome; from Rome went into the very heart of Spain, where he
surmounted extreme difficulties in the war against Afranius and Petreius,
and in the long siege of Marseilles; thence he returned into Macedonia,
beat the Roman army at Pharsalia, passed thence in pursuit of Pompey into
Egypt, which he also subdued; from Egypt he went into Syria and the
territories of Pontus, where he fought Pharnaces; thence into Africa,
where he defeated Scipio and Juba; again returned through Italy, where he
defeated Pompey's sons:
"Ocyor et coeli fiammis, et tigride foeta."
["Swifter than lightning, or the cub-bearing tigress."
—Lucan, v. 405]
"Ac veluti montis saxum de, vertice praeceps
Cum ruit avulsum vento, seu turbidus imber
Proluit, aut annis solvit sublapsa vetustas,
Fertur in abruptum magno mons improbus actu,
Exultatque solo, silvas, armenta, virosque,
Involvens secum."
["And as a stone torn from the mountain's top by the wind or rain
torrents, or loosened by age, falls massive with mighty force,
bounds here and there, in its course sweeps from the earth with it
woods, herds, and men."—AEneid, xii. 684.]
Speaking of the siege of Avaricum, he says, that it, was his custom to be
night and day with the pioneers.—[Engineers. D.W.]—In all
enterprises of consequence he always reconnoitred in person, and never
brought his army into quarters till he had first viewed the place, and, if
we may believe Suetonius, when he resolved to pass over into England, he
was the first man that sounded the passage.
He was wont to say that he more valued a victory obtained by counsel than
by force, and in the war against Petreius and Afranius, fortune presenting
him with an occasion of manifest advantage, he declined it, saying, that
he hoped, with a little more time, but less hazard, to overthrow his
enemies. He there also played a notable part in commanding his whole army
to pass the river by swimming, without any manner of necessity:
"Rapuitque ruens in praelia miles,
Quod fugiens timuisset, iter; mox uda receptis
Membra fovent armis, gelidosque a gurgite, cursu
Restituunt artus."
["The soldier rushing through a way to fight which he would have
been afraid to have taken in flight: then with their armour they
cover wet limbs, and by running restore warmth to their numbed
joints."—Lucan, iv. 151.]
I find him a little more temperate and considerate in his enterprises than
Alexander, for this man seems to seek and run headlong upon dangers like
an impetuous torrent which attacks and rushes against everything it meets,
without choice or discretion;
"Sic tauriformis volvitur Aufidus;
Qui regna Dauni perfluit Appuli,
Dum saevit, horrendamque cultis
Diluviem meditatur agris;"
["So the biforked Aufidus, which flows through the realm of the
Apulian Daunus, when raging, threatens a fearful deluge to the
tilled ground."—Horat., Od., iv. 14, 25.]
and, indeed, he was a general in the flower and first heat of his youth,
whereas Caesar took up the trade at a ripe and well advanced age; to which
may be added that Alexander was of a more sanguine, hot, and choleric
constitution, which he also inflamed with wine, from which Caesar was very
abstinent.
But where necessary occasion required, never did any man venture his
person more than he: so much so, that for my part, methinks I read in many
of his exploits a determinate resolution to throw himself away to avoid
the shame of being overcome. In his great battle with those of Tournay, he
charged up to the head of the enemies without his shield, just as he was
seeing the van of his own army beginning to give ground'; which also
several other times befell him. Hearing that his people were besieged, he
passed through the enemy's army in disguise to go and encourage them with
his presence. Having crossed over to Dyrrachium with very slender forces,
and seeing the remainder of his army which he had left to Antony's conduct
slow in following him, he undertook alone to repass the sea in a very
great storms and privately stole away to fetch the rest of his forces, the
ports on the other side being seized by Pompey, and the whole sea being in
his possession. And as to what he performed by force of hand, there are
many exploits that in hazard exceed all the rules of war; for with how
small means did he undertake to subdue the kingdom of Egypt, and
afterwards to attack the forces of Scipio and Juba, ten times greater than
his own? These people had, I know not what, more than human confidence in
their fortune; and he was wont to say that men must embark, and not
deliberate, upon high enterprises. After the battle of Pharsalia, when he
had sent his army away before him into Asia, and was passing in one single
vessel the strait of the Hellespont, he met Lucius Cassius at sea with ten
tall men-of-war, when he had the courage not only to stay his coming, but
to sail up to him and summon him to yield, which he did.
Having undertaken that furious siege of Alexia, where there were fourscore
thousand men in garrison, all Gaul being in arms to raise the siege and
having set an army on foot of a hundred and nine thousand horse, and of
two hundred and forty thousand foot, what a boldness and vehement
confidence was it in him that he would not give over his attempt, but
resolved upon two so great difficulties—which nevertheless he
overcame; and, after having won that great battle against those without,
soon reduced those within to his mercy. The same happened to Lucullus at
the siege of Tigranocerta against King Tigranes, but the condition of the
enemy was not the same, considering the effeminacy of those with whom
Lucullus had to deal. I will here set down two rare and extraordinary
events concerning this siege of Alexia; one, that the Gauls having drawn
their powers together to encounter Caesar, after they had made a general
muster of all their forces, resolved in their council of war to dismiss a
good part of this great multitude, that they might not fall into
confusion. This example of fearing to be too many is new; but, to take it
right, it stands to reason that the body of an army should be of a
moderate greatness, and regulated to certain bounds, both out of respect
to the difficulty of providing for them, and the difficulty of governing
and keeping them in order. At least it is very easy to make it appear by
example that armies monstrous in number have seldom done anything to
purpose. According to the saying of Cyrus in Xenophon, "'Tis not the
number of men, but the number of good men, that gives the advantage": the
remainder serving rather to trouble than assist. And Bajazet principally
grounded his resolution of giving Tamerlane battle, contrary to the
opinion of all his captains, upon this, that his enemies numberless number
of men gave him assured hopes of confusion. Scanderbeg, a very good and
expert judge in such matters, was wont to say that ten or twelve thousand
reliable fighting men were sufficient to a good leader to secure his
regulation in all sorts of military occasions. The other thing I will here
record, which seems to be contrary both to the custom and rules of war,
is, that Vercingetorix, who was made general of all the parts of the
revolted Gaul, should go shut up himself in Alexia: for he who has the
command of a whole country ought never to shut himself up but in case of
such last extremity that the only place he has left is in concern, and
that the only hope he has left is in the defence of that city; otherwise
he ought to keep himself always at liberty, that he may have the means to
provide, in general, for all parts of his government.
To return to Caesar. He grew, in time, more slow and more considerate, as
his friend Oppius witnesses: conceiving that he ought not lightly to
hazard the glory of so many victories, which one blow of fortune might
deprive him of. 'Tis what the Italians say, when they would reproach the
rashness and foolhardiness of young people, calling them Bisognosi
d'onore, "necessitous of honour," and that being in so great a want and
dearth of reputation, they have reason to seek it at what price soever,
which they ought not to do who have acquired enough already. There may
reasonably be some moderation, some satiety, in this thirst and appetite
of glory, as well as in other things: and there are enough people who
practise it.
He was far remote from the religious scruples of the ancient Romans, who
would never prevail in their wars but by dint of pure and simple valour;
and yet he was more conscientious than we should be in these days, and did
not approve all sorts of means to obtain a victory. In the war against
Ariovistus, whilst he was parleying with him, there happened some
commotion between the horsemen, which was occasioned by the fault of
Ariovistus' light horse, wherein, though Caesar saw he had a very great
advantage of the enemy, he would make no use on't, lest he should have
been reproached with a treacherous proceeding.
He was always wont to wear rich garments, and of a shining colour in
battle, that he might be the more remarkable and better observed.
He always carried a stricter and tighter hand over his soldiers when near
an enemy. When the ancient Greeks would accuse any one of extreme
insufficiency, they would say, in common proverb, that he could neither
read nor swim; he was of the same opinion, that swimming was of great use
in war, and himself found it so; for when he had to use diligence, he
commonly swam over the rivers in his way; for he loved to march on foot,
as also did Alexander the Great. Being in Egypt forced, to save himself,
to go into a little boat, and so many people leaping in with him that it
was in danger of sinking, he chose rather to commit himself to the sea,
and swam to his fleet, which lay two hundred paces off, holding in his
left hand his tablets, and drawing his coatarmour in his teeth, that it
might not fall into the enemy's hand, and at this time he was of a pretty
advanced age.
Never had any general so much credit with his soldiers: in the beginning
of the civil wars, his centurions offered him to find every one a
man-at-arms at his own charge, and the foot soldiers to serve him at their
own expense; those who were most at their ease, moreover, undertaking to
defray the more necessitous. The late Admiral Chastillon
[Gaspard de Coligny, assassinated in the St. Bartholomew
massacre, 24th August 1572.]
showed us the like example in our civil wars; for the French of his army
provided money out of their own purses to pay the foreigners that were
with him. There are but rarely found examples of so ardent and so ready an
affection amongst the soldiers of elder times, who kept themselves
strictly to their rules of war: passion has a more absolute command over
us than reason; and yet it happened in the war against Hannibal, that by
the example of the people of Rome in the city, the soldiers and captains
refused their pay in the army, and in Marcellus' camp those were branded
with the name of Mercenaries who would receive any. Having got the worst
of it near Dyrrachium, his soldiers came and offered themselves to be
chastised and punished, so that there was more need to comfort than
reprove them. One single cohort of his withstood four of Pompey's legions
above four hours together, till they were almost all killed with arrows,
so that there were a hundred and thirty thousand shafts found in the
trenches. A soldier called Scaeva, who commanded at one of the avenues,
invincibly maintained his ground, having lost an eye, with one shoulder
and one thigh shot through, and his shield hit in two hundred and thirty
places. It happened that many of his soldiers being taken prisoners,
rather chose to die than promise to join the contrary side. Granius
Petronius was taken by Scipio in Africa: Scipio having put the rest to
death, sent him word that he gave him his life, for he was a man of
quality and quaestor, to whom Petronius sent answer back, that Caesar's
soldiers were wont to give others their life, and not to receive it; and
immediately with his own hand killed himself.
Of their fidelity there are infinite examples amongst them, that which was
done by those who were besieged in Salona, a city that stood for Caesar
against Pompey, is not, for the rarity of an accident that there happened,
to be forgotten. Marcus Octavius kept them close besieged; they within
being reduced to the extremest necessity of all things, so that to supply
the want of men, most of them being either slain or wounded, they had
manumitted all their slaves, and had been constrained to cut off all the
women's hair to make ropes for their war engines, besides a wonderful
dearth of victuals, and yet continuing resolute never to yield. After
having drawn the siege to a great length, by which Octavius was grown more
negligent and less attentive to his enterprise, they made choice of one
day about noon, and having first placed the women and children upon the
walls to make a show, sallied upon the besiegers with such fury, that
having routed the first, second, and third body, and afterwards the
fourth, and the rest, and beaten them all out of their trenches, they
pursued them even to their ships, and Octavius himself was fain to fly to
Dyrrachium, where Pompey lay. I do not at present remember that I have met
with any other example where the besieged ever gave the besieger a total
defeat and won the field, nor that a sortie ever achieved the result of a
pure and entire victory.
CHAPTER XXXV——OF THREE GOOD WOMEN
They are not by the dozen, as every one knows, and especially in the
duties of marriage, for that is a bargain full of so many nice
circumstances that 'tis hard a woman's will should long endure such a
restraint; men, though their condition be something better under that tie,
have yet enough to do. The true touch and test of a happy marriage have
respect to the time of the companionship, if it has been constantly
gentle, loyal, and agreeable. In our age, women commonly reserve the
publication of their good offices, and their vehement affection towards
their husbands, until they have lost them, or at least, till then defer
the testimonies of their good will; a too slow testimony and unseasonable.
By it they rather manifest that they never loved them till dead: their
life is nothing but trouble; their death full of love and courtesy. As
fathers conceal their affection from their children, women, likewise,
conceal theirs from their husbands, to maintain a modest respect. This
mystery is not for my palate; 'tis to much purpose that they scratch
themselves and tear their hair. I whisper in a waiting-woman's or
secretary's ear: "How were they, how did they live together?" I always
have that good saying m my head:
"Jactantius moerent, quae minus dolent."
["They make the most ado who are least concerned." (Or:)
"They mourn the more ostentatiously, the less they grieve."
—Tacitus, Annal., ii. 77, writing of Germanicus.]
Their whimpering is offensive to the living and vain to the dead. We
should willingly give them leave to laugh after we are dead, provided they
will smile upon us whilst we are alive. Is it not enough to make a man
revive in pure spite, that she, who spat in my face whilst I was in being,
shall come to kiss my feet when I am no more? If there be any honour in
lamenting a husband, it only appertains to those who smiled upon them
whilst they had them; let those who wept during their lives laugh at their
deaths, as well outwardly as within. Therefore, never regard those
blubbered eyes and that pitiful voice; consider her deportment, her
complexion, the plumpness of her cheeks under all those formal veils; 'tis
there she talks plain French. There are few who do not mend upon't, and
health is a quality that cannot lie. That starched and ceremonious
countenance looks not so much back as forward, and is rather intended to
get a new husband than to lament the old. When I was a boy, a very
beautiful and virtuous lady, who is yet living, the widow of a prince,
wore somewhat more ornament in her dress than our laws of widowhood allow,
and being reproached with it, she made answer that it was because she was
resolved to have no more love affairs, and would never marry again.
I have here, not at all dissenting from our customs, made choice of three
women, who have also expressed the utmost of their goodness and affection
about their husbands' deaths; yet are they examples of another kind than
are now m use, and so austere that they will hardly be drawn into
imitation.
The younger Pliny' had near a house of his in Italy a neighbour who was
exceedingly tormented with certain ulcers in his private parts. His wife
seeing him so long to languish, entreated that he would give her leave to
see and at leisure to consider of the condition of his disease, and that
she would freely tell him what she thought. This permission being
obtained, and she having curiously examined the business, found it
impossible he could ever be cured, and that all he had to hope for or
expect was a great while to linger out a painful and miserable life, and
therefore, as the most sure and sovereign remedy, resolutely advised him
to kill himself. But finding him a little tender and backward in so rude
an attempt: "Do not think, my friend," said she, "that the torments I see
thee endure are not as sensible to me as to thyself, and that to deliver
myself from them, I will not myself make use of the same remedy I have
prescribed to thee. I will accompany thee in the cure as I have done in
the disease; fear nothing, but believe that we shall have pleasure in this
passage that is to free us from so many miseries, and we will go happily
together." Which having said, and roused up her husband's courage, she
resolved that they should throw themselves headlong into the sea out of a
window that overlooked it, and that she might maintain to the last the
loyal and vehement affection wherewith she had embraced him during his
life, she would also have him die in her arms; but lest they should fail,
and should quit their hold in the fall through fear, she tied herself fast
to him by the waist, and so gave up her own life to procure her husband's
repose. This was a woman of mean condition; and, amongst that class of
people, 'tis no very new thing to see some examples of rare virtue:
"Extrema per illos
Justitia excedens terris vestigia fecit."
["Justice, when she left the earth, took her last
steps among them."—Virgil, Georg., ii. 473.]
The other two were noble and rich, where examples of virtue are rarely
lodged.
Arria, the wife of Caecina Paetus, a consular person, was the mother of
another Arria, the wife of Thrasea Paetus, he whose virtue was so renowned
in the time of Nero, and by this son-in-law, the grandmother of Fannia:
for the resemblance of the names of these men and women, and their
fortunes, have led to several mistakes. This first Arria, her husband
Caecina Paetus, having been taken prisoner by some of the Emperor
Claudius' people, after Scribonianus' defeat, whose party he had embraced
in the war, begged of those who were to carry him prisoner to Rome, that
they would take her into their ship, where she would be of much less
charge and trouble to them than a great many persons they must otherwise
have to attend her husband, and that she alone would undertake to serve
him in his chamber, his kitchen, and all other offices. They refused,
whereupon she put herself into a fisher-boat she hired on the spot, and in
that manner followed him from Sclavonia. When she had come to Rome, Junia,
the widow of Scribonianus, having one day, from the resemblance of their
fortune, accosted her in the Emperor's presence; she rudely repulsed her
with these words, "I," said she, "speak to thee, or give ear to any thing
thou sayest! to thee in whose lap Scribonianus was slain, and thou art yet
alive!" These words, with several other signs, gave her friends to
understand that she would undoubtedly despatch herself, impatient of
supporting her husband's misfortune. And Thrasea, her son-in-law,
beseeching her not to throw away herself, and saying to her, "What! if I
should run the same fortune that Caecina has done, would you that your
daughter, my wife, should do the same?"—"Would I?" replied she,
"yes, yes, I would: if she had lived as long, and in as good understanding
with thee as I have done, with my husband." These answers made them more
careful of her, and to have a more watchful eye to her proceedings. One
day, having said to those who looked to her: "Tis to much purpose that you
take all this pains to prevent me; you may indeed make me die an ill
death, but to keep me from dying is not in your power"; she in a sudden
phrenzy started from a chair whereon she sat, and with all her force
dashed her head against the wall, by which blow being laid flat in a
swoon, and very much wounded, after they had again with great ado brought
her to herself: "I told you," said she, "that if you refused me some easy
way of dying, I should find out another, how painful soever." The
conclusion of so admirable a virtue was this: her husband Paetus, not
having resolution enough of his own to despatch himself, as he was by the
emperor's cruelty enjoined, one day, amongst others, after having first
employed all the reasons and exhortations which she thought most prevalent
to persuade him to it, she snatched the poignard he wore from his side,
and holding it ready in her hand, for the conclusion of her admonitions;
"Do thus, Paetus," said she, and in the same instant giving herself a
mortal stab in the breast, and then drawing it out of the wound, presented
it to him, ending her life with this noble, generous, and immortal saying,
"Paete, non dolet"—having time to pronounce no more but those three
never-to-be-forgotten words: "Paetus, it is not painful."
"Casta suo gladium cum traderet Arria Paeto,
Quern de visceribus traxerat ipsa suis
Si qua fides, vulnus quod feci non dolet, inquit,
Sed quod to facies, id mihi, Paete, dolet."
["When the chaste Arria gave to Poetus the reeking sword she had
drawn from her breast, 'If you believe me,' she said, 'Paetus, the
wound I have made hurts not, but 'tis that which thou wilt make that
hurts me.'"—-Martial, i. 14.]
The action was much more noble in itself, and of a braver sense than the
poet expressed it: for she was so far from being deterred by the thought
of her husband's wound and death and her own, that she had been their
promotress and adviser: but having performed this high and courageous
enterprise for her husband's only convenience, she had even in the last
gasp of her life no other concern but for him, and of dispossessing him of
the fear of dying with her. Paetus presently struck himself to the heart
with the same weapon, ashamed, I suppose, to have stood in need of so dear
and precious an example.
Pompeia Paulina, a young and very noble Roman lady, had married Seneca in
his extreme old age. Nero, his fine pupil, sent his guards to him to
denounce the sentence of death, which was performed after this manner:
When the Roman emperors of those times had condemned any man of quality,
they sent to him by their officers to choose what death he would, and to
execute it within such or such a time, which was limited, according to the
degree of their indignation, to a shorter or a longer respite, that they
might therein have better leisure to dispose their affairs, and sometimes
depriving them of the means of doing it by the shortness of the time; and
if the condemned seemed unwilling to submit to the order, they had people
ready at hand to execute it either by cutting the veins of the arms and
legs, or by compelling them by force to swallow a draught of poison. But
persons of honour would not abide this necessity, but made use of their
own physicians and surgeons for this purpose. Seneca, with a calm and
steady countenance, heard their charge, and presently called for paper to
write his will, which being by the captain refused, he turned himself
towards his friends, saying to them, "Since I cannot leave you any other
acknowledgment of the obligation I have to you, I leave you at least the
best thing I have, namely, the image of my life and manners, which I
entreat you to keep in memory of me, that by so doing you may acquire the
glory of sincere and real friends." And there withal, one while appeasing
the sorrow he saw in them with gentle words, and presently raising his
voice to reprove them: "What," said he, "are become of all our brave
philosophical precepts? What are become of all the provisions we have so
many years laid up against the accidents of fortune? Is Nero's cruelty
unknown to us? What could we expect from him who had murdered his mother
and his brother, but that he should put his tutor to death who had brought
him up?" After having spoken these words in general, he turned himself
towards his wife, and embracing her fast in his arms, as, her heart and
strength failing her, she was ready to sink down with grief, he begged of
her, for his sake, to bear this accident with a little more patience,
telling her, that now the hour was come wherein he was to show, not by
argument and discourse, but effect, the fruit he had acquired by his
studies, and that he really embraced his death, not only without grief,
but moreover with joy. "Wherefore, my dearest," said he, "do not dishonour
it with thy tears, that it may not seem as if thou lovest thyself more
than my reputation. Moderate thy grief, and comfort thyself in the
knowledge thou hast had of me and my actions, leading the remainder of thy
life in the same virtuous manner thou hast hitherto done." To which
Paulina, having a little recovered her spirits, and warmed the magnanimity
of her courage with a most generous affection, replied,—"No,
Seneca," said she, "I am not a woman to suffer you to go alone in such a
necessity: I will not have you think that the virtuous examples of your
life have not taught me how to die; and when can I ever better or more
fittingly do it, or more to my own desire, than with you? and therefore
assure yourself I will go along with you." Then Seneca, taking this noble
and generous resolution of his wife m good part, and also willing to free
himself from the fear of leaving her exposed to the cruelty of his enemies
after his death: "I have, Paulina," said he, "instructed thee in what
would serve thee happily to live; but thou more covetest, I see, the
honour of dying: in truth, I will not grudge it thee; the constancy and
resolution in our common end are the same, but the beauty and glory of thy
part are much greater." Which being said, the surgeons, at the same time,
opened the veins of both their arms, but as those of Seneca were more
shrunk up, as well with age as abstinence, made his blood flow too slowly,
he moreover commanded them to open the veins of his thighs; and lest the
torments he endured might pierce his wife's heart, and also to free
himself from the affliction of seeing her in so sad a condition, after
having taken a very affectionate leave of her, he entreated she would
suffer them to carry her into her chamber, which they accordingly did. But
all these incisions being not yet enough to make him die, he commanded
Statius Anneus, his physician, to give him a draught of poison, which had
not much better effect; for by reason of the weakness and coldness of his
limbs, it could not arrive at his heart. Wherefore they were forced to
superadd a very hot bath, and then, feeling his end approach, whilst he
had breath he continued excellent discourses upon the subject of his
present condition, which the secretaries wrote down so long as they could
hear his voice, and his last words were long after in high honour and
esteem amongst men, and it is a great loss to us that they have not come
down to our times. Then, feeling the last pangs of death, with the bloody
water of the bath he bathed his head, saying: "This water I dedicate to
Jupiter the deliverer." Nero, being presently informed of all this,
fearing lest the death of Paulina, who was one of the best-born ladies of
Rome, and against whom he had no particular unkindness, should turn to his
reproach, sent orders in all haste to bind up her wounds, which her
attendants did without her knowledge, she being already half dead, and
without all manner of sense. Thus, though she lived contrary to her own
design, it was very honourably, and befitting her own virtue, her pale
complexion ever after manifesting how much life had run from her veins.
These are my three very true stories, which I find as entertaining and as
tragic as any of those we make out of our own heads wherewith to amuse the
common people; and I wonder that they who are addicted to such relations,
do not rather cull out ten thousand very fine stories, which are to be
found in books, that would save them the trouble of invention, and be more
useful and diverting; and he who would make a whole and connected body of
them would need to add nothing of his own, but the connection only, as it
were the solder of another metal; and might by this means embody a great
many true events of all sorts, disposing and diversifying them according
as the beauty of the work should require, after the same manner, almost,
as Ovid has made up his Metamorphoses of the infinite number of various
fables.
In the last couple, this is, moreover, worthy of consideration, that
Paulina voluntarily offered to lose her life for the love of her husband,
and that her husband had formerly also forborne to die for the love of
her. We may think there is no just counterpoise in this exchange; but,
according to his stoical humour, I fancy he thought he had done as much
for her, in prolonging his life upon her account, as if he had died for
her. In one of his letters to Lucilius, after he has given him to
understand that, being seized with an ague in Rome, he presently took
coach to go to a house he had in the country, contrary to his wife's
opinion, who would have him stay, and that he had told her that the ague
he was seized with was not a fever of the body but of the place, it
follows thus: "She let me go," says he, "giving me a strict charge of my
health. Now I, who know that her life is involved in mine, begin to make
much of myself, that I may preserve her. And I lose the privilege my age
has given me, of being more constant and resolute in many things, when I
call to mind that in this old fellow there is a young girl who is
interested in his health. And since I cannot persuade her to love me more
courageously, she makes me more solicitously love myself: for we must
allow something to honest affections, and, sometimes, though occasions
importune us to the contrary, we must call back life, even though it be
with torment: we must hold the soul fast in our teeth, since the rule of
living, amongst good men, is not so long as they please, but as long as
they ought. He that loves not his wife nor his friend so well as to
prolong his life for them, but will obstinately die, is too delicate and
too effeminate: the soul must impose this upon itself, when the utility of
our friends so requires; we must sometimes lend ourselves to our friends,
and when we would die for ourselves must break that resolution for them.
'Tis a testimony of grandeur of courage to return to life for the
consideration of another, as many excellent persons have done: and 'tis a
mark of singular good nature to preserve old age (of which the greatest
convenience is the indifference as to its duration, and a more stout and
disdainful use of life), when a man perceives that this office is
pleasing, agreeable, and useful to some person by whom he is very much
beloved. And a man reaps by it a very pleasing reward; for what can be
more delightful than to be so dear to his wife, as upon her account he
shall become dearer to himself? Thus has my Paulina loaded me not only
with her fears, but my own; it has not been sufficient to consider how
resolutely I could die, but I have also considered how irresolutely she
would bear my death. I am enforced to live, and sometimes to live in
magnanimity." These are his own words, as excellent as they everywhere
are.
CHAPTER XXXVI——OF THE MOST EXCELLENT MEN
If I should be asked my choice among all the men who have come to my
knowledge, I should make answer, that methinks I find three more excellent
than all the rest.
One of them Homer: not that Aristotle and Varro, for example, were not,
peradventure, as learned as he; nor that possibly Virgil was not equal to
him in his own art, which I leave to be determined by such as know them
both. I who, for my part, understand but one of them, can only say this,
according to my poor talent, that I do not believe the Muses themselves
could ever go beyond the Roman:
"Tale facit carmen docta testudine, quale
Cynthius impositis temperat articulis:"
["He plays on his learned lute a verse such as Cynthian Apollo
modulates with his imposed fingers."—Propertius, ii. 34, 79.]
and yet in this judgment we are not to forget that it is chiefly from
Homer that Virgil derives his excellence, that he is guide and teacher;
and that one touch of the Iliad has supplied him with body and matter out
of which to compose his great and divine AEneid. I do not reckon upon
that, but mix several other circumstances that render to me this poet
admirable, even as it were above human condition. And, in truth, I often
wonder that he who has produced, and, by his authority, given reputation
in the world to so many deities, was not deified himself. Being blind and
poor, living before the sciences were reduced into rule and certain
observation, he was so well acquainted with them, that all those who have
since taken upon them to establish governments, to carry on wars, and to
write either of religion or philosophy, of what sect soever, or of the
arts, have made use of him as of a most perfect instructor in the
knowledge of all things, and of his books as of a treasury of all sorts of
learning:
"Qui, quid sit pulcrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
Planius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantore dicit:"
["Who tells us what is good, what evil, what useful, what not, more
clearly and better than Chrysippus and Crantor?"
—Horace, Ep., i. 2, 3.]
and as this other says,
"A quo, ceu fonte perenni,
Vatum Pieriis ora rigantur aquis"
["From which, as from a perennial spring, the lips of the poets
are moistened by Pierian waters."—Ovid, Amoy., iii. 9, 25.]
and the other,
"Adde Heliconiadum comites, quorum unus Homerus
Sceptra potitus;"
["Add the companions of the Muses, whose sceptre Homer has solely
obtained."—Lucretius, iii. 1050.]
and the other:
"Cujusque ex ore profusos
Omnis posteritas latices in carmina duxit,
Amnemque in tenues ausa est deducere rivos.
Unius foecunda bonis."
["From whose mouth all posterity has drawn out copious streams of
verse, and has made bold to turn the mighty river into its little
rivulets, fertile in the property of one man."
—Manilius, Astyon., ii. 8.]
'Tis contrary to the order of nature that he has made the most excellent
production that can possibly be; for the ordinary birth of things is
imperfect; they thrive and gather strength by growing, whereas he rendered
the infancy of poesy and several other sciences mature, perfect, and
accomplished at first. And for this reason he may be called the first and
the last of the poets, according to the fine testimony antiquity has left
us of him, "that as there was none before him whom he could imitate, so
there has been none since that could imitate him." His words, according to
Aristotle, are the only words that have motion and action, the only
substantial words. Alexander the Great, having found a rich cabinet
amongst Darius' spoils, gave order it should be reserved for him to keep
his Homer in, saying: that he was the best and most faithful counsellor he
had in his military affairs. For the same reason it was that Cleomenes,
the son of Anaxandridas, said that he was the poet of the Lacedaemonians,
for that he was an excellent master for the discipline of war. This
singular and particular commendation is also left of him in the judgment
of Plutarch, that he is the only author in the world that never glutted
nor disgusted his readers, presenting himself always another thing, and
always flourishing in some new grace. That wanton Alcibiades, having asked
one, who pretended to learning, for a book of Homer, gave him a box of the
ear because he had none, which he thought as scandalous as we should if we
found one of our priests without a Breviary. Xenophanes complained one day
to Hiero, the tyrant of Syracuse, that he was so poor he had not
wherewithal to maintain two servants. "What!" replied he, "Homer, who was
much poorer than thou art, keeps above ten thousand, though he is dead."
What did Panaetius leave unsaid when he called Plato the Homer of the
philosophers? Besides what glory can be compared to his? Nothing is so
frequent in men's mouths as his name and works, nothing so known and
received as Troy, Helen, and the war about her, when perhaps there was
never any such thing. Our children are still called by names that he
invented above three thousand years ago; who does not know Hector and
Achilles? Not only some particular families, but most nations also seek
their origin in his inventions. Mohammed, the second of that name, emperor
of the Turks, writing to our Pope Pius II., "I am astonished," says he,
"that the Italians should appear against me, considering that we have our
common descent from the Trojans, and that it concerns me as well as it
does them to revenge the blood of Hector upon the Greeks, whom they
countenance against me." Is it not a noble farce wherein kings, republics,
and emperors have so many ages played their parts, and to which the vast
universe serves for a theatre? Seven Grecian cities contended for his
birth, so much honour even his obscurity helped him to!
"Smyrna, Rhodos, Colophon, Salamis, Chios, Argos, Athenm."
The other is Alexander the Great. For whoever will consider the age at
which he began his enterprises, the small means by which he effected so
glorious a design, the authority he obtained in such mere youth with the
greatest and most experienced captains of the world, by whom he was
followed, the extraordinary favour wherewith fortune embraced and favoured
so many hazardous, not to say rash, exploits,
"Impellens quicquid sibi summa petenti
Obstaret, gaudensque viam fecisse ruins;"
["Bearing down all who sought to withstand him, and pleased
to force his way by ruin."—Lucan, i. 149.]
that greatness, to have at the age of three-and-thirty years, passed
victorious through the whole habitable earth, and in half a life to have
attained to the utmost of what human nature can do; so that you cannot
imagine its just duration and the continuation of his increase in valour
and fortune, up to a due maturity of age, but that you must withal imagine
something more than man: to have made so many royal branches to spring
from his soldiers, leaving the world, at his death, divided amongst four
successors, simple captains of his army, whose posterity so long continued
and maintained that vast possession; so many excellent virtues as he was
master of, justice, temperance, liberality, truth in his word, love
towards his own people, and humanity towards those he overcame; for his
manners, in general, seem in truth incapable of any manner of reproach,
although some particular and extraordinary actions of his may fall under
censure. But it is impossible to carry on such great things as he did
within the strict rules of justice; such as he are to be judged in gross
by the main end of their actions. The ruin of Thebes and Persepolis, the
murder of Menander and of Ephistion's physician, the massacre of so many
Persian prisoners at one time, of a troop of Indian soldiers not without
prejudice to his word, and of the Cossians, so much as to the very
children, are indeed sallies that are not well to be excused. For, as to
Clytus, the fault was more than redeemed; and that very action, as much as
any other whatever, manifests the goodness of his nature, a nature most
excellently formed to goodness; and it was ingeniously said of him, that
he had his virtues from Nature, his vices from Fortune. As to his being a
little given to bragging, a little too impatient of hearing himself
ill-spoken of, and as to those mangers, arms, and bits he caused to be
strewed in the Indies, all those little vanities, methinks, may very well
be allowed to his youth, and the prodigious prosperity of his fortune. And
who will consider withal his so many military virtues, his diligence,
foresight, patience, discipline, subtlety, magnanimity, resolution, and
good fortune, wherein (though we had not had the authority of Hannibal to
assure us) he was the first of men, the admirable beauty and symmetry of
his person, even to a miracle, his majestic port and awful mien, in a face
so young, ruddy, and radiant:
"Qualis, ubi Oceani perfusus Lucifer unda,
Quem Venus ante alios astrorum diligit ignes,
Extulit os sacrum coelo, tenebrasque resolvit;"
["As when, bathed in the waves of Ocean, Lucifer, whom Venus loves
beyond the other stars, has displayed his sacred countenance to the
heaven, and disperses the darkness"—AEneid, iii. 589.]
the excellence of his knowledge and capacity; the duration and grandeur of
his glory, pure, clean, without spot or envy, and that long after his
death it was a religious belief that his very medals brought good fortune
to all who carried them about them; and that more kings and princes have
written his actions than other historians have written the actions of any
other king or prince whatever; and that to this very day the Mohammedans,
who despise all other histories, admit of and honour his alone, by a
special privilege: whoever, I say, will seriously consider these
particulars, will confess that, all these things put together, I had
reason to prefer him before Caesar himself, who alone could make me
doubtful in my choice: and it cannot be denied that there was more of his
own in his exploits, and more of fortune in those of Alexander. They were
in many things equal, and peradventure Caesar had some greater qualities
they were two fires, or two torrents, overrunning the world by several
ways;
"Ac velut immissi diversis partibus ignes
Arentem in silvam, et virgulta sonantia lauro
Aut ubi decursu rapido de montibus altis
Dant sonitum spumosi amnes, et in aequora currunt,
Quisque suum populatus iter:"
["And as fires applied in several parts to a dry wood and crackling
shrubs of laurel, or as with impetuous fall from the steep
mountains, foaming torrents pour down to the ocean, each clearing a
destructive course."—AEneid, xii. 521.]
but though Caesar's ambition had been more moderate, it would still be so
unhappy, having the ruin of his country and universal mischief to the
world for its abominable object, that, all things raked together and put
into the balance, I must needs incline to Alexander's side.
The third and in my opinion the most excellent, is Epaminondas. Of glory
he has not near so much as the other two (which, for that matter, is but a
part of the substance of the thing): of valour and resolution, not of that
sort which is pushed on by ambition, but of that which wisdom and reason
can plant in a regular soul, he had all that could be imagined. Of this
virtue of his, he has, in my idea, given as ample proof as Alexander
himself or Caesar: for although his warlike exploits were neither so
frequent nor so full, they were yet, if duly considered in all their
circumstances, as important, as bravely fought, and carried with them as
manifest testimony of valour and military conduct, as those of any
whatever. The Greeks have done him the honour, without contradiction, to
pronounce him the greatest man of their nation; and to be the first of
Greece, is easily to be the first of the world. As to his knowledge, we
have this ancient judgment of him, "That never any man knew so much, and
spake so little as he";—[Plutarch, On the Demon of Socrates, c. 23.]—for
he was of the Pythagorean sect; but when he did speak, never any man spake
better; an excellent orator, and of powerful persuasion. But as to his
manners and conscience, he infinitely surpassed all men who ever undertook
the management of affairs; for in this one thing, which ought chiefly to
be considered, which alone truly denotes us for what we are, and which
alone I make counterbalance all the rest put together, he comes not short
of any philosopher whatever, not even of Socrates himself. Innocence, in
this man, is a quality peculiar, sovereign, constant, uniform,
incorruptible, compared with which, it appears in Alexander subject to
something else subaltern, uncertain, variable, effeminate, and fortuitous.
Antiquity has judged that in thoroughly sifting all the other great
captains, there is found in every one some peculiar quality that
illustrates his name: in this man only there is a full and equal virtue
throughout, that leaves nothing to be wished for in him, whether in
private or public employment, whether in peace or war; whether to live
gloriously and grandly, and to die: I do not know any form or fortune of
man that I so much honour and love.
'Tis true that I look upon his obstinate poverty, as it is set out by his
best friends, as a little too scrupulous and nice; and this is the only
feature, though high in itself and well worthy of admiration, that I find
so rugged as not to desire to imitate, to the degree it was in him.
Scipio AEmilianus alone, could one attribute to him as brave and
magnificent an end, and as profound and universal a knowledge, might be
put into the other scale of the balance. Oh, what an injury has time done
me to deprive me of the sight of two of the most noble lives which, by the
common consent of all the world, one of the greatest of the Greeks, and
the other of the Romans, were in all Plutarch. What a matter! what a
workman!
For a man that was no saint, but, as we say, a gentleman, of civilian and
ordinary manners, and of a moderate ambition, the richest life that I
know, and full of the richest and most to be desired parts, all things
considered, is, in my opinion, that of Alcibiades.
But as to what concerns Epaminondas, I will here, for the example of an
excessive goodness, add some of his opinions: he declared, that the
greatest satisfaction he ever had in his whole life, was the contentment
he gave his father and mother by his victory at Leuctra; wherein his
deference is great, preferring their pleasure before his own, so dust and
so full of so glorious an action. He did not think it lawful, even to
restore the liberty of his country, to kill a man without knowing a cause:
which made him so cold in the enterprise of his companion Pelopidas for
the relief of Thebes. He was also of opinion that men in battle ought to
avoid the encounter of a friend who was on the contrary side, and to spare
him. And his humanity, even towards his enemies themselves, having
rendered him suspected to the Boeotians, for that, after he had
miraculously forced the Lacedaemonians to open to him the pass which they
had undertaken to defend at the entrance into the Morea, near Corinth, he
contented himself with having charged through them, without pursuing them
to the utmost, he had his commission of general taken from him, very
honourably upon such an account, and for the shame it was to them upon
necessity afterwards to restore him to his command, and so to manifest how
much upon him depended their safety and honour; victory like a shadow
attending him wherever he went; and indeed the prosperity of his country,
as being from him derived, died with him.
CHAPTER XXXVII——OF THE RESEMBLANCE OF CHILDREN TO THEIR
FATHERS
This faggoting up of so many divers pieces is so done that I never set pen
to paper but when I have too much idle time, and never anywhere but at
home; so that it is compiled after divers interruptions and intervals,
occasions keeping me sometimes many months elsewhere. As to the rest, I
never correct my first by any second conceptions; I, peradventure, may
alter a word or so, but 'tis only to vary the phrase, and not to destroy
my former meaning. I have a mind to represent the progress of my humours,
and that every one may see each piece as it came from the forge. I could
wish I had begun sooner, and had taken more notice of the course of my
mutations. A servant of mine whom I employed to transcribe for me, thought
he had got a prize by stealing several pieces from me, wherewith he was
best pleased; but it is my comfort that he will be no greater a gainer
than I shall be a loser by the theft. I am grown older by seven or eight
years since I began; nor has it been without same new acquisition: I have,
in that time, by the liberality of years, been acquainted with the stone:
their commerce and long converse do not well pass away without some such
inconvenience. I could have been glad that of other infirmities age has to
present long-lived men withal, it had chosen some one that would have been
more welcome to me, for it could not possibly have laid upon me a disease
for which, even from my infancy, I have had so great a horror; and it is,
in truth, of all the accidents of old age, that of which I have ever been
most afraid. I have often thought with myself that I went on too far, and
that in so long a voyage I should at last run myself into some
disadvantage; I perceived, and have often enough declared, that it was
time to depart, and that life should be cut off in the sound and living
part, according to the surgeon's rule in amputations; and that nature made
him pay very strict usury who did not in due time pay the principal. And
yet I was so far from being ready, that in the eighteen months' time or
thereabout that I have been in this uneasy condition, I have so inured
myself to it as to be content to live on in it; and have found wherein to
comfort myself, and to hope: so much are men enslaved to their miserable
being, that there is no condition so wretched they will not accept,
provided they may live! Hear Maecenas:
"Debilem facito manu,
Debilem pede, coxa,
Lubricos quate dentes;
Vita dum superest, bene est."
["Cripple my hand, foot, hip; shake out my loose teeth: while
there's life, 'tis well."—Apud Seneca, Ep., 101.]
And Tamerlane, with a foolish humanity, palliated the fantastic cruelty he
exercised upon lepers, when he put all he could hear of to death, to
deliver them, as he pretended, from the painful life they lived. For there
was not one of them who would not rather have been thrice a leper than be
not. And Antisthenes the Stoic, being very sick, and crying out, "Who will
deliver me from these evils?" Diogenes, who had come to visit him, "This,"
said he, presenting him a knife, "soon enough, if thou wilt."—"I do
not mean from my life," he replied, "but from my sufferings." The
sufferings that only attack the mind, I am not so sensible of as most
other men; and this partly out of judgment, for the world looks upon
several things as dreadful or to be avoided at the expense of life, that
are almost indifferent to me: partly, through a dull and insensible
complexion I have in accidents which do not point-blank hit me; and that
insensibility I look upon as one of the best parts of my natural
condition; but essential and corporeal pains I am very sensible of. And
yet, having long since foreseen them, though with a sight weak and
delicate and softened with the long and happy health and quiet that God
has been pleased to give me the greatest part of my time, I had in my
imagination fancied them so insupportable, that, in truth, I was more
afraid than I have since found I had cause: by which I am still more
fortified in this belief, that most of the faculties of the soul, as we
employ them, more trouble the repose of life than they are any way useful
to it.
I am in conflict with the worst, the most sudden, the most painful, the
most mortal, and the most irremediable of all diseases; I have already had
the trial of five or six very long and very painful fits; and yet I either
flatter myself, or there is even in this state what is very well to be
endured by a man who has his soul free from the fear of death, and of the
menaces, conclusions, and consequences which physic is ever thundering in
our ears; but the effect even of pain itself is not so sharp and
intolerable as to put a man of understanding into rage and despair. I have
at least this advantage by my stone, that what I could not hitherto
prevail upon myself to resolve upon, as to reconciling and acquainting
myself with death, it will perfect; for the more it presses upon and
importunes me, I shall be so much the less afraid to die. I had already
gone so far as only to love life for life's sake, but my pain will
dissolve this intelligence; and God grant that in the end, should the
sharpness of it be once greater than I shall be able to bear, it does not
throw me into the other no less vicious extreme to desire and wish to die!
"Summum nec metuas diem, nec optes:"
["Neither to wish, nor fear to die." (Or:)
"Thou shouldest neither fear nor desire the last day."
—Martial, x. 7.]
they are two passions to be feared; but the one has its remedy much nearer
at hand than the other.
As to the rest, I have always found the precept that so rigorously enjoins
a resolute countenance and disdainful and indifferent comportment in the
toleration of infirmities to be ceremonial. Why should philosophy, which
only has respect to life and effects, trouble itself about these external
appearances? Let us leave that care to actors and masters of rhetoric, who
set so great a value upon our gestures. Let her allow this vocal frailty
to disease, if it be neither cordial nor stomachic, and permit the
ordinary ways of expressing grief by sighs, sobs, palpitations, and
turning pale, that nature has put out of our power; provided the courage
be undaunted, and the tones not expressive of despair, let her be
satisfied. What matter the wringing of our hands, if we do not wring our
thoughts? She forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem;
let her be satisfied with governing our understanding, which she has taken
upon her the care of instructing; that, in the fury of the colic, she
maintain the soul in a condition to know itself, and to follow its
accustomed way, contending with, and enduring, not meanly truckling under
pain; moved and heated, not subdued and conquered, in the contention;
capable of discourse and other things, to a certain degree. In such
extreme accidents, 'tis cruelty to require so exact a composedness. 'Tis
no great matter that we make a wry face, if the mind plays its part well:
if the body find itself relieved by complaining let it complain: if
agitation ease it, let it tumble and toss at pleasure; if it seem to find
the disease evaporate (as some physicians hold that it helps women in
delivery) in making loud outcries, or if this do but divert its torments,
let it roar as it will. Let us not command this voice to sally, but stop
it not. Epicurus, not only forgives his sage for crying out in torments,
but advises him to it:
"Pugiles etiam, quum feriunt, in jactandis caestibus
ingemiscunt, quia profundenda voce omne corpus intenditur,
venitque plaga vehementior."
["Boxers also, when they strike, groan in the act, because with the
strength of voice the whole body is carried, and the blow comes with
the greater vehemence."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 23.]
We have enough to do to deal with the disease, without troubling ourselves
with these superfluous rules.
Which I say in excuse of those whom we ordinarily see impatient in the
assaults of this malady; for as to what concerns myself, I have passed it
over hitherto with a little better countenance, and contented myself with
groaning without roaring out; not, nevertheless, that I put any great
constraint upon myself to maintain this exterior decorum, for I make
little account of such an advantage: I allow herein as much as the pain
requires; but either my pains are not so excessive, or I have more than
ordinary patience. I complain, I confess, and am a little impatient in a
very sharp fit, but I do not arrive to such a degree of despair as he who
with:
"Ejulatu, questu, gemitu, fremitibus
Resonando, multum flebiles voces refert:"
["Howling, roaring, groaning with a thousand noises, expressing his
torment in a dismal voice." (Or:) "Wailing, complaining, groaning,
murmuring much avail lugubrious sounds."—Verses of Attius, in his
Phaloctetes, quoted by Cicero, De Finib., ii. 29; Tusc. Quaes.,
ii. 14.]
I try myself in the depth of my suffering, and have always found that I
was in a capacity to speak, think, and give a rational answer as well as
at any other time, but not so firmly, being troubled and interrupted by
the pain. When I am looked upon by my visitors to be in the greatest
torment, and that they therefore forbear to trouble me, I often essay my
own strength, and myself set some discourse on foot, the most remote I can
contrive from my present condition. I can do anything upon a sudden
endeavour, but it must not continue long. Oh, what pity 'tis I have not
the faculty of that dreamer in Cicero, who dreaming he was lying with a
wench, found he had discharged his stone in the sheets. My pains strangely
deaden my appetite that way. In the intervals from this excessive torment,
when my ureters only languish without any great dolor, I presently feel
myself in my wonted state, forasmuch as my soul takes no other alarm but
what is sensible and corporal, which I certainly owe to the care I have
had of preparing myself by meditation against such accidents:
"Laborum,
Nulla mihi nova nunc facies inopinave surgit;
Omnia praecepi, atque animo mecum ante peregi."
["No new shape of suffering can arise new or unexpected; I have
anticipated all, and acted them over beforehand in my mind."
—AEneid, vi. 103.]
I am, however, a little roughly handled for an apprentice, and with a
sudden and sharp alteration, being fallen in an instant from a very easy
and happy condition of life into the most uneasy and painful that can be
imagined. For besides that it is a disease very much to be feared in
itself, it begins with me after a more sharp and severe manner than it is
used to do with other men. My fits come so thick upon me that I am
scarcely ever at ease; yet I have hitherto kept my mind so upright that,
provided I can still continue it, I find myself in a much better condition
of life than a thousand others, who have no fewer nor other disease but
what they create to themselves for want of meditation.
There is a certain sort of crafty humility that springs from presumption,
as this, for example, that we confess our ignorance in many things, and
are so courteous as to acknowledge that there are in the works of nature
some qualities and conditions that are imperceptible to us, and of which
our understanding cannot discover the means and causes; by this so honest
and conscientious declaration we hope to obtain that people shall also
believe us as to those that we say we do understand. We need not trouble
ourselves to seek out foreign miracles and difficulties; methinks, amongst
the things that we ordinarily see, there are such incomprehensible wonders
as surpass all difficulties of miracles. What a wonderful thing it is that
the drop of seed from which we are produced should carry in itself the
impression not only of the bodily form, but even of the thoughts and
inclinations of our fathers! Where can that drop of fluid matter contain
that infinite number of forms? and how can they carry on these
resemblances with so precarious and irregular a process that the son shall
be like his great-grandfather, the nephew like his uncle? In the family of
Lepidus at Rome there were three, not successively but by intervals, who
were born with the same eye covered with a cartilage. At Thebes there was
a race that carried from their mother's womb the form of the head of a
lance, and he who was not born so was looked upon as illegitimate. And
Aristotle says that in a certain nation, where the women were in common,
they assigned the children to their fathers by their resemblance.
'Tis to be believed that I derive this infirmity from my father, for he
died wonderfully tormented with a great stone in his bladder; he was never
sensible of his disease till the sixty-seventh year of his age; and before
that had never felt any menace or symptoms of it, either in his reins,
sides, or any other part, and had lived, till then, in a happy, vigorous
state of health, little subject to infirmities, and he continued seven
years after in this disease, dragging on a very painful end of life. I was
born about five-and-twenty years before his disease seized him, and in the
time of his most flourishing and healthful state of body, his third child
in order of birth: where could his propension to this malady lie lurking
all that while? And he being then so far from the infirmity, how could
that small part of his substance wherewith he made me, carry away so great
an impression for its share? and how so concealed, that till
five-and-forty years after, I did not begin to be sensible of it? being
the only one to this hour, amongst so many brothers and sisters, and all
by one mother, that was ever troubled with it. He that can satisfy me in
this point, I will believe him in as many other miracles as he pleases;
always provided that, as their manner is, he do not give me a doctrine
much more intricate and fantastic than the thing itself for current pay.
Let the physicians a little excuse the liberty I take, for by this same
infusion and fatal insinuation it is that I have received a hatred and
contempt of their doctrine; the antipathy I have against their art is
hereditary. My father lived three-score and fourteen years, my grandfather
sixty-nine, my great-grandfather almost fourscore years, without ever
tasting any sort of physic; and, with them, whatever was not ordinary
diet, was instead of a drug. Physic is grounded upon experience and
examples: so is my opinion. And is not this an express and very
advantageous experience. I do not know that they can find me in all their
records three that were born, bred, and died under the same roof, who have
lived so long by their conduct. They must here of necessity confess, that
if reason be not, fortune at least is on my side, and with physicians
fortune goes a great deal further than reason. Let them not take me now at
a disadvantage; let them not threaten me in the subdued condition wherein
I now am; that were treachery. In truth, I have enough the better of them
by these domestic examples, that they should rest satisfied. Human things
are not usually so constant; it has been two hundred years, save eighteen,
that this trial has lasted, for the first of them was born in the year
1402: 'tis now, indeed, very good reason that this experience should begin
to fail us. Let them not, therefore, reproach me with the infirmities
under which I now suffer; is it not enough that I for my part have lived
seven-and-forty years in good health? though it should be the end of my
career; 'tis of the longer sort.
My ancestors had an aversion to physic by some occult and natural
instinct; for the very sight of drugs was loathsome to my father. The
Seigneur de Gaviac, my uncle by the father's side, a churchman, and a
valetudinary from his birth, and yet who made that crazy life hold out to
sixty-seven years, being once fallen into a furious fever, it was ordered
by the physicians he should be plainly told that if he would not make use
of help (for so they call that which is very often an obstacle), he would
infallibly be a dead man. That good man, though terrified with this
dreadful sentence, yet replied, "I am then a dead man." But God soon after
made the prognostic false. The last of the brothers—there were four
of them—and by many years the last, the Sieur de Bussaguet, was the
only one of the family who made use of medicine, by reason, I suppose, of
the concern he had with the other arts, for he was a councillor in the
court of Parliament, and it succeeded so ill with him, that being in
outward appearance of the strongest constitution, he yet died long before
any of the rest, save the Sieur de Saint Michel.
'Tis possible I may have derived this natural antipathy to physic from
them; but had there been no other consideration in the case, I would have
endeavoured to have overcome it; for all these conditions that spring in
us without reason, are vicious; 'tis a kind of disease that we should
wrestle with. It may be I had naturally this propension; but I have
supported and fortified it by arguments and reasons which have established
in me the opinion I am of. For I also hate the consideration of refusing
physic for the nauseous taste.
I should hardly be of that humour who hold health to be worth purchasing
by all the most painful cauteries and incisions that can be applied. And,
with Epicurus, I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided, if greater
pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted, that will terminate in
greater pleasures. Health is a precious thing, and the only one, in truth,
meriting that a man should lay out, not only his time, sweat, labour, and
goods, but also his life itself to obtain it; forasmuch as, without it,
life is wearisome and injurious to us: pleasure, wisdom, learning, and
virtue, without it, wither away and vanish; and to the most laboured and
solid discourses that philosophy would imprint in us to the contrary, we
need no more but oppose the image of Plato being struck with an epilepsy
or apoplexy; and, in this presupposition, to defy him to call the rich
faculties of his soul to his assistance. All means that conduce to health
can neither be too painful nor too dear to me. But I have some other
appearances that make me strangely suspect all this merchandise. I do not
deny but that there may be some art in it, that there are not amongst so
many works of Nature, things proper for the conservation of health: that
is most certain: I very well know there are some simples that moisten, and
others that dry; I experimentally know that radishes are windy, and
senna-leaves purging; and several other such experiences I have, as that
mutton nourishes me, and wine warms me: and Solon said "that eating was
physic against the malady hunger." I do not disapprove the use we make of
things the earth produces, nor doubt, in the least, of the power and
fertility of Nature, and of its application to our necessities: I very
well see that pikes and swallows live by her laws; but I mistrust the
inventions of our mind, our knowledge and art, to countenance which, we
have abandoned Nature and her rules, and wherein we keep no bounds nor
moderation. As we call the piling up of the first laws that fall into our
hands justice, and their practice and dispensation very often foolish and
very unjust; and as those who scoff at and accuse it, do not,
nevertheless, blame that noble virtue itself, but only condemn the abuse
and profanation of that sacred title; so in physic I very much honour that
glorious name, its propositions, its promises, so useful for the service
of mankind; but the ordinances it foists upon us, betwixt ourselves, I
neither honour nor esteem.
In the first place, experience makes me dread it; for amongst all my
acquaintance, I see no people so soon sick, and so long before they are
well, as those who take much physic; their very health is altered and
corrupted by their frequent prescriptions. Physicians are not content to
deal only with the sick, but they will moreover corrupt health itself, for
fear men should at any time escape their authority. Do they not, from a
continual and perfect health, draw the argument of some great sickness to
ensue? I have been sick often enough, and have always found my sicknesses
easy enough to be supported (though I have made trial of almost all
sorts), and as short as those of any other, without their help, or without
swallowing their ill-tasting doses. The health I have is full and free,
without other rule or discipline than my own custom and pleasure. Every
place serves me well enough to stay in, for I need no other conveniences,
when I am sick, than what I must have when I am well. I never disturb
myself that I have no physician, no apothecary, nor any other assistance,
which I see most other sick men more afflicted at than they are with their
disease. What! Do the doctors themselves show us more felicity and
duration in their own lives, that may manifest to us some apparent effect
of their skill?
There is not a nation in the world that has not been many ages without
physic; and these the first ages, that is to say, the best and most happy;
and the tenth part of the world knows nothing of it yet; many nations are
ignorant of it to this day, where men live more healthful and longer than
we do here, and even amongst us the common people live well enough without
it. The Romans were six hundred years before they received it; and after
having made trial of it, banished it from the city at the instance of Cato
the Censor, who made it appear how easy it was to live without it, having
himself lived fourscore and five years, and kept his wife alive to an
extreme old age, not without physic, but without a physician: for
everything that we find to be healthful to life may be called physic. He
kept his family in health, as Plutarch says if I mistake not, with hare's
milk; as Pliny reports, that the Arcadians cured all manner of diseases
with that of a cow; and Herodotus says, the Lybians generally enjoy rare
health, by a custom they have, after their children are arrived to four
years of age, to burn and cauterise the veins of their head and temples,
by which means they cut off all defluxions of rheum for their whole lives.
And the country people of our province make use of nothing, in all sorts
of distempers, but the strongest wine they can get, mixed with a great
deal of saffron and spice, and always with the same success.
And to say the truth, of all this diversity and confusion of
prescriptions, what other end and effect is there after all, but to purge
the belly? which a thousand ordinary simples will do as well; and I do not
know whether such evacuations be so much to our advantage as they pretend,
and whether nature does not require a residence of her excrements to a
certain proportion, as wine does of its lees to keep it alive: you often
see healthful men fall into vomitings and fluxes of the belly by some
extrinsic accident, and make a great evacuation of excrements, without any
preceding need, or any following benefit, but rather with hurt to their
constitution. 'Tis from the great Plato, that I lately learned, that of
three sorts of motions which are natural to us, purging is the worst, and
that no man, unless he be a fool, ought to take anything to that purpose
but in the extremest necessity. Men disturb and irritate the disease by
contrary oppositions; it must be the way of living that must gently
dissolve, and bring it to its end. The violent gripings and contest
betwixt the drug and the disease are ever to our loss, since the combat is
fought within ourselves, and that the drug is an assistant not to be
trusted, being in its own nature an enemy to our health, and by trouble
having only access into our condition. Let it alone a little; the general
order of things that takes care of fleas and moles, also takes care of
men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to
leave it to itself. 'Tis to much purpose we cry out "Bihore,"—[A
term used by the Languedoc waggoners to hasten their horses]—'tis a
way to make us hoarse, but not to hasten the matter. 'Tis a proud and
uncompassionate order: our fears, our despair displease and stop it from,
instead of inviting it to, our relief; it owes its course to the disease,
as well as to health; and will not suffer itself to be corrupted in favour
of the one to the prejudice of the other's right, for it would then fall
into disorder. Let us, in God's name, follow it; it leads those that
follow, and those who will not follow, it drags along, both their fury and
physic together. Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much
better employed than upon your stomach.
One asking a Lacedaemonian what had made him live so long, he made answer,
"the ignorance of physic"; and the Emperor Adrian continually exclaimed as
he was dying, that the crowd of physicians had killed him. A bad wrestler
turned physician: "Courage," says Diogenes to him; "thou hast done well,
for now thou will throw those who have formerly thrown thee." But they
have this advantage, according to Nicocles, that the sun gives light to
their success and the earth covers their failures. And, besides, they have
a very advantageous way of making use of all sorts of events: for what
fortune, nature, or any other cause (of which the number is infinite),
products of good and healthful in us, it is the privilege of physic to
attribute to itself; all the happy successes that happen to the patient,
must be thence derived; the accidents that have cured me, and a thousand
others, who do not employ physicians, physicians usurp to themselves: and
as to ill accidents, they either absolutely disown them, in laying the
fault upon the patient, by such frivolous reasons as they are never at a
loss for; as "he lay with his arms out of bed," or "he was disturbed with
the rattling of a coach:"
"Rhedarum transitus arcto
Vicorum inflexu:"
["The passage of the wheels in the narrow
turning of the street"—Juvenal, iii. 236.]
or "somebody had set open the casement," or "he had lain upon his left
side," or "he had some disagreeable fancies in his head": in sum, a word,
a dream, or a look, seems to them excuse sufficient wherewith to palliate
their own errors: or, if they so please, they even make use of our growing
worse, and do their business in this way which can never fail them: which
is by buzzing us in the ear, when the disease is more inflamed by their
medicaments, that it had been much worse but for those remedies; he, whom
from an ordinary cold they have thrown into a double tertian-ague, had but
for them been in a continued fever. They do not much care what mischief
they do, since it turns to their own profit. In earnest, they have reason
to require a very favourable belief from their patients; and, indeed, it
ought to be a very easy one, to swallow things so hard to be believed.
Plato said very well, that physicians were the only men who might lie at
pleasure, since our health depends upon the vanity and falsity of their
promises.
AEsop, a most excellent author, and of whom few men discover all the
graces, pleasantly represents to us the tyrannical authority physicians
usurp over poor creatures, weakened and subdued by sickness and fear, when
he tells us, that a sick person, being asked by his physician what
operation he found of the potion he had given him: "I have sweated very
much," says the sick man. "That's good," says the physician. Another time,
having asked how he felt himself after his physic: "I have been very cold,
and have had a great shivering upon me," said he. "That is good," replied
the physician. After the third potion, he asked him again how he did:
"Why, I find myself swollen and puffed up," said he, "as if I had a
dropsy."—"That is very well," said the physician. One of his
servants coming presently after to inquire how he felt himself, "Truly,
friend," said he, "with being too well I am about to die."
There was a more just law in Egypt, by which the physician, for the three
first days, was to take charge of his patient at the patient's own risk
and cost; but, those three days being past, it was to be at his own. For
what reason is it that their patron, AEsculapius, should be struck with
thunder for restoring Hippolitus from death to life:
"Nam Pater omnipotens, aliquem indignatus ab umbris
Mortalem infernis ad lumina surgere vitae,
Ipse repertorem medicinae talis, et artis
Fulmine Phoebigenam Stygias detrusit ad undas;"
["Then the Almighty Father, offended that any mortal should rise to
the light of life from the infernal shades, struck the son of
Phoebus with his forked lightning to the Stygian lake."
—AEneid, vii. 770.]
and his followers be pardoned, who send so many souls from life to death?
A physician, boasting to Nicocles that his art was of great authority: "It
is so, indeed," said Nicocles, "that can with impunity kill so many
people."
As to what remains, had I been of their counsel, I would have rendered my
discipline more sacred and mysterious; they begun well, but they have not
ended so. It was a good beginning to make gods and demons the authors of
their science, and to have used a peculiar way of speaking and writing,
notwithstanding that philosophy concludes it folly to persuade a man to
his own good by an unintelligible way: "Ut si quis medicus imperet, ut
sumat:"
"Terrigenam, herbigradam, domiportam, sanguine cassam."
["Describing it by the epithets of an animal trailing with its slime
over the herbage, without blood or bones, and carrying its house
upon its back, meaning simply a snail."—Coste]
It was a good rule in their art, and that accompanies all other vain,
fantastic, and supernatural arts, that the patient's belief should
prepossess them with good hope and assurance of their effects and
operation: a rule they hold to that degree, as to maintain that the most
inexpert and ignorant physician is more proper for a patient who has
confidence in him, than the most learned and experienced whom he is not so
acquainted with. Nay, even the very choice of most of their drugs is in
some sort mysterious and divine; the left foot of a tortoise, the urine of
a lizard, the dung of an elephant, the liver of a mole, blood drawn from
under the right wing of a white pigeon; and for us who have the stone (so
scornfully they use us in our miseries) the excrement of rats beaten to
powder, and such like trash and fooleries which rather carry a face of
magical enchantment than of any solid science. I omit the odd number of
their pills, the destination of certain days and feasts of the year, the
superstition of gathering their simples at certain hours, and that so
austere and very wise countenance and carriage which Pliny himself so much
derides. But they have, as I said, failed in that they have not added to
this fine beginning the making their meetings and consultations more
religious and secret, where no profane person should have admission, no
more than in the secret ceremonies of AEsculapius; for by the reason of
this it falls out that their irresolution, the weakness of their
arguments, divinations and foundations, the sharpness of their disputes,
full of hatred, jealousy, and self-consideration, coming to be discovered
by every one, a man must be marvellously blind not to see that he runs a
very great hazard in their hands. Who ever saw one physician approve of
another's prescription, without taking something away, or adding something
to it? by which they sufficiently betray their tricks, and make it
manifest to us that they therein more consider their own reputation, and
consequently their profit, than their patient's interest. He was a much
wiser man of their tribe, who of old gave it as a rule, that only one
physician should undertake a sick person; for if he do nothing to purpose,
one single man's default can bring no great scandal upon the art of
medicine; and, on the contrary, the glory will be great if he happen to
have success; whereas, when there are many, they at every turn bring a
disrepute upon their calling, forasmuch as they oftener do hurt than good.
They ought to be satisfied with the perpetual disagreement which is found
in the opinions of the principal masters and ancient authors of this
science, which is only known to men well read, without discovering to the
vulgar the controversies and various judgments which they still nourish
and continue amongst themselves.
Will you have one example of the ancient controversy in physic? Herophilus
lodges the original cause of all diseases in the humours; Erasistratus, in
the blood of the arteries; Asclepiades, in the invisible atoms of the
pores; Alcmaeon, in the exuberance or defect of our bodily strength;
Diocles, in the inequality of the elements of which the body is composed,
and in the quality of the air we breathe; Strato, in the abundance,
crudity, and corruption of the nourishment we take; and Hippocrates lodges
it in the spirits. There is a certain friend of theirs,—[Celsus,
Preface to the First Book.]—whom they know better than I, who
declares upon this subject, "that the most important science in practice
amongst us, as that which is intrusted with our health and conservation,
is, by ill luck, the most uncertain, the most perplexed, and agitated with
the greatest mutations." There is no great danger in our mistaking the
height of the sun, or the fraction of some astronomical supputation; but
here, where our whole being is concerned, 'tis not wisdom to abandon
ourselves to the mercy of the agitation of so many contrary winds.
Before the Peloponnesian war there was no great talk of this science.
Hippocrates brought it into repute; whatever he established, Chrysippus
overthrew; after that, Erasistratus, Aristotle's grandson, overthrew what
Chrysippus had written; after these, the Empirics started up, who took a
quite contrary way to the ancients in the management of this art; when the
credit of these began a little to decay, Herophilus set another sort of
practice on foot, which Asclepiades in turn stood up against, and
overthrew; then, in their turn, the opinions first of Themiso, and then of
Musa, and after that those of Vectius Valens, a physician famous through
the intelligence he had with Messalina, came in vogue; the empire of
physic in Nero's time was established in Thessalus, who abolished and
condemned all that had been held till his time; this man's doctrine was
refuted by Crinas of Marseilles, who first brought all medicinal
operations under the Ephemerides and motions of the stars, and reduced
eating, sleeping, and drinking to hours that were most pleasing to Mercury
and the moon; his authority was soon after supplanted by Charinus, a
physician of the same city of Marseilles, a man who not only controverted
all the ancient methods of physic, but moreover the usage of hot baths,
that had been generally and for so many ages in common use; he made men
bathe in cold water, even in winter, and plunged his sick patients in the
natural waters of streams. No Roman till Pliny's time had ever vouchsafed
to practise physic; that office was only performed by Greeks and
foreigners, as 'tis now amongst us French, by those who sputter Latin;
for, as a very great physician says, we do not easily accept the medicine
we understand, no more than we do the drugs we ourselves gather. If the
nations whence we fetch our guaiacum, sarsaparilla, and China wood, have
physicians, how great a value must we imagine, by the same recommendation
of strangeness, rarity, and dear purchase, do they set upon our cabbage
and parsley? for who would dare to contemn things so far fetched, and
sought out at the hazard of so long and dangerous a voyage?
Since these ancient mutations in physic, there have been infinite others
down to our own times, and, for the most part, mutations entire and
universal, as those, for example, produced by Paracelsus, Fioravanti, and
Argentier; for they, as I am told, not only alter one recipe, but the
whole contexture and rules of the body of physic, accusing all others of
ignorance and imposition who have practised before them. At this rate, in
what a condition the poor patient must be, I leave you to judge.
If we were even assured that, when they make a mistake, that mistake of
theirs would do us no harm, though it did us no good, it were a reasonable
bargain to venture the making ourselves better without any danger of being
made worse. AEsop tells a story, that one who had bought a Morisco slave,
believing that his black complexion had arrived by accident and the ill
usage of his former master, caused him to enter with great care into a
course of baths and potions: it happened that the Moor was nothing amended
in his tawny complexion, but he wholly lost his former health. How often
do we see physicians impute the death of their patients to one another? I
remember that some years ago there was an epidemical disease, very
dangerous and for the most part mortal, that raged in the towns about us:
the storm being over which had swept away an infinite number of men, one
of the most famous physicians of all the country, presently after
published a book upon that subject, wherein, upon better thoughts, he
confesses that the letting blood in that disease was the principal cause
of so many mishaps. Moreover, their authors hold that there is no physic
that has not something hurtful in it. And if even those of the best
operation in some measure offend us, what must those do that are totally
misapplied? For my own part, though there were nothing else in the case, I
am of opinion, that to those who loathe the taste of physic, it must needs
be a dangerous and prejudicial endeavour to force it down at so
incommodious a time, and with so much aversion, and believe that it
marvellously distempers a sick person at a time when he has so much need
of repose. And more over, if we but consider the occasions upon which they
usually ground the cause of our diseases, they are so light and nice, that
I thence conclude a very little error in the dispensation of their drugs
may do a great deal of mischief. Now, if the mistake of a physician be so
dangerous, we are in but a scurvy condition; for it is almost impossible
but he must often fall into those mistakes: he had need of too many parts,
considerations, and circumstances, rightly to level his design: he must
know the sick person's complexion, his temperament, his humours,
inclinations, actions, nay, his very thoughts and imaginations; he must be
assured of the external circumstances, of the nature of the place, the
quality of the air and season, the situation of the planets, and their
influences: he must know in the disease, the causes, prognostics,
affections, and critical days; in the drugs, the weight, the power of
working, the country, figure, age, and dispensation, and he must know how
rightly to proportion and mix them together, to beget a just and perfect
symmetry; wherein if there be the least error, if amongst so many springs
there be but any one out of order, 'tis enough to destroy us. God knows
with how great difficulty most of these things are to be understood: for
(for example) how shall the physician find out the true sign of the
disease, every disease being capable of an infinite number of indications?
How many doubts and controversies have they amongst themselves upon the
interpretation of urines? otherwise, whence should the continual debates
we see amongst them about the knowledge of the disease proceed? how could
we excuse the error they so oft fall into, of taking fox for marten? In
the diseases I have had, though there were ever so little difficulty in
the case, I never found three of one opinion: which I instance, because I
love to introduce examples wherein I am myself concerned.
A gentleman at Paris was lately cut for the stone by order of the
physicians, in whose bladder, being accordingly so cut, there was found no
more stone than in the palm of his hand; and in the same place a bishop,
who was my particular friend, having been earnestly pressed by the
majority of the physicians whom he consulted, to suffer himself to be cut,
to which also, upon their word, I used my interest to persuade him, when
he was dead and opened, it appeared that he had no malady but in the
kidneys. They are least excusable for any error in this disease, by reason
that it is in some sort palpable; and 'tis thence that I conclude surgery
to be much more certain, by reason that it sees and feels what it does,
and so goes less upon conjecture; whereas the physicians have no 'speculum
matricis', by which to examine our brains, lungs, and liver.
Even the very promises of physic are incredible in themselves; for, having
to provide against divers and contrary accidents that often afflict us at
one and the same time, and that have almost a necessary relation, as the
heat of the liver and the coldness of the stomach, they will needs
persuade us, that of their ingredients one will heat the stomach and the
other will cool the liver: one has its commission to go directly to the
kidneys, nay, even to the bladder, without scattering its operations by
the way, and is to retain its power and virtue through all those turns and
meanders, even to the place to the service of which it is designed, by its
own occult property this will dry-the brain; that will moisten the lungs.
Of all this bundle of things having mixed up a potion, is it not a kind of
madness to imagine or to hope that these differing virtues should separate
themselves from one another in this mixture and confusion, to perform so
many various errands? I should very much fear that they would either lose
or change their tickets, and disturb one another's quarters. And who can
imagine but that, in this liquid confusion, these faculties must corrupt,
confound, and spoil one another? And is not the danger still more when the
making up of this medicine is entrusted to the skill and fidelity of still
another, to whose mercy we again abandon our lives?
As we have doublet and breeches-makers, distinct trades, to clothe us, and
are so much the better fitted, seeing that each of them meddles only with
his own business, and has less to trouble his head with than the tailor
who undertakes all; and as in matter of diet, great persons, for their
better convenience, and to the end they may be better served, have cooks
for the different offices, this for soups and potages, that for roasting,
instead of which if one cook should undertake the whole service, he could
not so well perform it; so also as to the cure of our maladies. The
Egyptians had reason to reject this general trade of physician, and to
divide the profession: to each disease, to each part of the body, its
particular workman; for that part was more properly and with less
confusion cared for, seeing the person looked to nothing else. Ours are
not aware that he who provides for all, provides for nothing; and that the
entire government of this microcosm is more than they are able to
undertake. Whilst they were afraid of stopping a dysentery, lest they
should put the patient into a fever, they killed me a friend, —[Estienne
de la Boetie.]—who was worth more than the whole of them. They
counterpoise their own divinations with the present evils; and because
they will not cure the brain to the prejudice of the stomach, they injure
both with their dissentient and tumultuary drugs.
As to the variety and weakness of the rationale of this art, they are more
manifest in it than in any other art; aperitive medicines are proper for a
man subject to the stone, by reason that opening and dilating the passages
they help forward the slimy matter whereof gravel and stone are
engendered, and convey that downward which begins to harden and gather in
the reins; aperitive things are dangerous for a man subject to the stone,
by reason that, opening and dilating the passages, they help forward the
matter proper to create the gravel toward the reins, which by their own
propension being apt to seize it, 'tis not to be imagined but that a great
deal of what has been conveyed thither must remain behind; moreover, if
the medicine happen to meet with anything too large to be carried through
all the narrow passages it must pass to be expelled, that obstruction,
whatever it is, being stirred by these aperitive things and thrown into
those narrow passages, coming to stop them, will occasion a certain and
most painful death. They have the like uniformity in the counsels they
give us for the regimen of life: it is good to make water often; for we
experimentally see that, in letting it lie long in the bladder, we give it
time to settle the sediment, which will concrete into a stone; it is good
not to make water often, for the heavy excrements it carries along with it
will not be voided without violence, as we see by experience that a
torrent that runs with force washes the ground it rolls over much cleaner
than the course of a slow and tardy stream; so, it is good to have often
to do with women, for that opens the passages and helps to evacuate
gravel; it is also very ill to have often to do with women, because it
heats, tires, and weakens the reins. It is good to bathe frequently in hot
water, forasmuch as that relaxes and mollifies the places where the gravel
and stone lie; it is also ill by reason that this application of external
heat helps the reins to bake, harden, and petrify the matter so disposed.
For those who are taking baths it is most healthful. To eat little at
night, to the end that the waters they are to drink the next morning may
have a better operation upon an empty stomach; on the other hand, it is
better to eat little at dinner, that it hinder not the operation of the
waters, while it is not yet perfect, and not to oppress the stomach so
soon after the other labour, but leave the office of digestion to the
night, which will much better perform it than the day, when the body and
soul are in perpetual moving and action. Thus do they juggle and trifle in
all their discourses at our expense; and they could not give me one
proposition against which I should not know how to raise a contrary of
equal force. Let them, then, no longer exclaim against those who in this
trouble of sickness suffer themselves to be gently guided by their own
appetite and the advice of nature, and commit themselves to the common
fortune.
I have seen in my travels almost all the famous baths of Christendom, and
for some years past have begun to make use of them myself: for I look upon
bathing as generally wholesome, and believe that we suffer no little
inconveniences in our health by having left off the custom that was
generally observed, in former times, almost by all nations, and is yet in
many, of bathing every day; and I cannot imagine but that we are much the
worse by, having our limbs crusted and our pores stopped with dirt. And as
to the drinking of them, fortune has in the first place rendered them not
at all unacceptable to my taste; and secondly, they are natural and
simple, which at least carry no danger with them, though they may do us no
good, of which the infinite crowd of people of all sorts and complexions
who repair thither I take to be a sufficient warranty; and although I have
not there observed any extraordinary and miraculous effects, but that on
the contrary, having more narrowly than ordinary inquired into it, I have
found all the reports of such operations that have been spread abroad in
those places ill-grounded and false, and those that believe them (as
people are willing to be gulled in what they desire) deceived in them, yet
I have seldom known any who have been made worse by those waters, and a
man cannot honestly deny but that they beget a better appetite, help
digestion, and do in some sort revive us, if we do not go too late and in
too weak a condition, which I would dissuade every one from doing. They
have not the virtue to raise men from desperate and inveterate diseases,
but they may help some light indisposition, or prevent some threatening
alteration. He who does not bring along with him so much cheerfulness as
to enjoy the pleasure of the company he will there meet, and of the walks
and exercises to which the amenity of those places invite us, will
doubtless lose the best and surest part of their effect. For this reason I
have hitherto chosen to go to those of the most pleasant situation, where
there was the best conveniency of lodging, provision, and company, as the
baths of Bagneres in France, those of Plombieres on the frontiers of
Germany and Lorraine, those of Baden in Switzerland, those of Lucca in
Tuscany, and especially those of Della Villa, which I have the most and at
various seasons frequented.
Every nation has particular opinions touching their use, and particular
rules and methods in using them; and all of them, according to what I have
seen, almost with like effect. Drinking them is not at all received in
Germany; the Germans bathe for all diseases, and will lie dabbling in the
water almost from sun to sun; in Italy, where they drink nine days, they
bathe at least thirty, and commonly drink the water mixed with some other
drugs to make it work the better. Here we are ordered to walk to digest
it; there we are kept in bed after taking it till it be wrought off, our
stomachs and feet having continually hot cloths applied to them all the
while; and as the Germans have a particular practice generally to use
cupping and scarification in the bath, so the Italians have their
'doccie', which are certain little streams of this hot water brought
through pipes, and with these bathe an hour in the morning, and as much in
the afternoon, for a month together, either the head, stomach, or any
other part where the evil lies. There are infinite other varieties of
customs in every country, or rather there is no manner of resemblance to
one another. By this you may see that this little part of physic to which
I have only submitted, though the least depending upon art of all others,
has yet a great share of the confusion and uncertainty everywhere else
manifest in the profession.
The poets put what they would say with greater emphasis and grace; witness
these two epigrams:
"Alcon hesterno signum Jovis attigit: ille,
Quamvis marmoreus, vim patitur medici.
Ecce hodie, jussus transferri ex aeede vetusta,
Effertur, quamvis sit Deus atque lapis."
["Alcon yesterday touched Jove's statue; he, although marble,
suffers the force of the physician: to-day ordered to be transferred
from the old temple, where it stood, it is carried out, although it
be a god and a stone."—Ausonius, Ep., 74.]
and the other:
"Lotus nobiscum est, hilaris coenavit; et idem
Inventus mane est mortuus Andragoras.
Tam subitae mortis causam, Faustine, requiris?
In somnis medicum viderat Hermocratem:"
["Andragoras bathed with us, supped gaily, and in the morning the
same was found dead. Dost thou ask, Faustinus, the cause of this so
sudden death? In his dreams he had seen the physician Hermocrates."
—Martial, vi. 53.]
upon which I will relate two stories.
The Baron de Caupene in Chalosse and I have betwixt us the advowson of a
benefice of great extent, at the foot of our mountains, called Lahontan.
It is with the inhabitants of this angle, as 'tis said of those of the Val
d'Angrougne; they lived a peculiar sort of life, their fashions, clothes,
and manners distinct from other people; ruled and governed by certain
particular laws and usages, received from father to son, to which they
submitted, without other constraint than the reverence to custom. This
little state had continued from all antiquity in so happy a condition,
that no neighbouring judge was ever put to the trouble of inquiring into
their doings; no advocate was ever retained to give them counsel, no
stranger ever called in to compose their differences; nor was ever any of
them seen to go a-begging. They avoided all alliances and traffic with the
outer world, that they might not corrupt the purity of their own
government; till, as they say, one of them, in the memory of man, having a
mind spurred on with a noble ambition, took it into his head, to bring his
name into credit and reputation, to make one of his sons something more
than ordinary, and having put him to learn to write in a neighbouring
town, made him at last a brave village notary. This fellow, having
acquired such dignity, began to disdain their ancient customs, and to buzz
into the people's ears the pomp of the other parts of the nation; the
first prank he played was to advise a friend of his, whom somebody had
offended by sawing off the horns of one of his goats, to make his
complaint to the royal judges thereabout, and so he went on from one to
another, till he had spoiled and confounded all. In the tail of this
corruption, they say, there happened another, and of worse consequence, by
means of a physician, who, falling in love with one of their daughters,
had a mind to marry her and to live amongst them. This man first of all
began to teach them the names of fevers, colds, and imposthumes; the seat
of the heart, liver, and intestines, a science till then utterly unknown
to them; and instead of garlic, with which they were wont to cure all
manner of diseases, how painful or extreme soever, he taught them, though
it were but for a cough or any little cold, to take strange mixtures, and
began to make a trade not only of their health, but of their lives. They
swear till then they never perceived the evening air to be offensive to
the head; that to drink when they were hot was hurtful, and that the winds
of autumn were more unwholesome than those of spring; that, since this use
of physic, they find themselves oppressed with a legion of unaccustomed
diseases, and that they perceive a general decay in their ancient vigour,
and their lives are cut shorter by the half. This is the first of my
stories.
The other is, that before I was afflicted with the stone, hearing that the
blood of a he-goat was with many in very great esteem, and looked upon as
a celestial manna rained down upon these latter ages for the good and
preservation of the lives of men, and having heard it spoken of by men of
understanding for an admirable drug, and of infallible operation; I, who
have ever thought myself subject to all the accidents that can befall
other men, had a mind, in my perfect health, to furnish myself with this
miracle, and therefore gave order to have a goat fed at home according to
the recipe: for he must be taken in the hottest month of all summer, and
must only have aperitive herbs given him to eat, and white wine to drink.
I came home by chance the very day he was to be killed; and some one came
and told me that the cook had found two or three great balls in his
paunch, that rattled against one another amongst what he had eaten. I was
curious to have all his entrails brought before me, where, having caused
the skin that enclosed them to be cut, there tumbled out three great
lumps, as light as sponges, so that they appeared to be hollow, but as to
the rest, hard and firm without, and spotted and mixed all over with
various dead colours; one was perfectly round, and of the bigness of an
ordinary ball; the other two something less, of an imperfect roundness, as
seeming not to be arrived at their, full growth. I find, by inquiry of
people accustomed to open these animals, that it is a rare and unusual
accident. 'Tis likely these are stones of the same nature with ours and if
so, it must needs be a very vain hope in those who have the stone, to
extract their cure from the blood of a beast that was himself about to die
of the same disease. For to say that the blood does not participate of
this contagion, and does not thence alter its wonted virtue, it is rather
to be believed that nothing is engendered in a body but by the conspiracy
and communication of all the parts: the whole mass works together, though
one part contributes more to the work than another, according to the
diversity of operations; wherefore it is very likely that there was some
petrifying quality in all the parts of this goat. It was not so much for
fear of the future, and for myself, that I was curious in this experiment,
but because it falls out in mine, as it does in many other families, that
the women store up such little trumperies for the service of the people,
using the same recipe in fifty several diseases, and such a recipe as they
will not take themselves, and yet triumph when they happen to be
successful.
As to what remains, I honour physicians, not according to the precept for
their necessity (for to this passage may be opposed another of the prophet
reproving King Asa for having recourse to a physician), but for
themselves, having known many very good men of that profession, and most
worthy to be beloved. I do not attack them; 'tis their art I inveigh
against, and do not much blame them for making their advantage of our
folly, for most men do the same. Many callings, both of greater and of
less dignity than theirs, have no other foundation or support than public
abuse. When I am sick I send for them if they be near, only to have their
company, and pay them as others do. I give them leave to command me to
keep myself warm, because I naturally love to do it, and to appoint leeks
or lettuce for my broth; to order me white wine or claret; and so as to
all other things, which are indifferent to my palate and custom. I know
very well that I do nothing for them in so doing, because sharpness and
strangeness are incidents of the very essence of physic. Lycurgus ordered
wine for the sick Spartans. Why? because they abominated the drinking it
when they were well; as a gentleman, a neighbour of mine, takes it as an
excellent medicine in his fever, because naturally he mortally hates the
taste of it. How many do we see amongst them of my humour, who despise
taking physic themselves, are men of a liberal diet, and live a quite
contrary sort of life to what they prescribe others? What is this but
flatly to abuse our simplicity? for their own lives and health are no less
dear to them than ours are to us, and consequently they would accommodate
their practice to their rules, if they did not themselves know how false
these are.
'Tis the fear of death and of pain, impatience of disease, and a violent
and indiscreet desire of a present cure, that so blind us: 'tis pure
cowardice that makes our belief so pliable and easy to be imposed upon:
and yet most men do not so much believe as they acquiesce and permit; for
I hear them find fault and complain as well as we; but they resolve at
last, "What should I do then?" As if impatience were of itself a better
remedy than patience. Is there any one of those who have suffered
themselves to be persuaded into this miserable subjection, who does not
equally surrender himself to all sorts of impostures? who does not give up
himself to the mercy of whoever has the impudence to promise him a cure?
The Babylonians carried their sick into the public square; the physician
was the people: every one who passed by being in humanity and civility
obliged to inquire of their condition, gave some advice according to his
own experience. We do little better; there is not so simple a woman, whose
gossips and drenches we do not make use of: and according to my humour, if
I were to take physic, I would sooner choose to take theirs than any
other, because at least, if they do no good, they will do no harm. What
Homer and Plato said of the Egyptians, that they were all physicians, may
be said of all nations; there is not a man amongst any of them who does
not boast of some rare recipe, and who will not venture it upon his
neighbour, if he will let him. I was the other day in a company where one,
I know not who, of my fraternity brought us intelligence of a new sort of
pills made up of a hundred and odd ingredients: it made us very merry, and
was a singular consolation, for what rock could withstand so great a
battery? And yet I hear from those who have made trial of it, that the
least atom of gravel deigned not to stir fort.
I cannot take my hand from the paper before I have added a word concerning
the assurance they give us of the certainty of their drugs, from the
experiments they have made.
The greatest part, I should say above two-thirds of the medicinal virtues,
consist in the quintessence or occult property of simples, of which we can
have no other instruction than use and custom; for quintessence is no
other than a quality of which we cannot by our reason find out the cause.
In such proofs, those they pretend to have acquired by the inspiration of
some daemon, I am content to receive (for I meddle not with miracles); and
also the proofs which are drawn from things that, upon some other account,
often fall into use amongst us; as if in the wool, wherewith we are wont
to clothe ourselves, there has accidentally some occult desiccative
property been found out of curing kibed heels, or as if in the radish we
eat for food there has been found out some aperitive operation. Galen
reports, that a man happened to be cured of a leprosy by drinking wine out
of a vessel into which a viper had crept by chance. In this example we
find the means and a very likely guide and conduct to this experience, as
we also do in those that physicians pretend to have been directed to by
the example of some beasts. But in most of their other experiments wherein
they affirm they have been conducted by fortune, and to have had no other
guide than chance, I find the progress of this information incredible.
Suppose man looking round about him upon the infinite number of things,
plants, animals, metals; I do not know where he would begin his trial; and
though his first fancy should fix him upon an elk's horn, wherein there
must be a very pliant and easy belief, he will yet find himself as
perplexed in his second operation. There are so many maladies and so many
circumstances presented to him, that before he can attain the certainty of
the point to which the perfection of his experience should arrive, human
sense will be at the end of its lesson: and before he can, amongst this
infinity of things, find out what this horn is; amongst so many diseases,
what is epilepsy; the many complexions in a melancholy person; the many
seasons in winter; the many nations in the French; the many ages in age;
the many celestial mutations in the conjunction of Venus and Saturn; the
many parts in man's body, nay, in a finger; and being, in all this,
directed neither by argument, conjecture, example, nor divine
inspirations, but merely by the sole motion of fortune, it must be by a
perfectly artificial, regular and methodical fortune. And after the cure
is performed, how can he assure himself that it was not because the
disease had arrived at its period or an effect of chance? or the operation
of something else that he had eaten, drunk, or touched that day? or by
virtue of his grandmother's prayers? And, moreover, had this experiment
been perfect, how many times was it repeated, and this long bead-roll of
haps, and concurrences strung anew by chance to conclude a certain rule?
And when the rule is concluded, by whom, I pray you? Of so many millions,
there are but three men who take upon them to record their experiments:
must fortune needs just hit one of these? What if another, and a hundred
others, have made contrary experiments? We might, peradventure, have some
light in this, were all the judgments and arguments of men known to us;
but that three witnesses, three doctors, should lord it over all mankind,
is against reason: it were necessary that human nature should have deputed
and chosen them out, and that they were declared our comptrollers by
express procuration:
"TO MADAME DE DURAS.
—[Marguerite de Grammont, widow of Jean de Durfort, Seigneur de
Duras, who was killed near Leghorn, leaving no posterity. Montaigne
seems to have been on terms of considerable intimacy with her, and
to have tendered her some very wholesome and frank advice in regard
to her relations with Henry IV.]—
"MADAME,—The last time you honoured me with a visit, you found me at
work upon this chapter, and as these trifles may one day fall into your
hands, I would also that they testify in how great honour the author will
take any favour you shall please to show them. You will there find the
same air and mien you have observed in his conversation; and though I
could have borrowed some better or more favourable garb than my own, I
would not have done it: for I require nothing more of these writings, but
to present me to your memory such as I naturally am. The same conditions
and faculties you have been pleased to frequent and receive with much more
honour and courtesy than they deserve, I would put together (but without
alteration or change) in one solid body, that may peradventure continue
some years, or some days, after I am gone; where you may find them again
when you shall please to refresh your memory, without putting you to any
greater trouble; neither are they worth it. I desire you should continue
the favour of your friendship to me, by the same qualities by which it was
acquired.
"I am not at all ambitious that any one should love and esteem me more
dead than living. The humour of Tiberius is ridiculous, but yet common,
who was more solicitous to extend his renown to posterity than to render
himself acceptable to men of his own time. If I were one of those to whom
the world could owe commendation, I would give out of it one-half to have
the other in hand; let their praises come quick and crowding about me,
more thick than long, more full than durable; and let them cease, in God's
name, with my own knowledge of them, and when the sweet sound can no
longer pierce my ears. It were an idle humour to essay, now that I am
about to forsake the commerce of men, to offer myself to them by a new
recommendation. I make no account of the goods I could not employ in the
service of my life. Such as I am, I will be elsewhere than in paper: my
art and industry have been ever directed to render myself good for
something; my studies, to teach me to do, and not to write. I have made it
my whole business to frame my life: this has been my trade and my work; I
am less a writer of books than anything else. I have coveted understanding
for the service of my present and real conveniences, and not to lay up a
stock for my posterity. He who has anything of value in him, let him make
it appear in his conduct, in his ordinary discourses, in his courtships,
and his quarrels: in play, in bed, at table, in the management of his
affairs, in his economics. Those whom I see make good books in ill
breeches, should first have mended their breeches, if they would have been
ruled by me. Ask a Spartan whether he had rather be a good orator or a
good soldier: and if I was asked the same question, I would rather choose
to be a good cook, had I not one already to serve me. My God! Madame, how
should I hate such a recommendation of being a clever fellow at writing,
and an ass and an inanity in everything else! Yet I had rather be a fool
both here and there than to have made so ill a choice wherein to employ my
talent. And I am so far from expecting to gain any new reputation by these
follies, that I shall think I come off pretty well if I lose nothing by
them of that little I had before. For besides that this dead and mute
painting will take from my natural being, it has no resemblance to my
better condition, but is much lapsed from my former vigour and
cheerfulness, growing faded and withered: I am towards the bottom of the
barrel, which begins to taste of the lees.
"As to the rest, Madame, I should not have dared to make so bold with the
mysteries of physic, considering the esteem that you and so many others
have of it, had I not had encouragement from their own authors. I think
there are of these among the old Latin writers but two, Pliny and Celsus
if these ever fall into your hands, you will find that they speak much
more rudely of their art than I do; I but pinch it, they cut its throat.
Pliny, amongst other things, twits them with this, that when they are at
the end of their rope, they have a pretty device to save themselves, by
recommending their patients, whom they have teased and tormented with
their drugs and diets to no purpose, some to vows and miracles, others to
the hot baths. (Be not angry, Madame; he speaks not of those in our parts,
which are under the protection of your house, and all Gramontins.) They
have a third way of saving their own credit, of ridding their hands of us
and securing themselves from the reproaches we might cast in their teeth
of our little amendment, when they have had us so long in their hands that
they have not one more invention left wherewith to amuse us, which is to
send us to the better air of some other country. This, Madame, is enough;
I hope you will give me leave to return to my discourse, from which I have
so far digressed, the better to divert you."
It was, I think, Pericles, who being asked how he did: "You may judge,"
says he, "by these," showing some little scrolls of parchment he had tied
about his neck and arms. By which he would infer that he must needs be
very sick when he was reduced to a necessity of having recourse to such
idle and vain fopperies, and of suffering himself to be so equipped. I
dare not promise but that I may one day be so much a fool as to commit my
life and death to the mercy and government of physicians; I may fall into
such a frenzy; I dare not be responsible for my future constancy: but
then, if any one ask me how I do, I may also answer, as Pericles did, "You
may judge by this," shewing my hand clutching six drachms of opium. It
will be a very evident sign of a violent sickness: my judgment will be
very much out of order; if once fear and impatience get such an advantage
over me, it may very well be concluded that there is a dreadful fever in
my mind.
I have taken the pains to plead this cause, which I understand
indifferently, a little to back and support the natural aversion to drugs
and the practice of physic I have derived from my ancestors, to the end it
may not be a mere stupid and inconsiderate aversion, but have a little
more form; and also, that they who shall see me so obstinate in my
resolution against all exhortations and menaces that shall be given me,
when my infirmity shall press hardest upon me, may not think 'tis mere
obstinacy in me; or any one so ill-natured as to judge it to be any motive
of glory: for it would be a strange ambition to seek to gain honour by an
action my gardener or my groom can perform as well as I. Certainly, I have
not a heart so tumorous and windy, that I should exchange so solid a
pleasure as health for an airy and imaginary pleasure: glory, even that of
the Four Sons of Aymon, is too dear bought by a man of my humour, if it
cost him three swinging fits of the stone. Give me health, in God's name!
Such as love physic, may also have good, great, and convincing
considerations; I do not hate opinions contrary to my own: I am so, far
from being angry to see a discrepancy betwixt mine and other men's
judgments, and from rendering myself unfit for the society of men, from
being of another sense and party than mine, that on the contrary (the most
general way that nature has followed being variety, and more in souls than
bodies, forasmuch as they are of a more supple substance, and more
susceptible of forms) I find it much more rare to see our humours and
designs jump and agree. And there never were, in the world, two opinions
alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains: their most universal quality
is diversity.
BOOK THE THIRD
CHAPTER I——OF PROFIT AND HONESTY
No man is free from speaking foolish things; but the worst on't is, when a
man labours to play the fool:
"Nae iste magno conatu magnas nugas dixerit."
["Truly he, with a great effort will shortly say a mighty trifle."
—-Terence, Heaut., act iii., s. 4.]
This does not concern me; mine slip from me with as little care as they
are of little value, and 'tis the better for them. I would presently part
with them for what they are worth, and neither buy nor sell them, but as
they weigh. I speak on paper, as I do to the first person I meet; and that
this is true, observe what follows.
To whom ought not treachery to be hateful, when Tiberius refused it in a
thing of so great importance to him? He had word sent him from Germany
that if he thought fit, they would rid him of Arminius by poison: this was
the most potent enemy the Romans had, who had defeated them so
ignominiously under Varus, and who alone prevented their aggrandisement in
those parts.
He returned answer, "that the people of Rome were wont to revenge
themselves of their enemies by open ways, and with their swords in their
hands, and not clandestinely and by fraud": wherein he quitted the
profitable for the honest. You will tell me that he was a braggadocio; I
believe so too: and 'tis no great miracle in men of his profession. But
the acknowledgment of virtue is not less valid in the mouth of him who
hates it, forasmuch as truth forces it from him, and if he will not
inwardly receive it, he at least puts it on for a decoration.
Our outward and inward structure is full of imperfection; but there is
nothing useless in nature, not even inutility itself; nothing has
insinuated itself into this universe that has not therein some fit and
proper place. Our being is cemented with sickly qualities: ambition,
jealousy, envy, revenge, superstition, and despair have so natural a
possession in us, that its image is discerned in beasts; nay, and cruelty,
so unnatural a vice; for even in the midst of compassion we feel within, I
know not what tart-sweet titillation of ill-natured pleasure in seeing
others suffer; and the children feel it:
"Suave mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis,
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem:"
["It is sweet, when the winds disturb the waters of the vast sea, to
witness from land the peril of other persons."—Lucretius, ii. I.]
of the seeds of which qualities, whoever should divest man, would destroy
the fundamental conditions of human life. Likewise, in all governments
there are necessary offices, not only abject, but vicious also. Vices
there help to make up the seam in our piecing, as poisons are useful for
the conservation of health. If they become excusable because they are of
use to us, and that the common necessity covers their true qualities, we
are to resign this part to the strongest and boldest citizens, who
sacrifice their honour and conscience, as others of old sacrificed their
lives, for the good of their country: we, who are weaker, take upon us
parts both that are more easy and less hazardous. The public weal requires
that men should betray, and lie, and massacre; let us leave this
commission to men who are more obedient and more supple.
In earnest, I have often been troubled to see judges, by fraud and false
hopes of favour or pardon, allure a criminal to confess his fact, and
therein to make use of cozenage and impudence. It would become justice,
and Plato himself, who countenances this manner of proceeding, to furnish
me with other means more suitable to my own liking: this is a malicious
kind of justice, and I look upon it as no less wounded by itself than by
others. I said not long since to some company in discourse, that I should
hardly be drawn to betray my prince for a particular man, who should be
much ashamed to betray any particular man for my prince; and I do not only
hate deceiving myself, but that any one should deceive through me; I will
neither afford matter nor occasion to any such thing.
In the little I have had to mediate betwixt our princes—[Between the
King of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV., and the Duc de Guise. See De Thou,
De Vita Sua, iii. 9.]—in the divisions and subdivisions by which we
are at this time torn to pieces, I have been very careful that they should
neither be deceived in me nor deceive others by me. People of that kind of
trading are very reserved, and pretend to be the most moderate imaginable
and nearest to the opinions of those with whom they have to do; I expose
myself in my stiff opinion, and after a method the most my own; a tender
negotiator, a novice, who had rather fail in the affair than be wanting to
myself. And yet it has been hitherto with so good luck (for fortune has
doubtless the best share in it), that few things have passed from hand to
hand with less suspicion or more favour and privacy. I have a free and
open way that easily insinuates itself and obtains belief with those with
whom I am to deal at the first meeting. Sincerity and pure truth, in what
age soever, pass for current; and besides, the liberty and freedom of a
man who treats without any interest of his own is never hateful or
suspected, and he may very well make use of the answer of Hyperides to the
Athenians, who complained of his blunt way of speaking: "Messieurs, do not
consider whether or no I am free, but whether I am so without a bribe, or
without any advantage to my own affairs." My liberty of speaking has also
easily cleared me from all suspicion of dissembling by its vehemency,
leaving nothing unsaid, how home and bitter soever (so that I could have
said no worse behind their backs), and in that it carried along with it a
manifest show of simplicity and indifference. I pretend to no other fruit
by acting than to act, and add to it no long arguments or propositions;
every action plays its own game, win if it can.
As to the rest, I am not swayed by any passion, either of love or hatred,
towards the great, nor has my will captivated either by particular injury
or obligation. I look upon our kings with an affection simply loyal and
respectful, neither prompted nor restrained by any private interest, and I
love myself for it. Nor does the general and just cause attract me
otherwise than with moderation, and without heat. I am not subject to
those penetrating and close compacts and engagements. Anger and hatred are
beyond the duty of justice; and are passions only useful to those who do
not keep themselves strictly to their duty by simple reason:
"Utatur motu animi, qui uti ratione non potest."
["He may employ his passion, who can make no use of his reason."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 25.]
All legitimate intentions are temperate and equable of themselves; if
otherwise, they degenerate into seditious and unlawful. This is it which
makes me walk everywhere with my head erect, my face and my heart open. In
truth, and I am not afraid to confess it, I should easily, in case of
need, hold up one candle to St. Michael and another to his dragon, like
the old woman; I will follow the right side even to the fire, but
exclusively, if I can. Let Montaigne be overwhelmed in the public ruin if
need be; but if there be no need, I should think myself obliged to fortune
to save me, and I will make use of all the length of line my duty allows
for his preservation. Was it not Atticus who, being of the just but losing
side, preserved himself by his moderation in that universal shipwreck of
the world, amongst so many mutations and diversities? For private man, as
he was, it is more easy; and in such kind of work, I think a man may
justly not be ambitious to offer and insinuate himself. For a man, indeed,
to be wavering and irresolute, to keep his affection unmoved and without
inclination in the troubles of his country and public divisions, I neither
think it handsome nor honest:
"Ea non media, sed nulla via est, velut eventum
exspectantium, quo fortunae consilia sua applicent."
["That is not a middle way, but no way, to await events, by which
they refer their resolutions to fortune."—Livy, xxxii. 21.]
This may be allowed in our neighbours' affairs; and thus Gelo, the tyrant
of Syracuse, suspended his inclination in the war betwixt the Greeks and
barbarians, keeping a resident ambassador with presents at Delphos, to
watch and see which way fortune would incline, and then take fit occasion
to fall in with the victors. It would be a kind of treason to proceed
after this manner in our own domestic affairs, wherein a man must of
necessity be of the one side or the other; though for a man who has no
office or express command to call him out, to sit still I hold it more
excusable (and yet I do not excuse myself upon these terms) than in
foreign expeditions, to which, however, according to our laws, no man is
pressed against his will. And yet even those who wholly engage themselves
in such a war may behave themselves with such temper and moderation, that
the storm may fly over their heads without doing them any harm. Had we not
reason to hope such an issue in the person of the late Bishop of Orleans,
the Sieur de Morvilliers?
[An able negotiator, who, though protected by the Guises, and
strongly supporting them, was yet very far from persecuting the
Reformists. He died 1577.]
And I know, amongst those who behave themselves most bravely in the
present war, some whose manners are so gentle, obliging, and just, that
they will certainly stand firm, whatever event Heaven is preparing for us.
I am of opinion that it properly belongs to kings only to quarrel with
kings; and I laugh at those spirits who, out of lightness of heart, lend
themselves to so disproportioned disputes; for a man has never the more
particular quarrel with a prince, by marching openly and boldly against
him for his own honour and according to his duty; if he does not love such
a person, he does better, he esteems him. And notably the cause of the
laws and of the ancient government of a kingdom, has this always annexed
to it, that even those who, for their own private interest, invade them,
excuse, if they do not honour, the defenders.
But we are not, as we nowadays do, to call peevishness and inward
discontent, that spring from private interest and passion, duty, nor a
treacherous and malicious conduct, courage; they call their proneness to
mischief and violence zeal; 'tis not the cause, but their interest, that
inflames them; they kindle and begin a war, not because it is just, but
because it is war.
A man may very well behave himself commodiously and loyally too amongst
those of the adverse party; carry yourself, if not with the same equal
affection (for that is capable of different measure), at least with an
affection moderate, well tempered, and such as shall not so engage you to
one party, that it may demand all you are able to do for that side,
content yourself with a moderate proportion of their, favour and goodwill;
and to swim in troubled waters without fishing in them.
The other way, of offering a man's self and the utmost service he is able
to do, both to one party and the other, has still less of prudence in it
than conscience. Does not he to whom you betray another, to whom you were
as welcome as to himself, know that you will at another time do as much
for him? He holds you for a villain; and in the meantime hears what you
will say, gathers intelligence from you, and works his own ends out of
your disloyalty; double-dealing men are useful for bringing in, but we
must have a care they carry out as little as is possible.
I say nothing to one party that I may not, upon occasion, say to the
other, with a little alteration of accent; and report nothing but things
either indifferent or known, or what is of common consequence. I cannot
permit myself, for any consideration, to tell them a lie. What is
intrusted to my secrecy, I religiously conceal; but I take as few trusts
of that nature upon me as I can. The secrets of princes are a troublesome
burthen to such as are not interested in them. I very willingly bargain
that they trust me with little, but confidently rely upon what I tell
them. I have ever known more than I desired. One open way of speaking
introduces another open way of speaking, and draws out discoveries, like
wine and love. Philippides, in my opinion, answered King Lysimachus very
discreetly, who, asking him what of his estate he should bestow upon him?
"What you will," said he, "provided it be none of your secrets." I see
every one is displeased if the bottom of the affair be concealed from him
wherein he is employed, or that there be any reservation in the thing; for
my part, I am content to know no more of the business than what they would
have me employ myself in, nor desire that my knowledge should exceed or
restrict what I have to say. If I must serve for an instrument of deceit,
let it be at least with a safe conscience: I will not be reputed a servant
either so affectionate or so loyal as to be fit to betray any one: he who
is unfaithful to himself, is excusably so to his master. But they are
princes who do not accept men by halves, and despise limited and
conditional services: I cannot help it: I frankly tell them how far I can
go; for a slave I should not be, but to reason, and I can hardly submit
even to that. And they also are to blame to exact from a freeman the same
subjection and obligation to their service that they do from him they have
made and bought, or whose fortune particularly and expressly depends upon
theirs. The laws have delivered me from a great anxiety; they have chosen
a side for me, and given me a master; all other superiority and obligation
ought to be relative to that, and cut, off from all other. Yet this is not
to say, that if my affection should otherwise incline me, my hand should
presently obey it; the will and desire are a law to themselves; but
actions must receive commission from the public appointment.
All this proceeding of mine is a little dissonant from the ordinary forms;
it would produce no great effects, nor be of any long duration; innocence
itself could not, in this age of ours, either negotiate without
dissimulation, or traffic without lying; and, indeed, public employments
are by no means for my palate: what my profession requires, I perform
after the most private manner that I can. Being young, I was engaged up to
the ears in business, and it succeeded well; but I disengaged myself in
good time. I have often since avoided meddling in it, rarely accepted, and
never asked it; keeping my back still turned to ambition; but if not like
rowers who so advance backward, yet so, at the same time, that I am less
obliged to my resolution than to my good fortune, that I was not wholly
embarked in it. For there are ways less displeasing to my taste, and more
suitable to my ability, by which, if she had formerly called me to the
public service, and my own advancement towards the world's opinion, I know
I should, in spite of all my own arguments to the contrary, have pursued
them. Such as commonly say, in opposition to what I profess, that what I
call freedom, simplicity, and plainness in my manners, is art and
subtlety, and rather prudence than goodness, industry than nature, good
sense than good luck, do me more honour than disgrace: but, certainly,
they make my subtlety too subtle; and whoever has followed me close, and
pryed narrowly into me, I will give him the victory, if he does not
confess that there is no rule in their school that could match this
natural motion, and maintain an appearance of liberty and licence, so
equal and inflexible, through so many various and crooked paths, and that
all their wit and endeavour could never have led them through. The way of
truth is one and simple; that of particular profit, and the commodity of
affairs a man is entrusted with, is double, unequal, and casual. I have
often seen these counterfeit and artificial liberties practised, but, for
the most part, without success; they relish of AEsop's ass who, in
emulation of the dog, obligingly clapped his two fore-feet upon his
master's shoulders; but as many caresses as the dog had for such an
expression of kindness, twice so many blows with a cudgel had the poor ass
for his compliment:
"Id maxime quemque decet, quod est cujusque suum maxime."
["That best becomes every man which belongs most to him;"
—Cicero, De Offic., i. 31.]
I will not deprive deceit of its due; that were but ill to understand the
world: I know it has often been of great use, and that it maintains and
supplies most men's employment. There are vices that are lawful, as there
are many actions, either good or excusable, that are not lawful in
themselves.
The justice which in itself is natural and universal is otherwise and more
nobly ordered than that other justice which is special, national, and
constrained to the ends of government,
"Veri juris germanaeque justitiae solidam et expressam
effigiem nullam tenemus; umbra et imaginibus utimur;"
["We retain no solid and express portraiture of true right and
germane justice; we have only the shadow and image of it."
—Cicero, De Offic., iii. 17.]
insomuch that the sage Dandamis, hearing the lives of Socrates,
Pythagoras, and Diogenes read, judged them to be great men every way,
excepting that they were too much subjected to the reverence of the laws,
which, to second and authorise, true virtue must abate very much of its
original vigour; many vicious actions are introduced, not only by their
permission, but by their advice:
"Ex senatus consultis plebisquescitis scelera exercentur."
["Crimes are committed by the decrees of the Senate and the
popular assembly."—Seneca, Ep., 95.]
I follow the common phrase that distinguishes betwixt profitable and
honest things, so as to call some natural actions, that are not only
profitable but necessary, dishonest and foul.
But let us proceed in our examples of treachery two pretenders to the
kingdom of Thrace—[Rhescuporis and Cotys. Tacitus, Annal., ii. 65]—
were fallen into dispute about their title; the emperor hindered them from
proceeding to blows: but one of them, under colour of bringing things to a
friendly issue by an interview, having invited his competitor to an
entertainment in his own house, imprisoned and killed him. Justice
required that the Romans should have satisfaction for this offence; but
there was a difficulty in obtaining it by ordinary ways; what, therefore,
they could not do legitimately, without war and without danger, they
resolved to do by treachery; and what they could not honestly do, they did
profitably. For which end, one Pomponius Flaccus was found to be a fit
instrument. This man, by dissembled words and assurances, having drawn the
other into his toils, instead of the honour and favour he had promised
him, sent him bound hand and foot to Rome. Here one traitor betrayed
another, contrary to common custom: for they are full of mistrust, and
'tis hard to overreach them in their own art: witness the sad experience
we have lately had.—[Montaigne here probably refers to the feigned
reconciliation between Catherine de Medici and Henri, Duc de Guise, in
1588.]
Let who will be Pomponius Flaccus, and there are enough who would: for my
part, both my word and my faith are, like all the rest, parts of this
common body: their best effect is the public service; this I take for
presupposed. But should one command me to take charge of the courts of law
and lawsuits, I should make answer, that I understood it not; or the place
of a leader of pioneers, I would say, that I was called to a more
honourable employment; so likewise, he that would employ me to lie,
betray, and forswear myself, though not to assassinate or to poison, for
some notable service, I should say, "If I have robbed or stolen anything
from any man, send me rather to the galleys." For it is permissible in a
man of honour to say, as the Lacedaemonians did,—[Plutarch,
Difference between a Flatterer and a Friend, c. 21.]—having been
defeated by Antipater, when just upon concluding an agreement: "You may
impose as heavy and ruinous taxes upon us as you please, but to command us
to do shameful and dishonest things, you will lose your time, for it is to
no purpose." Every one ought to make the same vow to himself that the
kings of Egypt made their judges solemnly swear, that they would not do
anything contrary to their consciences, though never so much commanded to
it by themselves. In such commissions there is evident mark of ignominy
and condemnation; and he who gives it at the same time accuses you, and
gives it, if you understand it right, for a burden and a punishment. As
much as the public affairs are bettered by your exploit, so much are your
own the worse, and the better you behave yourself in it, 'tis so much the
worse for yourself; and it will be no new thing, nor, peradventure,
without some colour of justice, if the same person ruin you who set you on
work.
If treachery can be in any case excusable, it must be only so when it is
practised to chastise and betray treachery. There are examples enough of
treacheries, not only rejected, but chastised and punished by those in
favour of whom they were undertaken. Who is ignorant of Fabricius sentence
against the physician of Pyrrhus?
But this we also find recorded, that some persons have commanded a thing,
who afterward have severely avenged the execution of it upon him they had
employed, rejecting the reputation of so unbridled an authority, and
disowning so abandoned and base a servitude and obedience. Jaropelk, Duke
of Russia, tampered with a gentleman of Hungary to betray Boleslaus, king
of Poland, either by killing him, or by giving the Russians opportunity to
do him some notable mischief. This worthy went ably to work: he was more
assiduous than before in the service of that king, so that he obtained the
honour to be of his council, and one of the chiefest in his trust. With
these advantages, and taking an opportune occasion of his master's
absence, he betrayed Vislicza, a great and rich city, to the Russians,
which was entirely sacked and burned, and not only all the inhabitants of
both sexes, young and old, put to the sword, but moreover a great number
of neighbouring gentry, whom he had drawn thither to that end. Jaropelk,
his revenge being thus satisfied and his anger appeased, which was not,
indeed, without pretence (for Boleslaus had highly offended him, and after
the same manner), and sated with the fruit of this treachery, coming to
consider the fulness of it, with a sound judgment and clear from passion,
looked upon what had been done with so much horror and remorse that he
caused the eyes to be bored out and the tongue and shameful parts to be
cut off of him who had performed it.
Antigonus persuaded the Argyraspides to betray Eumenes, their general, his
adversary, into his hands; but after he had caused him, so delivered, to
be slain, he would himself be the commissioner of the divine justice for
the punishment of so detestable a crime, and committed them into the hands
of the governor of the province, with express command, by whatever means,
to destroy and bring them all to an evil end, so that of that great number
of men, not so much as one ever returned again into Macedonia: the better
he had been served, the more wickedly he judged it to be, and meriting
greater punishment.
The slave who betrayed the place where his master, P. Sulpicius, lay
concealed, was, according to the promise of Sylla's proscription,
manumitted for his pains; but according to the promise of the public
justice, which was free from any such engagement, he was thrown headlong
from the Tarpeian rock.
Our King Clovis, instead of the arms of gold he had promised them, caused
three of Cararie's servants to be hanged after they had betrayed their
master to him, though he had debauched them to it: he hanged them with the
purse of their reward about their necks; after having satisfied his second
and special faith, he satisfied the general and first.
Mohammed II. having resolved to rid himself of his brother, out of
jealousy of state, according to the practice of the Ottoman family, he
employed one of his officers in the execution, who, pouring a quantity of
water too fast into him, choked him. This being done, to expiate the
murder, he delivered the murderer into the hands of the mother of him he
had so caused to be put to death, for they were only brothers by the
father's side; she, in his presence, ripped up the murderer's bosom, and
with her own hands rifled his breast for his heart, tore it out, and threw
it to the dogs. And even to the worst people it is the sweetest thing
imaginable, having once gained their end by a vicious action, to foist, in
all security, into it some show of virtue and justice, as by way of
compensation and conscientious correction; to which may be added, that
they look upon the ministers of such horrid crimes as upon men who
reproach them with them, and think by their deaths to erase the memory and
testimony of such proceedings.
Or if, perhaps, you are rewarded, not to frustrate the public necessity
for that extreme and desperate remedy, he who does it cannot for all that,
if he be not such himself, but look upon you as an accursed and execrable
fellow, and conclude you a greater traitor than he does, against whom you
are so: for he tries the malignity of your disposition by your own hands,
where he cannot possibly be deceived, you having no object of preceding
hatred to move you to such an act; but he employs you as they do condemned
malefactors in executions of justice, an office as necessary as
dishonourable. Besides the baseness of such commissions, there is,
moreover, a prostitution of conscience. Seeing that the daughter of
Sejanus could not be put to death by the law of Rome, because she was a
virgin, she was, to make it lawful, first ravished by the hangman and then
strangled: not only his hand but his soul is slave to the public
convenience.
When Amurath I., more grievously to punish his subjects who had taken part
in the parricide rebellion of his son, ordained that their nearest kindred
should assist in the execution, I find it very handsome in some of them to
have rather chosen to be unjustly thought guilty of the parricide of
another than to serve justice by a parricide of their own. And where I
have seen, at the taking of some little fort by assault in my time, some
rascals who, to save their own lives, would consent to hang their friends
and companions, I have looked upon them to be of worse condition than
those who were hanged. 'Tis said, that Witold, Prince of Lithuania,
introduced into the nation the practice that the criminal condemned to
death should with his own hand execute the sentence, thinking it strange
that a third person, innocent of the fault, should be made guilty of
homicide.
A prince, when by some urgent circumstance or some impetuous and
unforeseen accident that very much concerns his state, compelled to
forfeit his word and break his faith, or otherwise forced from his
ordinary duty, ought to attribute this necessity to a lash of the divine
rod: vice it is not, for he has given up his own reason to a more
universal and more powerful reason; but certainly 'tis a misfortune: so
that if any one should ask me what remedy? "None," say I, "if he were
really racked between these two extremes: 'sed videat, ne quoeratur
latebya perjurio', he must do it: but if he did it without regret, if it
did not weigh on him to do it, 'tis a sign his conscience is in a sorry
condition." If there be a person to be found of so tender a conscience as
to think no cure whatever worth so important a remedy, I shall like him
never the worse; he could not more excusably or more decently perish. We
cannot do all we would, so that we must often, as the last anchorage,
commit the protection of our vessels to the simple conduct of heaven. To
what more just necessity does he reserve himself? What is less possible
for him to do than what he cannot do but at the expense of his faith and
honour, things that, perhaps, ought to be dearer to him than his own
safety, or even the safety of his people. Though he should, with folded
arms, only call God to his assistance, has he not reason to hope that the
divine goodness will not refuse the favour of an extraordinary arm to just
and pure hands? These are dangerous examples, rare and sickly exceptions
to our natural rules: we must yield to them, but with great moderation and
circumspection: no private utility is of such importance that we should
upon that account strain our consciences to such a degree: the public may
be, when very manifest and of very great concern.
Timoleon made a timely expiation for his strange exploit by the tears he
shed, calling to mind that it was with a fraternal hand that he had slain
the tyrant; and it justly pricked his conscience that he had been
necessitated to purchase the public utility at so great a price as the
violation of his private morality. Even the Senate itself, by his means
delivered from slavery, durst not positively determine of so high a fact,
and divided into two so important and contrary aspects; but the
Syracusans, sending at the same time to the Corinthians to solicit their
protection, and to require of them a captain fit to re-establish their
city in its former dignity and to clear Sicily of several little tyrants
by whom it was oppressed, they deputed Timoleon for that service, with
this cunning declaration; "that according as he should behave himself well
or ill in his employment, their sentence should incline either to favour
the deliverer of his country, or to disfavour the murderer of his
brother." This fantastic conclusion carries along with it some excuse, by
reason of the danger of the example, and the importance of so strange an
action: and they did well to discharge their own judgment of it, and to
refer it to others who were not so much concerned. But Timoleon's
comportment in this expedition soon made his cause more clear, so worthily
and virtuously he demeaned himself upon all occasions; and the good
fortune that accompanied him in the difficulties he had to overcome in
this noble employment, seemed to be strewed in his way by the gods,
favourably conspiring for his justification.
The end of this matter is excusable, if any can be so; but the profit of
the augmentation of the public revenue, that served the Roman Senate for a
pretence to the foul conclusion I am going to relate, is not sufficient to
warrant any such injustice.
Certain cities had redeemed themselves and their liberty by money, by the
order and consent of the Senate, out of the hands of L. Sylla: the
business coming again in question, the Senate condemned them to be taxable
as they were before, and that the money they had disbursed for their
redemption should be lost to them. Civil war often produces such
villainous examples; that we punish private men for confiding in us when
we were public ministers: and the self-same magistrate makes another man
pay the penalty of his change that has nothing to do with it; the
pedagogue whips his scholar for his docility; and the guide beats the
blind man whom he leads by the hand; a horrid image of justice.
There are rules in philosophy that are both false and weak. The example
that is proposed to us for preferring private utility before faith given,
has not weight enough by the circumstances they put to it; robbers have
seized you, and after having made you swear to pay them a certain sum of
money, dismiss you. 'Tis not well done to say, that an honest man can be
quit of his oath without payment, being out of their hands. 'Tis no such
thing: what fear has once made me willing to do, I am obliged to do it
when I am no longer in fear; and though that fear only prevailed with my
tongue without forcing my will, yet am I bound to keep my word. For my
part, when my tongue has sometimes inconsiderately said something that I
did not think, I have made a conscience of disowning it: otherwise, by
degrees, we shall abolish all the right another derives from our promises
and oaths:
"Quasi vero forti viro vis possit adhiberi."
["As though a man of true courage could be compelled."
—Cicero, De Offic., iii. 30.]
And 'tis only lawful, upon the account of private interest, to excuse
breach of promise, when we have promised something that is unlawful and
wicked in itself; for the right of virtue ought to take place of the right
of any obligation of ours.
I have formerly placed Epaminondas in the first rank of excellent men, and
do not repent it. How high did he stretch the consideration of his own
particular duty? he who never killed a man whom he had overcome; who, for
the inestimable benefit of restoring the liberty of his country, made
conscience of killing a tyrant or his accomplices without due form of
justice: and who concluded him to be a wicked man, how good a citizen
soever otherwise, who amongst his enemies in battle spared not his friend
and his guest. This was a soul of a rich composition: he married goodness
and humanity, nay, even the tenderest and most delicate in the whole
school of philosophy, to the roughest and most violent human actions. Was
it nature or art that had intenerated that great courage of his, so full,
so obstinate against pain and death and poverty, to such an extreme degree
of sweetness and compassion? Dreadful in arms and blood, he overran and
subdued a nation invincible by all others but by him alone; and yet in the
heat of an encounter, could turn aside from his friend and guest.
Certainly he was fit to command in war who could so rein himself with the
curb of good nature, in the height and heat of his fury, a fury inflamed
and foaming with blood and slaughter. 'Tis a miracle to be able to mix any
image of justice with such violent actions: and it was only possible for
such a steadfastness of mind as that of Epaminondas therein to mix
sweetness and the facility of the gentlest manners and purest innocence.
And whereas one told the Mamertini that statutes were of no efficacy
against armed men; and another told the tribune of the people that the
time of justice and of war were distinct things; and a third said that the
noise of arms deafened the voice of laws, this man was not precluded from
listening to the laws of civility and pure courtesy. Had he not borrowed
from his enemies the custom of sacrificing to the Muses when he went to
war, that they might by their sweetness and gaiety soften his martial and
rigorous fury? Let us not fear, by the example of so great a master, to
believe that there is something unlawful, even against an enemy, and that
the common concern ought not to require all things of all men, against
private interest:
"Manente memoria, etiam in dissidio publicorum
foederum, privati juris:"
["The memory of private right remaining even amid
public dissensions."—Livy, xxv. 18.]
"Et nulla potentia vires
Praestandi, ne quid peccet amicus, habet;"
["No power on earth can sanction treachery against a friend."
—Ovid, De Ponto, i. 7, 37.]
and that all things are not lawful to an honest man for the service of his
prince, the laws, or the general quarrel:
"Non enim patria praestat omnibus officiis....
et ipsi conducit pios habere cives in parentes."
["The duty to one's country does not supersede all other duties.
The country itself requires that its citizens should act piously
toward their parents."—Cicero, De Offic., iii. 23.]
Tis an instruction proper for the time wherein we live: we need not harden
our courage with these arms of steel; 'tis enough that our shoulders are
inured to them: 'tis enough to dip our pens in ink without dipping them in
blood. If it be grandeur of courage, and the effect of a rare and singular
virtue, to contemn friendship, private obligations, a man's word and
relationship, for the common good and obedience to the magistrate, 'tis
certainly sufficient to excuse us, that 'tis a grandeur that can have no
place in the grandeur of Epaminondas' courage.
I abominate those mad exhortations of this other discomposed soul,
"Dum tela micant, non vos pietatis imago
Ulla, nec adversa conspecti fronte parentes
Commoveant; vultus gladio turbate verendos."
["While swords glitter, let no idea of piety, nor the face even of a
father presented to you, move you: mutilate with your sword those
venerable features "—Lucan, vii. 320.]
Let us deprive wicked, bloody, and treacherous natures of such a pretence
of reason: let us set aside this guilty and extravagant justice, and stick
to more human imitations. How great things can time and example do! In an
encounter of the civil war against Cinna, one of Pompey's soldiers having
unawares killed his brother, who was of the contrary party, he immediately
for shame and sorrow killed himself: and some years after, in another
civil war of the same people, a soldier demanded a reward of his officer
for having killed his brother.
A man but ill proves the honour and beauty of an action by its utility:
and very erroneously concludes that every one is obliged to it, and that
it becomes every one to do it, if it be of utility:
"Omnia non pariter rerum sunt omnibus apta."
["All things are not equally fit for all men."
—Propertius, iii. 9, 7.]
Let us take that which is most necessary and profitable for human society;
it will be marriage; and yet the council of the saints find the contrary
much better, excluding from it the most venerable vocation of man: as we
design those horses for stallions of which we have the least esteem.
CHAPTER II——OF REPENTANCE
Others form man; I only report him: and represent a particular one, ill
fashioned enough, and whom, if I had to model him anew, I should certainly
make something else than what he is but that's past recalling. Now, though
the features of my picture alter and change, 'tis not, however, unlike:
the world eternally turns round; all things therein are incessantly
moving, the earth, the rocks of Caucasus, and the pyramids of Egypt, both
by the public motion and their own. Even constancy itself is no other but
a slower and more languishing motion. I cannot fix my object; 'tis always
tottering and reeling by a natural giddiness; I take it as it is at the
instant I consider it; I do not paint its being, I paint its passage; not
a passing from one age to another, or, as the people say, from seven to
seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute, I must
accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently change, not only by
fortune, but also by intention. 'Tis a counterpart of various and
changeable accidents, and of irresolute imaginations, and, as it falls
out, sometimes contrary: whether it be that I am then another self, or
that I take subjects by other circumstances and considerations: so it is
that I may peradventure contradict myself, but, as Demades said, I never
contradict the truth. Could my soul once take footing, I would not essay
but resolve: but it is always learning and making trial.
I propose a life ordinary and without lustre: 'tis all one; all moral
philosophy may as well be applied to a common and private life, as to one
of richer composition: every man carries the entire form of human
condition. Authors communicate themselves to the people by some especial
and extrinsic mark; I, the first of any, by my universal being; as Michel
de Montaigne, not as a grammarian, a poet, or a lawyer. If the world find
fault that I speak too much of myself, I find fault that they do not so
much as think of themselves. But is it reason that, being so particular in
my way of living, I should pretend to recommend myself to the public
knowledge? And is it also reason that I should produce to the world, where
art and handling have so much credit and authority, crude and simple
effects of nature, and of a weak nature to boot? Is it not to build a wall
without stone or brick, or some such thing, to write books without
learning and without art? The fancies of music are carried on by art; mine
by chance. I have this, at least, according to discipline, that never any
man treated of a subject he better understood and knew than I what I have
undertaken, and that in this I am the most understanding man alive:
secondly, that never any man penetrated farther into his matter, nor
better and more distinctly sifted the parts and sequences of it, nor ever
more exactly and fully arrived at the end he proposed to himself. To
perfect it, I need bring nothing but fidelity to the work; and that is
there, and the most pure and sincere that is anywhere to be found. I speak
truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little
the more, as I grow older; for, methinks, custom allows to age more
liberty of prating, and more indiscretion of talking of a man's self. That
cannot fall out here, which I often see elsewhere, that the work and the
artificer contradict one another: "Can a man of such sober conversation
have written so foolish a book?" Or "Do so learned writings proceed from a
man of so weak conversation?" He who talks at a very ordinary rate, and
writes rare matter, 'tis to say that his capacity is borrowed and not his
own. A learned man is not learned in all things: but a sufficient man is
sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself; here my book and I go
hand in hand together. Elsewhere men may commend or censure the work,
without reference to the workman; here they cannot: who touches the one,
touches the other. He who shall judge of it without knowing him, will more
wrong himself than me; he who does know him, gives me all the satisfaction
I desire. I shall be happy beyond my desert, if I can obtain only thus
much from the public approbation, as to make men of understanding perceive
that I was capable of profiting by knowledge, had I had it; and that I
deserved to have been assisted by a better memory.
Be pleased here to excuse what I often repeat, that I very rarely repent,
and that my conscience is satisfied with itself, not as the conscience of
an angel, or that of a horse, but as the conscience of a man; always
adding this clause, not one of ceremony, but a true and real submission,
that I speak inquiring and doubting, purely and simply referring myself to
the common and accepted beliefs for the resolution. I do not teach; I only
relate.
There is no vice that is absolutely a vice which does not offend, and that
a sound judgment does not accuse; for there is in it so manifest a
deformity and inconvenience, that peradventure they are in the right who
say that it is chiefly begotten by stupidity and ignorance: so hard is it
to imagine that a man can know without abhorring it. Malice sucks up the
greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself. Vice leaves repentance
in the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and
lacerating itself: for reason effaces all other grief and sorrows, but it
begets that of repentance, which is so much the more grievous, by reason
it springs within, as the cold and heat of fevers are more sharp than
those that only strike upon the outward skin. I hold for vices (but every
one according to its proportion), not only those which reason and nature
condemn, but those also which the opinion of men, though false and
erroneous, have made such, if authorised by law and custom.
There is likewise no virtue which does not rejoice a well-descended
nature: there is a kind of, I know not what, congratulation in well-doing
that gives us an inward satisfaction, and a generous boldness that
accompanies a good conscience: a soul daringly vicious may, peradventure,
arm itself with security, but it cannot supply itself with this
complacency and satisfaction. 'Tis no little satisfaction to feel a man's
self preserved from the contagion of so depraved an age, and to say to
himself: "Whoever could penetrate into my soul would not there find me
guilty either of the affliction or ruin of any one, or of revenge or envy,
or any offence against the public laws, or of innovation or disturbance,
or failure of my word; and though the licence of the time permits and
teaches every one so to do, yet have I not plundered any Frenchman's
goods, or taken his money, and have lived upon what is my own, in war as
well as in peace; neither have I set any man to work without paying him
his hire." These testimonies of a good conscience please, and this natural
rejoicing is very beneficial to us, and the only reward that we can never
fail of.
To ground the recompense of virtuous actions upon the approbation of
others is too uncertain and unsafe a foundation, especially in so corrupt
and ignorant an age as this, wherein the good opinion of the vulgar is
injurious: upon whom do you rely to show you what is recommendable? God
defend me from being an honest man, according to the descriptions of
honour I daily see every one make of himself:
"Quae fuerant vitia, mores sunt."
["What before had been vices are now manners."—Seneca, Ep., 39.]
Some of my friends have at times schooled and scolded me with great
sincerity and plainness, either of their own voluntary motion, or by me
entreated to it as to an office, which to a well-composed soul surpasses
not only in utility, but in kindness, all other offices of friendship: I
have always received them with the most open arms, both of courtesy and
acknowledgment; but to say the truth, I have often found so much false
measure, both in their reproaches and praises, that I had not done much
amiss, rather to have done ill, than to have done well according to their
notions. We, who live private lives, not exposed to any other view than
our own, ought chiefly to have settled a pattern within ourselves by which
to try our actions: and according to that, sometimes to encourage and
sometimes to correct ourselves. I have my laws and my judicature to judge
of myself, and apply myself more to these than to any other rules: I do,
indeed, restrain my actions according to others; but extend them not by
any other rule than my own. You yourself only know if you are cowardly and
cruel, loyal and devout: others see you not, and only guess at you by
uncertain conjectures, and do not so much see your nature as your art;
rely not therefore upon their opinions, but stick to your own:
"Tuo tibi judicio est utendum.... Virtutis et vitiorum grave ipsius
conscientiae pondus est: qua sublata, jacent omnia."
["Thou must employ thy own judgment upon thyself; great is the
weight of thy own conscience in the discovery of virtues and vices:
which taken away, all things are lost."
—Cicero, De Nat. Dei, iii. 35; Tusc. Quaes., i. 25.]
But the saying that repentance immediately follows the sin seems not to
have respect to sin in its high estate, which is lodged in us as in its
own proper habitation. One may disown and retract the vices that surprise
us, and to which we are hurried by passions; but those which by a long
habit are rooted in a strong and vigorous will are not subject to
contradiction. Repentance is no other but a recanting of the will and an
opposition to our fancies, which lead us which way they please. It makes
this person disown his former virtue and continency:
"Quae mens est hodie, cur eadem non puero fait?
Vel cur his animis incolumes non redeunt genae?"
["What my mind is, why was it not the same, when I was a boy? or
why do not the cheeks return to these feelings?"
—Horace, Od., v. 10, 7.]
'Tis an exact life that maintains itself in due order in private. Every
one may juggle his part, and represent an honest man upon the stage: but
within, and in his own bosom, where all may do as they list, where all is
concealed, to be regular, there's the point. The next degree is to be so
in his house, and in his ordinary actions, for which we are accountable to
none, and where there is no study nor artifice. And therefore Bias,
setting forth the excellent state of a private family, says: "of which a
the master is the same within, by his own virtue and temper, that he is
abroad, for fear of the laws and report of men." And it was a worthy
saying of Julius Drusus, to the masons who offered him, for three thousand
crowns, to put his house in such a posture that his neighbours should no
longer have the same inspection into it as before; "I will give you," said
he, "six thousand to make it so that everybody may see into every room."
'Tis honourably recorded of Agesilaus, that he used in his journeys always
to take up his lodgings in temples, to the end that the people and the
gods themselves might pry into his most private actions. Such a one has
been a miracle to the world, in whom neither his wife nor servant has ever
seen anything so much as remarkable; few men have been admired by their
own domestics; no one was ever a prophet, not merely in his own house, but
in his own country, says the experience of histories: —[No man is a
hero to his valet-de-chambre, said Marshal Catinat]—'tis the same in
things of nought, and in this low example the image of a greater is to be
seen. In my country of Gascony, they look upon it as a drollery to see me
in print; the further off I am read from my own home, the better I am
esteemed. I purchase printers in Guienne; elsewhere they purchase me. Upon
this it is that they lay their foundation who conceal themselves present
and living, to obtain a name when they are dead and absent. I had rather
have a great deal less in hand, and do not expose myself to the world upon
any other account than my present share; when I leave it I quit the rest.
See this functionary whom the people escort in state, with wonder and
applause, to his very door; he puts off the pageant with his robe, and
falls so much the lower by how much he was higher exalted: in himself
within, all is tumult and degraded. And though all should be regular
there, it will require a vivid and well-chosen judgment to perceive it in
these low and private actions; to which may be added, that order is a
dull, sombre virtue. To enter a breach, conduct an embassy, govern a
people, are actions of renown; to reprehend, laugh, sell, pay, love, hate,
and gently and justly converse with a man's own family and with himself;
not to relax, not to give a man's self the lie, is more rare and hard, and
less remarkable. By which means, retired lives, whatever is said to the
contrary, undergo duties of as great or greater difficulty than the others
do; and private men, says Aristotle,' serve virtue more painfully and
highly than those in authority do: we prepare ourselves for eminent
occasions, more out of glory than conscience. The shortest way to arrive
at glory, would be to do that for conscience which we do for glory: and
the virtue of Alexander appears to me of much less vigour in his great
theatre, than that of Socrates in his mean and obscure employment. I can
easily conceive Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that
of Socrates, I cannot. Who shall ask the one what he can do, he will
answer, "Subdue the world": and who shall put the same question to the
other, he will say, "Carry on human life conformably with its natural
condition"; a much more general, weighty, and legitimate science than the
other.—[Montaigne added here, "To do for the world that for which he
came into the world," but he afterwards erased these words from the
manuscript.—Naigeon.]
The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking
orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in
mediocrity. As they who judge and try us within, make no great account of
the lustre of our public actions, and see they are only streaks and rays
of clear water springing from a slimy and muddy bottom so, likewise, they
who judge of us by this gallant outward appearance, in like manner
conclude of our internal constitution; and cannot couple common faculties,
and like their own, with the other faculties that astonish them, and are
so far out of their sight. Therefore it is that we give such savage forms
to demons: and who does not give Tamerlane great eyebrows, wide nostrils,
a dreadful visage, and a prodigious stature, according to the imagination
he has conceived by the report of his name? Had any one formerly brought
me to Erasmus, I should hardly have believed but that all was adage and
apothegm he spoke to his man or his hostess. We much more aptly imagine an
artisan upon his close-stool, or upon his wife, than a great president
venerable by his port and sufficiency: we fancy that they, from their high
tribunals, will not abase themselves so much as to live. As vicious souls
are often incited by some foreign impulse to do well, so are virtuous
souls to do ill; they are therefore to be judged by their settled state,
when they are at home, whenever that may be; and, at all events, when they
are nearer repose, and in their native station.
Natural inclinations are much assisted and fortified by education; but
they seldom alter and overcome their institution: a thousand natures of my
time have escaped towards virtue or vice, through a quite contrary
discipline:
"Sic ubi, desuetae silvis, in carcere clausae
Mansuevere ferx, et vultus posuere minaces,
Atque hominem didicere pati, si torrida parvus
Venit in ora cruor, redeunt rabiesque fororque,
Admonitaeque tument gustato sanguine fauces
Fervet, et a trepido vix abstinet ira magistro;"
["So savage beasts, when shut up in cages and grown unaccustomed to
the woods, have become tame, and have laid aside their fierce looks,
and submit to the rule of man; if again a slight taste of blood
comes into their mouths, their rage and fury return, their jaws are
erected by thirst of blood, and their anger scarcely abstains from
their trembling masters."—Lucan, iv. 237.]
these original qualities are not to be rooted out; they may be covered and
concealed. The Latin tongue is as it were natural to me; I understand it
better than French; but I have not been used to speak it, nor hardly to
write it, these forty years. Unless upon extreme and sudden emotions which
I have fallen into twice or thrice in my life, and once seeing my father
in perfect health fall upon me in a swoon, I have always uttered from the
bottom of my heart my first words in Latin; nature deafened, and forcibly
expressing itself, in spite of so long a discontinuation; and this example
is said of many others.
They who in my time have attempted to correct the manners of the world by
new opinions, reform seeming vices; but the essential vices they leave as
they were, if indeed they do not augment them, and augmentation is therein
to be feared; we defer all other well doing upon the account of these
external reformations, of less cost and greater show, and thereby expiate
good cheap, for the other natural, consubstantial, and intestine vices.
Look a little into our experience: there is no man, if he listen to
himself, who does not in himself discover a particular and governing form
of his own, that jostles his education, and wrestles with the tempest of
passions that are contrary to it. For my part, I seldom find myself
agitated with surprises; I always find myself in my place, as heavy and
unwieldy bodies do; if I am not at home, I am always near at hand; my
dissipations do not transport me very far; there is nothing strange or
extreme in the case; and yet I have sound and vigorous turns.
The true condemnation, and which touches the common practice of men, is
that their very retirement itself is full of filth and corruption; the
idea of their reformation composed, their repentance sick and faulty, very
nearly as much as their sin. Some, either from having been linked to vice
by a natural propension or long practice, cannot see its deformity. Others
(of which constitution I am) do indeed feel the weight of vice, but they
counterbalance it with pleasure, or some other occasion; and suffer and
lend themselves to it for a certain price, but viciously and basely. Yet
there might, haply, be imagined so vast a disproportion of measure, where
with justice the pleasure might excuse the sin, as we say of utility; not
only if accidental and out of sin, as in thefts, but in the very exercise
of sin, or in the enjoyment of women, where the temptation is violent,
and, 'tis said, sometimes not to be overcome.
Being the other day at Armaignac, on the estate of a kinsman of mine, I
there saw a peasant who was by every one nicknamed the thief. He thus
related the story of his life: that, being born a beggar, and finding that
he should not be able, so as to be clear of indigence, to get his living
by the sweat of his brow, he resolved to turn thief, and by means of his
strength of body had exercised this trade all the time of his youth in
great security; for he ever made his harvest and vintage in other men's
grounds, but a great way off, and in so great quantities, that it was not
to be imagined one man could have carried away so much in one night upon
his shoulders; and, moreover, he was careful equally to divide and
distribute the mischief he did, that the loss was of less importance to
every particular man. He is now grown old, and rich for a man of his
condition, thanks to his trade, which he openly confesses to every one.
And to make his peace with God, he says, that he is daily ready by good
offices to make satisfaction to the successors of those he has robbed, and
if he do not finish (for to do it all at once he is not able), he will
then leave it in charge to his heirs to perform the rest, proportionably
to the wrong he himself only knows he has done to each. By this
description, true or false, this man looks upon theft as a dishonest
action, and hates it, but less than poverty, and simply repents; but to
the extent he has thus recompensed he repents not. This is not that habit
which incorporates us into vice, and conforms even our understanding
itself to it; nor is it that impetuous whirlwind that by gusts troubles
and blinds our souls, and for the time precipitates us, judgment and all,
into the power of vice.
I customarily do what I do thoroughly and make but one step on't; I have
rarely any movement that hides itself and steals away from my reason, and
that does not proceed in the matter by the consent of all my faculties,
without division or intestine sedition; my judgment is to have all the
blame or all the praise; and the blame it once has, it has always; for
almost from my infancy it has ever been one: the same inclination, the
same turn, the same force; and as to universal opinions, I fixed myself
from my childhood in the place where I resolved to stick. There are some
sins that are impetuous, prompt, and sudden; let us set them aside: but in
these other sins so often repeated, deliberated, and contrived, whether
sins of complexion or sins of profession and vocation, I cannot conceive
that they should have so long been settled in the same resolution, unless
the reason and conscience of him who has them, be constant to have them;
and the repentance he boasts to be inspired with on a sudden, is very hard
for me to imagine or form. I follow not the opinion of the Pythagorean
sect, "that men take up a new soul when they repair to the images of the
gods to receive their oracles," unless he mean that it must needs be
extrinsic, new, and lent for the time; our own showing so little sign of
purification and cleanness, fit for such an office.
They act quite contrary to the stoical precepts, who do indeed command us
to correct the imperfections and vices we know ourselves guilty of, but
forbid us therefore to disturb the repose of our souls: these make us
believe that they have great grief and remorse within: but of amendment,
correction, or interruption, they make nothing appear. It cannot be a cure
if the malady be not wholly discharged; if repentance were laid upon the
scale of the balance, it would weigh down sin. I find no quality so easy
to counterfeit as devotion, if men do not conform their manners and life
to the profession; its essence is abstruse and occult; the appearance easy
and ostentatious.
For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may
condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire
reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but I
ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being
dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular, and
conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better; and
repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power;
sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and
regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no
more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving
those of another to be so. If to conceive and wish a nobler way of acting
than that we have should produce a repentance of our own, we must then
repent us of our most innocent actions, forasmuch as we may well suppose
that in a more excellent nature they would have been carried on with
greater dignity and perfection; and we would that ours were so. When I
reflect upon the deportment of my youth, with that of my old age, I find
that I have commonly behaved myself with equal order in both according to
what I understand: this is all that my resistance can do. I do not flatter
myself; in the same circumstances I should do the same things. It is not a
patch, but rather an universal tincture, with which I am stained. I know
no repentance, superficial, half-way, and ceremonious; it must sting me
all over before I can call it so, and must prick my bowels as deeply and
universally as God sees into me.
As to business, many excellent opportunities have escaped me for want of
good management; and yet my deliberations were sound enough, according to
the occurrences presented to me: 'tis their way to choose always the
easiest and safest course. I find that, in my former resolves, I have
proceeded with discretion, according to my own rule, and according to the
state of the subject proposed, and should do the same a thousand years
hence in like occasions; I do not consider what it is now, but what it was
then, when I deliberated on it: the force of all counsel consists in the
time; occasions and things eternally shift and change. I have in my life
committed some important errors, not for want of good understanding, but
for want of good luck. There are secret, and not to be foreseen, parts in
matters we have in hand, especially in the nature of men; mute conditions,
that make no show, unknown sometimes even to the possessors themselves,
that spring and start up by incidental occasions; if my prudence could not
penetrate into nor foresee them, I blame it not: 'tis commissioned no
further than its own limits; if the event be too hard for me, and take the
side I have refused, there is no remedy; I do not blame myself, I accuse
my fortune, and not my work; this cannot be called repentance.
Phocion, having given the Athenians an advice that was not followed, and
the affair nevertheless succeeding contrary to his opinion, some one said
to him, "Well, Phocion, art thou content that matters go so well?"—"I
am very well content," replied he, "that this has happened so well, but I
do not repent that I counselled the other." When any of my friends address
themselves to me for advice, I give it candidly and clearly, without
sticking, as almost all other men do, at the hazard of the thing's falling
out contrary to my opinion, and that I may be reproached for my counsel; I
am very indifferent as to that, for the fault will be theirs for having
consulted me, and I could not refuse them that office. —[We may give
advice to others, says Rochefoucauld, but we cannot supply them with the
wit to profit by it.]
I, for my own part, can rarely blame any one but myself for my oversights
and misfortunes, for indeed I seldom solicit the advice of another, if not
by honour of ceremony, or excepting where I stand in need of information,
special science, or as to matter of fact. But in things wherein I stand in
need of nothing but judgment, other men's reasons may serve to fortify my
own, but have little power to dissuade me; I hear them all with civility
and patience; but, to my recollection, I never made use of any but my own.
With me, they are but flies and atoms, that confound and distract my will;
I lay no great stress upon my opinions; but I lay as little upon those of
others, and fortune rewards me accordingly: if I receive but little
advice, I also give but little. I am seldom consulted, and still more
seldom believed, and know no concern, either public or private, that has
been mended or bettered by my advice. Even they whom fortune had in some
sort tied to my direction, have more willingly suffered themselves to be
governed by any other counsels than mine. And as a man who am as jealous
of my repose as of my authority, I am better pleased that it should be so;
in leaving me there, they humour what I profess, which is to settle and
wholly contain myself within myself. I take a pleasure in being
uninterested in other men's affairs, and disengaged from being their
warranty, and responsible for what they do.
In all affairs that are past, be it how it will, I have very little
regret; for this imagination puts me out of my pain, that they were so to
fall out they are in the great revolution of the world, and in the chain
of stoical 'causes: your fancy cannot, by wish and imagination, move one
tittle, but that the great current of things will not reverse both the
past and the future.
As to the rest, I abominate that incidental repentance which old age
brings along with it. He, who said of old, that he was obliged to his age
for having weaned him from pleasure, was of another opinion than I am; I
can never think myself beholden to impotency for any good it can do to me:
"Nec tam aversa unquam videbitur ab opere suo providentia,
ut debilitas inter optima inventa sit."
["Nor can Providence ever seem so averse to her own work, that
debility should be found to be amongst the best things."
—Quintilian, Instit. Orat., v. 12.]
Our appetites are rare in old age; a profound satiety seizes us after the
act; in this I see nothing of conscience; chagrin and weakness imprint in
us a drowsy and rheumatic virtue. We must not suffer ourselves to be so
wholly carried away by natural alterations as to suffer our judgments to
be imposed upon by them. Youth and pleasure have not formerly so far
prevailed with me, that I did not well enough discern the face of vice in
pleasure; neither does the distaste that years have brought me, so far
prevail with me now, that I cannot discern pleasure in vice. Now that I am
no more in my flourishing age, I judge as well of these things as if I
were.
["Old though I am, for ladies' love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet."—Chaucer.]
I, who narrowly and strictly examine it, find my reason the very same it
was in my most licentious age, except, perhaps, that 'tis weaker and more
decayed by being grown older; and I find that the pleasure it refuses me
upon the account of my bodily health, it would no more refuse now, in
consideration of the health of my soul, than at any time heretofore. I do
not repute it the more valiant for not being able to combat; my
temptations are so broken and mortified, that they are not worth its
opposition; holding but out my hands, I repel them. Should one present the
old concupiscence before it, I fear it would have less power to resist it
than heretofore; I do not discern that in itself it judges anything
otherwise now than it formerly did, nor that it has acquired any new
light: wherefore, if there be convalescence, 'tis an enchanted one.
Miserable kind of remedy, to owe one's health to one's disease! Tis not
that our misfortune should perform this office, but the good fortune of
our judgment. I am not to be made to do anything by persecutions and
afflictions, but to curse them: that is, for people who cannot be roused
but by a whip. My reason is much more free in prosperity, and much more
distracted, and put to't to digest pains than pleasures: I see best in a
clear sky; health admonishes me more cheerfully, and to better purpose,
than sickness. I did all that in me lay to reform and regulate myself from
pleasures, at a time when I had health and vigour to enjoy them; I should
be ashamed and envious that the misery and misfortune of my old age should
have credit over my good healthful, sprightly, and vigorous years, and
that men should estimate me, not by what I have been, but by what I have
ceased to be.
In my opinion, 'tis the happy living, and not (as Antisthenes' said) the
happy dying, in which human felicity consists. I have not made it my
business to make a monstrous addition of a philosopher's tail to the head
and body of a libertine; nor would I have this wretched remainder give the
lie to the pleasant, sound, and long part of my life: I would present
myself uniformly throughout. Were I to live my life over again, I should
live it just as I have lived it; I neither complain of the past, nor do I
fear the future; and if I am not much deceived, I am the same within that
I am without. 'Tis one main obligation I have to my fortune, that the
succession of my bodily estate has been carried on according to the
natural seasons; I have seen the grass, the blossom, and the fruit, and
now see the withering; happily, however, because naturally. I bear the
infirmities I have the better, because they came not till I had reason to
expect them, and because also they make me with greater pleasure remember
that long felicity of my past life. My wisdom may have been just the same
in both ages, but it was more active, and of better grace whilst young and
sprightly, than now it is when broken, peevish, and uneasy. I repudiate,
then, these casual and painful reformations. God must touch our hearts;
our consciences must amend of themselves, by the aid of our reason, and
not by the decay of our appetites; pleasure is, in itself, neither pale
nor discoloured, to be discerned by dim and decayed eyes.
We ought to love temperance for itself, and because God has commanded that
and chastity; but that which we are reduced to by catarrhs, and for which
I am indebted to the stone, is neither chastity nor temperance; a man
cannot boast that he despises and resists pleasure if he cannot see it, if
he knows not what it is, and cannot discern its graces, its force, and
most alluring beauties; I know both the one and the other, and may
therefore the better say it. But; methinks, our souls in old age are
subject to more troublesome maladies and imperfections than in youth; I
said the same when young and when I was reproached with the want of a
beard; and I say so now that my grey hairs give me some authority. We call
the difficulty of our humours and the disrelish of present things wisdom;
but, in truth, we do not so much forsake vices as we change them, and in
my opinion, for worse. Besides a foolish and feeble pride, an impertinent
prating, froward and insociable humours, superstition, and a ridiculous
desire of riches when we have lost the use of them, I find there more
envy, injustice, and malice. Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than
it does on the face; and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that, in
growing old, do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both
towards his perfection and decay. In observing the wisdom of Socrates, and
many circumstances of his condemnation, I should dare to believe that he
in some sort himself purposely, by collusion, contributed to it, seeing
that, at the age of seventy years, he might fear to suffer the lofty
motions of his mind to be cramped and his wonted lustre obscured. What
strange metamorphoses do I see age every day make in many of my
acquaintance! 'Tis a potent malady, and that naturally and imperceptibly
steals into us; a vast provision of study and great precaution are
required to evade the imperfections it loads us with, or at least to
weaken their progress. I find that, notwithstanding all my entrenchments,
it gets foot by foot upon me: I make the best resistance I can, but I do
not know to what at last it will reduce me. But fall out what will, I am
content the world may know, when I am fallen, from what I fell.
CHAPTER III——OF THREE COMMERCES
We must not rivet ourselves so fast to our humours and complexions: our
chiefest sufficiency is to know how to apply ourselves to divers
employments. 'Tis to be, but not to live, to keep a man's self tied and
bound by necessity to one only course; those are the bravest souls that
have in them the most variety and pliancy. Of this here is an honourable
testimony of the elder Cato:
"Huic versatile ingenium sic pariter ad omnia fuit,
ut natum ad id unum diceres, quodcumque ageret."
["His parts were so pliable to all uses, that one would say he had
been born only to that which he was doing."—Livy, xxxix. 49.]
Had I liberty to set myself forth after my own mode, there is no so
graceful fashion to which I would be so fixed as not to be able to
disengage myself from it; life is an unequal, irregular and multiform
motion. 'Tis not to be a friend to one's self, much less a master 'tis to
be a slave, incessantly to be led by the nose by one's self, and to be so
fixed in one's previous inclinations, that one cannot turn aside nor
writhe one's neck out of the collar. I say this now in this part of my
life, wherein I find I cannot easily disengage myself from the importunity
of my soul, which cannot ordinarily amuse itself but in things of limited
range, nor employ itself otherwise than entirely and with all its force;
upon the lightest subject offered it expands and stretches it to that
degree as therein to employ its utmost power; wherefore it is that
idleness is to me a very painful labour, and very prejudicial to my
health. Most men's minds require foreign matter to exercise and enliven
them; mine has rather need of it to sit still and repose itself,
"Vitia otii negotio discutienda sunt,"
["The vices of sloth are to be shaken off by business."
—Seneca, Ep. 56.]
for its chiefest and hardest study is to study itself. Books are to it a
sort of employment that debauch it from its study. Upon the first thoughts
that possess it, it begins to bustle and make trial of its vigour in all
directions, exercises its power of handling, now making trial of force,
now fortifying, moderating, and ranging itself by the way of grace and
order. It has of its own wherewith to rouse its faculties: nature has
given to it, as to all others, matter enough of its own to make advantage
of, and subjects proper enough where it may either invent or judge.
Meditation is a powerful and full study to such as can effectually taste
and employ themselves; I had rather fashion my soul than furnish it. There
is no employment, either more weak or more strong, than that of
entertaining a man's own thoughts, according as the soul is; the greatest
men make it their whole business,
"Quibus vivere est cogitare;"
["To whom to live is to think."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 28.]
nature has therefore favoured it with this privilege, that there is
nothing we can do so long, nor any action to which we more frequently and
with greater facility addict ourselves. 'Tis the business of the gods,
says Aristotle,' and from which both their beatitude and ours proceed.
The principal use of reading to me is, that by various objects it rouses
my reason, and employs my judgment, not my memory. Few conversations
detain me without force and effort; it is true that beauty and elegance of
speech take as much or more with me than the weight and depth of the
subject; and forasmuch as I am apt to be sleepy in all other
communication, and give but the rind of my attention, it often falls out
that in such poor and pitiful discourses, mere chatter, I either make
drowsy, unmeaning answers, unbecoming a child, and ridiculous, or more
foolishly and rudely still, maintain an obstinate silence. I have a
pensive way that withdraws me into myself, and, with that, a heavy and
childish ignorance of many very ordinary things, by which two qualities I
have earned this, that men may truly relate five or six as ridiculous
tales of me as of any other man whatever.
But, to proceed in my subject, this difficult complexion of mine renders
me very nice in my conversation with men, whom I must cull and pick out
for my purpose; and unfits me for common society. We live and negotiate
with the people; if their conversation be troublesome to us, if we disdain
to apply ourselves to mean and vulgar souls (and the mean and vulgar are
often as regular as those of the finest thread, and all wisdom is folly
that does not accommodate itself to the common ignorance), we must no more
intermeddle either with other men's affairs or our own; for business, both
public and private, has to do with these people. The least forced and most
natural motions of the soul are the most beautiful; the best employments,
those that are least strained. My God! how good an office does wisdom to
those whose desires it limits to their power! that is the most useful
knowledge: "according to what a man can," was the favourite sentence and
motto of Socrates. A motto of great solidity.
We must moderate and adapt our desires to the nearest and easiest to be
acquired things. Is it not a foolish humour of mine to separate myself
from a thousand to whom my fortune has conjoined me, and without whom I
cannot live, and cleave to one or two who are out of my intercourse; or
rather a fantastic desire of a thing I cannot obtain? My gentle and easy
manners, enemies of all sourness and harshness, may easily enough have
secured me from envy and animosities; to be beloved, I do not say, but
never any man gave less occasion of being hated; but the coldness of my
conversation has, reasonably enough, deprived me of the goodwill of many,
who are to be excused if they interpret it in another and worse sense.
I am very capable of contracting and maintaining rare and exquisite
friendships; for by reason that I so greedily seize upon such acquaintance
as fit my liking, I throw myself with such violence upon them that I
hardly fail to stick, and to make an impression where I hit; as I have
often made happy proof. In ordinary friendships I am somewhat cold and
shy, for my motion is not natural, if not with full sail: besides which,
my fortune having in my youth given me a relish for one sole and perfect
friendship, has, in truth, created in me a kind of distaste to others, and
too much imprinted in my fancy that it is a beast of company, as the
ancient said, but not of the herd.—[Plutarch, On the Plurality of
Friends, c. 2.]—And also I have a natural difficulty of
communicating myself by halves, with the modifications and the servile and
jealous prudence required in the conversation of numerous and imperfect
friendships: and we are principally enjoined to these in this age of ours,
when we cannot talk of the world but either with danger or falsehood.
Yet do I very well discern that he who has the conveniences (I mean the
essential conveniences) of life for his end, as I have, ought to fly these
difficulties and delicacy of humour, as much as the plague. I should
commend a soul of several stages, that knows both how to stretch and to
slacken itself; that finds itself at ease in all conditions whither
fortune leads it; that can discourse with a neighbour, of his building,
his hunting, his quarrels; that can chat with a carpenter or a gardener
with pleasure. I envy those who can render themselves familiar with the
meanest of their followers, and talk with them in their own way; and
dislike the advice of Plato, that men should always speak in a magisterial
tone to their servants, whether men or women, without being sometimes
facetious and familiar; for besides the reasons I have given, 'tis inhuman
and unjust to set so great a value upon this pitiful prerogative of
fortune, and the polities wherein less disparity is permitted betwixt
masters and servants seem to me the most equitable. Others study how to
raise and elevate their minds; I, how to humble mine and to bring it low;
'tis only vicious in extension:
"Narras et genus AEaci,
Et pugnata sacro bella sub Ilio
Quo Chium pretio cadum
Mercemur, quis aquam temperet ignibus,
Quo praebente domum, et quota,
Pelignis caream frigoribus, taces."
["You tell us long stories about the race of AEacus, and the battles
fought under sacred Ilium; but what to give for a cask of Chian
wine, who shall prepare the warm bath, and in whose house, and when
I may escape from the Pelignian cold, you do not tell us."
—Horace, Od., iii. 19, 3.]
Thus, as the Lacedaemonian valour stood in need of moderation, and of the
sweet and harmonious sound of flutes to soften it in battle, lest they
should precipitate themselves into temerity and fury, whereas all other
nations commonly make use of harsh and shrill sounds, and of loud and
imperious cries, to incite and heat the soldier's courage to the last
degree; so, methinks, contrary to the usual method, in the practice of our
minds, we have for the most part more need of lead than of wings; of
temperance and composedness than of ardour and agitation. But, above all
things, 'tis in my opinion egregiously to play the fool, to put on the
grave airs of a man of lofty mind amongst those who are nothing of the
sort: ever to speak in print (by the book),
"Favellare in puma di forchetta."
["To talk with the point of a fork," (affectedly)]
You must let yourself down to those with whom you converse; and sometimes
affect ignorance: lay aside power and subtilty in common conversation; to
preserve decorum and order 'tis enough-nay, crawl on the earth, if they so
desire it.
The learned often stumble at this stone; they will always be parading
their pedantic science, and strew their books everywhere; they have, in
these days, so filled the cabinets and ears of the ladies with them, that
if they have lost the substance, they at least retain the words; so as in
all discourse upon all sorts of subjects, how mean and common soever, they
speak and write after a new and learned way,
"Hoc sermone pavent, hoc iram, gaudia, curas,
Hoc cuncta effundunt animi secreta; quid ultra?
Concumbunt docte;"
["In this language do they express their fears, their anger, their
joys, their cares; in this pour out all their secrets; what more?
they lie with their lovers learnedly."—Juvenal, vi. 189.]
and quote Plato and Aquinas in things the first man they meet could
determine as well; the learning that cannot penetrate their souls hangs
still upon the tongue. If people of quality will be persuaded by me, they
shall content themselves with setting out their proper and natural
treasures; they conceal and cover their beauties under others that are
none of theirs: 'tis a great folly to put out their own light and shine by
a borrowed lustre: they are interred and buried under 'de capsula totae"—[Painted
and perfumed from head to foot." (Or:) "as if they were things carefully
deposited in a band-box."—Seneca, Ep. 115]—It is because they
do not sufficiently know themselves or do themselves justice: the world
has nothing fairer than they; 'tis for them to honour the arts, and to
paint painting. What need have they of anything but to live beloved and
honoured? They have and know but too much for this: they need do no more
but rouse and heat a little the faculties they have of their own. When I
see them tampering with rhetoric, law, logic, and other drugs, so improper
and unnecessary for their business, I begin to suspect that the men who
inspire them with such fancies, do it that they may govern them upon that
account; for what other excuse can I contrive? It is enough that they can,
without our instruction, compose the graces of their eyes to gaiety,
severity, sweetness, and season a denial with asperity, suspense, or
favour: they need not another to interpret what we speak for their
service; with this knowledge, they command with a switch, and rule both
the tutors and the schools. But if, nevertheless, it angers them to give
place to us in anything whatever, and will, out of curiosity, have their
share in books, poetry is a diversion proper for them; 'tis a wanton,
subtle, dissembling, and prating art, all pleasure and all show, like
themselves. They may also abstract several commodities from history. In
philosophy, out of the moral part of it, they may select such instructions
as will teach them to judge of our humours and conditions, to defend
themselves from our treacheries, to regulate the ardour of their own
desires, to manage their liberty, to lengthen the pleasures of life, and
gently to bear the inconstancy of a lover, the rudeness of a husband; and
the importunity of years, wrinkles, and the like. This is the utmost of
what I would allow them in the sciences.
There are some particular natures that are private and retired: my natural
way is proper for communication, and apt to lay me open; I am all without
and in sight, born for society and friendship. The solitude that I love
myself and recommend to others, is chiefly no other than to withdraw my
thoughts and affections into myself; to restrain and check, not my steps,
but my own cares and desires, resigning all foreign solicitude, and
mortally avoiding servitude and obligation, and not so much the crowd of
men as the crowd of business. Local solitude, to say the truth, rather
gives me more room and sets me more at large; I more readily throw myself
upon affairs of state and the world when I am alone. At the Louvre and in
the bustle of the court, I fold myself within my own skin; the crowd
thrusts me upon myself; and I never entertain myself so wantonly, with so
much licence, or so especially, as in places of respect and ceremonious
prudence: our follies do not make me laugh, it is our wisdom which does. I
am naturally no enemy to a court, life; I have therein passed a part of my
own, and am of a humour cheerfully to frequent great company, provided it
be by intervals and at my own time: but this softness of judgment whereof
I speak ties me perforce to solitude. Even at home, amidst a numerous
family, and in a house sufficiently frequented, I see people enough, but
rarely such with whom I delight to converse; and I there reserve both for
myself and others an unusual liberty: there is in my house no such thing
as ceremony, ushering, or waiting upon people down to the coach, and such
other troublesome ceremonies as our courtesy enjoins (O the servile and
importunate custom!). Every one there governs himself according to his own
method; let who will speak his thoughts, I sit mute, meditating and shut
up in my closet, without any offence to my guests.
The men whose society and familiarity I covet are those they call sincere
and able men; and the image of these makes me disrelish the rest. It is,
if rightly taken, the rarest of our forms, and a form that we chiefly owe
to nature. The end of this commerce is simply privacy, frequentation and
conference, the exercise of souls, without other fruit. In our discourse,
all subjects are alike to me; let there be neither weight, nor depth, 'tis
all one: there is yet grace and pertinency; all there is tinted with a
mature and constant judgment, and mixed with goodness, freedom, gaiety,
and friendship. 'Tis not only in talking of the affairs of kings and state
that our wits discover their force and beauty, but every whit as much in
private conferences. I understand my men even by their silence and smiles;
and better discover them, perhaps, at table than in the council.
Hippomachus said, very well, "that he could know the good wrestlers by
only seeing them walk in the street." If learning please to step into our
talk, it shall not be rejected, not magisterial, imperious, and
importunate, as-it commonly is, but suffragan and docile itself; we there
only seek to pass away our time; when we have a mind to be instructed and
preached to, we will go seek this in its throne; please let it humble
itself to us for the nonce; for, useful and profitable as it is, I imagine
that, at need, we may manage well enough without it, and do our business
without its assistance. A well-descended soul, and practised in the
conversation of men, will of herself render herself sufficiently
agreeable; art is nothing but the counterpart and register of what such
souls produce.
The conversation also of beautiful and honourable women is for me a sweet
commerce:
"Nam nos quoque oculos eruditos habemus."
["For we also have eyes that are versed in the matter."
—Cicero, Paradox, v. 2.]
If the soul has not therein so much to enjoy, as in the first the bodily
senses, which participate more of this, bring it to a proportion next to,
though, in my opinion, not equal to the other. But 'tis a commerce wherein
a man must stand a little upon his guard, especially those, where the body
can do much, as in me. I there scalded myself in my youth, and suffered
all the torments that poets say befall those who precipitate themselves
into love without order and judgment. It is true that that whipping has
made me wiser since:
"Quicumque Argolica de classe Capharea fugit,
Semper ab Euboicis vela retorquet aquis."
["Whoever of the Grecian fleet has escaped the Capharean rocks, ever
takes care to steer from the Euboean sea."—Ovid, Trist., i. i, 83.]
'Tis folly to fix all a man's thoughts upon it, and to engage in it with a
furious and indiscreet affection; but, on the other hand, to engage there
without love and without inclination, like comedians, to play a common
part, without putting anything to it of his own but words, is indeed to
provide for his safety, but, withal, after as cowardly a manner as he who
should abandon his honour, profit, or pleasure for fear of danger. For it
is certain that from such a practice, they who set it on foot can expect
no fruit that can please or satisfy a noble soul. A man must have, in good
earnest, desired that which he, in good earnest, expects to have a
pleasure in enjoying; I say, though fortune should unjustly favour their
dissimulation; which often falls out, because there is none of the sex,
let her be as ugly as the devil, who does not think herself well worthy to
be beloved, and who does not prefer herself before other women, either for
her youth, the colour of her hair, or her graceful motion (for there are
no more women universally ugly, than there are women universally
beautiful, and such of the Brahmin virgins as have nothing else to
recommend them, the people being assembled by the common crier to that
effect, come out into the market-place to expose their matrimonial parts
to public view, to try if these at least are not of temptation sufficient
to get them a husband). Consequently, there is not one who does not easily
suffer herself to be overcome by the first vow that they make to serve
her. Now from this common and ordinary treachery of the men of the present
day, that must fall out which we already experimentally see, either that
they rally together, and separate themselves by themselves to evade us, or
else form their discipline by the example we give them, play their parts
of the farce as we do ours, and give themselves up to the sport, without
passion, care, or love;
"Neque afl'ectui suo, aut alieno, obnoxiae;"
["Neither amenable to their own affections, nor those of others."
—Tacitus, Annal., xiii. 45.]
believing, according to the persuasion of Lysias in Plato, that they may
with more utility and convenience surrender themselves up to us the less
we love them; where it will fall out, as in comedies, that the people will
have as much pleasure or more than the comedians. For my part, I no more
acknowledge a Venus without a Cupid than, a mother without issue: they are
things that mutully lend and owe their essence to one another. Thus this
cheat recoils upon him who is guilty of it; it does not cost him much,
indeed, but he also gets little or nothing by it. They who have made Venus
a goddess have taken notice that her principal beauty was incorporeal and
spiritual; but the Venus whom these people hunt after is not so much as
human, nor indeed brutal; the very beasts will not accept it so gross and
so earthly; we see that imagination and desire often heat and incite them
before the body does; we see in both the one sex and the other, they have
in the herd choice and particular election in their affections, and that
they have amongst themselves a long commerce of good will. Even those to
whom old age denies the practice of their desire, still tremble, neigh,
and twitter for love; we see them, before the act, full of hope and
ardour, and when the body has played its game, yet please themselves with
the sweet remembrance of the past delight; some that swell with pride
after they have performed, and others who, tired and sated, still by
vociferation express a triumphing joy. He who has nothing to do but only
to discharge his body of a natural necessity, need not trouble others with
so curious preparations: it is not meat for a gross, coarse appetite.
As one who does not desire that men should think me better than I am, I
will here say this as to the errors of my youth. Not only from the danger
of impairing my health (and yet I could not be so careful but that I had
two light mischances), but moreover upon the account of contempt, I have
seldom given myself up to common and mercenary embraces: I would heighten
the pleasure by the difficulty, by desire, and a certain kind of glory,
and was of Tiberius's mind, who in his amours was as much taken with
modesty and birth as any other quality, and of the courtesan Flora's
humour, who never lent herself to less than a dictator, a consul, or a
censor, and took pleasure in the dignity of her lovers. Doubtless pearls
and gold tissue, titles and train, add something to it.
As to the rest, I had a great esteem for wit, provided the person was not
exceptionable; for, to confess the truth, if the one or the other of these
two attractions must of necessity be wanting, I should rather have quitted
that of the understanding, that has its use in better things; but in the
subject of love, a subject principally relating to the senses of seeing
and touching, something may be done without the graces of the mind:
without the graces of the body, nothing. Beauty is the true prerogative of
women, and so peculiarly their own, that ours, though naturally requiring
another sort of feature, is never in its lustre but when youthful and
beardless, a sort of confused image of theirs. 'Tis said that such as
serve the Grand Signior upon the account of beauty, who are an infinite
number, are, at the latest, dismissed at two-and-twenty years of age.
Reason, prudence, and the offices of friendship are better found amongst
men, and therefore it is that they govern the affairs of the world.
These two engagements are fortuitous, and depending upon others; the one
is troublesome by its rarity, the other withers with age, so that they
could never have been sufficient for the business of my life. That of
books, which is the third, is much more certain, and much more our own. It
yields all other advantages to the two first, but has the constancy and
facility of its service for its own share. It goes side by side with me in
my whole course, and everywhere is assisting me: it comforts me in old age
and solitude; it eases me of a troublesome weight of idleness, and
delivers me at all hours from company that I dislike: it blunts the point
of griefs, if they are not extreme, and have not got an entire possession
of my soul. To divert myself from a troublesome fancy, 'tis but to run to
my books; they presently fix me to them and drive the other out of my
thoughts, and do not mutiny at seeing that I have only recourse to them
for want of other more real, natural, and lively commodities; they always
receive me with the same kindness. He may well go a foot, they say, who
leads his horse in his hand; and our James, King of Naples and Sicily,
who, handsome, young and healthful, caused himself to be carried about on
a barrow, extended upon a pitiful mattress in a poor robe of grey cloth,
and a cap of the same, yet attended withal by a royal train, litters, led
horses of all sorts, gentlemen and officers, did yet herein represent a
tender and unsteady authority: "The sick man has not to complain who has
his cure in his sleeve." In the experience and practice of this maxim,
which is a very true one, consists all the benefit I reap from books. As a
matter of fact, I make no more use of them, as it were, than those who
know them not. I enjoy them as misers do their money, in knowing that I
may enjoy them when I please: my mind is satisfied with this right of
possession. I never travel without books, either in peace or war; and yet
sometimes I pass over several days, and sometimes months, without looking
on them. I will read by-and-by, say I to myself, or to-morrow, or when I
please; and in the interim, time steals away without any inconvenience.
For it is not to be imagined to what degree I please myself and rest
content in this consideration, that I have them by me to divert myself
with them when I am so disposed, and to call to mind what a refreshment
they are to my life. 'Tis the best viaticum I have yet found out for this
human journey, and I very much pity those men of understanding who are
unprovided of it. I the rather accept of any other sort of diversion, how
light soever, because this can never fail me.
When at home, I a little more frequent my library, whence I overlook at
once all the concerns of my family. 'Tis situated at the entrance into my
house, and I thence see under me my garden, court, and base-court, and
almost all parts of the building. There I turn over now one book, and then
another, on various subjects, without method or design. One while I
meditate, another I record and dictate, as I walk to and fro, such
whimsies as these I present to you here. 'Tis in the third storey of a
tower, of which the ground-room is my chapel, the second storey a chamber
with a withdrawing-room and closet, where I often lie, to be more retired;
and above is a great wardrobe. This formerly was the most useless part of
the house. I there pass away both most of the days of my life and most of
the hours of those days. In the night I am never there. There is by the
side of it a cabinet handsome enough, with a fireplace very commodiously
contrived, and plenty of light; and were I not more afraid of the trouble
than the expense—the trouble that frights me from all business—I
could very easily adjoin on either side, and on the same floor, a gallery
of an hundred paces long and twelve broad, having found walls already
raised for some other design to the requisite height. Every place of
retirement requires a walk: my thoughts sleep if I sit still: my fancy
does not go by itself, as when my legs move it: and all those who study
without a book are in the same condition. The figure of my study is round,
and there is no more open wall than what is taken up by my table and my
chair, so that the remaining parts of the circle present me a view of all
my books at once, ranged upon five rows of shelves round about me. It has
three noble and free prospects, and is sixteen paces in diameter. I am not
so continually there in winter; for my house is built upon an eminence, as
its name imports, and no part of it is so much exposed to the wind and
weather as this, which pleases me the better, as being of more difficult
access and a little remote, as well upon the account of exercise, as also
being there more retired from the crowd. 'Tis there that I am in my
kingdom, and there I endeavour to make myself an absolute monarch, and to
sequester this one corner from all society, conjugal, filial, and civil;
elsewhere I have but verbal authority only, and of a confused essence.
That man, in my opinion, is very miserable, who has not at home where to
be by himself, where to entertain himself alone, or to conceal himself
from others. Ambition sufficiently plagues her proselytes, by keeping them
always in show, like the statue of a public, square:
"Magna servitus est magna fortuna."
["A great fortune is a great slavery."
—Seneca, De Consol. ad. Polyb., c. 26.]
They cannot so much as be private in the watercloset. I have thought
nothing so severe in the austerity of life that our monks affect, as what
I have observed in some of their communities; namely, by rule, to have a
perpetual society of place, and numerous persons present in every action
whatever; and think it much more supportable to be always alone than never
to be so.
If any one shall tell me that it is to undervalue the Muses to make use of
them only for sport and to pass away the time, I shall tell him, that he
does not know so well as I the value of the sport, the pleasure, and the
pastime; I can hardly forbear to add that all other end is ridiculous. I
live from day to day, and, with reverence be it spoken, I only live for
myself; there all my designs terminate. I studied, when young, for
ostentation; since, to make myself a little wiser; and now for my
diversion, but never for any profit. A vain and prodigal humour I had
after this sort of furniture, not only for the supplying my own need, but,
moreover, for ornament and outward show, I have since quite cured myself
of.
Books have many charming qualities to such as know how to choose them; but
every good has its ill; 'tis a pleasure that is not pure and clean, no
more than others: it has its inconveniences, and great ones too. The soul
indeed is exercised therein; but the body, the care of which I must withal
never neglect, remains in the meantime without action, and grows heavy and
sombre. I know no excess more prejudicial to me, nor more to be avoided in
this my declining age.
These have been my three favourite and particular occupations; I speak not
of those I owe to the world by civil obligation.
CHAPTER IV——OF DIVERSION
I was once employed in consoling a lady truly afflicted. Most of their
mournings are artificial and ceremonious:
"Uberibus semper lacrymis, semperque paratis,
In statione subatque expectantibus illam,
Quo jubeat manare modo."
["A woman has ever a fountain of tears ready to gush up whenever
she requires to make use of them."—Juvenal, vi. 272.]
A man goes the wrong way to work when he opposes this passion; for
opposition does but irritate and make them more obstinate in sorrow; the
evil is exasperated by discussion. We see, in common discourse, that what
I have indifferently let fall from me, if any one takes it up to
controvert it, I justify it with the best arguments I have; and much more
a thing wherein I had a real interest. And besides, in so doing you enter
roughly upon your operation; whereas the first addresses of a physician to
his patient should be gracious, gay, and pleasing; never did any
ill-looking, morose physician do anything to purpose. On the contrary,
then, a man should, at the first approaches, favour their grief and
express some approbation of their sorrow. By this intelligence you obtain
credit to proceed further, and by a facile and insensible gradation fall
into discourses more solid and proper for their cure. I, whose aim it was
principally to gull the company who had their eyes fixed upon me, took it
into my head only to palliate the disease. And indeed I have found by
experience that I have an unlucky hand in persuading. My arguments are
either too sharp and dry, or pressed too roughly, or not home enough.
After I had some time applied myself to her grief, I did not attempt to
cure her by strong and lively reasons, either because I had them not at
hand, or because I thought to do my business better another way; neither
did I make choice of any of those methods of consolation which philosophy
prescribes: that what we complain of is no evil, according to Cleanthes;
that it is a light evil, according to the Peripatetics; that to bemoan
one's self is an action neither commendable nor just, according to
Chrysippus; nor this of Epicurus, more suitable to my way, of shifting the
thoughts from afflicting things to those that are pleasing; nor making a
bundle of all these together, to make use of upon occasion, according to
Cicero; but, gently bending my discourse, and by little and little
digressing, sometimes to subjects nearer, and sometimes more remote from
the purpose, according as she was more intent on what I said, I
imperceptibly led her from that sorrowful thought, and kept her calm and
in good-humour whilst I continued there. I herein made use of diversion.
They who succeeded me in the same service did not, for all that, find any
amendment in her, for I had not gone to the root.
I, peradventure, may elsewhere have glanced upon some sort of public
diversions; and the practice of military ones, which Pericles made use of
in the Peloponnesian war, and a thousand others in other places, to
withdraw the adverse forces from their own countries, is too frequent in
history. It was an ingenious evasion whereby Monseigneur d'Hempricourt
saved both himself and others in the city of Liege, into which the Duke of
Burgundy, who kept it besieged, had made him enter to execute the articles
of their promised surrender; the people, being assembled by night to
consider of it, began to mutiny against the agreement, and several of them
resolved to fall upon the commissioners, whom they had in their power; he,
feeling the gusts of this first popular storm, who were coming to rush
into his lodgings, suddenly sent out to them two of the inhabitants of the
city (of whom he had some with him) with new and milder terms to be
proposed in their council, which he had then and there contrived for his
need: These two diverted the first tempest, carrying back the enraged
rabble to the town-hall to hear and consider of what they had to say. The
deliberation was short; a second storm arose as violent as the other,
whereupon he despatched four new mediators of the same quality to meet
them, protesting that he had now better conditions to present them with,
and such as would give them absolute satisfaction, by which means the
tumult was once more appeased, and the people again turned back to the
conclave. In fine, by this dispensation of amusements, one after another,
diverting their fury and dissipating it in frivolous consultations, he
laid it at last asleep till the day appeared, which was his principal end.
This other story that follows is also of the same category. Atalanta, a
virgin of excelling beauty and of wonderful disposition of body, to
disengage herself from the crowd of a thousand suitors who sought her in
marriage, made this proposition, that she would accept of him for her
husband who should equal her in running, upon condition that they who
failed should lose their lives. There were enough who thought the prize
very well worth the hazard, and who suffered the cruel penalty of the
contract. Hippomenes, about to make trial after the rest, made his address
to the goddess of love, imploring her assistance; and she, granting his
request, gave him three golden apples, and instructed him how to use them.
The race beginning, as Hippomenes perceived his mistress to press hard up
to him; he, as it were by chance, let fall one of these apples; the maid,
taken with the beauty of it, failed not to step out of her way to pick it
up:
"Obstupuit Virgo, nitidique cupidine pomi
Declinat cursus, aurumque volubile tollit."
["The virgin, astonished and attracted by the glittering apple,
stops her career, and seizes the rolling gold."
—Ovid, Metam., x. 666.]
He did the same, when he saw his time, by the second and the third, till
by so diverting her, and making her lose so much ground, he won the race.
When physicians cannot stop a catarrh, they divert and turn it into some
other less dangerous part. And I find also that this is the most ordinary
practice for the diseases of the mind:
"Abducendus etiam nonnunquam animus est ad alia studia,
sollicitudines, curas, negotia: loci denique mutatione,
tanquam aegroti non convalescentes, saepe curandus est."
["The mind is sometimes to be diverted to other studies, thoughts,
cares, business: in fine, by change of place, as where sick persons
do not become convalescent."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 35.]
'Tis to little effect directly to jostle a man's infirmities; we neither
make him sustain nor repel the attack; we only make him decline and evade
it.
This other lesson is too high and too difficult: 'tis for men of the first
form of knowledge purely to insist upon the thing, to consider and judge
it; it appertains to one sole Socrates to meet death with an ordinary
countenance, to grow acquainted with it, and to sport with it; he seeks no
consolation out of the thing itself; dying appears to him a natural and
indifferent accident; 'tis there that he fixes his sight and resolution,
without looking elsewhere. The disciples of Hegesias, who starved
themselves to death, animated thereunto by his fine lectures, and in such
numbers that King Ptolemy ordered he should be forbidden to entertain his
followers with such homicidal doctrines, did not consider death in itself,
neither did they judge of it; it was not there they fixed their thoughts;
they ran towards and aimed at a new being.
The poor wretches whom we see brought upon the scaffold, full of ardent
devotion, and therein, as much as in them lies, employing all their
senses, their ears in hearing the instructions given them, their eyes and
hands lifted up towards heaven, their voices in loud prayers, with a
vehement and continual emotion, do doubtless things very commendable and
proper for such a necessity: we ought to commend them for their devotion,
but not properly for their constancy; they shun the encounter, they divert
their thoughts from the consideration of death, as children are amused
with some toy or other when the surgeon is going to give them a prick with
his lancet. I have seen some, who, casting their eyes upon the dreadful
instruments of death round about, have fainted, and furiously turned their
thoughts another way; such as are to pass a formidable precipice are
advised either to shut their eyes or to look another way.
Subrius Flavius, being by Nero's command to be put to death, and by the
hand of Niger, both of them great captains, when they lead him to the
place appointed for his execution, seeing the grave that Niger had caused
to be hollowed to put him into ill-made: "Neither is this," said he,
turning to the soldiers who guarded him, "according to military
discipline." And to Niger, who exhorted him to keep his head firm: "Do but
thou strike as firmly," said he. And he very well foresaw what would
follow when he said so; for Niger's arm so trembled that he had several
blows at his head before he could cut it off. This man seems to have had
his thoughts rightly fixed upon the subject.
He who dies in a battle, with his sword in his hand, does not then think
of death; he feels or considers it not; the ardour of the fight diverts
his thought another way. A worthy man of my acquaintance, falling as he
was fighting a duel, and feeling himself nailed to the earth by nine or
ten thrusts of his enemy, every one present called to him to think of his
conscience; but he has since told me, that though he very well heard what
they said, it nothing moved him, and that he never thought of anything but
how to disengage and revenge himself. He afterwards killed his man in that
very duel. He who brought to L. Silanus the sentence of death, did him a
very great kindness, in that, having received his answer, that he was well
prepared to die, but not by base hands, he ran upon him with his soldiers
to force him, and as he, unarmed as he was, obstinately defended himself
with his fists and feet, he made him lose his life in the contest, by that
means dissipating and diverting in a sudden and furious rage the painful
apprehension of the lingering death to which he was designed.
We always think of something else; either the hope of a better life
comforts and supports us, or the hope of our children's worth, or the
future glory of our name, or the leaving behind the evils of this life, or
the vengeance that threatens those who are the causes of our death,
administers consolation to us:
"Spero equidem mediis, si quid pia numina possunt,
Supplicia hausurum scopulis, et nomine Dido
Saepe vocaturum . . . .
Audiam; et haec Manes veniet mihi fama sub imos."
["I hope, however, if the pious gods have any power, thou wilt feel
thy punishment amid the rocks, and will call on the name of Dido;
I shall hear, and this report will come to me below."—AEneid, iv.
382, 387.]
Xenophon was sacrificing with a crown upon his head when one came to bring
him news of the death of his son Gryllus, slain in the battle of Mantinea:
at the first surprise of the news, he threw his crown to the ground; but
understanding by the sequel of the narrative the manner of a most brave
and valiant death, he took it up and replaced it upon his head. Epicurus
himself, at his death, consoles himself upon the utility and eternity of
his writings:
"Omnes clari et nobilitati labores fiunt tolerabiles;"
["All labours that are illustrious and famous become supportable."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 26.]
and the same wound, the same fatigue, is not, says Xenophon, so
intolerable to a general of an army as to a common soldier. Epaminondas
took his death much more cheerfully, having been informed that the victory
remained to him:
"Haec sunt solatia, haec fomenta summorum dolorum;"
["These are sedatives and alleviations to the greatest pains."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 23.]
and such like circumstances amuse, divert, and turn our thoughts from the
consideration of the thing in itself. Even the arguments of philosophy are
always edging and glancing on the matter, so as scarce to rub its crust;
the greatest man of the first philosophical school, and superintendent
over all the rest, the great Zeno, forms this syllogism against death: "No
evil is honourable; but death is honourable; therefore death is no evil";
against drunkenness this: "No one commits his secrets to a drunkard; but
every one commits his secrets to a wise man: therefore a wise man is no
drunkard." Is this to hit the white? I love to see that these great and
leading souls cannot rid themselves of our company: perfect men as they
are, they are yet simply men.
Revenge is a sweet passion, of great and natural impression; I discern it
well enough, though I have no manner of experience of it. From this not
long ago to divert a young prince, I did not tell him that he must, to him
that had struck him upon the one cheek, turn the other, upon account of
charity; nor go about to represent to him the tragical events that poetry
attributes to this passion. I left that behind; and I busied myself to
make him relish the beauty of a contrary image: and, by representing to
him what honour, esteem, and goodwill he would acquire by clemency and
good nature, diverted him to ambition. Thus a man is to deal in such
cases.
If your passion of love be too violent, disperse it, say they, and they
say true; for I have often tried it with advantage: break it into several
desires, of which let one be regent, if you will, over the rest; but, lest
it should tyrannise and domineer over you, weaken and protract, by
dividing and diverting it:
"Cum morosa vago singultiet inguine vena,"
["When you are tormented with fierce desire, satisfy it with the
first person that presents herself."—Persius, Sat., vi. 73.]
"Conjicito humorem collectum in corpora quaeque,"
[Lucretius, vi. 1062, to the like effect.]
and provide for it in time, lest it prove troublesome to deal with, when
it has once seized you:
"Si non prima novis conturbes vulnera plagis,
Volgivagaque vagus venere ante recentia cures."
["Unless you cure old wounds by new."-Lucretius, iv. 1064.]
I was once wounded with a vehement displeasure, and withal, more just than
vehement; I might peradventure have lost myself in it, if I had merely
trusted to my own strength. Having need of a powerful diversion to
disengage me, by art and study I became amorous, wherein I was assisted by
my youth: love relieved and rescued me from the evil wherein friendship
had engaged me. 'Tis in everything else the same; a violent imagination
hath seized me: I find it a nearer way to change than to subdue it: I
depute, if not one contrary, yet another at least, in its place. Variation
ever relieves, dissolves, and dissipates.
If I am not able to contend with it, I escape from it; and in avoiding it,
slip out of the way, and make, my doubles; shifting place, business, and
company, I secure myself in the crowd of other thoughts and fancies, where
it loses my trace, and I escape.
After the same manner does nature proceed, by the benefit of inconstancy;
for time, which she has given us for the sovereign physician of our
passions, chiefly works by this, that supplying our imaginations with
other and new affairs, it loosens and dissolves the first apprehension,
how strong soever. A wise man little less sees his friend dying at the end
of five-and-twenty years than on the first year; and according to
Epicurus, no less at all; for he did not attribute any alleviation of
afflictions, either to their foresight or their antiquity; but so many
other thoughts traverse this, that it languishes and tires at last.
Alcibiades, to divert the inclination of common rumours, cut off the ears
and tail of his beautiful dog, and turned him out into the public place,
to the end that, giving the people this occasion to prate, they might let
his other actions alone. I have also seen, for this same end of diverting
the opinions and conjectures of the people and to stop their mouths, some
women conceal their real affections by those that were only counterfeit;
but I have also seen some of them, who in counterfeiting have suffered
themselves to be caught indeed, and who have quitted the true and original
affection for the feigned: and so have learned that they who find their
affections well placed are fools to consent to this disguise: the public
and favourable reception being only reserved for this pretended lover, one
may conclude him a fellow of very little address and less wit, if he does
not in the end put himself into your place, and you into his; this is
precisely to cut out and make up a shoe for another to draw on.
A little thing will turn and divert us, because a little thing holds us.
We do not much consider subjects in gross and singly; they are little and
superficial circumstances, or images that touch us, and the outward
useless rinds that peel off from the subjects themselves:
"Folliculos ut nunc teretes aestate cicadae
Linquunt."
["As husks we find grasshoppers leave behind them in summer."
—Lucretius, v. 801.]
Even Plutarch himself laments his daughter for the little apish tricks of
her infancy.—[Consolation to his Wife on the Death of their
Daughter, c. I.]—The remembrance of a farewell, of the particular
grace of an action, of a last recommendation, afflict us. The sight of
Caesar's robe troubled all Rome, which was more than his death had done.
Even the sound of names ringing in our ears, as "my poor master,"—"my
faithful friend,"—"alas, my dear father," or, "my sweet daughter,"
afflict us. When these repetitions annoy me, and that I examine it a
little nearer, I find 'tis no other but a grammatical and word complaint;
I am only wounded with the word and tone, as the exclamations of preachers
very often work more upon their auditory than their reasons, and as the
pitiful eyes of a beast killed for our service; without my weighing or
penetrating meanwhile into the true and solid essence of my subject:
"His se stimulis dolor ipse lacessit."
["With these incitements grief provokes itself."
—Lucretius, ii. 42.]
These are the foundations of our mourning.
The obstinacy of my stone to all remedies especially those in my bladder,
has sometimes thrown me into so long suppressions of urine for three or
four days together, and so near death, that it had been folly to have
hoped to evade it, and it was much rather to have been desired,
considering the miseries I endure in those cruel fits. Oh, that good
emperor, who caused criminals to be tied that they might die for want of
urination, was a great master in the hangman's' science! Finding myself in
this condition, I considered by how many light causes and objects
imagination nourished in me the regret of life; of what atoms the weight
and difficulty of this dislodging was composed in my soul; to how many
idle and frivolous thoughts we give way in so great an affair; a dog, a
horse, a book, a glass, and what not, were considered in my loss; to
others their ambitious hopes, their money, their knowledge, not less
foolish considerations in my opinion than mine. I look upon death
carelessly when I look upon it universally as the end of life. I insult
over it in gross, but in detail it domineers over me: the tears of a
footman, the disposing of my clothes, the touch of a friendly hand, a
common consolation, discourages and softens me. So do the complaints in
tragedies agitate our souls with grief; and the regrets of Dido and
Ariadne, impassionate even those who believe them not in Virgil and
Catullus. 'Tis a symptom of an obstinate and obdurate nature to be
sensible of no emotion, as 'tis reported for a miracle of Polemon; but
then he did not so much as alter his countenance at the biting of a mad
dog that tore away the calf of his leg; and no wisdom proceeds so far as
to conceive so vivid and entire a cause of sorrow, by judgment that it
does not suffer increase by its presence, when the eyes and ears have
their share; parts that are not to be moved but by vain accidents.
Is it reason that even the arts themselves should make an advantage of our
natural stupidity and weakness? An orator, says rhetoric in the farce of
his pleading, shall be moved with the sound of his own voice and feigned
emotions, and suffer himself to be imposed upon by the passion he
represents; he will imprint in himself a true and real grief, by means of
the part he plays, to transmit it to the judges, who are yet less
concerned than he: as they do who are hired at funerals to assist in the
ceremony of sorrow, who sell their tears and mourning by weight and
measure; for although they act in a borrowed form, nevertheless, by
habituating and settling their countenances to the occasion, 'tis most
certain they often are really affected with an actual sorrow. I was one,
amongst several others of his friends, who conveyed the body of Monsieur
de Grammont to Spissons from the siege of La Fere, where he was slain; I
observed that in all places we passed through we filled the people we met
with lamentations and tears by the mere solemn pomp of our convoy, for the
name of the defunct was not there so much as known. Quintilian reports as
to have seen comedians so deeply engaged in a mourning part, that they
still wept in the retiring room, and who, having taken upon them to stir
up passion in another, have themselves espoused it to that degree as to
find themselves infected with it, not only to tears, but, moreover, with
pallor and the comportment of men really overwhelmed with grief.
In a country near our mountains the women play Priest Martin, for as they
augment the regret of the deceased husband by the remembrance of the good
and agreeable qualities he possessed, they also at the same time make a
register of and publish his imperfections; as if of themselves to enter
into some composition, and divert themselves from compassion to disdain.
Yet with much better grace than we, who, when we lose an acquaintance,
strive to give him new and false praises, and to make him quite another
thing when we have lost sight of him than he appeared to us when we did
see him; as if regret were an instructive thing, or as if tears, by
washing our understandings, cleared them. For my part, I henceforth
renounce all favourable testimonies men would give of me, not because I
shall be worthy of them, but because I shall be dead.
Whoever shall ask a man, "What interest have you in this siege?" —"The
interest of example," he will say, "and of the common obedience to my
prince: I pretend to no profit by it; and for glory, I know how small a
part can affect a private man such as I: I have here neither passion nor
quarrel." And yet you shall see him the next day quite another man,
chafing and red with fury, ranged in battle for the assault; 'tis the
glittering of so much steel, the fire and noise of our cannon and drums,
that have infused this new rigidity and fury into his veins. A frivolous
cause, you will say. How a cause? There needs none to agitate the mind; a
mere whimsy without body and without subject will rule and agitate it. Let
me thing of building castles in Spain, my imagination suggests to me
conveniences and pleasures with which my soul is really tickled and
pleased. How often do we torment our mind with anger or sorrow by such
shadows, and engage ourselves in fantastic passions that impair both soul
and body? What astonished, fleeting, confused grimaces does this raving
put our faces into! what sallies and agitations both of members and voices
does it inspire us with! Does it not seem that this individual man has
false visions amid the crowd of others with whom he has to do, or that he
is possessed with some internal demon that persecutes him? Inquire of
yourself where is the object of this mutation? is there anything but us in
nature which inanity sustains, over which it has power? Cambyses, from
having dreamt that his brother should be one day king of Persia, put him
to death: a beloved brother, and one in whom he had always confided.
Aristodemus, king of the Messenians, killed himself out of a fancy of ill
omen, from I know not what howling of his dogs; and King Midas did as much
upon the account of some foolish dream he had dreamed. 'Tis to prize life
at its just value, to abandon it for a dream. And yet hear the soul
triumph over the miseries and weakness of the body, and that it is exposed
to all attacks and alterations; truly, it has reason so to speak!
"O prima infelix finger ti terra Prometheo!
Ille parum cauti pectoris egit opus
Corpora disponens, mentem non vidit in arte;
Recta animi primum debuit esse via."
["O wretched clay, first formed by Prometheus. In his attempt,
what little wisdom did he shew! In framing bodies, he did not
apply his art to form the mind, which should have been his first
care."—Propertius, iii. 5, 7.]
CHAPTER V——UPON SOME VERSES OF VIRGIL
By how much profitable thoughts are more full and solid, by so much are
they also more cumbersome and heavy: vice, death, poverty, diseases, are
grave and grievous subjects. A man should have his soul instructed in the
means to sustain and to contend with evils, and in the rules of living and
believing well: and often rouse it up, and exercise it in this noble
study; but in an ordinary soul it must be by intervals and with
moderation; it will otherwise grow besotted if continually intent upon it.
I found it necessary, when I was young, to put myself in mind and solicit
myself to keep me to my duty; gaiety and health do not, they say, so well
agree with those grave and serious meditations: I am at present in another
state: the conditions of age but too much put me in mind, urge me to
wisdom, and preach to me. From the excess of sprightliness I am fallen
into that of severity, which is much more troublesome; and for that reason
I now and then suffer myself purposely a little to run into disorder, and
occupy my mind in wanton and youthful thoughts, wherewith it diverts
itself. I am of late but too reserved, too heavy, and too ripe; years
every day read to me lectures of coldness and temperance. This body of
mine avoids disorder and dreads it; 'tis now my body's turn to guide my
mind towards reformation; it governs, in turn, and more rudely and
imperiously than the other; it lets me not an hour alone, sleeping or
waking, but is always preaching to me death, patience, and repentance. I
now defend myself from temperance, as I have formerly done from pleasure;
it draws me too much back, and even to stupidity. Now I will be master of
myself, to all intents and purposes; wisdom has its excesses, and has no
less need of moderation than folly. Therefore, lest I should wither, dry
up, and overcharge myself with prudence, in the intervals and truces my
infirmities allow me:
"Mens intenta suis ne seit usque malis."
["That my mind may not eternally be intent upon my ills."
—Ovid., Trist., iv. i, 4.]
I gently turn aside, and avert my eyes from the stormy and cloudy sky I
have before me, which, thanks be to God, I regard without fear, but not
without meditation and study, and amuse myself in the remembrance of my
better years:
"Animus quo perdidit, optat,
Atque in praeterita se totus imagine versat."
["The mind wishes to have what it has lost, and throws itself
wholly into memories of the past."—Petronius, c. 128.]
Let childhood look forward and age backward; was not this the
signification of Janus' double face? Let years draw me along if they will,
but it shall be backward; as long as my eyes can discern the pleasant
season expired, I shall now and then turn them that way; though it escape
from my blood and veins, I shall not, however, root the image of it out of
my memory:
"Hoc est
Vivere bis, vita posse priore frui."
["'Tis to live twice to be able to enjoy one's former life again."
—Martial, x. 23, 7.]
Plato ordains that old men should be present at the exercises, dances, and
sports of young people, that they may rejoice in others for the activity
and beauty of body which is no more in themselves, and call to mind the
grace and comeliness of that flourishing age; and wills that in these
recreations the honour of the prize should be given to that young man who
has most diverted the company. I was formerly wont to mark cloudy and
gloomy days as extraordinary; these are now my ordinary days; the
extraordinary are the clear and bright; I am ready to leap for joy, as for
an unwonted favour, when nothing happens me. Let me tickle myself, I
cannot force a poor smile from this wretched body of mine; I am only merry
in conceit and in dreaming, by artifice to divert the melancholy of age;
but, in faith, it requires another remedy than a dream. A weak contest of
art against nature. 'Tis great folly to lengthen and anticipate human
incommodities, as every one does; I had rather be a less while old than be
old before I am really so.' I seize on even the least occasions of
pleasure I can meet. I know very well, by hearsay, several sorts of
prudent pleasures, effectually so, and glorious to boot; but opinion has
not power enough over me to give me an appetite to them. I covet not so
much to have them magnanimous, magnificent, and pompous, as I do to have
them sweet, facile, and ready:
"A natura discedimus; populo nos damus,
nullius rei bono auctori."
["We depart from nature and give ourselves to the people, who
understand nothing."—Seneca, Ep., 99.]
My philosophy is in action, in natural and present practice, very little
in fancy: what if I should take pleasure in playing at cob-nut or to whip
a top!
"Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem."
["He did not sacrifice his health even to rumours." Ennius, apud
Cicero, De Offic., i. 24]
Pleasure is a quality of very little ambition; it thinks itself rich
enough of itself without any addition of repute; and is best pleased where
most retired. A young man should be whipped who pretends to a taste in
wine and sauces; there was nothing which, at that age, I less valued or
knew: now I begin to learn; I am very much ashamed on't; but what should I
do? I am more ashamed and vexed at the occasions that put me upon't. 'Tis
for us to dote and trifle away the time, and for young men to stand upon
their reputation and nice punctilios; they are going towards the world and
the world's opinion; we are retiring from it:
"Sibi arma, sibi equos, sibi hastas, sibi clavam, sibi pilam,
sibi natationes, et cursus habeant: nobis senibus, ex lusionibus
multis, talos relinquant et tesseras;"
["Let them reserve to themselves arms, horses, spears, clubs,
tennis, swimming, and races; and of all the sports leave to us old
men cards and dice."—Cicero, De Senec., c. 16.]
the laws themselves send us home. I can do no less in favour of this
wretched condition into which my age has thrown me than furnish it with
toys to play withal, as they do children; and, in truth, we become such.
Both wisdom and folly will have enough to do to support and relieve me by
alternate services in this calamity of age:
"Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem."
["Mingle with counsels a brief interval of folly."
—Horace, Od., iv. 12, 27.]
I accordingly avoid the lightest punctures; and those that formerly would
not have rippled the skin, now pierce me through and through: my habit of
body is now so naturally declining to ill:
"In fragili corpore odiosa omnis offensio est;"
["In a fragile body every shock is obnoxious."
—Cicero, De Senec., c. 18.]
"Mensque pati durum sustinet aegra nihil."
["And the infirm mind can bear no difficult exertion."
—Ovid, De Ponto., i. 5, 18.]
I have ever been very susceptibly tender as to offences: I am much more
tender now, and open throughout.
"Et minimae vires frangere quassa valent."
["And little force suffices to break what was cracked before."
—Ovid, De Tris., iii. 11, 22.]
My judgment restrains me from kicking against and murmuring at the
inconveniences that nature orders me to endure, but it does not take away
my feeling them: I, who have no other thing in my aim but to live and be
merry, would run from one end of the world to the other to seek out one
good year of pleasant and jocund tranquillity. A melancholic and dull
tranquillity may be enough for me, but it benumbs and stupefies me; I am
not contented with it. If there be any person, any knot of good company in
country or city, in France or elsewhere, resident or in motion, who can
like my humour, and whose humours I can like, let them but whistle and I
will run and furnish them with essays in flesh and bone:
Seeing it is the privilege of the mind to rescue itself from old age, I
advise mine to it with all the power I have; let it meanwhile continue
green, and flourish if it can, like mistletoe upon a dead tree. But I fear
'tis a traitor; it has contracted so strict a fraternity with the body
that it leaves me at every turn, to follow that in its need. I wheedle and
deal with it apart in vain; I try in vain to wean it from this
correspondence, to no effect; quote to it Seneca and Catullus, and ladies
and royal masques; if its companion have the stone, it seems to have it
too; even the faculties that are most peculiarly and properly its own
cannot then perform their functions, but manifestly appear stupefied and
asleep; there is no sprightliness in its productions, if there be not at
the same time an equal proportion in the body too.
Our masters are to blame, that in searching out the causes of the
extraordinary emotions of the soul, besides attributing it to a divine
ecstasy, love, martial fierceness, poesy, wine, they have not also
attributed a part to health: a boiling, vigorous, full, and lazy health,
such as formerly the verdure of youth and security, by fits, supplied me
withal; that fire of sprightliness and gaiety darts into the mind flashes
that are lively and bright beyond our natural light, and of all
enthusiasms the most jovial, if not the most extravagant.
It is, then, no wonder if a contrary state stupefy and clog my spirit, and
produce a contrary effect:
"Ad nullum consurgit opus, cum corpore languet;"
["When the mind is languishing, the body is good for nothing."
(Or:) "It rises to no effort; it languishes with the body."
—Pseudo Gallus, i. 125.]
and yet would have me obliged to it for giving, as it wants to make out,
much less consent to this stupidity than is the ordinary case with men of
my age. Let us, at least, whilst we have truce, drive away incommodities
and difficulties from our commerce:
"Dum licet, obducta solvatur fronte senectus:"
["Whilst we can, let us banish old age from the brow."
—Herod., Ep., xiii. 7.]
"Tetrica sunt amcenanda jocularibus."
["Sour things are to be sweetened with those that are pleasant."
—Sidonius Apollin., Ep., i. 9.]
I love a gay and civil wisdom, and fly from all sourness and austerity of
manners, all repellent, mien being suspected by me:
"Tristemque vultus tetrici arrogantiam:"
["The arrogant sadness of a crabbed face."—Auctor Incert.]
"Et habet tristis quoque turba cinaedos."
["And the dull crowd also has its voluptuaries." (Or:)
"An austere countenance sometimes covers a debauched mind."
—Idem.]
I am very much of Plato's opinion, who says that facile or harsh humours
are great indications of the good or ill disposition of the mind. Socrates
had a constant countenance, but serene and smiling, not sourly austere,
like the elder Crassus, whom no one ever saw laugh. Virtue is a pleasant
and gay quality.
I know very well that few will quarrel with the licence of my writings,
who have not more to quarrel with in the licence of their own thoughts: I
conform myself well enough to their inclinations, but I offend their eyes.
'Tis a fine humour to strain the writings of Plato, to wrest his pretended
intercourses with Phaedo, Dion, Stella, and Archeanassa:
"Non pudeat dicere, quod non pudet sentire."
["Let us not be ashamed to speak what we are not ashamed to think."]
I hate a froward and dismal spirit, that slips over all the pleasures of
life and seizes and feeds upon misfortunes; like flies, that cannot stick
to a smooth and polished body, but fix and repose themselves upon craggy
and rough places, and like cupping-glasses, that only suck and attract bad
blood.
As to the rest, I have enjoined myself to dare to say all that I dare to
do; even thoughts that are not to be published, displease me; the worst of
my actions and qualities do not appear to me so evil as I find it evil and
base not to dare to own them. Every one is wary and discreet in
confession, but men ought to be so in action; the boldness of doing ill is
in some sort compensated and restrained by the boldness of confessing it.
Whoever will oblige himself to tell all, should oblige himself to do
nothing that he must be forced to conceal. I wish that this excessive
licence of mine may draw men to freedom, above these timorous and mincing
virtues sprung from our imperfections, and that at the expense of my
immoderation I may reduce them to reason. A man must see and study his
vice to correct it; they who conceal it from others, commonly conceal it
from themselves; and do not think it close enough, if they themselves see
it: they withdraw and disguise it from their own consciences:
"Quare vitia sua nemo confitetur? Quia etiam nunc in
illia est; somnium narrare vigilantis est."
["Why does no man confess his vices? because he is yet in them;
'tis for a waking man to tell his dream."—Seneca, Ep., 53.]
The diseases of the body explain themselves by their increase; we find
that to be the gout which we called a rheum or a strain; the diseases of
the soul, the greater they are, keep, themselves the most obscure; the
most sick are the least sensible; therefore it is that with an unrelenting
hand they most often, in full day, be taken to task, opened, and torn from
the hollow of the heart. As in doing well, so in doing ill, the mere
confession is sometimes satisfaction. Is there any deformity in doing
amiss, that can excuse us from confessing ourselves? It is so great a pain
to me to dissemble, that I evade the trust of another's secrets, wanting
the courage to disavow my knowledge. I can keep silent, but deny I cannot
without the greatest trouble and violence to myself imaginable to be very
secret, a man must be so by nature, not by obligation. 'Tis little worth,
in the service of a prince, to be secret, if a man be not a liar to boot.
If he who asked Thales the Milesian whether he ought solemnly to deny that
he had committed adultery, had applied himself to me, I should have told
him that he ought not to do it; for I look upon lying as a worse fault
than the other. Thales advised him quite contrary, bidding him swear to
shield the greater fault by the less;
[Montaigne's memory here serves him ill, for the question being put
to Thales, his answer was: "But is not perjury worse than
adultery?"—Diogenes Laertius, in vita, i. 36.]
nevertheless, this counsel was not so much an election as a multiplication
of vice. Upon which let us say this in passing, that we deal liberally
with a man of conscience when we propose to him some difficulty in
counterpoise of vice; but when we shut him up betwixt two vices, he is put
to a hard choice as Origen was either to idolatrise or to suffer himself
to be carnally abused by a great Ethiopian slave they brought to him. He
submitted to the first condition, and wrongly, people say. Yet those women
of our times are not much out, according to their error, who protest they
had rather burden their consciences with ten men than one mass.
If it be indiscretion so to publish one's errors, yet there is no great
danger that it pass into example and custom; for Ariston said, that the
winds men most fear are those that lay them open. We must tuck up this
ridiculous rag that hides our manners: they send their consciences to the
stews, and keep a starched countenance: even traitors and assassins
espouse the laws of ceremony, and there fix their duty. So that neither
can injustice complain of incivility, nor malice of indiscretion. 'Tis
pity but a bad man should be a fool to boot, and that outward decency
should palliate his vice: this rough-cast only appertains to a good and
sound wall, that deserves to be preserved and whited.
In favour of the Huguenots, who condemn our auricular and private
confession, I confess myself in public, religiously and purely: St.
Augustin, Origeti, and Hippocrates have published the errors of their
opinions; I, moreover, of my manners. I am greedy of making myself known,
and I care not to how many, provided it be truly; or to say better, I
hunger for nothing; but I mortally hate to be mistaken by those who happen
to learn my name. He who does all things for honour and glory, what can he
think to gain by shewing himself to the world in a vizor, and by
concealing his true being from the people? Praise a humpback for his
stature, he has reason to take it for an affront: if you are a coward, and
men commend you for your valour, is it of you they speak? They take you
for another. I should like him as well who glorifies himself in the
compliments and congees that are made him as if he were master of the
company, when he is one of the least of the train. Archelaus, king of
Macedon, walking along the street, somebody threw water on his head, which
they who were with him said he ought to punish: "Aye, but," said he,
"whoever it was, he did not throw the water upon me, but upon him whom he
took me to be." Socrates being told that people spoke ill of him, "Not at
all," said he, "there is nothing, in me of what they say."
For my part, if any one should recommend me as a good pilot, as being very
modest or very chaste, I should owe him no thanks; and so, whoever should
call me traitor, robber, or drunkard, I should be as little concerned.
They who do not rightly know themselves, may feed themselves with false
approbations; not I, who see myself, and who examine myself even to my
very bowels, and who very well know what is my due. I am content to be
less commended, provided I am better known. I may be reputed a wise man in
such a sort of wisdom as I take to be folly. I am vexed that my Essays
only serve the ladies for a common piece of furniture, and a piece for the
hall; this chapter will make me part of the water-closet. I love to
traffic with them a little in private; public conversation is without
favour and without savour. In farewells, we oftener than not heat our
affections towards the things we take leave of; I take my last leave of
the pleasures of this world: these are our last embraces.
But let us come to my subject: what has the act of generation, so natural,
so necessary, and so just, done to men, to be a thing not to be spoken of
without blushing, and to be excluded from all serious and moderate
discourse? We boldly pronounce kill, rob, betray, and that we dare only to
do betwixt the teeth. Is it to say, the less we expend in words, we may
pay so much the more in thinking? For it is certain that the words least
in use, most seldom written, and best kept in, are the best and most
generally known: no age, no manners, are ignorant of them, no more than
the word bread they imprint themselves in every one without being,
expressed, without voice, and without figure; and the sex that most
practises it is bound to say least of it. 'Tis an act that we have placed
in the franchise of silence, from which to take it is a crime even to
accuse and judge it; neither dare we reprehend it but by periphrasis and
picture. A great favour to a criminal to be so execrable that justice
thinks it unjust to touch and see him; free, and safe by the benefit of
the severity of his condemnation. Is it not here as in matter of books,
that sell better and become more public for being suppressed? For my part,
I will take Aristotle at his word, who says, that "bashfulness is an
ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age." These verses are preached
in the ancient school, a school that I much more adhere to than the
modern: its virtues appear to me to be greater, and the vices less:
"Ceux qui par trop fuyant Venus estrivent,
Faillent autant que ceulx qui trop la suyvent."
["They err as much who too much forbear Venus, as they who are too
frequent in her rites."—A translation by Amyot from Plutarch, A
philosopher should converse with princes.]
"Tu, dea, rerum naturam sola gubernas,
Nec sine to quicquam dias in luminis oras
Exoritur, neque fit laetum, nec amabile quidquam."
["Goddess, still thou alone governest nature, nor without thee
anything comes into light; nothing is pleasant, nothing joyful."
—Lucretius, i. 22.]
I know not who could set Pallas and the Muses at variance with Venus, and
make them cold towards Love; but I see no deities so well met, or that are
more indebted to one another. Who will deprive the Muses of amorous
imaginations, will rob them of the best entertainment they have, and of
the noblest matter of their work: and who will make Love lose the
communication and service of poesy, will disarm him of his best weapons:
by this means they charge the god of familiarity and good will, and the
protecting goddesses of humanity and justice, with the vice of ingratitude
and unthankfulness. I have not been so long cashiered from the state and
service of this god, that my memory is not still perfect in his force and
value:
"Agnosco veteris vestigia flammae;"
["I recognise vestiges of my old flame."—AEneid., iv. 23.]
There are yet some remains of heat and emotion after the fever:
"Nec mihi deficiat calor hic, hiemantibus annis!"
["Nor let this heat of youth fail me in my winter years."]
Withered and drooping as I am, I feel yet some remains of the past ardour:
"Qual l'alto Egeo, per the Aquilone o Noto
Cessi, the tutto prima il volse et scosse,
Non 's accheta ei pero; ma'l suono e'l moto
Ritien del l'onde anco agitate e grosse:"
["As Aegean seas, when storms be calmed again,
That rolled their tumbling waves with troublous blasts,
Do yet of tempests passed some show retain,
And here and there their swelling billows cast."—Fairfax.]
but from what I understand of it, the force and power of this god are more
lively and animated in the picture of poesy than in their own essence:
"Et versus digitos habet:"
["Verse has fingers."—Altered from Juvenal, iv. 196.]
it has I know not what kind of air, more amorous than love itself. Venus
is not so beautiful, naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil:
"Dixerat; et niveis hinc atque hinc Diva lacertis
Cunctantem amplexu molli fovet. Ille repente
Accepit solitam flammam; notusque medullas
Intravit calor, et labefacta per ossa cucurrit
Non secus atque olim tonitru, cum rupta corusco
Ignea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos.
. . . . . . Ea verba loquutus,
Optatos dedit amplexus; placidumque petivit
Conjugis infusus gremio per membra soporem."
["The goddess spoke, and throwing round him her snowy arms in soft
embraces, caresses him hesitating. Suddenly he caught the wonted
flame, and the well-known warmth pierced his marrow, and ran
thrilling through his shaken bones: just as when at times, with
thunder, a stream of fire in lightning flashes shoots across the
skies. Having spoken these words, he gave her the wished embrace,
and in the bosom of his spouse sought placid sleep."
—AEneid, viii. 387 and 392.]
All that I find fault with in considering it is, that he has represented
her a little too passionate for a married Venus; in this discreet kind of
coupling, the appetite is not usually so wanton, but more grave and dull.
Love hates that people should hold of any but itself, and goes but faintly
to work in familiarities derived from any other title, as marriage is:
alliance, dowry, therein sway by reason, as much or more than grace and
beauty. Men do not marry for themselves, let them say what they will; they
marry as much or more for their posterity and family; the custom and
interest of marriage concern our race much more than us; and therefore it
is, that I like to have a match carried on by a third hand rather than a
man's own, and by another man's liking than that of the party himself; and
how much is all this opposite to the conventions of love? And also it is a
kind of incest to employ in this venerable and sacred alliance the heat
and extravagance of amorous licence, as I think I have said elsewhere. A
man, says Aristotle, must approach his wife with prudence and temperance,
lest in dealing too lasciviously with her, the extreme pleasure make her
exceed the bounds of reason. What he says upon the account of conscience,
the physicians say upon the account of health: "that a pleasure
excessively lascivious, voluptuous, and frequent, makes the seed too hot,
and hinders conception": 'tis said, elsewhere, that to a languishing
intercourse, as this naturally is, to supply it with a due and fruitful
heat, a man must do it but seldom and at appreciable intervals:
"Quo rapiat sitiens Venerem, interiusque recondat."
["But let him thirstily snatch the joys of love and enclose them in
his bosom."—Virg., Georg., iii. 137.]
I see no marriages where the conjugal compatibility sooner fails than
those that we contract upon the account of beauty and amorous desires;
there should be more solid and constant foundation, and they should
proceed with greater circumspection; this furious ardour is worth nothing.
They who think they honour marriage by joining love to it, do, methinks,
like those who, to favour virtue, hold that nobility is nothing else but
virtue. They are indeed things that have some relation to one another, but
there is a great deal of difference; we should not so mix their names and
titles; 'tis a wrong to them both so to confound them. Nobility is a brave
quality, and with good reason introduced; but forasmuch as 'tis a quality
depending upon others, and may happen in a vicious person, in himself
nothing, 'tis in estimate infinitely below virtue';
["If nobility be virtue, it loses its quality in all things wherein
not virtuous: and if it be not virtue, 'tis a small matter."
—La Byuyere.]
'tis a virtue, if it be one, that is artificial and apparent, depending
upon time and fortune: various in form, according to the country; living
and mortal; without birth, as the river Nile; genealogical and common; of
succession and similitude; drawn by consequence, and a very weak one.
Knowledge, strength, goodness, beauty, riches, and all other qualities,
fall into communication and commerce, but this is consummated in itself,
and of no use to the service of others. There was proposed to one of our
kings the choice of two candidates for the same command, of whom one was a
gentleman, the other not; he ordered that, without respect to quality,
they should choose him who had the most merit; but where the worth of the
competitors should appear to be entirely equal, they should have respect
to birth: this was justly to give it its rank. A young man unknown, coming
to Antigonus to make suit for his father's command, a valiant man lately
dead: "Friend," said he, "in such preferments as these, I have not so much
regard to the nobility of my soldiers as to their prowess." And, indeed,
it ought not to go as it did with the officers of the kings of Sparta,
trumpeters, fiddlers, cooks, the children of whom always succeeded to
their places, how ignorant soever, and were preferred before the most
experienced in the trade. They of Calicut make of nobles a sort of
superhuman persons: they are interdicted marriage and all but warlike
employments: they may have of concubines their fill, and the women as many
lovers, without being jealous of one another; but 'tis a capital and
irremissible crime to couple with a person of meaner conditions than
themselves; and they think themselves polluted, if they have but touched
one in walking along; and supposing their nobility to be marvellously
interested and injured in it, kill such as only approach a little too near
them: insomuch that the ignoble are obliged to cry out as they walk, like
the gondoliers of Venice, at the turnings of streets for fear of jostling;
and the nobles command them to step aside to what part they please: by
that means these avoid what they repute a perpetual ignominy, those
certain death. No time, no favour of the prince, no office, or virtue, or
riches, can ever prevail to make a plebeian become noble: to which this
custom contributes, that marriages are interdicted betwixt different
trades; the daughter of one of the cordwainers' gild is not permitted to
marry a carpenter; and parents are obliged to train up their children
precisely in their own callings, and not put them to any other trade; by
which means the distinction and continuance of their fortunes are
maintained.
A good marriage, if there be any such, rejects the company and conditions
of love, and tries to represent those of friendship. 'Tis a sweet society
of life, full of constancy, trust, and an infinite number of useful and
solid services and mutual obligations; which any woman who has a right
taste:
"Optato quam junxit lumine taeda"—
["Whom the marriage torch has joined with the desired light."
—Catullus, lxiv. 79.]
would be loth to serve her husband in quality of a mistress. If she be
lodged in his affection as a wife, she is more honourably and securely
placed. When he purports to be in love with another, and works all he can
to obtain his desire, let any one but ask him, on which he had rather a
disgrace should fall, his wife or his mistress, which of their misfortunes
would most afflict him, and to which of them he wishes the most grandeur,
the answer to these questions is out of dispute in a sound marriage.
And that so few are observed to be happy, is a token of its price and
value. If well formed and rightly taken, 'tis the best of all human
societies; we cannot live without it, and yet we do nothing but decry it.
It happens, as with cages, the birds without despair to get in, and those
within despair of getting out. Socrates being asked, whether it was more
commodious to take a wife or not, "Let a man take which course he will,"
said he; "he will repent." 'Tis a contract to which the common saying:
"Homo homini aut deus aut lupus,"
["Man to man is either a god or a wolf."—Erasmus, Adag.]
may very fitly be applied; there must be a concurrence of many qualities
in the construction. It is found nowadays more convenient for simple and
plebeian souls, where delights, curiosity, and idleness do not so much
disturb it; but extravagant humours, such as mine, that hate all sorts of
obligation and restraint, are not so proper for it:
"Et mihi dulce magis resoluto vivere collo."
["And it is sweet to me to live with a loosened neck."
—Pseudo Gallus, i. 61.]
Might I have had my own will, I would not have married Wisdom herself, if
she would have had me. But 'tis to much purpose to evade it; the common
custom and usance of life will have it so. The most of my actions are
guided by example, not by choice, and yet I did not go to it of my own
voluntary motion; I was led and drawn to it by extrinsic occasions; for
not only things that are incommodious in themselves, but also things
however ugly, vicious, and to be avoided, may be rendered acceptable by
some condition or accident; so unsteady and vain is all human resolution!
and I was persuaded to it, when worse prepared and less tractable than I
am at present, that I have tried what it is: and as great a libertine as I
am taken to be, I have in truth more strictly observed the laws of
marriage, than I either promised or expected. 'Tis in vain to kick, when a
man has once put on his fetters: a man must prudently manage his liberty;
but having once submitted to obligation, he must confine himself within
the laws of common duty, at least, do what he can towards it. They who
engage in this contract, with a design to carry themselves in it with
hatred and contempt, do an unjust and inconvenient thing; and the fine
rule that I hear pass from hand to hand amongst the women, as a sacred
oracle:
["Serve thy husband as thy master, but guard thyself against him as
from a traitor."]
which is to say, comport thyself towards him with a dissembled, inimical,
and distrustful reverence (a cry of war and defiance), is equally
injurious and hard. I am too mild for such rugged designs: to say the
truth, I am not arrived to that perfection of ability and refinement of
wit, to confound reason with injustice, and to laugh at all rule and order
that does not please my palate; because I hate superstition, I do not
presently run into the contrary extreme of irreligion.
(If a man hate superstition he cannot love religion. D.W.)
If a man does not always perform his duty, he ought at least to love and
acknowledge it; 'tis treachery to marry without espousing.
Let us proceed.
Our poet represents a marriage happy in a good accord wherein nevertheless
there is not much loyalty. Does he mean, that it is not impossible but a
woman may give the reins to her own passion, and yield to the
importunities of love, and yet reserve some duty toward marriage, and that
it may be hurt, without being totally broken? A serving man may cheat his
master, whom nevertheless he does not hate. Beauty, opportunity, and
destiny (for destiny has also a hand in't),
"Fatum est in partibus illis
Quas sinus abscondit; nam, si tibi sidera cessent,
Nil faciet longi mensura incognita nervi;"
["There is a fatality about the hidden parts: let nature have
endowed you however liberally, 'tis of no use, if your good star
fails you in the nick of time."—Juvenal, ix. 32.]
have attached her to a stranger; though not so wholly, peradventure, but
that she may have some remains of kindness for her husband. They are two
designs, that have several paths leading to them, without being confounded
with one another; a woman may yield to a man she would by no means have
married, not only for the condition of his fortune, but for those also of
his person. Few men have made a wife of a mistress, who have not repented
it. And even in the other world, what an unhappy life does Jupiter lead
with his, whom he had first enjoyed as a mistress! 'Tis, as the proverb
runs, to befoul a basket and then put it upon one's head. I have in my
time, in a good family, seen love shamefully and dishonestly cured by
marriage: the considerations are widely different. We love at once,
without any tie, two things contrary in themselves.
Socrates was wont to say, that the city of Athens pleased, as ladies do
whom men court for love; every one loved to come thither to take a turn,
and pass away his time; but no one liked it so well as to espouse it, that
is, to inhabit there, and to make it his constant residence. I have been
vexed to see husbands hate their wives only because they themselves do
them wrong; we should not, at all events, methinks, love them the less for
our own faults; they should at least, upon the account of repentance and
compassion, be dearer to us.
They are different ends, he says, and yet in some sort compatible;
marriage has utility, justice, honour, and constancy for its share; a
flat, but more universal pleasure: love founds itself wholly upon
pleasure, and, indeed, has it more full, lively, and sharp; a pleasure
inflamed by difficulty; there must be in it sting and smart: 'tis no
longer love, if without darts and fire. The bounty of ladies is too
profuse in marriage, and dulls the point of affection and desire: to evade
which inconvenience, do but observe what pains Lycurgus and Plato take in
their laws.
Women are not to blame at all, when they refuse the rules of life that are
introduced into the world, forasmuch as the men make them without their
help. There is naturally contention and brawling betwixt them and us; and
the strictest friendship we have with them is yet mixed with tumult and
tempest. In the opinion of our author, we deal inconsiderately with them
in this: after we have discovered that they are, without comparison, more
able and ardent in the practice of love than we, and that the old priest
testified as much, who had been one while a man, and then a woman:
"Venus huic erat utraque nota:"
["Both aspects of love were known to him,"
—Tiresias. Ovid. Metam., iii. 323.]
and moreover, that we have learned from their own mouths the proof that,
in several ages, was made by an Emperor and Empress of Rome,—[Proclus.]
—both famous for ability in that affair! for he in one night
deflowered ten Sarmatian virgins who were his captives: but she had
five-and-twenty bouts in one night, changing her man according to her need
and liking;
"Adhuc ardens rigidae tentigine vulvae
Et lassata viris, nondum satiata, recessit:"
["Ardent still, she retired, fatigued, but not satisfied."
—Juvenal, vi. 128.]
and that upon the dispute which happened in Cataluna, wherein a wife
complaining of her husband's too frequent addresses to her, not so much,
as I conceive, that she was incommodated by it (for I believe no miracles
out of religion) as under this pretence, to curtail and curb in this,
which is the fundamental act of marriage, the authority of husbands over
their wives, and to shew that their frowardness and malignity go beyond
the nuptial bed, and spurn under foot even the graces and sweets of Venus;
the husband, a man truly brutish and unnatural, replied, that even on
fasting days he could not subsist with less than ten courses: whereupon
came out that notable sentence of the Queen of Arragon, by which, after
mature deliberation of her council, this good queen, to give a rule and
example to all succeeding ages of the moderation required in a just
marriage, set down six times a day as a legitimate and necessary stint;
surrendering and quitting a great deal of the needs and desires of her
sex, that she might, she said, establish an easy, and consequently, a
permanent and immutable rule. Hereupon the doctors cry out: what must the
female appetite and concupiscence be, when their reason, their reformation
and virtue, are taxed at such a rate, considering the divers judgments of
our appetites? for Solon, master of the law school, taxes us but at three
a month,—that men may not fail in point of conjugal frequentation:
after having, I say, believed and preached all this, we go and enjoin them
continency for their particular share, and upon the last and extreme
penalties.
There is no passion so hard to contend with as this, which we would have
them only resist, not simply as an ordinary vice, but as an execrable
abomination, worse than irreligion and parricide; whilst we, at the same
time, go to't without offence or reproach. Even those amongst us who have
tried the experiment have sufficiently confessed what difficulty, or
rather impossibility, they have found by material remedies to subdue,
weaken, and cool the body. We, on the contrary, would have them at once
sound, vigorous plump, high-fed, and chaste; that is to say, both hot and
cold; for the marriage, which we tell them is to keep them from burning,
is but small refreshment to them, as we order the matter. If they take one
whose vigorous age is yet boiling, he will be proud to make it known
elsewhere;
"Sit tandem pudor; aut eamus in jus;
Multis mentula millibus redempta,
Non est haec tua, Basse; vendidisti;"
["Let there be some shame, or we shall go to law: your vigour,
bought by your wife with many thousands, is no longer yours: thou
hast sold it.—"Martial, xii. 90.]
Polemon the philosopher was justly by his wife brought before the judge
for sowing in a barren field the seed that was due to one that was
fruitful: if, on the other hand, they take a decayed fellow, they are in a
worse condition in marriage than either maids or widows. We think them
well provided for, because they have a man to lie with, as the Romans
concluded Clodia Laeta, a vestal nun, violated, because Caligula had
approached her, though it was declared he did no more but approach her:
but, on the contrary, we by that increase their necessity, forasmuch as
the touch and company of any man whatever rouses their desires, that in
solitude would be more quiet. And to the end, 'tis likely, that they might
render their chastity more meritorious by this circumstance and
consideration, Boleslas and Kinge his wife, kings of Poland, vowed it by
mutual consent, being in bed together, on their very wedding day, and kept
their vow in spite of all matrimonial conveniences.
We train them up from their infancy to the traffic of love; their grace,
dressing, knowledge, language, and whole instruction tend that way: their
governesses imprint nothing in them but the idea of love, if for nothing
else but by continually representing it to them, to give them a distaste
for it. My daughter, the only child I have, is now of an age that forward
young women are allowed to be married at; she is of a slow, thin, and
tender complexion, and has accordingly been brought up by her mother after
a retired and particular manner, so that she but now begins to be weaned
from her childish simplicity. She was reading before me in a French book
where the word 'fouteau', the name of a tree very well known, occurred;—[The
beech-tree; the name resembles in sound an obscene French word.]—the
woman, to whose conduct she is committed, stopped her short a little
roughly, and made her skip over that dangerous step. I let her alone, not
to trouble their rules, for I never concern myself in that sort of
government; feminine polity has a mysterious procedure; we must leave it
to them; but if I am not mistaken the commerce of twenty lacquies could
not, in six months' time, have so imprinted in her memory the meaning,
usage, and all the consequence of the sound of these wicked syllables, as
this good old woman did by reprimand and interdiction.
"Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos
Matura virgo, et frangitur artibus;
Jam nunc et incestos amores
De tenero, meditatur ungui."
["The maid ripe for marriage delights to learn Ionic dances, and to
imitate those lascivious movements. Nay, already from her infancy
she meditates criminal amours."—Horace, Od., iii. 6, 21., the text
has 'fingitur'.]
Let them but give themselves the rein a little, let them but enter into
liberty of discourse, we are but children to them in this science. Hear
them but describe our pursuits and conversation, they will very well make
you understand that we bring them nothing they have not known before, and
digested without our help.
[This sentence refers to a conversation between some young women in
his immediate neighbourhood, which the Essayist just below informs
us that he overheard, and which was too shocking for him to repeat.
It must have been tolerably bad.—Remark by the editor of a later
edition.]
Is it, perhaps, as Plato says, that they have formerly been debauched
young fellows? I happened one day to be in a place where I could hear some
of their talk without suspicion; I am sorry I cannot repeat it. By'rlady,
said I, we had need go study the phrases of Amadis, and the tales of
Boccaccio and Aretin, to be able to discourse with them: we employ our
time to much purpose indeed. There is neither word, example, nor step they
are not more perfect in than our books; 'tis a discipline that springs
with their blood,
"Et mentem ipsa Venus dedit,"
["Venus herself made them what they are,"
—Virg., Georg., iii. 267.]
which these good instructors, nature, youth, and health, are continually
inspiring them with; they need not learn, they breed it:
"Nec tantum niveo gavisa est ulla columbo,
Compar, vel si quid dicitur improbius,
Oscula mordenti semper decerpere rostro,
Quantum praecipue multivola est mulier."
["No milk-white dove, or if there be a thing more lascivious,
takes so much delight in kissing as woman, wishful for every man
she sees."—Catullus, lxvi. 125.]
So that if the natural violence of their desire were not a little
restrained by fear and honour, which were wisely contrived for them, we
should be all shamed. All the motions in the world resolve into and tend
to this conjunction; 'tis a matter infused throughout: 'tis a centre to
which all things are directed. We yet see the edicts of the old and wise
Rome made for the service of love, and the precepts of Socrates for the
instruction of courtezans:
"Noncon libelli Stoici inter sericos
Jacere pulvillos amant:"
["There are writings of the Stoics which we find lying upon
silken cushions."—Horace, Epod., viii. 15.]
Zeno, amongst his laws, also regulated the motions to be observed in
getting a maidenhead. What was the philosopher Strato's book Of Carnal
Conjunction?—[ Diogenes Laertius, v. 59.]—And what did
Theophrastus treat of in those he intituled, the one 'The Lover', and the
other 'Of Love?' Of what Aristippus in his 'Of Former Delights'? What do
the so long and lively descriptions in Plato of the loves of his time
pretend to? and the book called 'The Lover', of Demetrius Phalereus? and
'Clinias', or the 'Ravished Lover', of Heraclides; and that of
Antisthenes, 'Of Getting Children', or, 'Of Weddings', and the other, 'Of
the Master or the Lover'? And that of Aristo: 'Of Amorous Exercises' What
those of Cleanthes: one, 'Of Love', the other, 'Of the Art of Loving'? The
amorous dialogues of Sphaereus? and the fable of Jupiter and Juno, of
Chrysippus, impudent beyond all toleration? And his fifty so lascivious
epistles? I will let alone the writings of the philosophers of the
Epicurean sect, protectress of voluptuousness. Fifty deities were, in time
past, assigned to this office; and there have been nations where, to
assuage the lust of those who came to their devotion, they kept men and
women in their temples for the worshippers to lie with; and it was an act
of ceremony to do this before they went to prayers:
"Nimirum propter continentiam incontinentia necessaria est;
incendium ignibus extinguitur."
["Forsooth incontinency is necessary for continency's sake; a
conflagration is extinguished by fire."]
In the greatest part of the world, that member of our body was deified; in
the same province, some flayed off the skin to offer and consecrate a
piece; others offered and consecrated their seed. In another, the young
men publicly cut through betwixt the skin and the flesh of that part in
several places, and thrust pieces of wood into the openings as long and
thick as they would receive, and of these pieces of wood afterwards made a
fire as an offering to their gods; and were reputed neither vigorous nor
chaste, if by the force of that cruel pain they seemed to be at all
dismayed. Elsewhere the most sacred magistrate was reverenced and
acknowledged by that member and in several ceremonies the effigy of it was
carried in pomp to the honour of various divinities. The Egyptian ladies,
in their Bacchanalia, each carried one finely-carved of wood about their
necks, as large and heavy as she could so carry it; besides which, the
statue of their god presented one, which in greatness surpassed all the
rest of his body.—[Herodotus, ii. 48, says "nearly as large as the
body itself."]—The married women, near the place where I live, make
of their kerchiefs the figure of one upon their foreheads, to glorify
themselves in the enjoyment they have of it; and coming to be widows, they
throw it behind, and cover it with their headcloths. The most modest
matrons of Rome thought it an honour to offer flowers and garlands to the
god Priapus; and they made the virgins, at the time of their espousals,
sit upon his shameful parts. And I know not whether I have not in my time
seen some air of like devotion. What was the meaning of that ridiculous
piece of the chaussuye of our forefathers, and that is still worn by our
Swiss? ["Cod-pieces worn"—Cotton]—To what end do we make a
show of our implements in figure under our breeches, and often, which is
worse, above their natural size, by falsehood and imposture? I have half a
mind to believe that this sort of vestment was invented in the better and
more conscientious ages, that the world might not be deceived, and that
every one should give a public account of his proportions: the simple
nations wear them yet, and near about the real size. In those days, the
tailor took measure of it, as the shoemaker does now of a man's foot. That
good man, who, when I was young, gelded so many noble and ancient statues
in his great city, that they might not corrupt the sight of the ladies,
according to the advice of this other ancient worthy:
"Flagitii principium est, nudare inter gives corpora,"
["'Tis the beginning of wickedness to expose their persons among the
citizens"—Ennius, ap. Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 33.]
should have called to mind, that, as in the mysteries of the Bona Dea, all
masculine appearance was excluded, he did nothing, if he did not geld
horses and asses, in short, all nature:
"Omne adeo genus in terris, hominumque, ferarumque,
Et genus aequoreum, pecudes, pictaeque volucres,
In furias ignemque ruunt."
["So that all living things, men and animals, wild or tame,
and fish and gaudy fowl, rush to this flame of love."
—Virgil, Georg., iii. 244.]
The gods, says Plato, have given us one disobedient and unruly member
that, like a furious animal, attempts, by the violence of its appetite, to
subject all things to it; and so they have given to women one like a
greedy and ravenous animal, which, if it be refused food in season, grows
wild, impatient of delay, and infusing its rage into their bodies, stops
the passages, and hinders respiration, causing a thousand ills, till,
having imbibed the fruit of the common thirst, it has plentifully bedewed
the bottom of their matrix. Now my legislator—[The Pope who, as
Montaigne has told us, took it into his head to geld the statues.]—
should also have considered that, peradventure, it were a chaster and more
fruitful usage to let them know the fact as it is betimes, than permit
them to guess according to the liberty and heat of their own fancy;
instead of the real parts they substitute, through hope and desire, others
that are three times more extravagant; and a certain friend of mine lost
himself by producing his in place and time when the opportunity was not
present to put them to their more serious use. What mischief do not those
pictures of prodigious dimension do that the boys make upon the staircases
and galleries of the royal houses? they give the ladies a cruel contempt
of our natural furniture. And what do we know but that Plato, after other
well-instituted republics, ordered that the men and women, old and young,
should expose themselves naked to the view of one another, in his
gymnastic exercises, upon that very account? The Indian women who see the
men in their natural state, have at least cooled the sense of seeing. And
let the women of the kingdom of Pegu say what they will, who below the
waist have nothing to cover them but a cloth slit before, and so strait,
that what decency and modesty soever they pretend by it, at every step all
is to be seen, that it is an invention to allure the men to them, and to
divert them from boys, to whom that nation is generally inclined; yet,
peradventure they lose more by it than they get, and one may venture to
say, that an entire appetite is more sharp than one already half-glutted
by the eyes. Livia was wont to say, that to a virtuous woman a naked man
was but a statue. The Lacedaemonian women, more virgins when wives than
our daughters are, saw every day the young men of their city stripped
naked in their exercises, themselves little heeding to cover their thighs
in walking, believing themselves, says Plato, sufficiently covered by
their virtue without any other robe. But those, of whom St. Augustin
speaks, have given nudity a wonderful power of temptation, who have made
it a doubt, whether women at the day of judgment shall rise again in their
own sex, and not rather in ours, for fear of tempting us again in that
holy state. In brief, we allure and flesh them by all sorts of ways: we
incessantly heat and stir up their imagination, and then we find fault.
Let us confess the truth; there is scarce one of us who does not more
apprehend the shame that accrues to him by the vices of his wife than by
his own, and that is not more solicitous (a wonderful charity) of the
conscience of his virtuous wife than of his own; who had not rather commit
theft and sacrilege, and that his wife was a murderess and a heretic, than
that she should not be more chaste than her husband: an unjust estimate of
vices. Both we and they are capable of a thousand corruptions more
prejudicial and unnatural than lust: but we weigh vices, not according to
nature, but according to our interest; by which means they take so many
unequal forms.
The austerity of our decrees renders the application of women to this vice
more violent and vicious than its own condition needs, and engages it in
consequences worse than their cause: they will readily offer to go to the
law courts to seek for gain, and to the wars to get reputation, rather
than in the midst of ease and delights, to have to keep so difficult a
guard. Do not they very well see that there is neither merchant nor
soldier who will not leave his business to run after this sport, or the
porter or cobbler, toiled and tired out as they are with labour and
hunger?
"Num tu, qux tenuit dives Achaemenes,
Aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes,
Permutare velis crine Licymnim?
Plenas aut Arabum domos,
Dum fragrantia detorquet ad oscula
Cervicem, aut facili sxvitia negat,
Quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi,
Interdum rapere occupet?"
["Wouldst thou not exchange all that the wealthy Arhaemenes had,
or the Mygdonian riches of fertile Phrygia, for one ringlet of
Licymnia's hair? or the treasures of the Arabians, when she turns
her head to you for fragrant kisses, or with easily assuaged anger
denies them, which she would rather by far you took by force, and
sometimes herself snatches one!"—Horace, Od., ii. 12, 21.]
I do not know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpass
the resolution of a beautiful young woman, bred up after our fashion, in
the light and commerce of the world, assailed by so many contrary
examples, and yet keeping herself entire in the midst of a thousand
continual and powerful solicitations. There is no doing more difficult
than that not doing, nor more active:
I hold it more easy to carry a suit of armour all the days of one's life
than a maidenhead; and the vow of virginity of all others is the most
noble, as being the hardest to keep:
"Diaboli virtus in lumbis est,"
says St. Jerome. We have, doubtless, resigned to the ladies the most
difficult and most vigorous of all human endeavours, and let us resign to
them the glory too. This ought to encourage them to be obstinate in it;
'tis a brave thing for them to defy us, and to spurn under foot that vain
pre-eminence of valour and virtue that we pretend to have over them; they
will find if they do but observe it, that they will not only be much more
esteemed for it, but also much more beloved. A gallant man does not give
over his pursuit for being refused, provided it be a refusal of chastity,
and not of choice; we may swear, threaten, and complain to much purpose;
we therein do but lie, for we love them all the better: there is no
allurement like modesty, if it be not rude and crabbed. 'Tis stupidity and
meanness to be obstinate against hatred and disdain; but against a
virtuous and constant resolution, mixed with goodwill, 'tis the exercise
of a noble and generous soul. They may acknowledge our service to a
certain degree, and give us civilly to understand that they disdain us
not; for the law that enjoins them to abominate us because we adore them,
and to hate us because we love them, is certainly very cruel, if but for
the difficulty of it. Why should they not give ear to our offers and
requests, so long as they are kept within the bounds of modesty? wherefore
should we fancy them to have other thoughts within, and to be worse than
they seem? A queen of our time said with spirit, "that to refuse these
courtesies is a testimony of weakness in women and a self-accusation of
facility, and that a lady could not boast of her chastity who was never
tempted."
The limits of honour are not cut so short; they may give themselves a
little rein, and relax a little without being faulty: there lies on the
frontier some space free, indifferent, and neuter. He that has beaten and
pursued her into her fort is a strange fellow if he be not satisfied with
his fortune: the price of the conquest is considered by the difficulty.
Would you know what impression your service and merit have made in her
heart? Judge of it by her behaviour. Such an one may grant more, who does
not grant so much. The obligation of a benefit wholly relates to the good
will of those who confer it: the other coincident circumstances are dumb,
dead, and casual; it costs her dearer to grant you that little, than it
would do her companion to grant all. If in anything rarity give
estimation, it ought especially in this: do not consider how little it is
that is given, but how few have it to give; the value of money alters
according to the coinage and stamp of the place. Whatever the spite and
indiscretion of some may make them say in the excess of their discontent,
virtue and truth will in time recover all the advantage. I have known some
whose reputation has for a great while suffered under slander, who have
afterwards been restored to the world's universal approbation by their
mere constancy without care or artifice; every one repents, and gives
himself the lie for what he has believed and said; and from girls a little
suspected they have been afterward advanced to the first rank amongst the
ladies of honour. Somebody told Plato that all the world spoke ill of him.
"Let them talk," said he; "I will live so as to make them change their
note." Besides the fear of God, and the value of so rare a glory, which
ought to make them look to themselves, the corruption of the age we live
in compels them to it; and if I were they, there is nothing I would not
rather do than intrust my reputation in so dangerous hands. In my time the
pleasure of telling (a pleasure little inferior to that of doing) was not
permitted but to those who had some faithful and only friend; but now the
ordinary discourse and common table-talk is nothing but boasts of favours
received and the secret liberality of ladies. In earnest, 'tis too abject,
too much meanness of spirit, in men to suffer such ungrateful, indiscreet,
and giddy-headed people so to persecute, forage, and rifle those tender
and charming favours.
This our immoderate and illegitimate exasperation against this vice
springs from the most vain and turbulent disease that afflicts human
minds, which is jealousy:
"Quis vetat apposito lumen de lumine sumi?
Dent licet assidue, nil tamen inde perit;"
["Who says that one light should not be lighted from another light?
Let them give ever so much, as much ever remains to lose."—Ovid, De
Arte Amandi, iii. 93. The measure of the last line is not good;
but the words are taken from the epigram in the Catalecta entitled
Priapus.]
she, and envy, her sister, seem to me to be the most foolish of the whole
troop. As to the last, I can say little about it; 'tis a passion that,
though said to be so mighty and powerful, had never to do with me. As to
the other, I know it by sight, and that's all. Beasts feel it; the
shepherd Cratis, having fallen in love with a she-goat, the he-goat, out
of jealousy, came, as he lay asleep, to butt the head of the female, and
crushed it. We have raised this fever to a greater excess by the examples
of some barbarous nations; the best disciplined have been touched with it,
and 'tis reason, but not transported:
"Ense maritali nemo confossus adulter
Purpureo Stygias sanguine tinxit aquas."
["Never did adulterer slain by a husband
stain with purple blood the Stygian waters."]
Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Cato, and other brave men were cuckolds,
and knew it, without making any bustle about it; there was in those days
but one coxcomb, Lepidus, that died for grief that his wife had used him
so.
"Ah! tum te miserum malique fati,
Quem attractis pedibus, patente porta,
Percurrent raphanique mugilesque:"
["Wretched man! when, taken in the fact, thou wilt be
dragged out of doors by the heels, and suffer the punishment
of thy adultery."—Catullus, xv. 17.]
and the god of our poet, when he surprised one of his companions with his
wife, satisfied himself by putting them to shame only,
"Atque aliquis de dis non tristibus optat
Sic fieri turpis:"
["And one of the merry gods wishes that he should himself
like to be so disgraced."—Ovid, Metam., iv. 187.]
and nevertheless took anger at the lukewarm embraces she gave him;
complaining that upon that account she was grown jealous of his affection:
"Quid causas petis ex alto? fiducia cessit
Quo tibi, diva, mei?"
["Dost thou seek causes from above? Why, goddess, has your
confidence in me ceased?"—Virgil, AEneid, viii. 395.]
nay, she entreats arms for a bastard of hers,
"Arena rogo genitrix nato."
["I, a mother, ask armour for a son."—Idem, ibid., 383.]
which are freely granted; and Vulcan speaks honourably of AEneas,
"Arma acri facienda viro,"
["Arms are to be made for a valiant hero."—AEneid, viii. 441.]
with, in truth, a more than human humanity. And I am willing to leave this
excess of kindness to the gods:
"Nec divis homines componier aequum est."
["Nor is it fit to compare men with gods."
—Catullus, lxviii. 141.]
As to the confusion of children, besides that the gravest legislators
ordain and affect it in their republics, it touches not the women, where
this passion is, I know not how, much better seated:
"Saepe etiam Juno, maxima coelicolam,
Conjugis in culpa flagravit quotidiana."
["Often was Juno, greatest of the heaven-dwellers, enraged by her
husband's daily infidelities."—Idem, ibid.]
When jealousy seizes these poor souls, weak and incapable of resistance,
'tis pity to see how miserably it torments and tyrannises over them; it
insinuates itself into them under the title of friendship, but after it
has once possessed them, the same causes that served for a foundation of
good-will serve them for a foundation of mortal hatred. 'Tis, of all the
diseases of the mind, that which the most things serve for aliment and the
fewest for remedy: the virtue, health, merit, reputation of the husband
are incendiaries of their fury and ill-will:
"Nullae sunt inimicitiae, nisi amoris, acerbae."
["No enmities are bitter, save that of love."
(Or:) "No hate is implacable except the hatred of love"
—Propertius, ii. 8, 3.]
This fever defaces and corrupts all they have of beautiful and good
besides; and there is no action of a jealous woman, let her be how chaste
and how good a housewife soever, that does not relish of anger and
wrangling; 'tis a furious agitation, that rebounds them to an extremity
quite contrary to its cause. This held good with one Octavius at Rome.
Having lain with Pontia Posthumia, he augmented love with fruition, and
solicited with all importunity to marry her: unable to persuade her, this
excessive affection precipitated him to the effects of the most cruel and
mortal hatred: he killed her. In like manner, the ordinary symptoms of
this other amorous disease are intestine hatreds, private conspiracies,
and cabals:
"Notumque furens quid faemina possit,"
["And it is known what an angry woman is capable of doing."
—AEneid, V. 21.]
and a rage which so much the more frets itself, as it is compelled to
excuse itself by a pretence of good-will.
Now, the duty of chastity is of a vast extent; is it the will that we
would have them restrain? This is a very supple and active thing; a thing
very nimble, to be stayed. How? if dreams sometimes engage them so far
that they cannot deny them: it is not in them, nor, peradventure, in
chastity itself, seeing that is a female, to defend itself from lust and
desire. If we are only to trust to their will, what a case are we in,
then? Do but imagine what crowding there would be amongst men in pursuance
of the privilege to run full speed, without tongue or eyes, into every
woman's arms who would accept them. The Scythian women put out the eyes of
all their slaves and prisoners of war, that they might have their pleasure
of them, and they never the wiser. O, the furious advantage of
opportunity! Should any one ask me, what was the first thing to be
considered in love matters, I should answer that it was how to take a
fitting time; and so the second; and so the third—'tis a point that
can do everything. I have sometimes wanted fortune, but I have also
sometimes been wanting to myself in matters of attempt. God help him, who
yet makes light of this! There is greater temerity required in this age of
ours, which our young men excuse under the name of heat; but should women
examine it more strictly, they would find that it rather proceeds from
contempt. I was always superstitiously afraid of giving offence, and have
ever had a great respect for her I loved: besides, he who in this traffic
takes away the reverence, defaces at the same time the lustre. I would in
this affair have a man a little play the child, the timorous, and the
servant. If not this, I have in other bashfulness whereof altogether in
things some air of the foolish Plutarch makes mention; and the course of
my life has been divers ways hurt and blemished with it; a quality very
ill suiting my universal form: and, indeed, what are we but sedition and
discrepancy? I am as much out of countenance to be denied as I am to deny;
and it so much troubles me to be troublesome to others that on occasion
when duty compels me to try the good-will of any one in a thing that is
doubtful and that will be chargeable to him, I do it very faintly, and
very much against my will: but if it be for my own particular (whatever
Homer truly says, that modesty is a foolish virtue in an indigent person),
I commonly commit it to a third person to blush for me, and deny those who
employ me with the same difficulty: so that it has sometimes befallen me
to have had a mind to deny, when I had not the power to do it.
'Tis folly, then, to attempt to bridle in women a desire that is so
powerful in them, and so natural to them. And when I hear them brag of
having so maidenly and so temperate a will, I laugh at them: they retire
too far back. If it be an old toothless trot, or a young dry consumptive
thing, though it be not altogether to be believed, at least they say it
with more similitude of truth. But they who still move and breathe, talk
at that ridiculous rate to their own prejudice, by reason that
inconsiderate excuses are a kind of self-accusation; like a gentleman, a
neighbour of mine, suspected to be insufficient:
"Languidior tenera cui pendens sicula beta,
Numquam se mediam sustulit ad tunicam,"
[Catullus, lxvii. 2, i.—The sense is in the context.]
who three or four days after he was married, to justify himself, went
about boldly swearing that he had ridden twenty stages the night before:
an oath that was afterwards made use of to convict him of his ignorance in
that affair, and to divorce him from his wife. Besides, it signifies
nothing, for there is neither continency nor virtue where there are no
opposing desires. It is true, they may say, but we will not yield; saints
themselves speak after that manner. I mean those who boast in good gravity
of their coldness and insensibility, and who expect to be believed with a
serious countenance; for when 'tis spoken with an affected look, when
their eyes give the lie to their tongue, and when they talk in the cant of
their profession, which always goes against the hair, 'tis good sport. I
am a great servant of liberty and plainness; but there is no remedy; if it
be not wholly simple or childish, 'tis silly, and unbecoming ladies in
this commerce, and presently runs into impudence. Their disguises and
figures only serve to cosen fools; lying is there in its seat of honour;
'tis a by-way, that by a back-door leads us to truth. If we cannot curb
their imagination, what would we have from them. Effects? There are enough
of them that evade all foreign communication, by which chastity may be
corrupted:
"Illud saepe facit, quod sine teste facit;"
["He often does that which he does without a witness."
—Martial, vii. 62, 6.]
and those which we fear the least are, peradventure, most to be feared;
their sins that make the least noise are the worst:
"Offendor maecha simpliciore minus."
["I am less offended with a more professed strumpet."
—Idem, vi. 7,6.]
There are ways by which they may lose their virginity without
prostitution, and, which is more, without their knowledge:
"Obsterix, virginis cujusdam integritatem manu velut explorans, sive
malevolentia, sive inscitia, sive casu, dum inspicit, perdidit."
["By malevolence, or unskilfulness, or accident, the midwife,
seeking with the hand to test some maiden's virginity, has sometimes
destroyed it."—St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, i. 18.]
Such a one, by seeking her maidenhead, has lost it; another by playing
with it has destroyed it. We cannot precisely circumscribe the actions, we
interdict them; they must guess at our meaning under general and doubtful
terms; the very idea we invent for their chastity is ridiculous: for,
amongst the greatest patterns that I have is Fatua, the wife of Faunus:
who never, after her marriage, suffered herself to be seen by any man
whatever; and the wife of Hiero, who never perceived her husband's
stinking breath, imagining that it was common to all men. They must become
insensible and invisible to satisfy us.
Now let us confess that the knot of this judgment of duty principally lies
in the will; there have been husbands who have suffered cuckoldom, not
only without reproach or taking offence at their wives, but with singular
obligation to them and great commendation of their virtue. Such a woman
has been, who prized her honour above her life, and yet has prostituted it
to the furious lust of a mortal enemy, to save her husband's life, and
who, in so doing, did that for him she would not have done for herself!
This is not the place wherein we are to multiply these examples; they are
too high and rich to be set off with so poor a foil as I can give them
here; let us reserve them for a nobler place; but for examples of ordinary
lustre, do we not every day see women amongst us who surrender themselves
for their husbands sole benefit, and by their express order and mediation?
and, of old, Phaulius the Argian, who offered his to King Philip out of
ambition; as Galba did it out of civility, who, having entertained
Maecenas at supper, and observing that his wife and he began to cast
glances at one another and to make eyes and signs, let himself sink down
upon his cushion, like one in a profound sleep, to give opportunity to
their desires: which he handsomely confessed, for thereupon a servant
having made bold to lay hands on the plate upon the table, he frankly
cried, "What, you rogue? do you not see that I only sleep for Maecenas?"
Such there may be, whose manners may be lewd enough, whose will may be
more reformed than another, who outwardly carries herself after a more
regular manner. As we see some who complain of having vowed chastity
before they knew what they did; and I have also known others really,
complain of having been given up to debauchery before they were of the
years of discretion. The vice of the parents or the impulse of nature,
which is a rough counsellor, may be the cause.
In the East Indies, though chastity is of singular reputation, yet custom
permitted a married woman to prostitute herself to any one who presented
her with an elephant, and that with glory, to have been valued at so high
a rate. Phaedo the philosopher, a man of birth, after the taking of his
country Elis, made it his trade to prostitute the beauty of his youth, so
long as it lasted, to any one that would, for money thereby to gain his
living: and Solon was the first in Greece, 'tis said, who by his laws gave
liberty to women, at the expense of their chastity, to provide for the
necessities of life; a custom that Herodotus says had been received in
many governments before his time. And besides, what fruit is there of this
painful solicitude? For what justice soever there is in this passion, we
are yet to consider whether it turns to account or no: does any one think
to curb them, with all his industry?
"Pone seram; cohibe: sed quis custodiet ipsos
Custodes? cauta est, et ab illis incipit uxor."
["Put on a lock; shut them up under a guard; but who shall guard
the guard? she knows what she is about, and begins with them."
—Juvenal, vi. 346.]
What commodity will not serve their turn, in so knowing an age?
Curiosity is vicious throughout; but 'tis pernicious here. 'Tis folly to
examine into a disease for which there is no physic that does not inflame
and make it worse; of which the shame grows still greater and more public
by jealousy, and of which the revenge more wounds our children than it
heals us. You wither and die in the search of so obscure a proof. How
miserably have they of my time arrived at that knowledge who have been so
unhappy as to have found it out? If the informer does not at the same time
apply a remedy and bring relief, 'tis an injurious information, and that
better deserves a stab than the lie. We no less laugh at him who takes
pains to prevent it, than at him who is a cuckold and knows it not. The
character of cuckold is indelible: who once has it carries it to his
grave; the punishment proclaims it more than the fault. It is to much
purpose to drag out of obscurity and doubt our private misfortunes, thence
to expose them on tragic scaffolds; and misfortunes that only hurt us by
being known; for we say a good wife or a happy marriage, not that they are
really so, but because no one says to the contrary. Men should be so
discreet as to evade this tormenting and unprofitable knowledge: and the
Romans had a custom, when returning from any expedition, to send home
before to acquaint their wives with their coming, that they might not
surprise them; and to this purpose it is that a certain nation has
introduced a custom, that the priest shall on the wedding-day open the way
to the bride, to free the husband from the doubt and curiosity of
examining in the first assault, whether she comes a virgin to his bed, or
has been at the trade before.
But the world will be talking. I know, a hundred honest men cuckolds,
honestly and not unbeseemingly; a worthy man is pitied, not disesteemed
for it. Order it so that your virtue may conquer your misfortune; that
good men may curse the occasion, and that he who wrongs you may tremble
but to think on't. And, moreover, who escapes being talked of at the same
rate, from the least even to the greatest?
"Tot qui legionibus imperitivit
Et melior quam to multis fuit, improbe, rebus."
["Many who have commanded legions, many a man much better far than
you, you rascal."—Lucretius, iii. 1039, 1041.]
Seest thou how many honest men are reproached with this in thy presence;
believe that thou art no more spared elsewhere. But, the very ladies will
be laughing too; and what are they so apt to laugh at in this virtuous age
of ours as at a peaceable and well-composed marriage? Each amongst you has
made somebody cuckold; and nature runs much in parallel, in compensation,
and turn for turn. The frequency of this accident ought long since to have
made it more easy; 'tis now passed into custom.
Miserable passion! which has this also, that it is incommunicable,
"Fors etiam nostris invidit questibus aures;"
["Fortune also refuses ear to our complaints."
—Catullus, lxvii.]
for to what friend dare you intrust your griefs, who, if he does not laugh
at them, will not make use of the occasion to get a share of the quarry?
The sharps, as well as the sweets of marriage, are kept secret by the
wise; and amongst its other troublesome conditions this to a prating
fellow, as I am, is one of the chief, that custom has rendered it indecent
and prejudicial to communicate to any one all that a man knows and all
that a man feels. To give women the same counsel against jealousy would be
so much time lost; their very being is so made up of suspicion, vanity,
and curiosity, that to cure them by any legitimate way is not to be hoped.
They often recover of this infirmity by a form of health much more to be
feared than the disease itself; for as there are enchantments that cannot
take away the evil but by throwing it upon another, they also willingly
transfer this ever to their husbands, when they shake it off themselves.
And yet I know not, to speak truth, whether a man can suffer worse from
them than their jealousy; 'tis the most dangerous of all their conditions,
as the head is of all their members. Pittacus used to say,—[Plutarch,
On Contentment, c. II.]— that every one had his trouble, and that
his was the jealous head of his wife; but for which he should think
himself perfectly happy. A mighty inconvenience, sure, which could poison
the whole life of so just, so wise, and so valiant a man; what must we
other little fellows do? The senate of Marseilles had reason to grant him
his request who begged leave to kill himself that he might be delivered
from the clamour of his wife; for 'tis a mischief that is never removed
but by removing the whole piece; and that has no remedy but flight or
patience, though both of them very hard. He was, methinks, an
understanding fellow who said, 'twas a happy marriage betwixt a blind wife
and a deaf husband.
Let us also consider whether the great and violent severity of obligation
we enjoin them does not produce two effects contrary to our design namely,
whether it does not render the pursuants more eager to attack, and the
women more easy to yield. For as to the first, by raising the value of the
place, we raise the value and the desire of the conquest. Might it not be
Venus herself, who so cunningly enhanced the price of her merchandise, by
making the laws her bawds; knowing how insipid a delight it would be that
was not heightened by fancy and hardness to achieve? In short, 'tis all
swine's flesh, varied by sauces, as Flaminius' host said. Cupid is a
roguish god, who makes it his sport to contend with devotion and justice:
'tis his glory that his power mates all powers, and that all other rules
give place to his:
"Materiam culpae prosequiturque suae."
["And seeks out a matter (motive) for his crimes."
—Ovid, Trist., iv. I. 34.]
As to the second point; should we not be less cuckolds, if we less feared
to be so? according to the humour of women whom interdiction incites, and
who are more eager, being forbidden:
"Ubi velis, nolunt; ubi nolis, volunt ultro;
Concessa pudet ire via."
["Where thou wilt, they won't; where thou wilt not, they
spontaneously agree; they are ashamed to go in the permitted path."
—Terence, Eunuchus, act iv., sc. 8, v 43]
What better interpretation can we make of Messalina's behaviour? She, at
first, made her husband a cuckold in private, as is the common use; but,
bringing her business about with too much ease, by reason of her husband's
stupidity, she soon scorned that way, and presently fell to making open
love, to own her lovers, and to favour and entertain them in the sight of
all: she would make him know and see how she used him. This animal, not to
be roused with all this, and rendering her pleasures dull and flat by his
too stupid facility, by which he seemed to authorise and make them lawful;
what does she? Being the wife of a living and healthful emperor, and at
Rome, the theatre of the world, in the face of the sun, and with solemn
ceremony, and to Silius, who had long before enjoyed her, she publicly
marries herself one day that her husband was gone out of the city. Does it
not seem as if she was going to become chaste by her husband's negligence?
or that she sought another husband who might sharpen her appetite by his
jealousy, and who by watching should incite her? But the first difficulty
she met with was also the last: this beast suddenly roused these sleepy,
sluggish sort of men are often the most dangerous: I have found by
experience that this extreme toleration, when it comes to dissolve,
produces the most severe revenge; for taking fire on a sudden, anger and
fury being combined in one, discharge their utmost force at the first
onset,
"Irarumque omnes effundit habenas:"
["He let loose his whole fury."—AEneid, xii. 499.]
he put her to death, and with her a great number of those with whom she
had intelligence, and even one of them who could not help it, and whom she
had caused to be forced to her bed with scourges.
What Virgil says of Venus and Vulcan, Lucretius had better expressed of a
stolen enjoyment betwixt her and Mars:
"Belli fera moenera Mavors
Armipotens regit, ingremium qui saepe tuum se
Rejictt, aeterno devinctus vulnere amoris
............................
Pascit amore avidos inhians in te, Dea, visus,
Eque tuo pendet resupini spiritus ore
Hunc tu, Diva, tuo recubantem corpore sancto
Circumfusa super, suaveis ex ore loquelas
Funde."
["Mars, the god of wars, who controls the cruel tasks of war, often
reclines on thy bosom, and greedily drinks love at both his eyes,
vanquished by the eternal wound of love: and his breath, as he
reclines, hangs on thy lips; bending thy head over him as he lies
upon thy sacred person, pour forth sweet and persuasive words."
—Lucretius, i. 23.]
When I consider this rejicit, fiascit, inhians, ynolli, fovet, medullas,
labefacta, pendet, percurrit, and that noble circumfusa, mother of the
pretty infuses; I disdain those little quibbles and verbal allusions that
have since sprung up. Those worthy people stood in need of no subtlety to
disguise their meaning; their language is downright, and full of natural
and continued vigour; they are all epigram; not only the tail, but the
head, body, and feet. There is nothing forced, nothing languishing, but
everything keeps the same pace:
"Contextus totes virilis est; non sunt circa flosculos occupati."
["The whole contexture is manly; they don't occupy themselves with
little flowers of rhetoric."—Seneca, Ep., 33.]
'Tis not a soft eloquence, and without offence only; 'tis nervous and
solid, that does not so much please, as it fills and ravishes the greatest
minds. When I see these brave forms of expression, so lively, so profound,
I do not say that 'tis well said, but well thought. 'Tis the sprightliness
of the imagination that swells and elevates the words:
"Pectus est quod disertum Tacit."
["The heart makes the man eloquent."—Quintilian, x. 7.]
Our people call language, judgment, and fine words, full conceptions. This
painting is not so much carried on by dexterity of hand as by having the
object more vividly imprinted in the soul. Gallus speaks simply because he
conceives simply: Horace does not content himself with a superficial
expression; that would betray him; he sees farther and more clearly into
things; his mind breaks into and rummages all the magazine of words and
figures wherewith to express himself, and he must have them more than
ordinary, because his conception is so. Plutarch says' that he sees the
Latin tongue by the things: 'tis here the same: the sense illuminates and
produces the words, no more words of air, but of flesh and bone; they
signify more than they say. Moreover, those who are not well skilled in a
language present some image of this; for in Italy I said whatever I had a
mind to in common discourse, but in more serious talk, I durst not have
trusted myself with an idiom that I could not wind and turn out of its
ordinary pace; I would have a power of introducing something of my own.
The handling and utterance of fine wits is that which sets off language;
not so much by innovating it, as by putting it to more vigorous and
various services, and by straining, bending, and adapting it to them. They
do not create words, but they enrich their own, and give them weight and
signification by the uses they put them to, and teach them unwonted
motions, but withal ingeniously and discreetly. And how little this talent
is given to all is manifest by the many French scribblers of this age:
they are bold and proud enough not to follow the common road, but want of
invention and discretion ruins them; there is nothing seen in their
writings but a wretched affectation of a strange new style, with cold and
absurd disguises, which, instead of elevating, depress the matter:
provided they can but trick themselves out with new words, they care not
what they signify; and to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders,
they leave the old one, very often more sinewy and significant than the
other.
There is stuff enough in our language, but there is a defect in cutting
out: for there is nothing that might not be made out of our terms of
hunting and war, which is a fruitful soil to borrow from; and forms of
speaking, like herbs, improve and grow stronger by being transplanted. I
find it sufficiently abundant, but not sufficiently pliable and vigorous;
it commonly quails under a powerful conception; if you would maintain the
dignity of your style, you will often perceive it to flag and languish
under you, and there Latin steps in to its relief, as Greek does to
others. Of some of these words I have just picked out we do not so easily
discern the energy, by reason that the frequent use of them has in some
sort abased their beauty, and rendered it common; as in our ordinary
language there are many excellent phrases and metaphors to be met with, of
which the beauty is withered by age, and the colour is sullied by too
common handling; but that nothing lessens the relish to an understanding
man, nor does it derogate from the glory of those ancient authors who,
'tis likely, first brought those words into that lustre.
The sciences treat of things too refinedly, after an artificial, very
different from the common and natural, way. My page makes love, and
understands it; but read to him Leo Hebraeus—[Leo the Jew, Ficinus,
Cardinal Bembo, and Mario Equicola all wrote Treatises on Love.]—
and Ficinus, where they speak of love, its thoughts and actions, he
understands it not. I do not find in Aristotle most of my ordinary
motions; they are there covered and disguised in another robe for the use
of the schools. Good speed them! were I of the trade, I would as much
naturalise art as they artificialise nature. Let us let Bembo and Equicola
alone.
When I write, I can very well spare both the company and the remembrance
of books, lest they should interrupt my progress; and also, in truth, the
best authors too much humble and discourage me: I am very much of the
painter's mind, who, having represented cocks most wretchedly ill, charged
all his boys not to suffer any natural cock to come into his shop; and had
rather need to give myself a little lustre, of the invention of
Antigenides the musician, who, when he was asked to sing or play, took
care beforehand that the auditory should, either before or after, be
satiated with some other ill musicians. But I can hardly be without
Plutarch; he is so universal and so full, that upon all occasions, and
what extravagant subject soever you take in hand, he will still be at your
elbow, and hold out to you a liberal and not to be exhausted hand of
riches and embellishments. It vexes me that he is so exposed to be the
spoil of those who are conversant with him: I can scarce cast an eye upon
him but I purloin either a leg or a wing.
And also for this design of mine 'tis convenient for me for me to write at
home, in a wild country, where I have nobody to assist or relieve me;
where I hardly see a man who understands the Latin of his Paternoster, and
of French a little less. I might have made it better elsewhere, but then
the work would have been less my own; and its principal end and perfection
is to be exactly mine. I readily correct an accidental error, of which I
am full, as I run carelessly on; but for my ordinary and constant
imperfections, it were a kind of treason to put them out. When another
tells me, or that I say to myself, "Thou art too thick of figures: this is
a word of rough Gascon: that is a dangerous phrase (I do not reject any of
those that are used in the common streets of France; they who would fight
custom with grammar are triflers): this is an ignorant discourse: this is
a paradoxical discourse: that is going too far: thou makest thyself too
merry at times: men will think thou sayest a thing in good earnest which
thou only speakest in jest."—"Yes, I know, but I correct the faults
of inadvertence, not those of custom. Do I not talk at the same rate
throughout? Do I not represent myself to the life? 'Tis enough that I have
done what I designed; all the world knows me in my book, and my book in
me."
Now I have an apish, imitative quality: when I used to write verses (and I
never made any but Latin), they evidently discovered the poet I had last
read, and some of my first essays have a little exotic taste: I speak
something another kind of language at Paris than I do at Montaigne.
Whoever I steadfastly look upon easily leaves some impression of his upon
me; whatever I consider I usurp, whether a foolish countenance, a
disagreeable look, or a ridiculous way of speaking; and vices most of all,
because they seize and stick to me, and will not leave hold without
shaking. I swear more by imitation than by complexion: a murderous
imitation, like that of the apes so terrible both in stature and strength,
that Alexander met with in a certain country of the Indies, and which he
would have had much ado any other way to have subdued; but they afforded
him the means by that inclination of theirs to imitate whatever they saw
done; for by that the hunters were taught to put on shoes in their sight,
and to tie them fast with many knots, and to muffle up their heads in caps
all composed of running nooses, and to seem to anoint their eyes with
glue; so did those poor beasts employ their imitation to their own ruin
they glued up their own eyes, haltered and bound themselves. The other
faculty of playing the mimic, and ingeniously acting the words and
gestures of another, purposely to make people merry and to raise their
admiration, is no more in me than in a stock. When I swear my own oath,
'tis only, by God! of all oaths the most direct. They say that Socrates
swore by the dog; Zeno had for his oath the same interjection at this time
in use amongst the Italians, Cappari! Pythagoras swore By water and air. I
am so apt, without thinking of it, to receive these superficial
impressions, that if I have Majesty or Highness in my mouth three days
together, they come out instead of Excellency and Lordship eight days
after; and what I say to-day in sport and fooling I shall say the same
to-morrow seriously. Wherefore, in writing, I more unwillingly undertake
beaten arguments, lest I should handle them at another's expense. Every
subject is equally fertile to me: a fly will serve the purpose, and 'tis
well if this I have in hand has not been undertaken at the recommendation
of as flighty a will. I may begin, with that which pleases me best, for
the subjects are all linked to one another.
But my soul displeases me, in that it ordinarily produces its deepest and
most airy conceits and which please me best, when I least expect or study
for them, and which suddenly vanish, having at the instant, nothing to
apply them to; on horseback, at table, and in bed: but most on horseback,
where I am most given to think. My speaking is a little nicely jealous of
silence and attention: if I am talking my best, whoever interrupts me,
stops me. In travelling, the necessity of the way will often put a stop to
discourse; besides which I, for the most part, travel without company fit
for regular discourses, by which means I have all the leisure I would to
entertain myself. It falls out as it does in my dreams; whilst dreaming I
recommend them to my memory (for I am apt to dream that I dream), but, the
next morning, I may represent to myself of what complexion they were,
whether gay, or sad, or strange, but what they were, as to the rest, the
more I endeavour to retrieve them, the deeper I plunge them in oblivion.
So of thoughts that come accidentally into my head, I have no more but a
vain image remaining in my memory; only enough to make me torment myself
in their quest to no purpose.
Well, then, laying books aside, and more simply and materially speaking, I
find, after all, that Love is nothing else but the thirst of enjoying the
object desired, or Venus any other thing than the pleasure of discharging
one's vessels, just as the pleasure nature gives in discharging other
parts, that either by immoderation or indiscretion become vicious.
According to Socrates, love is the appetite of generation by the mediation
of beauty. And when I consider the ridiculous titillation of this
pleasure, the absurd, crack-brained, wild motions with which it inspires
Zeno and Cratippus, the indiscreet rage, the countenance inflamed with
fury and cruelty in the sweetest effects of love, and then that austere
air, so grave, severe, ecstatic, in so wanton an action; that our delights
and our excrements are promiscuously shuffled together; and that the
supreme pleasure brings along with it, as in pain, fainting and
complaining; I believe it to be true, as Plato says, that the gods made
man for their sport:
"Quaenam ista jocandi
Saevitia!"
["With a sportive cruelty" (Or:) "What an unkindness there is in
jesting!"—Claudian in Eutrop. i. 24.]
and that it was in mockery that nature has ordered the most agitative of
actions and the most common, to make us equal, and to put fools and wise
men, beasts and us, on a level. Even the most contemplative and prudent
man, when I imagine him in this posture, I hold him an impudent fellow to
pretend to be prudent and contemplative; they are the peacocks' feet that
abate his pride:
"Ridentem dicere verum
Quid vetat?"
["What prevents us from speaking truth with a smile?"
—Horace, Sat., i. I, 24.]
They who banish serious imaginations from their sports, do, says one, like
him who dares not adore the statue of a saint, if not covered with a veil.
We eat and drink, indeed, as beasts do; but these are not actions that
obstruct the functions of the soul, in these we maintain our advantage
over them; this other action subjects all other thought, and by its
imperious authority makes an ass of all Plato's divinity and philosophy;
and yet there is no complaint of it. In everything else a man may keep
some decorum, all other operations submit to the rules of decency; this
cannot so much as in imagination appear other than vicious or ridiculous:
find out, if you can, therein any serious and discreet procedure.
Alexander said, that he chiefly knew himself to be mortal by this act and
sleeping; sleep suffocates and suppresses the faculties of the soul; the
familiarity with women likewise dissipates and exhausts them: doubtless
'tis a mark, not only of our original corruption, but also of our vanity
and deformity.
On the one side, nature pushes us on to it, having fixed the most noble,
useful, and pleasant of all her functions to this desire: and, on the
other side, leaves us to accuse and avoid it, as insolent and indecent, to
blush at it, and to recommend abstinence. Are we not brutes to call that
work brutish which begets us? People of so many differing religions have
concurred in several proprieties, as sacrifices, lamps, burning incense,
fasts, and offerings; and amongst others, in the condemning this act: all
opinions tend that way, besides the widespread custom of circumcision,
which may be regarded as a punishment. We have, peradventure, reason to
blame ourselves for being guilty of so foolish a production as man, and to
call the act, and the parts that are employed in the act, shameful (mine,
truly, are now shameful and pitiful). The Essenians, of whom Pliny speaks,
kept up their country for several ages without either nurse or
baby-clouts, by the arrival of strangers who, following this pretty
humour, came continually to them: a whole nation being resolute, rather to
hazard a total extermination, than to engage themselves in female
embraces, and rather to lose the succession of men, than to beget one.
'Tis said, that Zeno never had to do with a woman but once in his life,
and then out of civility, that he might not seem too obstinately to
disdain the sex.
[Diogenes Laertius, vii. 13.—What is there said, however, is that
Zeno seldom had commerce with boys, lest he should be deemed a very
misogynist.]
Every one avoids seeing a man born, every one runs to see him die; to
destroy him a spacious field is sought out in the face of the sun, but, to
make him, we creep into as dark and private a corner as we can: 'tis a
man's duty to withdraw himself bashfully from the light to create; but
'tis glory and the fountain of many virtues to know how to destroy what we
have made: the one is injury, the other favour: for Aristotle says that to
do any one a kindness, in a certain phrase of his country, is to kill him.
The Athenians, to couple the disgrace of these two actions, having to
purge the Isle of Delos, and to justify themselves to Apollo, interdicted
at once all births and burials in the precincts thereof:
"Nostri nosmet paenitet."
["We are ashamed of ourselves."—Terence, Phoymio, i. 3, 20.]
There are some nations that will not be seen to eat. I know a lady, and of
the best quality, who has the same opinion, that chewing disfigures the
face, and takes away much from the ladies' grace and beauty; and therefore
unwillingly appears at a public table with an appetite; and I know a man
also, who cannot endure to see another eat, nor himself to be seen eating,
and who is more shy of company when putting in than when putting out. In
the Turkish empire, there are a great number of men who, to excel others,
never suffer themselves to be seen when they make their repast: who never
have any more than one a week; who cut and mangle their faces and limbs;
who never speak to any one: fanatic people who think to honour their
nature by disnaturing themselves; who value themselves upon their contempt
of themselves, and purport to grow better by being worse. What monstrous
animal is this, that is a horror to himself, to whom his delights are
grievous, and who weds himself to misfortune? There are people who conceal
their life:
"Exilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant,"
["And change for exile their homes and pleasant abodes."
—Virgil, Georg., ii. 511.]
and withdraw them from the sight of other men; who avoid health and
cheerfulness, as dangerous and prejudicial qualities. Not only many sects,
but many peoples, curse their birth, and bless their death; and there is a
place where the sun is abominated and darkness adored. We are only
ingenious in using ourselves ill: 'tis the real quarry our intellects fly
at; and intellect, when misapplied, is a dangerous tool!
"O miseri! quorum gaudia crimen habent!"
["O wretched men, whose pleasures are a crime!"
—Pseudo Gallus, i. 180.]
Alas, poor man! thou hast enough inconveniences that are inevitable,
without increasing them by throe own invention; and art miserable enough
by nature, without being so by art; thou hast real and essential
deformities enough, without forging those that are imaginary. Dost thou
think thou art too much at ease unless half thy ease is uneasy? dost thou
find that thou hast not performed all the necessary offices that nature
has enjoined thee, and that she is idle in thee, if thou dost not oblige
thyself to other and new offices? Thou dost not stick to infringe her
universal and undoubted laws; but stickest to thy own special and
fantastic rules, and by how much more particular, uncertain, and
contradictory they are, by so much thou employest thy whole endeavour in
them: the laws of thy parish occupy and bind thee: those of God and the
world concern thee not. Run but a little over the examples of this kind;
thy life is full of them.
Whilst the verses of these two poets, treat so reservedly and discreetly
of wantonness as they do, methinks they discover it much more openly.
Ladies cover their necks with network, priests cover several sacred
things, and painters shadow their pictures to give them greater lustre:
and 'tis said that the sun and wind strike more violently by reflection
than in a direct line. The Egyptian wisely answered him who asked him what
he had under his cloak, "It is hid under my cloak," said he, "that thou
mayest not know what it is:" but there are certain other things that
people hide only to show them. Hear that one, who speaks plainer,
"Et nudum pressi corpus ad usque meum:"
["And pressed her naked body to mine" (Or:) "My body
I applied even to her naked side"—Ovid, Amor., i. 5, 24.]
methinks that he emasculates me. Let Martial turn up Venus as high as he
may, he cannot shew her so naked: he who says all that is to be said gluts
and disgusts us. He who is afraid to express himself, draws us on to guess
at more than is meant; there is treachery in this sort of modesty, and
specially when they half open, as these do, so fair a path to imagination.
Both the action and description should relish of theft.
The more respectful, more timorous, more coy, and secret love of the
Spaniards and Italians pleases me. I know not who of old wished his throat
as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what he
swallowed; it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitous
pleasure, especially in such natures as mine that have the fault of being
too prompt. To stay its flight and delay it with preambles: all things
—a glance, a bow, a word, a sign, stand for favour and recompense
betwixt them. Were it not an excellent piece of thrift in him who could
dine on the steam of the roast? 'Tis a passion that mixes with very little
solid essence, far more vanity and feverish raving; and we should serve
and pay it accordingly. Let us teach the ladies to set a better value and
esteem upon themselves, to amuse and fool us: we give the last charge at
the first onset; the French impetuosity will still show itself; by
spinning out their favours, and exposing them in small parcels, even
miserable old age itself will find some little share of reward, according
to its worth and merit. He who has no fruition but in fruition, who wins
nothing unless he sweeps the stakes, who takes no pleasure in the chase
but in the quarry, ought not to introduce himself in our school: the more
steps and degrees there are, so much higher and more honourable is the
uppermost seat: we should take a pleasure in being conducted to it, as in
magnificent palaces, by various porticoes and passages, long and pleasant
galleries, and many windings. This disposition of things would turn to our
advantage; we should there longer stay and longer love; without hope and
without desire we proceed not worth a pin. Our conquest and entire
possession is what they ought infinitely to dread: when they wholly
surrender themselves up to the mercy of our fidelity and constancy they
run a mighty hazard; they are virtues very rare and hard to be found; the
ladies are no sooner ours, than we are no more theirs:
"Postquam cupidae mentis satiata libido est,
Verba nihil metuere, nihil perjuria curant;"
["When our desires are once satisfied, we care little
for oaths and promises."—Catullus, lxiv. 147.]
And Thrasonides, a young man of Greece, was so in love with his passion
that, having, gained a mistress's consent, he refused to enjoy her, that
he might not by fruition quench and stupefy the unquiet ardour of which he
was so proud, and with which he so fed himself. Dearness is a good sauce
to meat: do but observe how much the manner of salutation, particular to
our nation, has, by its facilities, made kisses, which Socrates says are
so powerful and dangerous for the stealing of hearts, of no esteem. It is
a displeasing custom and injurious for the ladies, that they must be
obliged to lend their lips to every fellow who has three footmen at his
heels, however ill-favoured he may be in himself:
"Cujus livida naribus caninis
Dependet glacies, rigetque barba . . .
Centum occurrere malo culilingis:"
Martial, vii. 94.
and we ourselves barely gain by it; for as the world is divided, for three
beautiful women we must kiss fifty ugly ones; and to a tender stomach,
like those of my age, an ill kiss overpays a good one.
In Italy they passionately court even their common women who sell
themselves for money, and justify the doing so by saying, "that there are
degrees of fruition, and that by such service they would procure for
themselves that which is most entire; the women sell nothing but their
bodies; the will is too free and too much of its own to be exposed to
sale." So that these say, 'tis the will they undertake and they have
reason. 'Tis indeed the will that we are to serve and gain by wooing. I
abhor to imagine mine, a body without affection: and this madness is,
methinks, cousin-german to that of the boy who would needs pollute the
beautiful statue of Venus made by Praxiteles; or that of the furious
Egyptian, who violated the dead carcase of a woman he was embalming: which
was the occasion of the law then made in Egypt, that the corpses of
beautiful young women, of those of good quality, should be kept three days
before they should be delivered to those whose office it was to take care
for the interment. Periander did more wonderfully, who extended his
conjugal affection (more regular and legitimate) to the enjoyment of his
wife Melissa after she was dead. Does it not seem a lunatic humour in the
Moon, seeing she could no otherwise enjoy her darling Endymion, to lay-him
for several months asleep, and to please herself with the fruition of a
boy who stirred not but in his sleep? I likewise say that we love a body
without a soul or sentiment when we love a body without its consent and
desire. All enjoyments are not alike: there are some that are hectic and
languishing: a thousand other causes besides good-will may procure us this
favour from the ladies; this is not a sufficient testimony of affection:
treachery may lurk there, as well as elsewhere: they sometimes go to't by
halves:
"Tanquam thura merumque parent
Absentem marmoreamve putes:"
["As if they are preparing frankincense and wine . . . you might
think her absent or marble."—Martial, xi. 103, 12, and 59, 8.]
I know some who had rather lend that than their coach, and who only impart
themselves that way. You are to examine whether your company pleases them
upon any other account, or, as some strong-chined groom, for that only; in
what degree of favour and esteem you are with them:
"Tibi si datur uni,
Quem lapide illa diem candidiore notat."
["Wherefore that is enough, if that day alone is given us which she
marks with a whiter stone."—Catullus, lxviii. 147.]
What if they eat your bread with the sauce of a more pleasing imagination.
"Te tenet, absentes alios suspirat amores."
["She has you in her arms; her thoughts are with
other absent lovers."—Tibullus, i. 6, 35.]
What? have we not seen one in these days of ours who made use of this act
for the purpose of a most horrid revenge, by that means to kill and
poison, as he did, a worthy lady?
Such as know Italy will not think it strange if, for this subject, I seek
not elsewhere for examples; for that nation may be called the regent of
the world in this. They have more generally handsome and fewer ugly women
than we; but for rare and excellent beauties we have as many as they. I
think the same of their intellects: of those of the common sort, they have
evidently far more brutishness is immeasurably rarer there; but in
individual characters of the highest form, we are nothing indebted to
them. If I should carry on the comparison, I might say, as touching
valour, that, on the contrary, it is, to what it is with them, common and
natural with us; but sometimes we see them possessed of it to such a
degree as surpasses the greatest examples we can produce: The marriages of
that country are defective in this; their custom commonly imposes so rude
and so slavish a law upon the women, that the most distant acquaintance
with a stranger is as capital an offence as the most intimate; so that all
approaches being rendered necessarily substantial, and seeing that all
comes to one account, they have no hard choice to make; and when they have
broken down the fence, we may safely presume they get on fire:
"Luxuria ipsis vinculis, sicut fera bestia,
irritata, deinde emissa."
["Lust, like a wild beast, being more excited by being bound,
breaks from his chains with greater wildness."—Livy, xxxiv. 4.]
They must give them a little more rein:
"Vidi ego nuper equum, contra sua frena tenacem,
Ore reluctanti fulminis ire modo":
["I saw, the other day, a horse struggling against his bit,
rush like a thunderbolt."—Ovid, Amor., iii. 4, 13.]
the desire of company is allayed by giving it a little liberty. We are
pretty much in the same case they are extreme in constraint, we in
licence. 'Tis a good custom we have in France that our sons are received
into the best families, there to be entertained and bred up pages, as in a
school of nobility; and 'tis looked upon as a discourtesy and an affront
to refuse this to a gentleman. I have taken notice (for, so many families,
so many differing forms) that the ladies who have been strictest with
their maids have had no better luck than those who allowed them a greater
liberty. There should be moderation in these things; one must leave a
great deal of their conduct to their own discretion; for, when all comes
to all, no discipline can curb them throughout. But it is true withal that
she who comes off with flying colours from a school of liberty, brings
with her whereon to repose more confidence than she who comes away sound
from a severe and strict school.
Our fathers dressed up their daughters' looks in bashfulness and fear
(their courage and desires being the same); we ours in confidence and
assurance; we understand nothing of the matter; we must leave it to the
Sarmatian women, who may not lie with a man till with their own hands they
have first killed another in battle. For me, who have no other title left
me to these things but by the ears, 'tis sufficient if, according to the
privilege of my age, they retain me for one of their counsel. I advise
them then, and us men too, to abstinence; but if the age we live in will
not endure it, at least modesty and discretion. For, as in the story of
Aristippus, who, speaking to some young men who blushed to see him go into
a scandalous house, said "the vice is in not coming out, not in going in,"
let her who has no care of her conscience have yet some regard to her
reputation; and though she be rotten within, let her carry a fair outside
at least.
I commend a gradation and delay in bestowing their favours: Plato
'declares that, in all sorts of love, facility and promptness are
forbidden to the defendant. 'Tis a sign of eagerness which they ought to
disguise with all the art they have, so rashly, wholly, and hand-over-hand
to surrender themselves. In carrying themselves orderly and measuredly in
the granting their last favours, they much more allure our desires and
hide their own. Let them still fly before us, even those who have most
mind to be overtaken: they better conquer us by flying, as the Scythians
did. To say the truth, according to the law that nature has imposed upon
them, it is not properly for them either to will or desire; their part is
to suffer, obey, and consent and for this it is that nature has given them
a perpetual capacity, which in us is but at times and uncertain; they are
always fit for the encounter, that they may be always ready when we are so
"Pati natee."-["Born to suffer."-Seneca, Ep., 95.]—And whereas she
has ordered that our appetites shall be manifest by a prominent
demonstration, she would have theirs to be hidden and concealed within,
and has furnished them with parts improper for ostentation, and simply
defensive. Such proceedings as this that follows must be left to the
Amazonian licence: Alexander marching his army through Hyrcania,
Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons, came with three hundred light horse of
her own-sex, well mounted, and armed, having left the remainder of a very
great, army that followed her behind the neighbouring mountains to give
him a visit; where she publicly and in plain terms told him that the fame
of his valour and victories had brought her thither to see him, and to
make him an offer of her forces to assist him in the pursuit of his
enterprises; and that, finding him so handsome, young, and vigorous, she,
who was also perfect in all those qualities, advised that they might lie
together, to the end that from the most valiant woman of the world and the
bravest man then living, there might spring some great and wonderful issue
for the time to come. Alexander returned her thanks for all the rest; but,
to give leisure for the accomplishment of her last demand, he detained her
thirteen days in that place, which were spent in royal feasting and
jollity, for the welcome of so courageous a princess.
We are, almost throughout, unjust judges of their actions, as they are of
ours. I confess the truth when it makes against me, as well as when 'tis
on my side. 'Tis an abominable intemperance that pushes them on so often
to change, and that will not let them limit their affection to any one
person whatever; as is evident in that goddess to whom are attributed so
many changes and so many lovers. But 'tis true withal that 'tis contrary
to the nature of love if it be, not violent; and contrary to the nature of
violence if it be constant. And they who wonder, exclaim, and keep such a
clutter to find out the causes of this frailty of theirs, as unnatural and
not to be believed, how comes it to pass they do not discern how often
they are themselves guilty of the same, without any astonishment or
miracle at all? It would, peradventure, be more strange to see the passion
fixed; 'tis not a simply corporeal passion. If there be no end to avarice
and ambition, there is doubtless no more in desire; it still lives after
satiety; and 'tis impossible to prescribe either constant satisfaction or
end; it ever goes beyond its possession. And by that means inconstancy,
peradventure, is in some sort more pardonable in them than in us: they may
plead, as well as we, the inclination to variety and novelty common to us
both; and secondly, without us, that they buy a cat in a sack: Joanna,
queen of Naples, caused her first husband, Andrews, to be hanged at the
bars of her window in a halter of gold and silk woven with her own hand,
because in matrimonial performances she neither found his parts nor
abilities answer the expectation she had conceived from his stature,
beauty, youth, and activity, by which she had been caught and deceived.
They may say there is more pains required in doing than in suffering; and
so they are on their part always at least provided for necessity, whereas
on our part it may fall out otherwise. For this reason it was, that Plato
wisely made a law that before marriage, to determine of the fitness of
persons, the judges should see the young men who pretended to it stripped
stark naked, and the women but to the girdle only. When they come to try
us they do not, perhaps, find us worthy of their choice:
"Experta latus, madidoque simillima loro
Inguina, nec lassa stare coacta manu,
Deserit imbelles thalamos."
["After using every endeavour to arouse him to action,
she quits the barren couch."—Martial, vii. 58.]
'Tis not enough that a man's will be good; weakness and insufficiency
lawfully break a marriage,
"Et quaerendum aliunde foret nervosius illud,
Quod posset zonam solvere virgineam:"
["And seeks a more vigorous lover to undo her virgin zone."
—Catullus, lxvii. 27.]
why not? and according to her own standard, an amorous intelligence, more
licentious and active,
"Si blando nequeat superesse labori."
["If his strength be unequal to the pleasant task."
—Virgil, Georg., iii. 127.]
But is it not great impudence to offer our imperfections and imbecilities,
where we desire to please and leave a good opinion and esteem of
ourselves? For the little that I am able to do now:
"Ad unum
Mollis opus."
["Fit but for once."—Horace, Epod., xii. 15.]
I would not trouble a woman, that I am to reverence and fear:
"Fuge suspicari,
Cujus undenum trepidavit aetas
Claudere lustrum."
["Fear not him whose eleventh lustrum is closed."
—Horace, Od., ii. 4, 12, limits it to the eighth.]
Nature should satisfy herself in having rendered this age miserable,
without rendering it ridiculous too. I hate to see it, for one poor inch
of pitiful vigour which comes upon it but thrice a week, to strut and set
itself out with as much eagerness as if it could do mighty feats; a true
flame of flax; and laugh to see it so boil and bubble and then in a moment
so congealed and extinguished. This appetite ought to appertain only to
the flower of beautiful youth: trust not to its seconding that
indefatigable, full, constant, magnanimous ardour you think in you, for it
will certainly leave you in a pretty corner; but rather transfer it to
some tender, bashful, and ignorant boy, who yet trembles at the rod, and
blushes:
"Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro
Si quis ebur, vel mista rubent ubi lilia multa
Alba rosa."
["As Indian ivory streaked with crimson, or white lilies mixed
with the damask rose."—AEneid, xii. 67.]
Who can stay till the morning without dying for shame to behold the
disdain of the fair eyes of her who knows so well his fumbling
impertinence,
"Et taciti fecere tamen convicia vultus,"
["Though she nothing say, her looks betray her anger."
—Ovid, Amor., i. 7, 21.]
has never had the satisfaction and the glory of having cudgelled them till
they were weary, with the vigorous performance of one heroic night. When I
have observed any one to be vexed with me, I have not presently accused
her levity, but have been in doubt, if I had not reason rather to complain
of nature; she has doubtless used me very uncivilly and unkindly:
"Si non longa satis, si non bene mentula crassa
Nimirum sapiunt, videntque parvam
Matronae quoque mentulam illibenter:"
[The first of these verses is the commencement of an epigram of the
Veterum Poetayurra Catalecta, and the two others are from an epigram
in the same collection (Ad Matrones). They describe untranslatably
Montaigne's charge against nature, indicated in the previous
passage.]
and done me a most enormous injury. Every member I have, as much one as
another, is equally my own, and no other more properly makes me a man than
this.
I universally owe my entire picture to the public. The wisdom of my
instruction consists in liberty, in truth, in essence: disdaining to
introduce those little, feigned, common, and provincial rules into the
catalogue of its real duties; all natural, general, and constant, of which
civility and ceremony are daughters indeed, but illegitimate. We are sure
to have the vices of appearance, when we shall have had those of essence:
when we have done with these, we run full drive upon the others, if we
find it must be so; for there is danger that we shall fancy new offices,
to excuse our negligence towards the natural ones, and to confound them:
and to manifest this, is it not seen that in places where faults are
crimes, crimes are but faults; that in nations where the laws of decency
are most rare and most remiss, the primitive laws of common reason are
better observed: the innumerable multitude of so many duties stifling and
dissipating our care. The application of ourselves to light and trivial
things diverts us from those that are necessary and just. Oh, how these
superficial men take an easy and plausible way in comparison of ours!
These are shadows wherewith we palliate and pay one another; but we do not
pay, but inflame the reckoning towards that great judge, who tucks up our
rags and tatters above our shameful parts, and suckles not to view us all
over, even to our inmost and most secret ordures: it were a useful decency
of our maidenly modesty, could it keep him from this discovery. In fine,
whoever could reclaim man from so scrupulous a verbal superstition, would
do the world no great disservice. Our life is divided betwixt folly and
prudence: whoever will write of it but what is reverend and canonical,
will leave above the one-half behind. I do not excuse myself to myself;
and if I did, it should rather be for my excuses that I would excuse
myself than for any other fault; I excuse myself of certain humours, which
I think more strong in number than those that are on my side. In
consideration of which, I will further say this (for I desire to please
every one, though it will be hard to do):
"Esse unum hominem accommodatum ad tantam morum
ac sermonum et voluntatum varietatem,"
["For a man to conform to such a variety of manners,
discourses, and will."—Q. Cicero, De Pet. Consul, c. 14.]
that they ought not to condemn me for what I make authorities, received
and approved by so many ages, to utter: and that there is no reason that
for want of rhyme they should refuse me the liberty they allow even to
churchmen of our nation and time, and these amongst the most notable, of
which here are two of their brisk verses:
"Rimula, dispeream, ni monogramma tua est."
"Un vit d'amy la contente et bien traicte:"
[St. Gelais, (Euvres Poetiques), p. 99, ed. of Lyons, 1574.]
besides how many others. I love modesty; and 'tis not out of judgment that
I have chosen this scandalous way of speaking; 'tis nature that has chosen
it for me. I commend it not, no more than other forms that are contrary to
common use: but I excuse it, and by circumstances both general and
particular, alleviate its accusation.
But to proceed. Whence, too, can proceed that usurpation of sovereign
authority you take upon you over the women, who favour you at their own
expense,
"Si furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte,"
["If, in the stealthy night, she has made strange gifts."
—Catullus, lxviii. 145.]
so that you presently assume the interest, coldness, and authority of a
husband? 'Tis a free contract why do you not then keep to it, as you would
have them do? there is no prescription upon voluntary things. 'Tis against
the form, but it is true withal, that I in my time have conducted this
bargain as much as the nature of it would permit, as conscientiously and
with as much colour of justice, as any other contract; and that I never
pretended other affection than what I really had, and have truly
acquainted them with its birth, vigour, and declination, its fits and
intermissions: a man does not always hold on at the same rate. I have been
so sparing of my promises, that I think I have been better than my word.
They have found me faithful even to service of their inconstancy, a
confessed and sometimes multiplied inconstancy. I never broke with them,
whilst I had any hold at all, and what occasion soever they have given me,
never broke with them to hatred or contempt; for such privacies, though
obtained upon never so scandalous terms, do yet oblige to some good will:
I have sometimes, upon their tricks and evasions, discovered a little
indiscreet anger and impatience; for I am naturally subject to rash
emotions, which, though light and short, often spoil my market. At any
time they have consulted my judgment, I never stuck to give them sharp and
paternal counsels, and to pinch them to the quick. If I have left them any
cause to complain of me, 'tis rather to have found in me, in comparison of
the modern use, a love foolishly conscientious than anything else. I have
kept my, word in things wherein I might easily have been dispensed; they
sometimes surrendered themselves with reputation, and upon articles that
they were willing enough should be broken by the conqueror: I have, more
than once, made pleasure in its greatest effort strike to the interest of
their honour; and where reason importuned me, have armed them against
myself; so that they ordered themselves more decorously and securely by my
rules, when they frankly referred themselves to them, than they would have
done by their own. I have ever, as much as I could, wholly taken upon
myself alone the hazard of our assignations, to acquit them; and have
always contrived our meetings after the hardest and most unusual manner,
as less suspected, and, moreover, in my opinion, more accessible. They are
chiefly more open, where they think they are most securely shut; things
least feared are least interdicted and observed; one may more boldly dare
what nobody thinks you dare, which by its difficulty becomes easy. Never
had any man his approaches more impertinently generative; this way of
loving is more according to discipline but how ridiculous it is to our
people, and how ineffectual, who better knows than I? yet I shall not
repent me of it; I have nothing there more to lose:
"Me tabula sacer
Votiva paries, indicat uvida
Suspendisse potenti
Vestimenta maris deo:"
["The holy wall, by my votive table, shows that I have hanged up my
wet clothes in honour of the powerful god of the sea."
—Horace, Od., i. 5, 13.]
'tis now time to speak out. But as I might, per adventure, say to another,
"Thou talkest idly, my friend; the love of thy time has little commerce
with faith and integrity;"
"Haec si tu postules
Ratione certa facere, nihilo plus agas,
Quam si des operam, ut cum ratione insanias:"
["If you seek to make these things certain by reason, you will do no
more than if you should seek to be mad in your senses."
—Terence, Eun., act i., sc. i, v. 16.]
on the contrary, also, if it were for me to begin again, certainly it
should be by the same method and the same progress, how fruitless soever
it might be to me; folly and insufficiency are commendable in an
incommendable action: the farther I go from their humour in this, I
approach so much nearer to my own. As to the rest, in this traffic, I did
not suffer myself to be totally carried away; I pleased myself in it, but
did not forget myself. I retained the little sense and discretion that
nature has given me, entire for their service and my own: a little
emotion, but no dotage. My conscience, also, was engaged in it, even to
debauch and licentiousness; but, as to ingratitude, treachery, malice, and
cruelty, never. I would not purchase the pleasure of this vice at any
price, but content myself with its proper and simple cost:
"Nullum intra se vitium est."
["Nothing is a vice in itself."—Seneca, Ep., 95.]
I almost equally hate a stupid and slothful laziness, as I do a toilsome
and painful employment; this pinches, the other lays me asleep. I like
wounds as well as bruises, and cuts as well as dry blows. I found in this
commerce, when I was the most able for it, a just moderation betwixt these
extremes. Love is a sprightly, lively, and gay agitation; I was neither
troubled nor afflicted with it, but heated, and moreover, disordered; a
man must stop there; it hurts nobody but fools. A young man asked the
philosopher Panetius if it were becoming a wise man to be in love? "Let
the wise man look to that," answered he, "but let not thou and I, who are
not so, engage ourselves in so stirring and violent an affair, that
enslaves us to others, and renders us contemptible to ourselves." He said
true that we are not to intrust a thing so precipitous in itself to a soul
that has not wherewithal to withstand its assaults and disprove
practically the saying of Agesilaus, that prudence and love cannot live
together. 'Tis a vain employment, 'tis true, unbecoming, shameful, and
illegitimate; but carried on after this manner, I look upon it as
wholesome, and proper to enliven a drowsy soul and to rouse up a heavy
body; and, as an experienced physician, I would prescribe it to a man of
my form and condition, as soon as any other recipe whatever, to rouse and
keep him in vigour till well advanced in years, and to defer the
approaches of age. Whilst we are but in the suburbs, and that the pulse
yet beats:
"Dum nova canities, dum prima et recta senectus,
Dum superest lachesi quod torqueat, et pedibus me
Porto meis, nullo dextram subeunte bacillo,"
["Whilst the white hair is new, whilst old age is still straight
shouldered, whilst there still remains something for Lachesis to
spin, whilst I walk on my own legs, and need no staff to lean upon."
—Juvenal, iii. 26.]
we have need to be solicited and tickled by some such nipping incitation
as this. Do but observe what youth, vigour, and gaiety it inspired the
good Anacreon withal: and Socrates, who was then older than I, speaking of
an amorous object:
"Leaning," said he, "my shoulder to her shoulder, and my head to hers, as
we were reading together in a book, I felt, without dissembling, a sudden
sting in my shoulder like the biting of an insect, which I still felt
above five days after, and a continual itching crept into my heart." So
that merely the accidental touch, and of a shoulder, heated and altered a
soul cooled and enerved by age, and the strictest liver of all mankind.
And, pray, why not? Socrates was a man, and would neither be, nor seem,
any other thing. Philosophy does not contend against natural pleasures,
provided they be moderate, and only preaches moderation, not a total
abstinence; the power of its resistance is employed against those that are
adulterate and strange. Philosophy says that the appetites of the body
ought not to be augmented by the mind, and ingeniously warns us not to
stir up hunger by saturity; not to stuff, instead of merely filling, the
belly; to avoid all enjoyments that may bring us to want; and all meats
and drinks that bring thirst and hunger: as, in the service of love, she
prescribes us to take such an object as may simply satisfy the body's
need, and does not stir the soul, which ought only barely to follow and
assist the body, without mixing in the affair. But have I not reason to
hold that these precepts, which, indeed, in my opinion, are somewhat over
strict, only concern a body in its best plight; and that in a body broken
with age, as in a weak stomach, 'tis excusable to warm and support it by
art, and by the mediation of the fancy to restore the appetite and
cheerfulness it has lost of itself.
May we not say that there is nothing in us, during this earthly prison,
that is purely either corporeal or spiritual; and that we injuriously
break up a man alive; and that it seems but reasonable that we should
carry ourselves as favourably, at least, towards the use of pleasure as we
do towards that of pain! Pain was (for example) vehement even to
perfection in the souls of the saints by penitence: the body had there
naturally a sham by the right of union, and yet might have but little part
in the cause; and yet are they not contented that it should barely follow
and assist the afflicted soul: they have afflicted itself with grievous
and special torments, to the end that by emulation of one another the soul
and body might plunge man into misery by so much more salutiferous as it
is more severe. In like manner, is it not injustice, in bodily pleasures,
to subdue and keep under the soul, and say that it must therein be dragged
along as to some enforced and servile obligation and necessity? 'Tis
rather her part to hatch and cherish them, there to present herself, and
to invite them, the authority of ruling belonging to her; as it is also
her part, in my opinion, in pleasures that are proper to her, to inspire
and infuse into the body all the sentiment it is capable of, and to study
how to make them sweet and useful to it. For it is good reason, as they
say, that the body should not pursue its appetites to the prejudice of the
mind; but why is it not also the reason that the mind should not pursue
hers to the prejudice of the body?
I have no other passion to keep me in breath. What avarice, ambition,
quarrels, lawsuits do for others who, like me, have no particular
vocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to me
vigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassure
my countenance, so that the grimaces of old age, those deformed and dismal
looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me upon sound and
wise studies, by which I might render myself more loved and esteemed,
clearing my mind of the despair of itself and of its use, and
redintegrating it to itself; would divert me from a thousand troublesome
thoughts, a thousand melancholic humours that idleness and the ill posture
of our health loads us withal at such an age; would warm again, in dreams
at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold up the chin, and
a little stretch out the nerves, the vigour and gaiety of life of that
poor man who is going full drive towards his ruin. But I very well
understand that it is a commodity hard to recover: by weakness and long
experience our taste is become more delicate and nice; we ask most when we
bring least, and are harder to choose when we least deserve to be
accepted: and knowing ourselves for what we are, we are less confident and
more distrustful; nothing can assure us of being beloved, considering our
condition and theirs. I am out of countenance to see myself in company
with those young wanton creatures:
"Cujus in indomito constantior inguine nervus,
Quam nova collibus arbor inhaeret."
["In whose unbridled reins the vigour is more inherent than in the
young tree on the hills."—Horace, Epod., xii. 19.]
To what end should we go insinuate our misery amid their gay and sprightly
humour?
"Possint ut juvenes visere fervidi.
Multo non sine risu,
Dilapsam in cineres facem."
["As the fervid youths may behold, not without laughter, a burning
torch worn to ashes."—Horace, Od., iv. 13, 21.]
They have strength and reason on their side; let us give way; we have
nothing to do there: and these blossoms of springing beauty suffer not
themselves to be handled by such benumbed hands nor dealt with by mere
material means, for, as the old philosopher answered one who jeered him
because he could not gain the favour of a young girl he made love to:
"Friend, the hook will not stick in such soft cheese." It is a commerce
that requires relation and correspondence: the other pleasures we receive
may be acknowledged by recompenses of another nature, but this is not to
be paid but with the same kind of coin. In earnest, in this sport, the
pleasure I give more tickles my imagination than that they give me; now,
he has nothing of generosity in him who can receive pleasure where he
confers none—it must needs be a mean soul that will owe all, and can
be content to maintain relations with persons to whom he is a continual
charge; there is no beauty, grace, nor privacy so exquisite that a
gentleman ought to desire at this rate. If they can only be kind to us out
of pity, I had much rather die than live upon charity. I would have right
to ask, in the style wherein I heard them beg in Italy: "Fate ben per
voi,"—["Do good for yourself."]—or after the manner that Cyrus
exhorted his soldiers, "Who loves himself let him follow me."—"Consort
yourself," some one will say to me, "with women of your own condition,
whom like fortune will render more easy to your desire." O ridiculous and
insipid composition!
"Nolo
Barbam vellere mortuo leoni."
["I would not pluck the beard from a dead lion."—Martial]
Xenophon lays it for an objection and an accusation against Menon, that he
never made love to any but old women. For my part, I take more pleasure in
but seeing the just and sweet mixture of two young beauties, or only in
meditating on it in my fancy, than myself in acting second in a pitiful
and imperfect conjunction;
[Which Cotton renders, "Than to be myself an actor in the second
with a deformed creature."]
I leave that fantastic appetite to the Emperor Galba, who was only for old
curried flesh: and to this poor wretch:
"O ego Di faciant talem to cernere possim,
Caraque mutatis oscula ferre comis,
Amplectique meis corpus non pingue lacertis!"
[Ovid, who (Ex. Ponto, i. 4, 49) writes to his wife, "O would the
gods arrange that such I might see thee, and bring dear kisses to
thy changed locks, and embrace thy withered body with my arms"]
Amongst chief deformities I reckon forced and artificial beauties: Hemon,
a young boy of Chios, thinking by fine dressing to acquire the beauty that
nature had denied him, came to the philosopher Arcesilaus and asked him if
it was possible for a wise man to be in love—"Yes," replied he,
"provided it be not with a farded and adulterated beauty like thine."
[Diogenes Laertius, iv. 36. The question was whether a wise man
could love him. Cotton has "Emonez, a young courtezan of Chios."]
Ugliness of a confessed antiquity is to me less old and less ugly than
another that is polished and plastered up. Shall I speak it, without the
danger of having my throat cut? love, in my opinion, is not properly and
naturally in its season, but in the age next to childhood,
"Quem si puellarum insereres choro,
Mille sagaces falleret hospites,
Discrimen obscurum, solutis
Crinibus ambiguoque vultu:"
["Whom if thou shouldst place in a company of girls, it would
require a thousand experts to distinguish him, with his loose locks
and ambiguous countenance."—Horace, Od., ii. 5, 21.]
nor beauty neither; for whereas Homer extends it so far as to the budding
of the beard, Plato himself has remarked this as rare: and the reason why
the sophist Bion so pleasantly called the first appearing hairs of
adolescence 'Aristogitons' and 'Harmodiuses'—[Plutarch, On Love,
c.34.]— is sufficiently known. I find it in virility already in some
sort a little out of date, though not so much as in old age;
"Importunus enim transvolat aridas
Quercus."
["For it uncivilly passes over withered oaks."
—Horace, Od., iv. 13, 9.]
and Marguerite, Queen of Navarre, like a woman, very far extends the
advantage of women, ordaining that it is time, at thirty years old, to
convert the title of fair into that of good. The shorter authority we give
to love over our lives, 'tis so much the better for us. Do but observe his
port; 'tis a beardless boy. Who knows not how, in his school they proceed
contrary to all order; study, exercise, and usage are their ways for
insufficiency there novices rule:
"Amor ordinem nescit."
["Love ignores rules." (Or:) "Love knows no rule."
—St. Jerome, Letter to Chyomatius.]
Doubtless his conduct is much more graceful when mixed with inadvertency
and trouble; miscarriages and ill successes give him point and grace;
provided it be sharp and eager, 'tis no great matter whether it be prudent
or no: do but observe how he goes reeling, tripping, and playing: you put
him in the stocks when you guide him by art and wisdom; and he is
restrained of his divine liberty when put into those hairy and callous
clutches.
As to the rest, I often hear the women set out this intelligence as
entirely spiritual, and disdain to put the interest the senses there have
into consideration; everything there serves; but I can say that I have
often seen that we have excused the weakness of their understandings in
favour of their outward beauty, but have never yet seen that in favour of
mind, how mature and full soever, any of them would hold out a hand to a
body that was never so little in decadence. Why does not some one of them
take it into her head to make that noble Socratical bargain between body
and soul, purchasing a philosophical and spiritual intelligence and
generation at the price of her thighs, which is the highest price she can
get for them? Plato ordains in his Laws that he who has performed any
signal and advantageous exploit in war may not be refused during the whole
expedition, his age or ugliness notwithstanding, a kiss or any other
amorous favour from any woman whatever. What he thinks to be so just in
recommendation of military valour, why may it not be the same in
recommendation of any other good quality? and why does not some woman take
a fancy to possess over her companions the glory of this chaste love? I
may well say chaste;
"Nam si quando ad praelia ventum est,
Ut quondam in stipulis magnus sine viribus ignis,
Incassum furit:"
["For when they sometimes engage in love's battle,
his sterile ardour lights up but as the flame of a straw."
—Virgil, Georg., iii. 98.]
the vices that are stifled in the thought are not the worst.
To conclude this notable commentary, which has escaped from me in a
torrent of babble, a torrent sometimes impetuous and hurtful,
"Ut missum sponsi furtivo munere malum
Procurrit casto virginis a gremio,
Quod miserae oblitae molli sub veste locatuat,
Dum adventu matris prosilit, excutitur,
Atque illud prono praeceps agitur decursu
Huic manat tristi conscius ore rubor."
["As when an apple, sent by a lover secretly to his mistress, falls
from the chaste virgin's bosom, where she had quite forgotten it;
when, starting at her mother's coming in, it is shaken out and rolls
over the floor before her eyes, a conscious blush covers her face."
—Catullus, lxv. 19.]
I say that males and females are cast in the same mould, and that,
education and usage excepted, the difference is not great. Plato
indifferently invites both the one and the other to the society of all
studies, exercises, and vocations, both military and civil, in his
Commonwealth; and the philosopher Antisthenes rejected all distinction
betwixt their virtue and ours. It is much more easy to accuse one sex than
to excuse the other; 'tis according to the saying,
"Le fourgon se moque de la paele."
["The Pot and the Kettle."]
CHAPTER VI——OF COACHES
It is very easy to verify, that great authors, when they write of causes,
not only make use of those they think to be the true causes, but also of
those they believe not to be so, provided they have in them some beauty
and invention: they speak true and usefully enough, if it be ingeniously.
We cannot make ourselves sure of the supreme cause, and therefore crowd a
great many together, to see if it may not accidentally be amongst them:
"Namque unam dicere causam
Non satis est, verum plures, unde una tamen sit."
[Lucretius, vi. 704.—The sense is in the preceding passage.]
Do you ask me, whence comes the custom of blessing those who sneeze? We
break wind three several ways; that which sallies from below is too
filthy; that which breaks out from the mouth carries with it some reproach
of gluttony; the third is sneezing, which, because it proceeds from the
head and is without offence, we give it this civil reception: do not laugh
at this distinction; they say 'tis Aristotle's.
I think I have seen in Plutarch' (who of all the authors I know, is he who
has best mixed art with nature, and judgment with knowledge), his giving
as a reason for the, rising of the stomach in those who are at sea, that
it is occasioned by fear; having first found out some reason by which he
proves that fear may produce such an effect. I, who am very subject to it,
know well that this cause concerns not me; and I know it, not by argument,
but by necessary experience. Without instancing what has been told me,
that the same thing often happens in beasts, especially hogs, who are out
of all apprehension of danger; and what an acquaintance of mine told me of
himself, that though very subject to it, the disposition to vomit has
three or four times gone off him, being very afraid in a violent storm, as
it happened to that ancient:
"Pejus vexabar, quam ut periculum mihi succurreret;"
["I was too ill to think of danger." (Or the reverse:)
"I was too frightened to be ill."—Seneca, Ep., 53. 2]
I was never afraid upon the water, nor indeed in any other peril (and I
have had enough before my eyes that would have sufficed, if death be one),
so as to be astounded to lose my judgment. Fear springs sometimes as much
from want of judgment as from want of courage. All the dangers I have been
in I have looked upon without winking, with an open, sound, and entire
sight; and, indeed, a man must have courage to fear. It formerly served me
better than other help, so to order and regulate my retreat, that it was,
if not without fear, nevertheless without affright and astonishment; it
was agitated, indeed, but not amazed or stupefied. Great souls go yet much
farther, and present to us flights, not only steady and temperate, but
moreover lofty. Let us make a relation of that which Alcibiades reports of
Socrates, his fellow in arms: "I found him," says he, "after the rout of
our army, him and Lachez, last among those who fled, and considered him at
my leisure and in security, for I was mounted on a good horse, and he on
foot, as he had fought. I took notice, in the first place, how much
judgment and resolution he showed, in comparison of Lachez, and then the
bravery of his march, nothing different from his ordinary gait; his sight
firm and regular, considering and judging what passed about him, looking
one while upon those, and then upon others, friends and enemies, after
such a manner as encouraged those, and signified to the others that he
would sell his life dear to any one who should attempt to take it from
him, and so they came off; for people are not willing to attack such kind
of men, but pursue those they see are in a fright." That is the testimony
of this great captain, which teaches us, what we every day experience,
that nothing so much throws us into dangers as an inconsiderate eagerness
of getting ourselves clear of them:
"Quo timoris minus est, eo minus ferme periculi est."
["When there is least fear, there is for the most part least
danger."—Livy, xxii. 5.]
Our people are to blame who say that such an one is afraid of death, when
they would express that he thinks of it and foresees it: foresight is
equally convenient in what concerns us, whether good or ill. To consider
and judge of danger is, in some sort, the reverse to being astounded. I do
not find myself strong enough to sustain the force and impetuosity of this
passion of fear, nor of any other vehement passion whatever: if I was once
conquered and beaten down by it, I should never rise again very sound.
Whoever should once make my soul lose her footing, would never set her
upright again: she retastes and researches herself too profoundly, and too
much to the quick, and therefore would never let the wound she had
received heal and cicatrise. It has been well for me that no sickness has
yet discomposed her: at every charge made upon me, I preserve my utmost
opposition and defence; by which means the first that should rout me would
keep me from ever rallying again. I have no after-game to play: on which
side soever the inundation breaks my banks, I lie open, and am drowned
without remedy. Epicurus says, that a wise man can never become a fool; I
have an opinion reverse to this sentence, which is, that he who has once
been a very fool, will never after be very wise. God grants me cold
according to my cloth, and passions proportionable to the means I have to
withstand them: nature having laid me open on the one side, has covered me
on the other; having disarmed me of strength, she has armed me with
insensibility and an apprehension that is regular, or, if you will, dull.
I cannot now long endure (and when I was young could much less) either
coach, litter, or boat, and hate all other riding but on horseback, both
in town and country. But I can bear a litter worse than a coach; and, by
the same reason, a rough agitation upon the water, whence fear is
produced, better than the motions of a calm. At the little jerks of oars,
stealing the vessel from under us, I find, I know not how, both my head
and my stomach disordered; neither-can I endure to sit upon a tottering
chair. When the sail or the current carries us equally, or that we are
towed, the equal agitation does not disturb me at all; 'tis an interrupted
motion that offends me, and most of all when most slow: I cannot otherwise
express it. The physicians have ordered me to squeeze and gird myself
about the bottom of the belly with a napkin to remedy this evil; which
however I have not tried, being accustomed to wrestle with my own defects,
and overcome them myself.
Would my memory serve me, I should not think my time ill spent in setting
down here the infinite variety that history presents us of the use of
chariots in the service of war: various, according to the nations and
according to the age; in my opinion, of great necessity and effect; so
that it is a wonder that we have lost all knowledge of them. I will only
say this, that very lately, in our fathers' time, the Hungarians made very
advantageous use of them against the Turks; having in every one of them a
targetter and a musketeer, and a number of harquebuses piled ready and
loaded, and all covered with a pavesade like a galliot—[Canvas
spread along the side of a ship of war, in action to screen the movements
of those on board.]—They formed the front of their battle with three
thousand such coaches, and after the cannon had played, made them all pour
in their shot upon the enemy, who had to swallow that volley before they
tasted of the rest, which was no little advance; and that done, these
chariots charged into their squadrons to break them and open a way for the
rest; besides the use they might make of them to flank the soldiers in a
place of danger when marching to the field, or to cover a post, and
fortify it in haste. In my time, a gentleman on one of our frontiers,
unwieldy of body, and finding no horse able to carry his weight, having a
quarrel, rode through the country in a chariot of this fashion, and found
great convenience in it. But let us leave these chariots of war.
As if their effeminacy—[Which Cotton translates: "as if the
insignificancy of coaches." ]—had not been sufficiently known by
better proofs, the last kings of our first race travelled in a chariot
drawn by four oxen. Marc Antony was the first at Rome who caused himself
to be drawn in a coach by lions, and a singing wench with him.
[Cytheris, the Roman courtezan.—Plutarch's Life of Antony, c. 3.
This, was the same person who is introduced by Gallus under the name
of Lycoris. Gallus doubtless knew her personally.]
Heliogabalus did since as much, calling himself Cybele, the mother of the
gods; and also drawn by tigers, taking upon him the person of the god
Bacchus; he also sometimes harnessed two stags to his coach, another time
four dogs, and another four naked wenches, causing himself to be drawn by
them in pomp, stark naked too. The Emperor Firmus caused his chariot to be
drawn by ostriches of a prodigious size, so that it seemed rather to fly
than roll.
The strangeness of these inventions puts this other fancy in my head: that
it is a kind of pusillanimity in monarchs, and a testimony that they do
not sufficiently understand themselves what they are, when they study to
make themselves honoured and to appear great by excessive expense: it were
indeed excusable in a foreign country, but amongst their own subjects,
where they are in sovereign command, and may do what they please, it
derogates from their dignity the most supreme degree of honour to which
they can arrive: just as, methinks, it is superfluous in a private
gentleman to go finely dressed at home; his house, his attendants, and his
kitchen sufficiently answer for him. The advice that Isocrates gives his
king seems to be grounded upon reason: that he should be splendid in plate
and furniture; forasmuch as it is an expense of duration that devolves on
his successors; and that he should avoid all magnificences that will in a
short time be forgotten. I loved to go fine when I was a younger brother,
for want of other ornament; and it became me well: there are some upon
whom their rich clothes weep: We have strange stories of the frugality of
our kings about their own persons and in their gifts: kings who were great
in reputation, valour, and fortune. Demosthenes vehemently opposes the law
of his city that assigned the public money for the pomp of their public
plays and festivals: he would that their greatness should be seen in
numbers of ships well equipped, and good armies well provided for; and
there is good reason to condemn Theophrastus, who, in his Book on Riches,
establishes a contrary opinion, and maintains that sort of expense to be
the true fruit of abundance. They are delights, says Aristotle, that a
only please the baser sort of the people, and that vanish from the memory
as soon as the people are sated with them, and for which no serious and
judicious man can have any esteem. This money would, in my opinion, be
much more royally, as more profitably, justly, and durably, laid out in
ports, havens, walls, and fortifications; in sumptuous buildings,
churches, hospitals, colleges, the reforming of streets and highways:
wherein Pope Gregory XIII. will leave a laudable memory to future times:
and wherein our Queen Catherine would to long posterity manifest her
natural liberality and munificence, did her means supply her affection.
Fortune has done me a great despite in interrupting the noble structure of
the Pont-Neuf of our great city, and depriving me of the hope of seeing it
finished before I die.
Moreover, it seems to subjects, who are spectators of these triumphs, that
their own riches are exposed before them, and that they are entertained at
their own expense: for the people are apt to presume of kings, as we do of
our servants, that they are to take care to provide us all things
necessary in abundance, but not touch it themselves; and therefore the
Emperor Galba, being pleased with a musician who played to him at supper,
called for his money-box, and gave him a handful of crowns that he took
out of it, with these words: "This is not the public money, but my own."
Yet it so falls out that the people, for the most part, have reason on
their side, and that the princes feed their eyes with what they have need
of to fill their bellies.
Liberality itself is not in its true lustre in a sovereign hand: private
men have therein the most right; for, to take it exactly, a king has
nothing properly his own; he owes himself to others: authority is not
given in favour of the magistrate, but of the people; a superior is never
made so for his own profit, but for the profit of the inferior, and a
physician for the sick person, and not for himself: all magistracy, as
well as all art, has its end out of itself wherefore the tutors of young
princes, who make it their business to imprint in them this virtue of
liberality, and preach to them to deny nothing and to think nothing so
well spent as what they give (a doctrine that I have known in great credit
in my time), either have more particular regard to their own profit than
to that of their master, or ill understand to whom they speak. It is too
easy a thing to inculcate liberality on him who has as much as he will to
practise it with at the expense of others; and, the estimate not being
proportioned to the measure of the gift but to the measure of the means of
him who gives it, it comes to nothing in so mighty hands; they find
themselves prodigal before they can be reputed liberal. And it is but a
little recommendation, in comparison with other royal virtues: and the
only one, as the tyrant Dionysius said, that suits well with tyranny
itself. I should rather teach him this verse of the ancient labourer:
["That whoever will have a good crop must sow with his hand, and not
pour out of the sack."—Plutarch, Apothegms, Whether the Ancients
were more excellent in Arms than in Learning.]
he must scatter it abroad, and not lay it on a heap in one place: and
that, seeing he is to give, or, to say better, to pay and restore to so
many people according as they have deserved, he ought to be a loyal and
discreet disposer. If the liberality of a prince be without measure or
discretion, I had rather he were covetous.
Royal virtue seems most to consist in justice; and of all the parts of
justice that best denotes a king which accompanies liberality, for this
they have particularly reserved to be performed by themselves, whereas all
other sorts of justice they remit to the administration of others. An
immoderate bounty is a very weak means to acquire for them good will; it
checks more people than it allures:
"Quo in plures usus sis, minus in multos uti possis....
Quid autem est stultius, quam, quod libenter facias,
curare ut id diutius facere non possis;"
["By how much more you use it to many, by so much less will you be
in a capacity to use it to many more. And what greater folly can
there be than to order it so that what you would willingly do, you
cannot do longer."—Cicero, De Offic., ii. 15.]
and if it be conferred without due respect of merit, it puts him out of
countenance who receives it, and is received ungraciously. Tyrants have
been sacrificed to the hatred of the people by the hands of those very men
they have unjustly advanced; such kind of men as buffoons, panders,
fiddlers, and such ragamuffins, thinking to assure to themselves the
possession of benefits unduly received, if they manifest to have him in
hatred and disdain of whom they hold them, and in this associate
themselves to the common judgment and opinion.
The subjects of a prince excessive in gifts grow excessive in asking, and
regulate their demands, not by reason, but by example. We have, seriously,
very often reason to blush at our own impudence: we are over-paid,
according to justice, when the recompense equals our service; for do we
owe nothing of natural obligation to our princes? If he bear our charges,
he does too much; 'tis enough that he contribute to them: the overplus is
called benefit, which cannot be exacted: for the very name Liberality
sounds of Liberty.
In our fashion it is never done; we never reckon what we have received; we
are only for the future liberality; wherefore, the more a prince exhausts
himself in giving, the poorer he grows in friends. How should he satisfy
immoderate desires, that still increase as they are fulfilled? He who has
his thoughts upon taking, never thinks of what he has taken; covetousness
has nothing so properly and so much its own as ingratitude.
The example of Cyrus will not do amiss in this place, to serve the kings
of these times for a touchstone to know whether their gifts are well or
ill bestowed, and to see how much better that emperor conferred them than
they do, by which means they are reduced to borrow of unknown subjects,
and rather of them whom they have wronged than of them on whom they have
conferred their benefits, and so receive aids wherein there is nothing of
gratuitous but the name. Croesus reproached him with his bounty, and cast
up to how much his treasure would amount if he had been a little
closer-handed. He had a mind to justify his liberality, and therefore sent
despatches into all parts to the grandees of his dominions whom he had
particularly advanced, entreating every one of them to supply him with as
much money as they could, for a pressing occasion, and to send him
particulars of what each could advance. When all these answers were
brought to him, every one of his friends, not thinking it enough barely to
offer him so much as he had received from his bounty, and adding to it a
great deal of his own, it appeared that the sum amounted to a great deal
more than Croesus' reckoning. Whereupon Cyrus: "I am not," said he, "less
in love with riches than other princes, but rather a better husband; you
see with how small a venture I have acquired the inestimable treasure of
so many friends, and how much more faithful treasurers they are to me than
mercenary men without obligation, without affection; and my money better
laid up than in chests, bringing upon me the hatred, envy, and contempt of
other princes."
The emperors excused the superfluity of their plays and public spectacles
by reason that their authority in some sort (at least in outward
appearance) depended upon the will of the people of Rome, who, time out of
mind, had been accustomed to be entertained and caressed with such shows
and excesses. But they were private citizens, who had nourished this
custom to gratify their fellow-citizens and companions (and chiefly out of
their own purses) by such profusion and magnificence it had quite another
taste when the masters came to imitate it:
"Pecuniarum translatio a justis dominis ad alienos
non debet liberalis videri."
["The transferring of money from the right owners to strangers
ought not to have the title of liberality."
—Cicero, De Offic., i. 14.]
Philip, seeing that his son went about by presents to gain the affection
of the Macedonians, reprimanded him in a letter after this manner: "What!
hast thou a mind that thy subjects shall look upon thee as their
cash-keeper and not as their king? Wilt thou tamper with them to win their
affections? Do it, then, by the benefits of thy virtue, and not by those
of thy chest." And yet it was, doubtless, a fine thing to bring and plant
within the amphitheatre a great number of vast trees, with all their
branches in their full verdure, representing a great shady forest,
disposed in excellent order; and, the first day, to throw into it a
thousand ostriches and a thousand stags, a thousand boars, and a thousand
fallow-deer, to be killed and disposed of by the people: the next day, to
cause a hundred great lions, a hundred leopards, and three hundred bears
to be killed in his presence; and for the third day, to make three hundred
pair of gladiators fight it out to the last, as the Emperor Probus did. It
was also very fine to see those vast amphitheatres, all faced with marble
without, curiously wrought with figures and statues, and within glittering
with rare enrichments:
"Baltheus en! gemmis, en illita porticus auro:"
["A belt glittering with jewels, and a portico overlaid with gold."
—Calpurnius, Eclog., vii. 47. A baltheus was a shoulder-belt or
baldric.]
all the sides of this vast space filled and environed, from the bottom to
the top, with three or four score rows of seats, all of marble also, and
covered with cushions:
"Exeat, inquit,
Si pudor est, et de pulvino surgat equestri,
Cujus res legi non sufficit;"
["Let him go out, he said, if he has any sense of shame, and rise
from the equestrian cushion, whose estate does not satisfy the law."
—Juvenal, iii. 153. The Equites were required to possess a fortune
of 400 sestertia, and they sat on the first fourteen rows behind the
orchestra.]
where a hundred thousand men might sit at their ease: and, the place
below, where the games were played, to make it, by art, first open and
cleave in chasms, representing caves that vomited out the beasts designed
for the spectacle; and then, secondly, to be overflowed by a deep sea,
full of sea monsters, and laden with ships of war, to represent a naval
battle; and, thirdly, to make it dry and even again for the combat of the
gladiators; and, for the fourth scene, to have it strown with vermilion
grain and storax,—[A resinous gum.]—instead of sand, there to
make a solemn feast for all that infinite number of people: the last act
of one only day:
"Quoties nos descendentis arenae
Vidimus in partes, ruptaque voragine terrae
Emersisse feras, et eisdem saepe latebris
Aurea cum croceo creverunt arbuta libro!....
Nec solum nobis silvestria cernere monstra
Contigit; aequoreos ego cum certantibus ursis
Spectavi vitulos, et equorum nomine dignum,
Sen deforme pecus, quod in illo nascitur amni...."
["How often have we seen the stage of the theatre descend and part
asunder, and from a chasm in the earth wild beasts emerge, and then
presently give birth to a grove of gilded trees, that put forth
blossoms of enamelled flowers. Nor yet of sylvan marvels alone had
we sight: I saw sea-calves fight with bears, and a deformed sort of
cattle, we might call sea-horses."—Calpurnius, Eclog., vii. 64.]
Sometimes they made a high mountain advance itself, covered with
fruit-trees and other leafy trees, sending down rivulets of water from the
top, as from the mouth of a fountain: otherwhiles, a great ship was seen
to come rolling in, which opened and divided of itself, and after having
disgorged from the hold four or five hundred beasts for fight, closed
again, and vanished without help. At other times, from the floor of this
place, they made spouts of perfumed water dart their streams upward, and
so high as to sprinkle all that infinite multitude. To defend themselves
from the injuries of the weather, they had that vast place one while
covered over with purple curtains of needlework, and by-and-by with silk
of one or another colour, which they drew off or on in a moment, as they
had a mind:
"Quamvis non modico caleant spectacula sole,
Vela reducuntur, cum venit Hermogenes."
["The curtains, though the sun should scorch the spectators, are
drawn in, when Hermogenes appears."-Martial, xii. 29, 15. M.
Tigellius Hermogenes, whom Horace and others have satirised. One
editor calls him "a noted thief," another: "He was a literary
amateur of no ability, who expressed his critical opinions with too
great a freedom to please the poets of his day." D.W.]
The network also that was set before the people to defend them from the
violence of these turned-out beasts was woven of gold:
"Auro quoque torts refulgent
Retia."
["The woven nets are refulgent with gold."
—Calpurnius, ubi supra.]
If there be anything excusable in such excesses as these, it is where the
novelty and invention create more wonder than the expense; even in these
vanities we discover how fertile those ages were in other kind of wits
than these of ours. It is with this sort of fertility, as with all other
products of nature: not that she there and then employed her utmost force:
we do not go; we rather run up and down, and whirl this way and that; we
turn back the way we came. I am afraid our knowledge is weak in all
senses; we neither see far forward nor far backward; our understanding
comprehends little, and lives but a little while; 'tis short both in
extent of time and extent of matter:
"Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Mufti, sed omnes illacrymabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longs
Nocte."
[ Many brave men lived before Agamemnon, but all are pressed by the
long night unmourned and unknown."—Horace, Od., iv. 9, 25.]
"Et supra bellum Thebanum et funera Trojae
Non alias alii quoque res cecinere poetae?"
["Why before the Theban war and the destruction of Troy, have not
other poets sung other events?"—Lucretius, v. 327. Montaigne here
diverts himself m giving Lucretius' words a construction directly
contrary to what they bear in the poem. Lucretius puts the
question, Why if the earth had existed from all eternity, there had
not been poets, before the Theban war, to sing men's exploits.
—Coste.]
And the narrative of Solon, of what he had learned from the Egyptian
priests, touching the long life of their state, and their manner of
learning and preserving foreign histories, is not, methinks, a testimony
to be refused in this consideration:
"Si interminatam in omnes partes magnitudinem regionum videremus et
temporum, in quam se injiciens animus et intendens, ita late
longeque peregrinatur, ut nullam oram ultimi videat, in qua possit
insistere: in haec immensitate . . . infinita vis innumerabilium
appareret fomorum."
["Could we see on all parts the unlimited magnitude of regions and
of times, upon which the mind being intent, could wander so far and
wide, that no limit is to be seen, in which it can bound its eye, we
should, in that infinite immensity, discover an infinite force of
innumerable atoms." Here also Montaigne puts a sense quite
different from what the words bear in the original; but the
application he makes of them is so happy that one would declare they
were actually put together only to express his own sentiments. "Et
temporum" is an addition by Montaigne.—Coste.]
Though all that has arrived, by report, of our knowledge of times past
should be true, and known by some one person, it would be less than
nothing in comparison of what is unknown. And of this same image of the
world, which glides away whilst we live upon it, how wretched and limited
is the knowledge of the most curious; not only of particular events, which
fortune often renders exemplary and of great concern, but of the state of
great governments and nations, a hundred more escape us than ever come to
our knowledge. We make a mighty business of the invention of artillery and
printing, which other men at the other end of the world, in China, had a
thousand years ago. Did we but see as much of the world as we do not see,
we should perceive, we may well believe, a perpetual multiplication and
vicissitude of forms. There is nothing single and rare in respect of
nature, but in respect of our knowledge, which is a wretched foundation
whereon to ground our rules, and that represents to us a very false image
of things. As we nowadays vainly conclude the declension and decrepitude
of the world, by the arguments we extract from our own weakness and decay:
"Jamque adeo est affecta aetas effoet aque tellus;"
["Our age is feeble, and the earth less fertile."
—Lucretius, ii. 1151.]
so did he vainly conclude as to its birth and youth, by the vigour he
observed in the wits of his time, abounding in novelties and the invention
of divers arts:
"Verum, ut opinor, habet novitatem summa, recensque
Natura est mundi, neque pridem exordia coepit
Quare etiam quaedam nunc artes expoliuntur,
Nunc etiam augescunt; nunc addita navigiis sunt
Multa."
["But, as I am of opinion, the whole of the world is of recent
origin, nor had its commencement in remote times; wherefore it is
that some arts are still being refined, and some just on the
increase; at present many additions are being made to shipping."
—Lucretius, v. 331.]
Our world has lately discovered another (and who will assure us that it is
the last of its brothers, since the Daemons, the Sybils, and we ourselves
have been ignorant of this till now?), as large, well-peopled, and
fruitful as this whereon we live and yet so raw and childish, that we are
still teaching it it's a B C: 'tis not above fifty years since it knew
neither letters, weights, measures, vestments, corn, nor vines: it was
then quite naked in the mother's lap, and only lived upon what she gave
it. If we rightly conclude of our end, and this poet of the youthfulness
of that age of his, that other world will only enter into the light when
this of ours shall make its exit; the universe will fall into paralysis;
one member will be useless, the other in vigour. I am very much afraid
that we have greatly precipitated its declension and ruin by our
contagion; and that we have sold it opinions and our arts at a very dear
rate. It was an infant world, and yet we have not whipped and subjected it
to our discipline by the advantage of our natural worth and force, neither
have we won it by our justice and goodness, nor subdued it by our
magnanimity. Most of their answers, and the negotiations we have had with
them, witness that they were nothing behind us in pertinency and clearness
of natural understanding. The astonishing magnificence of the cities of
Cusco and Mexico, and, amongst many other things, the garden of the king,
where all the trees, fruits, and plants, according to the order and
stature they have in a garden, were excellently formed in gold; as, in his
cabinet, were all the animals bred upon his territory and in its seas; and
the beauty of their manufactures, in jewels, feathers, cotton, and
painting, gave ample proof that they were as little inferior to us in
industry. But as to what concerns devotion, observance of the laws,
goodness, liberality, loyalty, and plain dealing, it was of use to us that
we had not so much as they; for they have lost, sold, and betrayed
themselves by this advantage over us.
As to boldness and courage, stability, constancy against pain, hunger, and
death, I should not fear to oppose the examples I find amongst them to the
most famous examples of elder times that we find in our records on this
side of the world. Far as to those who subdued them, take but away the
tricks and artifices they practised to gull them, and the just
astonishment it was to those nations to see so sudden and unexpected an
arrival of men with beards, differing in language, religion, shape, and
countenance, from so remote a part of the world, and where they had never
heard there was any habitation, mounted upon great unknown monsters,
against those who had not only never seen a horse, but had never seen any
other beast trained up to carry a man or any other loading; shelled in a
hard and shining skin, with a cutting and glittering weapon in his hand,
against them, who, out of wonder at the brightness of a looking glass or a
knife, would exchange great treasures of gold and pearl; and who had
neither knowledge, nor matter with which, at leisure, they could penetrate
our steel: to which may be added the lightning and thunder of our cannon
and harquebuses, enough to frighten Caesar himself, if surprised, with so
little experience, against people naked, except where the invention of a
little quilted cotton was in use, without other arms, at the most, than
bows, stones, staves, and bucklers of wood; people surprised under colour
of friendship and good faith, by the curiosity of seeing strange and
unknown things; take but away, I say, this disparity from the conquerors,
and you take away all the occasion of so many victories. When I look upon
that in vincible ardour wherewith so many thousands of men, women, and
children so often presented and threw themselves into inevitable dangers
for the defence of their gods and liberties; that generous obstinacy to
suffer all extremities and difficulties, and death itself, rather than
submit to the dominion of those by whom they had been so shamefully
abused; and some of them choosing to die of hunger and fasting, being
prisoners, rather than to accept of nourishment from the hands of their so
basely victorious enemies: I see, that whoever would have attacked them
upon equal terms of arms, experience, and number, would have had a hard,
and, peradventure, a harder game to play than in any other war we have
seen.
Why did not so noble a conquest fall under Alexander, or the ancient
Greeks and Romans; and so great a revolution and mutation of so many
empires and nations, fall into hands that would have gently levelled,
rooted up, and made plain and smooth whatever was rough and savage amongst
them, and that would have cherished and propagated the good seeds that
nature had there produced; mixing not only with the culture of land and
the ornament of cities, the arts of this part of the world, in what was
necessary, but also the Greek and Roman virtues, with those that were
original of the country? What a reparation had it been to them, and what a
general good to the whole world, had our first examples and deportments in
those parts allured those people to the admiration and imitation of
virtue, and had begotten betwixt them and us a fraternal society and
intelligence? How easy had it been to have made advantage of souls so
innocent, and so eager to learn, leaving, for the most part, naturally so
good inclinations before? Whereas, on the contrary, we have taken
advantage of their ignorance and inexperience, with greater ease to
incline them to treachery, luxury, avarice, and towards all sorts of
inhumanity and cruelty, by the pattern and example of our manners. Who
ever enhanced the price of merchandise at such a rate? So many cities
levelled with the ground, so many nations exterminated, so many millions
of people fallen by the edge of the sword, and the richest and most
beautiful part of the world turned upside down, for the traffic of pearl
and pepper? Mechanic victories! Never did ambition, never did public
animosities, engage men against one another in such miserable hostilities,
in such miserable calamities.
Certain Spaniards, coasting the sea in quest of their mines, landed in a
fruitful and pleasant and very well peopled country, and there made to the
inhabitants their accustomed professions: "that they were peaceable men,
who were come from a very remote country, and sent on the behalf of the
King of Castile, the greatest prince of the habitable world, to whom the
Pope, God's vicegerent upon earth, had given the principality of all the
Indies; that if they would become tributaries to him, they should be very
gently and courteously used"; at the same time requiring of them victuals
for their nourishment, and gold whereof to make some pretended medicine;
setting forth, moreover, the belief in one only God, and the truth of our
religion, which they advised them to embrace, whereunto they also added
some threats. To which they received this answer: "That as to their being
peaceable, they did not seem to be such, if they were so. As to their
king, since he was fain to beg, he must be necessitous and poor; and he
who had made him this gift, must be a man who loved dissension, to give
that to another which was none of his own, to bring it into dispute
against the ancient possessors. As to victuals, they would supply them;
that of gold they had little; it being a thing they had in very small
esteem, as of no use to the service of life, whereas their only care was
to pass it over happily and pleasantly: but that what they could find
excepting what was employed in the service of their gods, they might
freely take. As to one only God, the proposition had pleased them well;
but that they would not change their religion, both because they had so
long and happily lived in it, and that they were not wont to take advice
of any but their friends, and those they knew: as to their menaces, it was
a sign of want of judgment to threaten those whose nature and power were
to them unknown; that, therefore, they were to make haste to quit their
coast, for they were not used to take the civilities and professions of
armed men and strangers in good part; otherwise they should do by them as
they had done by those others," showing them the heads of several executed
men round the walls of their city. A fair example of the babble of these
children. But so it is, that the Spaniards did not, either in this or in
several other places, where they did not find the merchandise they sought,
make any stay or attempt, whatever other conveniences were there to be
had; witness my CANNIBALS. —[Chapter XXX. of Book I.]
Of the two most puissant monarchs of that world, and, peradventure, of
this, kings of so many kings, and the last they turned out, he of Peru,
having been taken in a battle, and put to so excessive a ransom as exceeds
all belief, and it being faithfully paid, and he having, by his
conversation, given manifest signs of a frank, liberal, and constant
spirit, and of a clear and settled understanding, the conquerors had a
mind, after having exacted one million three hundred and twenty-five
thousand and five hundred weight of gold, besides silver, and other things
which amounted to no less (so that their horses were shod with massy
gold), still to see, at the price of what disloyalty and injustice
whatever, what the remainder of the treasures of this king might be, and
to possess themselves of that also. To this end a false accusation was
preferred against him, and false witnesses brought to prove that he went
about to raise an insurrection in his provinces, to procure his own
liberty; whereupon, by the virtuous sentence of those very men who had by
this treachery conspired his ruin, he was condemned to be publicly hanged
and strangled, after having made him buy off the torment of being burnt
alive, by the baptism they gave him immediately before execution; a horrid
and unheard of barbarity, which, nevertheless, he underwent without giving
way either in word or look, with a truly grave and royal behaviour. After
which, to calm and appease the people, aroused and astounded at so strange
a thing, they counterfeited great sorrow for his death, and appointed most
sumptuous funerals.
The other king of Mexico,—[Guatimosin]—having for a long time
defended his beleaguered city, and having in this siege manifested the
utmost of what suffering and perseverance can do, if ever prince and
people did, and his misfortune having delivered him alive into his
enemies' hands, upon articles of being treated like a king, neither did he
in his captivity discover anything unworthy of that title. His enemies,
after their victory, not finding so much gold as they expected, when they
had searched and rifled with their utmost diligence, they went about to
procure discoveries by the most cruel torments they could invent upon the
prisoners they had taken: but having profited nothing by these, their
courage being greater than their torments, they arrived at last to such a
degree of fury, as, contrary to their faith and the law of nations, to
condemn the king himself, and one of the principal noblemen of his court,
to the rack, in the presence of one another. This lord, finding himself
overcome with pain, being environed with burning coals, pitifully turned
his dying eyes towards his master, as it were to ask him pardon that he
was able to endure no more; whereupon the king, darting at him a fierce
and severe look, as reproaching his cowardice and pusillanimity, with a
harsh and constant voice said to him thus only: "And what dost thou think
I suffer? am I in a bath? am I more at ease than thou?" Whereupon the
other immediately quailed under the torment and died upon the spot. The
king, half roasted, was carried thence; not so much out of pity (for what
compassion ever touched so barbarous souls, who, upon the doubtful
information of some vessel of gold to be made a prey of, caused not only a
man, but a king, so great in fortune and desert, to be broiled before
their eyes), but because his constancy rendered their cruelty still more
shameful. They afterwards hanged him for having nobly attempted to deliver
himself by arms from so long a captivity and subjection, and he died with
a courage becoming so magnanimous a prince.
Another time, they burnt in the same fire four hundred and sixty men alive
at once, the four hundred of the common people, the sixty the principal
lords of a province, simply prisoners of war. We have these narratives
from themselves for they not only own it, but boast of it and publish it.
Could it be for a testimony of their justice or their zeal to religion?
Doubtless these are ways too differing and contrary to so holy an end. Had
they proposed to themselves to extend our faith, they would have
considered that it does not amplify in the possession of territories, but
in the gaining of men; and would have more than satisfied themselves with
the slaughters occasioned by the necessity of war, without indifferently
mixing a massacre, as upon wild beasts, as universal as fire and sword
could make it; having only, by intention, saved so many as they meant to
make miserable slaves of, for the work and service of their mines; so that
many of the captains were put to death upon the place of conquest, by
order of the kings of Castile, justly offended with the horror of their
deportment, and almost all of them hated and disesteemed. God
meritoriously permitted that all this great plunder should be swallowed up
by the sea in transportation, or in the civil wars wherewith they devoured
one another; and most of the men themselves were buried in a foreign land
without any fruit of their victory.
That the revenue from these countries, though in the hands of so
parsimonious and so prudent a prince,—[Phillip II.]—so little
answers the expectation given of it to his predecessors, and to that
original abundance of riches which was found at the first landing in those
new discovered countries (for though a great deal be fetched thence, yet
we see 'tis nothing in comparison of that which might be expected), is
that the use of coin was there utterly unknown, and that consequently
their gold was found all hoarded together, being of no other use but for
ornament and show, as a furniture reserved from father to son by many
puissant kings, who were ever draining their mines to make this vast heap
of vessels and statues for the decoration of their palaces and temples;
whereas our gold is always in motion and traffic; we cut it into a
thousand small pieces, and cast it into a thousand forms, and scatter and
disperse it in a thousand ways. But suppose our kings should thus hoard up
all the gold they could get in several ages and let it lie idle by them.
Those of the kingdom of Mexico were in some sort more civilised and more
advanced in arts than the other nations about them. Therefore did they
judge, as we do, that the world was near its period, and looked upon the
desolation we brought amongst them as a certain sign of it. They believed
that the existence of the world was divided into five ages, and in the
life of five successive suns, of which four had already ended their time,
and that this which gave them light was the fifth. The first perished,
with all other creatures, by an universal inundation of water; the second
by the heavens falling upon us and suffocating every living thing to which
age they assigned the giants, and showed bones to the Spaniards, according
to the proportion of which the stature of men amounted to twenty feet; the
third by fire, which burned and consumed all; the fourth by an emotion of
the air and wind, which came with such violence as to beat down even many
mountains, wherein the men died not, but were turned into baboons. What
impressions will not the weakness of human belief admit? After the death
of this fourth sun, the world was twenty-five years in perpetual darkness:
in the fifteenth of which a man and a woman were created, who restored the
human race: ten years after, upon a certain day, the sun appeared newly
created, and since the account of their year takes beginning from that
day: the third day after its creation the ancient gods died, and the new
ones were since born daily. After what manner they think this last sun
shall perish, my author knows not; but their number of this fourth change
agrees with the great conjunction of stars which eight hundred and odd
years ago, as astrologers suppose, produced great alterations and
novelties in the world.
As to pomp and magnificence, upon the account of which I engaged in this
discourse, neither Greece, Rome, nor Egypt, whether for utility,
difficulty, or state, can compare any of their works with the highway to
be seen in Peru, made by the kings of the country, from the city of Quito
to that of Cusco (three hundred leagues), straight, even, five-and-twenty
paces wide, paved, and provided on both sides with high and beautiful
walls; and close by them, and all along on the inside, two perennial
streams, bordered with beautiful plants, which they call moly. In this
work, where they met with rocks and mountains, they cut them through, and
made them even, and filled up pits and valleys with lime and stone to make
them level. At the end of every day's journey are beautiful palaces,
furnished with provisions, vestments, and arms, as well for travellers as
for the armies that are to pass that way. In the estimate of this work I
have reckoned the difficulty which is especially considerable in that
place; they did not build with any stones less than ten feet square, and
had no other conveniency of carriage but by drawing their load themselves
by force of arm, and knew not so much as the art of scaffolding, nor any
other way of standing to their work, but by throwing up earth against the
building as it rose higher, taking it away again when they had done.
Let us here return to our coaches. Instead of these, and of all other
sorts of carriages, they caused themselves to be carried upon men's
shoulders. This last king of Peru, the day that he was taken, was thus
carried betwixt two upon staves of gold, and set in a chair of gold in the
middle of his army. As many of these sedan-men as were killed to make him
fall (for they would take him alive), so many others (and they contended
for it) took the place of those who were slain, so that they could never
beat him down, what slaughter soever they made of these people, till a
horseman, seizing upon him, brought him to the ground.
CHAPTER VII——OF THE INCONVENIENCE OF GREATNESS
Since we cannot attain unto it, let us revenge our selves by railing at
it; and yet it is not absolutely railing against anything to proclaim its
defects, because they are in all things to be found, how beautiful or how
much to be coveted soever. Greatness has, in general, this manifest
advantage, that it can lower itself when it pleases, and has, very near,
the choice of both the one and the other condition; for a man does not
fall from all heights; there are several from which one may descend
without falling down. It does, indeed, appear to me that we value it at
too high a rate, and also overvalue the resolution of those whom we have
either seen or heard have contemned it, or displaced themselves of their
own accord: its essence is not so evidently commodious that a man may not,
with out a miracle, refuse it. I find it a very hard thing to undergo
misfortunes, but to be content with a moderate measure of fortune, and to
avoid greatness, I think a very easy matter. 'Tis, methinks, a virtue to
which I, who am no conjuror, could without any great endeavour arrive.
What, then, is to be expected from them that would yet put into
consideration the glory attending this refusal, wherein there may lurk
worse ambition than even in the desire itself, and fruition of greatness?
Forasmuch as ambition never comports itself better, according to itself,
than when it proceeds by obscure and unfrequented ways.
I incite my courage to patience, but I rein it as much as I can towards
desire. I have as much to wish for as another, and allow my wishes as much
liberty and indiscretion; but yet it never befell me to wish for either
empire or royalty, or the eminency of those high and commanding fortunes:
I do not aim that way; I love myself too well. When I think to grow
greater, 'tis but very moderately, and by a compelled and timorous
advancement, such as is proper for me in resolution, in prudence, in
health, in beauty, and even in riches too; but this supreme reputation,
this mighty authority, oppress my imagination; and, quite contrary to that
other,—[Julius Caesar.]—I should, peradventure, rather choose
to be the second or third in Perigord than the first at Paris at least,
without lying, rather the third at Paris than the first. I would neither
dispute with a porter, a miserable unknown, nor make crowds open in
adoration as I pass. I am trained up to a moderate condition, as well by
my choice as fortune; and have made it appear, in the whole conduct of my
life and enterprises, that I have rather avoided than otherwise the
climbing above the degree of fortune wherein God has placed me by my
birth; all natural constitution is equally just and easy. My soul is such
a poltroon, that I measure not good fortune by the height, but by the
facility.
But if my heart be not great enough, 'tis open enough to make amends, at
any one's request, freely to lay open its weakness. Should any one put me
upon comparing the life of L. Thorius Balbus, a brave man, handsome,
learned, healthful, understanding, and abounding in all sorts of
conveniences and pleasures, leading a quiet life, and all his own, his
mind well prepared against death, superstition, pain, and other
incumbrances of human necessity, dying, at last, in battle, with his sword
in his hand, for the defence of his country, on the one part; and on the
other part, the life of M. Regulus, so great and high as is known to every
one, and his end admirable; the one without name and without dignity, the
other exemplary and glorious to a wonder. I should doubtless say, as
Cicero did, could I speak as well as he.
[Cicero, De Finibus, ii. 20, gives the preference to Regulus, and
proclaims him the happier man.]
But if I was to compare them with my own, I should then also say that the
first is as much according to my capacity, and from desire, which I
conform to my capacity, as the second is far beyond it; that I could not
approach the last but with veneration, the other I could readily attain by
use.
Let us return to our temporal greatness, from which we are digressed. I
disrelish all dominion, whether active or passive. Otanes, one of the
seven who had right to pretend to the kingdom of Persia, did as I should
willingly have done, which was, that he gave up to his competitors his
right of being promoted to it, either by election or by lot, provided that
he and his might live in the empire out of all authority and subjection,
those of the ancient laws excepted, and might enjoy all liberty that was
not prejudicial to these, being as impatient of commanding as of being
commanded.
The most painful and difficult employment in the world, in my opinion, is
worthily to discharge the office of a king. I excuse more of their
mistakes than men commonly do, in consideration of the intolerable weight
of their function, which astounds me. 'Tis hard to keep measure in so
immeasurable a power; yet so it is that it is, even to those who are not
of the best nature, a singular incitement to virtue to be seated in a
place where you cannot do the least good that shall not be put upon
record, and where the least benefit redounds to so many men, and where
your talent of administration, like that of preachers, principally
addresses itself to the people, no very exact judge, easy to deceive, and
easily content. There are few things wherein we can give a sincere
judgment, by reason that there are few wherein we have not, in some sort,
a private interest. Superiority and inferiority, dominion and subjection
are bound to a natural envy and contest, and must of necessity perpetually
intrench upon one another. I believe neither the one nor the other
touching the rights of the other party; let reason therefore, which is
inflexible and without passion, determine when we can avail ourselves of
it. 'Tis not above a month ago that I read over, two Scottish authors
contending upon this subject, of whom he who stands for the people makes
the king to be in a worse condition than a carter; he who writes for
monarchy places him some degrees above God in power and sovereignty.
Now, the incommodity of greatness that I have taken to remark in this
place, upon some occasion that has lately put it into my head, is this:
there is not, peradventure, anything more pleasant in the commerce of many
than the trials that we make against one another, out of emulation of
honour and worth, whether in the exercises of the body or in those of the
mind, wherein sovereign greatness can have no true part. And, in earnest,
I have often thought that by force of respect itself men use princes
disdainfully and injuriously in that particular; for the thing I was
infinitely offended at in my childhood, that they who exercised with me
forbore to do their best because they found me unworthy of their utmost
endeavour, is what we see happen to them daily, every one finding himself
unworthy to contend with them. If we discover that they have the least
desire to get the better of us, there is no one who will not make it his
business to give it them, and who will not rather betray his own glory
than offend theirs; and will therein employ so much force only as is
necessary to save their honour. What share have they, then, in the
engagement, where every one is on their side? Methinks I see those
paladins of ancient times presenting themselves to jousts and battle with
enchanted arms and bodies. Brisson,
[Plutarch, On Satisfaction or Tranquillity of the Mind. But in his
essay, How a Man may Distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend, he calls
him Chriso.]
running against Alexander, purposely missed his blow, and made a fault in
his career; Alexander chid him for it, but he ought to have had him
whipped. Upon this consideration Carneades said, that "the sons of princes
learned nothing right but to manage horses; by reason that, in all their
other exercises, every one bends and yields to them; but a horse, that is
neither a flatterer nor a courtier, throws the son of a king with no more
ceremony than he would throw that of a porter."
Homer was fain to consent that Venus, so sweet and delicate a goddess as
she was, should be wounded at the battle of Troy, thereby to ascribe
courage and boldness to her qualities that cannot possibly be in those who
are exempt from danger. The gods are made to be angry, to fear, to run
away, to be jealous, to grieve, to be transported with passions, to honour
them with the virtues that, amongst us, are built upon these
imperfections. Who does not participate in the hazard and difficulty, can
claim no interest in the honour and pleasure that are the consequents of
hazardous actions. 'Tis pity a man should be so potent that all things
must give way to him; fortune therein sets you too remote from society,
and places you in too great a solitude. This easiness and mean facility of
making all things bow under you, is an enemy to all sorts of pleasure:
'tis to slide, not to go; 'tis to sleep, and not to live. Conceive man
accompanied with omnipotence: you overwhelm him; he must beg disturbance
and opposition as an alms: his being and his good are in indigence. Evil
to man is in its turn good, and good evil. Neither is pain always to be
shunned, nor pleasure always to be pursued.
Their good qualities are dead and lost; for they can only be perceived by
comparison, and we put them out of this: they have little knowledge of
true praise, having their ears deafened with so continual and uniform an
approbation. Have they to do with the stupidest of all their subjects?
they have no means to take any advantage of him; if he but say: "'Tis
because he is my king," he thinks he has said enough to express that he
therefore suffered himself to be overcome. This quality stifles and
consumes the other true and essential qualities: they are sunk in the
royalty, and leave them nothing to recommend themselves with but actions
that directly concern and serve the function of their place; 'tis so much
to be a king, that this alone remains to them. The outer glare that
environs him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there repelled
and dissipated, being filled and stopped by this prevailing light. The
senate awarded the prize of eloquence to Tiberius; he refused it,
esteeming that though it had been just, he could derive no advantage from
a judgment so partial, and that was so little free to judge.
As we give them all advantages of honour, so do we soothe and authorise
all their vices and defects, not only by approbation, but by imitation
also. Every one of Alexander's followers carried his head on one side, as
he did; and the flatterers of Dionysius ran against one another in his
presence, and stumbled at and overturned whatever was under foot, to shew
they were as purblind as he. Hernia itself has also served to recommend a
man to favour; I have seen deafness affected; and because the master hated
his wife, Plutarch—[who, however, only gives one instance; and in
this he tells us that the man visited his wife privately.]—has seen
his courtiers repudiate theirs, whom they loved; and, which is yet more,
uncleanliness and all manner of dissoluteness have so been in fashion; as
also disloyalty, blasphemy, cruelty, heresy, superstition, irreligion,
effeminacy, and worse, if worse there be; and by an example yet more
dangerous than that of Mithridates' flatterers, who, as their master
pretended to the honour of a good physician, came to him to have incisions
and cauteries made in their limbs; for these others suffered the soul, a
more delicate and noble part, to be cauterised.
But to end where I began: the Emperor Adrian, disputing with the
philosopher Favorinus about the interpretation of some word, Favorinus
soon yielded him the victory; for which his friends rebuking him, "You
talk simply," said he; "would you not have him wiser than I, who commands
thirty legions?" Augustus wrote verses against Asinius Pollio, and "I,"
said Pollio, "say nothing, for it is not prudence to write in contest with
him who has power to proscribe." And they were right. For Dionysius,
because he could not equal Philoxenus in poesy and Plato in discourse,
condemned the one to the quarries, and sent the other to be sold for a
slave into the island of AEgina.
CHAPTER VIII——OF THE ART OF CONFERENCE
'Tis a custom of our justice to condemn some for a warning to others. To
condemn them for having done amiss, were folly, as Plato says,
[Diogenes Laertius, however, in his Life of Plato, iii. 181, says
that Plato's offence was the speaking too freely to the tyrant.]
for what is done can never be undone; but 'tis to the end they may offend
no more, and that others may avoid the example of their offence: we do not
correct the man we hang; we correct others by him. I do the same; my
errors are sometimes natural, incorrigible, and irremediable: but the good
which virtuous men do to the public, in making themselves imitated, I,
peradventure, may do in making my manners avoided:
"Nonne vides, Albi ut male vivat filius? utque
Barrus inops? magnum documentum, ne patriam rein
Perdere guis velit;"
["Dost thou not see how ill the son of Albus lives? and how the
indigent Barrus? a great warning lest any one should incline to
dissipate his patrimony."—Horace, Sat., i. 4, 109.]
publishing and accusing my own imperfections, some one will learn to be
afraid of them. The parts that I most esteem in myself, derive more honour
from decrying, than for commending myself which is the reason why I so
often fall into, and so much insist upon that strain. But, when all is
summed up, a man never speaks of himself without loss; a man's accusations
of himself are always believed; his praises never: There may,
peradventure, be some of my own complexion who better instruct myself by
contrariety than by similitude, and by avoiding than by imitation. The
elder Cato was regarding this sort of discipline, when he said, "that the
wise may learn more of fools, than fools can of the wise"; and Pausanias
tells us of an ancient player upon the harp, who was wont to make his
scholars go to hear one who played very ill, who lived over against him,
that they might learn to hate his discords and false measures. The horror
of cruelty more inclines me to clemency, than any example of clemency
could possibly do. A good rider does not so much mend my seat, as an
awkward attorney or a Venetian, on horseback; and a clownish way of
speaking more reforms mine than the most correct. The ridiculous and
simple look of another always warns and advises me; that which pricks,
rouses and incites much better than that which tickles. The time is now
proper for us to reform backward; more by dissenting than by agreeing; by
differing more than by consent. Profiting little by good examples, I make
use of those that are ill, which are everywhere to be found: I endeavour
to render myself as agreeable as I see others offensive; as constant as I
see others fickle; as affable as I see others rough; as good as I see
others evil: but I propose to myself impracticable measures.
The most fruitful and natural exercise of the mind, in my opinion, is
conversation; I find the use of it more sweet than of any other action of
life; and for that reason it is that, if I were now compelled to choose, I
should sooner, I think, consent to lose my sight, than my hearing and
speech. The Athenians, and also the Romans, kept this exercise in great
honour in their academies; the Italians retain some traces of it to this
day, to their great advantage, as is manifest by the comparison of our
understandings with theirs. The study of books is a languishing and feeble
motion that heats not, whereas conversation teaches and exercises at once.
If I converse with a strong mind and a rough disputant, he presses upon my
flanks, and pricks me right and left; his imaginations stir up mine;
jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up to something
above myself; and acquiescence is a quality altogether tedious in
discourse. But, as our mind fortifies itself by the communication of
vigorous and regular understandings, 'tis not to be expressed how much it
loses and degenerates by the continual commerce and familiarity we have
with mean and weak spirits; there is no contagion that spreads like that;
I know sufficiently by experience what 'tis worth a yard. I love to
discourse and dispute, but it is with but few men, and for myself; for to
do it as a spectacle and entertainment to great persons, and to make of a
man's wit and words competitive parade is, in my opinion, very unbecoming
a man of honour.
Folly is a bad quality; but not to be able to endure it, to fret and vex
at it, as I do, is another sort of disease little less troublesome than
folly itself; and is the thing that I will now accuse in myself. I enter
into conference, and dispute with great liberty and facility, forasmuch as
opinion meets in me with a soil very unfit for penetration, and wherein to
take any deep root; no propositions astonish me, no belief offends me,
though never so contrary to my own; there is no so frivolous and
extravagant fancy that does not seem to me suitable to the production of
human wit. We, who deprive our judgment of the right of determining, look
indifferently upon the diverse opinions, and if we incline not our
judgment to them, yet we easily give them the hearing: Where one scale is
totally empty, I let the other waver under an old wife's dreams; and I
think myself excusable, if I prefer the odd number; Thursday rather than
Friday; if I had rather be the twelfth or fourteenth than the thirteenth
at table; if I had rather, on a journey, see a hare run by me than cross
my way, and rather give my man my left foot than my right, when he comes
to put on my stockings. All such reveries as are in credit around us,
deserve at least a hearing: for my part, they only with me import inanity,
but they import that. Moreover, vulgar and casual opinions are something
more than nothing in nature; and he who will not suffer himself to proceed
so far, falls, peradventure, into the vice of obstinacy, to avoid that of
superstition.
The contradictions of judgments, then, neither offend nor alter, they only
rouse and exercise, me. We evade correction, whereas we ought to offer and
present ourselves to it, especially when it appears in the form of
conference, and not of authority. At every opposition, we do not consider
whether or no it be dust, but, right or wrong, how to disengage ourselves:
instead of extending the arms, we thrust out our claws. I could suffer
myself to be rudely handled by my friend, so much as to tell me that I am
a fool, and talk I know not of what. I love stout expressions amongst
gentle men, and to have them speak as they think; we must fortify and
harden our hearing against this tenderness of the ceremonious sound of
words. I love a strong and manly familiarity and conversation: a
friendship that pleases itself in the sharpness and vigour of its
communication, like love in biting and scratching: it is not vigorous and
generous enough, if it be not quarrelsome, if it be civilised and
artificial, if it treads nicely and fears the shock:
"Neque enim disputari sine reprehensione potest."
["Neither can a man dispute, but he must contradict."
(Or:) "Nor can people dispute without reprehension."
—Cicero, De Finib., i. 8.]
When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger: I
advance towards him who controverts, who instructs me; the cause of truth
ought to be the common cause both of the one and the other. What will the
angry man answer? Passion has already confounded his judgment; agitation
has usurped the place of reason. It were not amiss that the decision of
our disputes should pass by wager: that there might be a material mark of
our losses, to the end we might the better remember them; and that my man
might tell me: "Your ignorance and obstinacy cost you last year, at
several times, a hundred crowns." I hail and caress truth in what quarter
soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender myself, and open my conquered
arms as far off as I can discover it; and, provided it be not too
imperiously, take a pleasure in being reproved, and accommodate myself to
my accusers, very often more by reason of civility than amendment, loving
to gratify and nourish the liberty of admonition by my facility of
submitting to it, and this even at my own expense.
Nevertheless, it is hard to bring the men of my time to it: they have not
the courage to correct, because they have not the courage to suffer
themselves to be corrected; and speak always with dissimulation in the
presence of one another: I take so great a pleasure in being judged and
known, that it is almost indifferent to me in which of the two forms I am
so: my imagination so often contradicts and condemns itself, that 'tis all
one to me if another do it, especially considering that I give his
reprehension no greater authority than I choose; but I break with him, who
carries himself so high, as I know of one who repents his advice, if not
believed, and takes it for an affront if it be not immediately followed.
That Socrates always received smilingly the contradictions offered to his
arguments, a man may say arose from his strength of reason; and that, the
advantage being certain to fall on his side, he accepted them as a matter
of new victory. But we see, on the contrary, that nothing in argument
renders our sentiment so delicate, as the opinion of pre-eminence, and
disdain of the adversary; and that, in reason, 'tis rather for the weaker
to take in good part the oppositions that correct him and set him right.
In earnest, I rather choose the company of those who ruffle me than of
those who fear me; 'tis a dull and hurtful pleasure to have to do with
people who admire us and approve of all we say. Antisthenes commanded his
children never to take it kindly or for a favour, when any man commended
them. I find I am much prouder of the victory I obtain over myself, when,
in the very ardour of dispute, I make myself submit to my adversary's
force of reason, than I am pleased with the victory I obtain over him
through his weakness. In fine, I receive and admit of all manner of
attacks that are direct, how weak soever; but I am too impatient of those
that are made out of form. I care not what the subject is, the opinions
are to me all one, and I am almost indifferent whether I get the better or
the worse. I can peaceably argue a whole day together, if the argument be
carried on with method; I do not so much require force and subtlety as
order; I mean the order which we every day observe in the wranglings of
shepherds and shop-boys, but never amongst us: if they start from their
subject, 'tis out of incivility, and so 'tis with us; but their tumult and
impatience never put them out of their theme; their argument still
continues its course; if they interrupt, and do not stay for one another,
they at least understand one another. Any one answers too well for me, if
he answers what I say: when the dispute is irregular and disordered, I
leave the thing itself, and insist upon the form with anger and
indiscretion; falling into wilful, malicious, and imperious way of
disputation, of which I am afterwards ashamed. 'Tis impossible to deal
fairly with a fool: my judgment is not only corrupted under the hand of so
impetuous a master, but my conscience also.
Our disputes ought to be interdicted and punished as well as other verbal
crimes: what vice do they not raise and heap up, being always governed and
commanded by passion? We first quarrel with their reasons, and then with
the men. We only learn to dispute that we may contradict; and so, every
one contradicting and being contradicted, it falls out that the fruit of
disputation is to lose and annihilate truth. Therefore it is that Plato in
his Republic prohibits this exercise to fools and ill-bred people. To what
end do you go about to inquire of him, who knows nothing to the purpose? A
man does no injury to the subject, when he leaves it to seek how he may
treat it; I do not mean by an artificial and scholastic way, but by a
natural one, with a sound understanding. What will it be in the end? One
flies to the east, the other to the west; they lose the principal,
dispersing it in the crowd of incidents after an hour of tempest, they
know not what they seek: one is low, the other high, and a third wide. One
catches at a word and a simile; another is no longer sensible of what is
said in opposition to him, and thinks only of going on at his own rate,
not of answering you: another, finding himself too weak to make good his
rest, fears all, refuses all, at the very beginning, confounds the
subject; or, in the very height of the dispute, stops short and is silent,
by a peevish ignorance affecting a proud contempt or a foolishly modest
avoidance of further debate: provided this man strikes, he cares not how
much he lays himself open; the other counts his words, and weighs them for
reasons; another only brawls, and uses the advantage of his lungs. Here's
one who learnedly concludes against himself, and another who deafens you
with prefaces and senseless digressions: an other falls into downright
railing, and seeks a quarrel after the German fashion, to disengage
himself from a wit that presses too hard upon him: and a last man sees
nothing into the reason of the thing, but draws a line of circumvallation
about you of dialectic clauses, and the formulas of his art.
Now, who would not enter into distrust of sciences, and doubt whether he
can reap from them any solid fruit for the service of life, considering
the use we put them to?
"Nihil sanantibus litteris."
["Letters which cure nothing."—Seneca, Ep., 59.]
Who has got understanding by his logic? Where are all her fair promises?
"Nec ad melius vivendum, nec ad commodius disserendum."
["It neither makes a man live better nor talk better."
—Cicero, De Fin., i. 19.]
Is there more noise or confusion in the scolding of herring-wives than in
the public disputes of men of this profession? I had rather my son should
learn in a tap-house to speak, than in the schools to prate. Take a master
of arts, and confer with him: why does he not make us sensible of this
artificial excellence? and why does he not captivate women and
ignoramuses, as we are, with admiration at the steadiness of his reasons
and the beauty of his order? why does he not sway and persuade us to what
he will? why does a man, who has so much advantage in matter and
treatment, mix railing, indiscretion, and fury in his disputations? Strip
him of his gown, his hood, and his Latin, let him not batter our ears with
Aristotle, pure and simple, you will take him for one of us, or worse.
Whilst they torment us with this complication and confusion of words, it
fares with them, methinks, as with jugglers; their dexterity imposes upon
our senses, but does not at all work upon our belief this legerdemain
excepted, they perform nothing that is not very ordinary and mean: for
being the more learned, they are none the less fools.
[So Hobbes said that if he had read as much as the academical
pedants he should have known as little.]
I love and honour knowledge as much as they that have it, and in its true
use 'tis the most noble and the greatest acquisition of men; but in such
as I speak of (and the number of them is infinite), who build their
fundamental sufficiency and value upon it, who appeal from their
understanding to their memory:
"Sub aliena umbra latentes,"
["Sheltering under the shadow of others."—Seneca, Ep., 33.]
and who can do nothing but by book, I hate it, if I dare to say so, worse
than stupidity. In my country, and in my time, learning improves fortunes
enough, but not minds; if it meet with those that are dull and heavy, it
overcharges and suffocates them, leaving them a crude and undigested mass;
if airy and fine, it purifies, clarifies, and subtilises them, even to
exinanition. 'Tis a thing of almost indifferent quality; a very useful
accession to a well-born soul, but hurtful and pernicious to others; or
rather a thing of very precious use, that will not suffer itself to be
purchased at an under rate; in the hand of some 'tis a sceptre, in that of
others a fool's bauble.
But let us proceed. What greater victory do you expect than to make your
enemy see and know that he is not able to encounter you? When you get the
better of your argument; 'tis truth that wins; when you get the advantage
of form and method,'tis then you who win. I am of opinion that in, Plato
and Xenophon Socrates disputes more in favour of the disputants than in
favour of the dispute, and more to instruct Euthydemus and Protagoras in
the, knowledge of their impertinence, than in the impertinence of their
art. He takes hold of the first subject like one who has a more profitable
end than to explain it—namely, to clear the understandings that he
takes upon him to instruct and exercise. To hunt after truth is properly
our business, and we are inexcusable if we carry on the chase
impertinently and ill; to fail of seizing it is another thing, for we are
born to inquire after truth: it belongs to a greater power to possess it.
It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather
elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge. The world is but a
school of inquisition: it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall
run the best courses. He may as well play the fool who speaks true, as he
who speaks false, for we are upon the manner, not the matter, of speaking.
'Tis my humour as much to regard the form as the substance, and the
advocate as much as the cause, as Alcibiades ordered we should: and every
day pass away my time in reading authors without any consideration of
their learning; their manner is what I look after, not their subject: And
just so do I hunt after the conversation of any eminent wit, not that he
may teach me, but that I may know him, and that knowing him, if I think
him worthy of imitation, I may imitate him. Every man may speak truly, but
to speak methodically, prudently, and fully, is a talent that few men
have. The falsity that proceeds from ignorance does not offend me, but the
foppery of it. I have broken off several treaties that would have been of
advantage to me, by reason of the impertinent contestations of those with
whom I treated. I am not moved once in a year at the faults of those over
whom I have authority, but upon the account of the ridiculous obstinacy of
their allegations, denials, excuses, we are every day going together by
the ears; they neither understand what is said, nor why, and answer
accordingly; 'tis enough to drive a man mad. I never feel any hurt upon my
head but when 'tis knocked against another, and more easily forgive the
vices of my servants than their boldness, importunity, and folly; let them
do less, provided they understand what they do: you live in hope to warm
their affection to your service, but there is nothing to be had or to be
expected from a stock.
But what, if I take things otherwise than they are? Perhaps I do; and
therefore it is that I accuse my own impatience, and hold, in the first
place, that it is equally vicious both in him that is in the right, and in
him that is in the wrong; for 'tis always a tyrannic sourness not to
endure a form contrary to one's own: and, besides, there cannot, in truth,
be a greater, more constant, nor more irregular folly than to be moved and
angry at the follies of the world, for it principally makes us quarrel
with ourselves; and the old philosopher never wanted an occasion for his
tears whilst he considered himself. Miso, one of the seven sages, of a
Timonian and Democritic humour, being asked, "what he laughed at, being
alone?"—"That I do laugh alone," answered he. How many ridiculous
things, in my own opinion, do I say and answer every day that comes over
my head? and then how many more, according to the opinion of others? If I
bite my own lips, what ought others to do? In fine, we must live amongst
the living, and let the river run under the bridge without our care, or,
at least, without our interference. In truth, why do we meet a man with a
hunch-back, or any other deformity, without being moved, and cannot endure
the encounter of a deformed mind without being angry? this vicious
sourness sticks more to the judge than to the crime. Let us always have
this saying of Plato in our mouths: "Do not I think things unsound,
because I am not sound in myself? Am I not myself in fault? may not my
observations reflect upon myself?"—a wise and divine saying, that
lashes the most universal and common error of mankind. Not only the
reproaches that we throw in the face of one another, but our reasons also,
our arguments and controversies, are reboundable upon us, and we wound
ourselves with our own weapons: of which antiquity has left me enough
grave examples. It was ingeniously and home-said by him, who was the
inventor of this sentence:
"Stercus cuique suum bene olet."
["To every man his own excrements smell well."—Erasmus]
We see nothing behind us; we mock ourselves an hundred times a day; when
we deride our neighbours; and we detest in others the defects which are
more manifest in us, and which we admire with marvellous inadvertency and
impudence. It was but yesterday that I heard a man of understanding and of
good rank, as pleasantly as justly scoffing at the folly of another, who
did nothing but torment everybody with the catalogue of his genealogy and
alliances, above half of them false (for they are most apt to fall into
such ridiculous discourses, whose qualities are most dubious and least
sure), and yet, would he have looked into himself, he would have discerned
himself to be no less intemperate and wearisome in extolling his wife's
pedigree. O importunate presumption, with which the wife sees herself
armed by the hands of her own husband. Did he understand Latin, we should
say to him:
"Age, si hic non insanit satis sua sponte, instiga."
["Come! if of himself he is not mad enough, urge him on."
—Terence, And., iv. 2, 9.]
I do not say that no man should accuse another, who is not clean himself,—for
then no one would ever accuse,—clean from the same sort of spot; but
I mean that our judgment, falling upon another who is then in question,
should not, at the same time, spare ourselves, but sentence us with an
inward and severe authority. 'Tis an office of charity, that he who cannot
reclaim himself from a vice, should, nevertheless, endeavour to remove it
from another, in whom, peradventure, it may not have so deep and so
malignant a root; neither do him who reproves me for my fault that he
himself is guilty of the same. What of that? The reproof is,
notwithstanding, true and of very good use. Had we a good nose, our own
ordure would stink worse to us, forasmuch as it is our own: and Socrates
is of opinion that whoever should find himself, his son, and a stranger
guilty of any violence and wrong, ought to begin with himself, present
himself first to the sentence of justice, and implore, to purge himself,
the assistance of the hand of the executioner; in the next place, he
should proceed to his son, and lastly, to the stranger. If this precept
seem too severe, he ought at least to present himself the first, to the
punishment of his own conscience.
The senses are our first and proper judges, which perceive not things but
by external accidents; and 'tis no wonder, if in all the parts of the
service of our society, there is so perpetual and universal a mixture of
ceremonies and superficial appearances; insomuch that the best and most
effectual part of our polities therein consist. 'Tis still man with whom
we have to do, of whom the condition is wonderfully corporal. Let those
who, of these late years, would erect for us such a contemplative and
immaterial an exercise of religion, not wonder if there be some who think
it had vanished and melted through their fingers had it not more upheld
itself among us as a mark, title, and instrument of division and faction,
than by itself. As in conference, the gravity, robe, and fortune of him
who speaks, ofttimes gives reputation to vain arguments and idle words, it
is not to be presumed but that a man, so attended and feared, has not in
him more than ordinary sufficiency; and that he to whom the king has given
so many offices and commissions and charges, he so supercilious and proud,
has not a great deal more in him, than another who salutes him at so great
a distance, and who has no employment at all. Not only the words, but the
grimaces also of these people, are considered and put into the account;
every one making it his business to give them some fine and solid
interpretation. If they stoop to the common conference, and that you offer
anything but approbation and reverence, they then knock you down with the
authority of their experience: they have heard, they have seen, they have
done so and so: you are crushed with examples. I should willingly tell
them, that the fruit of a surgeon's experience, is not the history of his
practice and his remembering that he has cured four people of the plague
and three of the gout, unless he knows how thence to extract something
whereon to form his judgment, and to make us sensible that he has thence
become more skillful in his art. As in a concert of instruments, we do not
hear a lute, a harpsichord, or a flute alone, but one entire harmony, the
result of all together. If travel and offices have improved them, 'tis a
product of their understanding to make it appear. 'Tis not enough to
reckon experiences, they must weigh, sort and distil them, to extract the
reasons and conclusions they carry along with them. There were never so
many historians: it is, indeed, good and of use to read them, for they
furnish us everywhere with excellent and laudable instructions from the
magazine of their memory, which, doubtless, is of great concern to the
help of life; but 'tis not that we seek for now: we examine whether these
relaters and collectors of things are commendable themselves.
I hate all sorts of tyranny, both in word and deed. I am very ready to
oppose myself against those vain circumstances that delude our judgments
by the senses; and keeping my eye close upon those extraordinary
greatnesses, I find that at best they are men, as others are:
"Rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa
Fortuna."
["For in those high fortunes, common sense is generally rare."
—Juvenal, viii. 73.]
Peradventure, we esteem and look upon them for less than they are, by
reason they undertake more, and more expose themselves; they do not answer
to the charge they have undertaken. There must be more vigour and strength
in the bearer than in the burden; he who has not lifted as much as he can,
leaves you to guess that he has still a strength beyond that, and that he
has not been tried to the utmost of what he is able to do; he who sinks
under his load, makes a discovery of his best, and the weakness of his
shoulders. This is the reason that we see so many silly souls amongst the
learned, and more than those of the better sort: they would have made good
husbandmen, good merchants, and good artisans: their natural vigour was
cut out to that proportion. Knowledge is a thing of great weight, they
faint under it: their understanding has neither vigour nor dexterity
enough to set forth and distribute, to employ or make use of this rich and
powerful matter; it has no prevailing virtue but in a strong nature; and
such natures are very rare—and the weak ones, says Socrates, corrupt
the dignity of philosophy in the handling, it appears useless and vicious,
when lodged in an ill-contrived mind. They spoil and make fools of
themselves:
"Humani qualis simulator simius oris,
Quern puer arridens pretioso stamine serum
Velavit, nudasque nates ac terga reliquit,
Ludibrium mensis."
["Just like an ape, simulator of the human face, whom a wanton boy
has dizened up in rich silks above, but left the lower parts bare,
for a laughing-stock for the tables."
—Claudian, in Eutrop., i 303.]
Neither is it enough for those who govern and command us, and have all the
world in their hands, to have a common understanding, and to be able to do
the same that we can; they are very much below us, if they be not
infinitely above us: as they promise more, so they are to perform more.
And yet silence is to them, not only a countenance of respect and gravity,
but very often of good advantage too: for Megabyzus, going 'to see Apelles
in his painting-room, stood a great while without speaking a word, and at
last began to talk of his paintings, for which he received this rude
reproof: "Whilst thou wast silent, thou seemedst to be some great thing,
by reason of thy chains and rich habit; but now that we have heard thee
speak, there is not the meanest boy in my workshop that does not despise
thee." Those princely ornaments, that mighty state, did not permit him to
be ignorant with a common ignorance, and to speak impertinently of
painting; he ought to have kept this external and presumptive knowledge by
silence. To how many foolish fellows of my time has a sullen and silent
mien procured the credit of prudence and capacity!
Dignities and offices are of necessity conferred more by fortune than upon
the account of merit; and we are often to blame, to condemn kings when
these are misplaced: on the contrary, 'tis a wonder they should have so
good luck, where there is so little skill:
"Principis est virtus maxima nosse suos;"
["'Tis the chief virtue of a prince to know his people."
—Martial, viii. 15.]
for nature has not given them a sight that can extend to so many people,
to discern which excels the rest, nor to penetrate into our bosoms, where
the knowledge of our wills and best value lies they must choose us by
conjecture and by groping; by the family, wealth, learning, and the voice
of the people, which are all very feeble arguments. Whoever could find out
a way by which they might judge by justice, and choose men by reason,
would, in this one thing, establish a perfect form of government.
"Ay, but he brought that great affair to a very good pass." This is,
indeed, to say something, but not to say enough: for this sentence is
justly received, "That we are not to judge of counsels by events." The
Carthaginians punished the ill counsels of their captains, though they
were rectified by a successful issue; and the Roman people often denied a
triumph for great and very advantageous victories because the conduct of
their general was not answerable to his good fortune. We ordinarily see,
in the actions of the world, that Fortune, to shew us her power in all
things, and who takes a pride in abating our presumption, seeing she could
not make fools wise, has made them fortunate in emulation of virtue; and
most favours those operations the web of which is most purely her own;
whence it is that the simplest amongst us bring to pass great business,
both public and private; and, as Seiramnes, the Persian, answered those
who wondered that his affairs succeeded so ill, considering that his
deliberations were so wise, "that he was sole master of his designs, but
that success was wholly in the power of fortune"; these may answer the
same, but with a contrary turn. Most worldly affairs are performed by
themselves
"Fata viam inveniunt;"
["The destinies find the way."—AEneid, iii. 395]
the event often justifies a very foolish conduct; our interposition is
little more than as it were a running on by rote, and more commonly a
consideration of custom and example, than of reason. Being formerly
astonished at the greatness of some affair, I have been made acquainted
with their motives and address by those who had performed it, and have
found nothing in it but very ordinary counsels; and the most common and
usual are indeed, perhaps, the most sure and convenient for practice, if
not for show. What if the plainest reasons are the best seated? the
meanest, lowest, and most beaten more adapted to affairs? To maintain the
authority of the counsels of kings, it needs not that profane persons
should participate of them, or see further into them than the outmost
barrier; he who will husband its reputation must be reverenced upon credit
and taken altogether. My consultation somewhat rough-hews the matter, and
considers it lightly by the first face it presents: the stress and main of
the business I have been wont to refer to heaven;
"Permitte divis caetera."
["Leave the rest to the gods."—Horace, Od., i. 9, 9.]
Good and ill fortune are, in my opinion, two sovereign powers; 'tis folly
to think that human prudence can play the part of Fortune; and vain is his
attempt who presumes to comprehend both causes and consequences, and by
the hand to conduct the progress of his design; and most especially vain
in the deliberations of war. There was never greater circumspection and
military prudence than sometimes is seen amongst us: can it be that men
are afraid to lose themselves by the way, that they reserve themselves to
the end of the game? I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself and
consultation, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of
chance; my will and my reason are sometimes moved by one breath, and
sometimes by another; and many of these movements there are that govern
themselves without me: my reason has uncertain and casual agitations and
impulsions:
"Vertuntur species animorum, et pectora motus
Nunc alios, alios, dum nubila ventus agebat,
Concipiunt."
["The aspects of their minds change; and they conceive now such
ideas, now such, just so long as the wind agitated the clouds."
—Virgil, Georg., i. 42.]
Let a man but observe who are of greatest authority in cities, and who
best do their own business; we shall find that they are commonly men of
the least parts: women, children, and madmen have had the fortune to
govern great kingdoms equally well with the wisest princes, and Thucydides
says, that the stupid more ordinarily do it than those of better
understandings; we attribute the effects of their good fortune to their
prudence:
"Ut quisque Fortuna utitur,
Ita praecellet; atque exinde sapere illum omnes dicimus;"
["He makes his way who knows how to use Fortune, and thereupon we
all call him wise."—Plautus, Pseudol., ii. 3, 13.]
wherefore I say unreservedly, events are a very poor testimony of our
worth and parts.
Now, I was upon this point, that there needs no more but to see a man
promoted to dignity; though we knew him but three days before a man of
little regard, yet an image of grandeur of sufficiency insensibly steals
into our opinion, and we persuade ourselves that, being augmented in
reputation and train, he is also increased in merit; we judge of him, not
according to his worth, but as we do by counters, according to the
prerogative of his place. If it happen so that he fall again, and be mixed
with the common crowd, every one inquires with amazement into the cause of
his having been raised so high. "Is this he," say they, "was he no wiser
when he was there? Do princes satisfy themselves with so little? Truly, we
were in good hands." This is a thing that I have often seen in my time.
Nay, even the very disguise of grandeur represented in our comedies in
some sort moves and gulls us. That which I myself adore in kings is the
crowd of their adorers; all reverence and submission are due to them,
except that of the understanding: my reason is not obliged to bow and
bend; my knees are. Melanthius being asked what he thought of the tragedy
of Dionysius, "I could not see it," said he, "it was so clouded with
language"; so most of those who judge of the discourses of great men ought
to say, "I did not understand his words, they were so clouded with
gravity, grandeur, and majesty." Antisthenes one day tried to persuade the
Athenians to give order that their asses might be employed in tilling the
ground as well as the horses were; to which it was answered that that
animal was not destined for such a service: "That's all one," replied he,
"you have only to order it: for the most ignorant and incapable men you
employ in the commands of your wars incontinently become worthy enough,
because you employ them"; to which the custom of so many people, who
canonise the king they have chosen out of their own body, and are not
content only to honour, but must adore them, comes very near. Those of
Mexico, after the ceremonies of their king's coronation are over, dare no
more look him in the face; but, as if they had deified him by his royalty.
Amongst the oaths they make him take to maintain their religion, their
laws, and liberties, to be valiant, just, and mild, he moreover swears to
make the sun run his course in his wonted light, to drain the clouds at
fit seasons, to make rivers run their course, and to cause the earth to
bear all things necessary for his people.
I differ from this common fashion, and am more apt to suspect the capacity
when I see it accompanied with that grandeur of fortune and public
applause; we are to consider of what advantage it is to speak when a man
pleases, to choose his subject, to interrupt or change it, with a
magisterial authority; to protect himself from the oppositions of others
by a nod, a smile, or silence, in the presence of an assembly that
trembles with reverence and respect. A man of a prodigious fortune coming
to give his judgment upon some slight dispute that was foolishly set on
foot at his table, began in these words: "It can be no other but a liar or
a fool that will say otherwise than so and so." Pursue this philosophical
point with a dagger in your hand.
There is another observation I have made, from which I draw great
advantage; which is, that in conferences and disputes, every word that
seems to be good, is not immediately to be accepted. Most men are rich in
borrowed sufficiency: a man may say a good thing, give a good answer, cite
a good sentence, without at all seeing the force of either the one or the
other. That a man may not understand all he borrows, may perhaps be
verified in myself. A man must not always presently yield, what truth or
beauty soever may seem to be in the opposite argument; either he must
stoutly meet it, or retire, under colour of not understanding it, to try,
on all parts, how it is lodged in the author. It may happen that we
entangle ourselves, and help to strengthen the point itself. I have
sometimes, in the necessity and heat of the combat, made answers that have
gone through and through, beyond my expectation or hope; I only gave them
in number, they were received in weight. As, when I contend with a
vigorous man, I please myself with anticipating his conclusions, I ease
him of the trouble of explaining himself, I strive to forestall his
imagination whilst it is yet springing and imperfect; the order and
pertinency of his understanding warn and threaten me afar off: I deal
quite contrary with the others; I must understand, and presuppose nothing
but by them. If they determine in general words, "this is good, that is
naught," and that they happen to be in the right, see if it be not fortune
that hits it off for them: let them a little circumscribe and limit their
judgment; why, or how, it is so. These universal judgments that I see so
common, signify nothing; these are men who salute a whole people in a
crowd together; they, who have a real acquaintance, take notice of and
salute them individually and by name. But 'tis a hazardous attempt; and
from which I have, more than every day, seen it fall out, that weak
understandings, having a mind to appear ingenious, in taking notice, as
they read a book, of what is best and most to be admired, fix their
admiration upon some thing so very ill chosen, that instead of making us
discern the excellence of the author; they make us very well see their own
ignorance. This exclamation is safe, "That is fine," after having heard a
whole page of Virgil; by that the cunning sort save themselves; but to
undertake to follow him line by line, and, with an expert and tried
judgment, to observe where a good author excels himself, weighing the
words, phrases, inventions, and his various excellences, one after
another; keep aloof from that:
"Videndum est, non modo quid quisque loquatur, sed etiam quid
quisque sentiat, atque etiam qua de causa quisque sentiat."
["A man is not only to examine what every one says, but also what
every one thinks, and from what reason every one thinks."
—Cicero, De Offic:, i. 41.]
I every day hear fools say things that are not foolish: they say a good
thing; let us examine how far they understand it, whence they have it, and
what they mean by it. We help them to make use of this fine expression, of
this fine sentence, which is none of theirs; they only have it in keeping;
they have bolted it out at a venture; we place it for them in credit and
esteem. You lend them your hand. To what purpose? they do not think
themselves obliged to you for it, and become more inept still. Don't help
them; let them alone; they will handle the matter like people who are
afraid of burning their fingers; they dare change neither its seat nor
light, nor break into it; shake it never so little, it slips through their
fingers; they give it up, be it never so strong or fair they are fine
weapons, but ill hafted: How many times have I seen the experience of
this? Now, if you come to explain anything to them, and to confirm them,
they catch at it, and presently rob you of the advantage of your
interpretation; "It was what I was about to say; it was just my idea; if I
did not express it so, it was for want of language." Mere wind! Malice
itself must be employed to correct this arrogant ignorance. The dogma of
Hegesias, "that we are neither to hate nor accuse, but instruct," is
correct elsewhere; but here 'tis injustice and inhumanity to relieve and
set him right who stands in no need on't, and is the worse for't. I love
to let them step deeper into the mire; and so deep, that, if it be
possible, they may at last discern their error.
Folly and absurdity are not to be cured by bare admonition; and what Cyrus
answered to him, who importuned him to harangue his army, upon the point
of battle, "that men do not become valiant and warlike upon a sudden, by a
fine oration, no more than a man becomes a good musician by hearing a fine
song," may properly be said of such an admonition as this. These are
apprenticeships that are to be served beforehand, by a long and continued
education. We owe this care and this assiduity of correction and
instruction to our own people; but to go preach to the first passer-by,
and to become tutor to the ignorance and folly of the first we meet, is a
thing that I abhor. I rarely do it, even in private conversation, and
rather give up the whole thing than proceed to these initiatory and school
instructions; my humour is unfit either to speak or write for beginners;
but for things that are said in common discourse, or amongst other things,
I never oppose them either by word or sign, how false or absurd soever.
As to the rest, nothing vexes me so much in folly as that it is more
satisfied with itself than any reason can reasonably be. 'Tis unfortunate
that prudence forbids us to satisfy and trust ourselves, and always
dismisses us timorous and discontented; whereas obstinacy and temerity
fill those who are possessed with them with joy and assurance. 'Tis for
the most ignorant to look at other men over the shoulder, always returning
from the combat full of joy and triumph. And moreover, for the most part,
this arrogance of speech and gaiety of countenance gives them the better
of it in the opinion of the audience, which is commonly weak and incapable
of well judging and discerning the real advantage. Obstinacy of opinion
and heat in argument are the surest proofs of folly; is there anything so
assured, resolute, disdainful, contemplative, serious and grave as the
ass?
May we not include under the title of conference and communication the
quick and sharp repartees which mirth and familiarity introduce amongst
friends, pleasantly and wittily jesting and rallying with one another?
'Tis an exercise for which my natural gaiety renders me fit enough, and
which, if it be not so tense and serious as the other I spoke of but now,
is, as Lycurgus thought, no less smart and ingenious, nor of less utility.
For my part, I contribute to it more liberty than wit, and have therein
more of luck than invention; but I am perfect in suffering, for I endure a
retaliation that is not only tart, but indiscreet to boot, without being
moved at all; and whoever attacks me, if I have not a brisk answer
immediately ready, I do not study to pursue the point with a tedious and
impertinent contest, bordering upon obstinacy, but let it pass, and
hanging down cheerfully my ears, defer my revenge to another and better
time: there is no merchant that always gains: Most men change their
countenance and their voice where their wits fail, and by an unseasonable
anger, instead of revenging themselves, accuse at once their own folly and
impatience. In this jollity, we sometimes pinch the secret strings of our
imperfections which, at another and graver time, we cannot touch without
offence, and so profitably give one another a hint of our defects. There
are other jeux de main,—[practical jokes]—rude and indiscreet,
after the French manner, that I mortally hate; my skin is very tender and
sensible: I have in my time seen two princes of the blood buried upon that
very account. 'Tis unhandsome to fight in play. As to the rest, when I
have a mind to judge of any one, I ask him how far he is contented with
himself; to what degree his speaking or his work pleases him. I will none
of these fine excuses, "I did it only in sport,
'Ablatum mediis opus est incudibus istud.'
["That work was taken from the anvil half finished."
—Ovid, Trist., i. 6, 29.]
I was not an hour about it: I have never looked at it since." Well, then,
say I, lay these aside, and give me a perfect one, such as you would be
measured by. And then, what do you think is the best thing in your work?
is it this part or that? is it grace or the matter, the invention, the
judgment, or the learning? For I find that men are, commonly, as wide of
the mark in judging of their own works, as of those of others; not only by
reason of the kindness they have for them, but for want of capacity to
know and distinguish them: the work, by its own force and fortune, may
second the workman, and sometimes outstrip him, beyond his invention and
knowledge. For my part, I judge of the value of other men's works more
obscurely than of my own; and place the Essays, now high, or low, with
great doubt and inconstancy. There are several books that are useful upon
the account of their subjects, from which the author derives no praise;
and good books, as well as good works, that shame the workman. I may write
the manner of our feasts, and the fashion of our clothes, and may write
them ill; I may publish the edicts of my time, and the letters of princes
that pass from hand to hand; I may make an abridgment of a good book (and
every abridgment of a good book is a foolish abridgment), which book shall
come to be lost; and so on: posterity will derive a singular utility from
such compositions: but what honour shall I have unless by great good
fortune? Most part of the famous books are of this condition.
When I read Philip de Commines, doubtless a very good author, several
years ago, I there took notice of this for no vulgar saying, "That a man
must have a care not to do his master so great service, that at last he
will not know how to give him his just reward"; but I ought to commend the
invention, not him, because I met with it in Tacitus, not long since:
"Beneficia ea usque lxta sunt, dum videntur exsolvi posse;
ubi multum antevenere, pro gratis odium redditur;"
["Benefits are so far acceptable as they appear to be capable of
recompense; where they much exceed that point, hatred is returned
instead of thanks."—Tacitus, Annal., iv. 18.]
and Seneca vigorously says:
"Nam qui putat esse turpe non reddere,
non vult esse cui reddat:"
["For he who thinks it a shame not to requite, does not wish to
have the man live to whom he owes return."—Seneca, Ep., 81.]
Q. Cicero says with less directness.:
"Qui se non putat satisfacere,
amicus esse nullo modo potest."
["Who thinks himself behind in obligation, can by no
means be a friend."—Q. Cicero, De Petitione Consul, c. 9.]
The subject, according to what it is, may make a man looked upon as
learned and of good memory; but to judge in him the parts that are most
his own and the most worthy, the vigour and beauty of his soul, one must
first know what is his own and what is not; and in that which is not his
own, how much we are obliged to him for the choice, disposition, ornament,
and language he has there presented us with. What if he has borrowed the
matter and spoiled the form, as it often falls out? We, who are little
read in books, are in this strait, that when we meet with a high fancy in
some new poet, or some strong argument in a preacher, we dare not,
nevertheless, commend it till we have first informed ourselves, through
some learned man, if it be the writer's wit or borrowed from some other;
until that I always stand upon my guard.
I have lately been reading the history of Tacitus quite through, without
interrupting it with anything else (which but seldom happens with me, it
being twenty years since I have kept to any one book an hour together),
and I did it at the instance of a gentleman for whom France has a great
esteem, as well for his own particular worth, as upon the account of a
constant form of capacity and virtue which runs through a great many
brothers of them. I do not know any author in a public narrative who mixes
so much consideration of manners and particular inclinations: and I am of
a quite contrary opinion to him, holding that, having especially to follow
the lives of the emperors of his time, so various and extreme in all sorts
of forms, so many notable actions as their cruelty especially produced in
their subjects, he had a stronger and more attractive matter to treat of
than if he had had to describe battles and universal commotions; so that I
often find him sterile, running over those brave deaths as if he feared to
trouble us with their multitude and length. This form of history is by
much the most useful; public movements depend most upon the conduct of
fortune, private ones upon our own. 'Tis rather a judgment than a
narration of history; there are in it more precepts than stories: it is
not a book to read, 'tis a book to study and learn; 'tis full of
sententious opinions, right or wrong; 'tis a nursery of ethic and politic
discourses, for the use and ornament of those who have any place in the
government of the world. He always argues by strong and solid reasons,
after a pointed and subtle manner, according to the affected style of that
age, which was so in love with an inflated manner, that where point and
subtlety were wanting in things it supplied these with lofty and swelling
words. 'Tis not much unlike the style of Seneca: I look upon Tacitus as
more sinewy, and Seneca as more sharp. His pen seems most proper for a
troubled and sick state, as ours at present is; you would often say that
he paints and pinches us.
They who doubt his good faith sufficiently accuse themselves of being his
enemy upon some other account. His opinions are sound, and lean to the
right side in the Roman affairs. And yet I am angry at him for judging
more severely of Pompey than consists with the opinion of those worthy men
who lived in the same time, and had dealings with him; and to have reputed
him on a par with Marius and Sylla, excepting that he was more close.
Other writers have not acquitted his intention in the government of
affairs from ambition and revenge; and even his friends were afraid that
victory would have transported him beyond the bounds of reason, but not to
so immeasurable a degree as theirs; nothing in his life threatened such
express cruelty and tyranny. Neither ought we to set suspicion against
evidence; and therefore I do not believe Plutarch in this matter. That his
narrations were genuine and straightforward may, perhaps, be argued from
this very thing, that they do not always apply to the conclusions of his
judgments, which he follows according to the bias he has taken, very often
beyond the matter he presents us withal, which he has not deigned to alter
in the least degree. He needs no excuse for having approved the religion
of his time, according as the laws enjoined, and to have been ignorant of
the true; this was his misfortune, not his fault.
I have principally considered his judgment, and am not very well satisfied
therewith throughout; as these words in the letter that Tiberius, old and
sick, sent to the senate. "What shall I write to you, sirs, or how should
I write to you, or what should I not write to you at this time? May the
gods and goddesses lay a worse punishment upon me than I am every day
tormented with, if I know!" I do not see why he should so positively apply
them to a sharp remorse that tormented the conscience of Tiberius; at
least, when I was in the same condition, I perceived no such thing.
And this also seemed to me a little mean in him that, having to say that
he had borne an honourable office in Rome, he excuses himself that he does
not say it out of ostentation; this seems, I say, mean for such a soul as
his; for not to speak roundly of a man's self implies some want of
courage; a man of solid and lofty judgment, who judges soundly and surely,
makes use of his own example upon all occasions, as well as those of
others; and gives evidence as freely of himself as of a third person. We
are to pass by these common rules of civility, in favour of truth and
liberty. I dare not only speak of myself, but to speak only of myself:
when I write of anything else, I miss my way and wander from my subject. I
am not so indiscreetly enamoured of myself, so wholly mixed up with, and
bound to myself, that I cannot distinguish and consider myself apart, as I
do a neighbour or a tree: 'tis equally a fault not to discern how far a
man's worth extends, and to say more than a man discovers in himself. We
owe more love to God than to ourselves, and know Him less; and yet speak
of Him as much as we will.
If the writings of Tacitus indicate anything true of his qualities, he was
a great personage, upright and bold, not of a superstitious but of a
philosophical and generous virtue. One may think him bold in his
relations; as where he tells us, that a soldier carrying a burden of wood,
his hands were so frozen and so stuck to the load that they there remained
closed and dead, being severed from his arms. I always in such things bow
to the authority of so great witnesses.
What also he says, that Vespasian, "by the favour of the god Serapis,
cured a blind woman at Alexandria by anointing her eyes with his spittle,
and I know not what other miracle," he says by the example and duty of all
his good historians. They record all events of importance; and amongst
public incidents are the popular rumours and opinions. 'Tis their part to
relate common beliefs, not to regulate them: that part concerns divines
and philosophers, directors of consciences; and therefore it was that this
companion of his, and a great man like himself, very wisely said:
"Equidem plura transcribo, quam credo: nam nec affirmare
sustineo, de quibus dubito, nec subducere quae accepi;"
["Truly, I set down more things than I believe, for I can neither
affirm things whereof I doubt, nor suppress what I have heard."
—Quintus Curtius, ix.]
and this other:
"Haec neque affirmare neque refellere operae
pretium est; famae rerum standum est."
["'Tis neither worth the while to affirm or to refute these things;
we must stand to report"—Livy, i., Praef., and viii. 6.]
And writing in an age wherein the belief of prodigies began to decline, he
says he would not, nevertheless, forbear to insert in his Annals, and to
give a relation of things received by so many worthy men, and with so
great reverence of antiquity; 'tis very well said. Let them deliver to us
history, more as they receive it than as they believe it. I, who am
monarch of the matter whereof I treat, and who am accountable to none, do
not, nevertheless, always believe myself; I often hazard sallies of my own
wit, wherein I very much suspect myself, and certain verbal quibbles, at
which I shake my ears; but I let them go at a venture. I see that others
get reputation by such things: 'tis not for me alone to judge. I present
myself standing and lying, before and behind, my right side and my left,
and, in all my natural postures. Wits, though equal in force, are not
always equal in taste and application.
This is what my memory presents to me in gross, and with uncertainty
enough; all judgments in gross are weak and imperfect.
CHAPTER IX——OF VANITY
There is, peradventure, no more manifest vanity than to write of it so
vainly. That which divinity has so divinely expressed to us—["Vanity
of vanities: all is vanity."—Eccles., i. 2.]—ought to be
carefully and continually meditated by men of understanding. Who does not
see that I have taken a road, in which, incessantly and without labour, I
shall proceed so long as there shall be ink and paper in the world? I can
give no account of my life by my actions; fortune has placed them too low:
I must do it by my fancies. And yet I have seen a gentleman who only
communicated his life by the workings of his belly: you might see on his
premises a show of a row of basins of seven or eight days' standing; it
was his study, his discourse; all other talk stank in his nostrils. Here,
but not so nauseous, are the excrements of an old mind, sometimes thick,
sometimes thin, and always indigested. And when shall I have done
representing the continual agitation and mutation of my thoughts, as they
come into my head, seeing that Diomedes wrote six thousand books upon the
sole subject of grammar?
[It was not Diomedes, but Didymus the grammarian, who, as Seneca
(Ep., 88) tells us, wrote four not six thousand books on questions
of vain literature, which was the principal study of the ancient
grammarian.—Coste. But the number is probably exaggerated, and for
books we should doubtless read pamphlets or essays.]
What, then, ought prating to produce, since prattling and the first
beginning to speak, stuffed the world with such a horrible load of
volumes? So many words for words only. O Pythagoras, why didst not thou
allay this tempest? They accused one Galba of old for living idly; he made
answer, "That every one ought to give account of his actions, but not of
his home." He was mistaken, for justice also takes cognisance of those who
glean after the reaper.
But there should be some restraint of law against foolish and impertinent
scribblers, as well as against vagabonds and idle persons; which if there
were, both I and a hundred others would be banished from the reach of our
people. I do not speak this in jest: scribbling seems to be a symptom of a
disordered and licentious age. When did we write so much as since our
troubles? when the Romans so much, as upon the point of ruin? Besides
that, the refining of wits does not make people wiser in a government:
this idle employment springs from this, that every one applies himself
negligently to the duty of his vocation, and is easily debauched from it.
The corruption of the age is made up by the particular contribution of
every individual man; some contribute treachery, others injustice,
irreligion, tyranny, avarice, cruelty, according to their power; the
weaker sort contribute folly, vanity, and idleness; of these I am one. It
seems as if it were the season for vain things, when the hurtful oppress
us; in a time when doing ill is common, to do but what signifies nothing
is a kind of commendation. 'Tis my comfort, that I shall be one of the
last who shall be called in question; and whilst the greater offenders are
being brought to account, I shall have leisure to amend: for it would,
methinks, be against reason to punish little inconveniences, whilst we are
infested with the greater. As the physician Philotimus said to one who
presented him his finger to dress, and who he perceived, both by his
complexion and his breath, had an ulcer in his lungs: "Friend, it is not
now time to play with your nails." —[Plutarch, How we may
distinguish a Flatterer from a Friend.]
And yet I saw, some years ago, a person, whose name and memory I have in
very great esteem, in the very height of our great disorders, when there
was neither law nor justice, nor magistrate who performed his office, no
more than there is now, publish I know not what pitiful reformations about
cloths, cookery, and law chicanery. Those are amusements wherewith to feed
a people that are ill-used, to show that they are not totally forgotten.
Those others do the same, who insist upon prohibiting particular ways of
speaking, dances, and games, to a people totally abandoned to all sorts of
execrable vices. 'Tis no time to bathe and cleanse one's self, when one is
seized by a violent fever; it was for the Spartans alone to fall to
combing and curling themselves, when they were just upon the point of
running headlong into some extreme danger of their life.
For my part, I have that worse custom, that if my slipper go awry, I let
my shirt and my cloak do so too; I scorn to mend myself by halves.
When I am in a bad plight, I fasten upon the mischief; I abandon myself
through despair; I let myself go towards the precipice, and, as they say,
"throw the helve after the hatchet"; I am obstinate in growing worse, and
think myself no longer worth my own care; I am either well or ill
throughout. 'T is a favour to me, that the desolation of this kingdom
falls out in the desolation of my age: I better suffer that my ill be
multiplied, than if my well had been disturbed.—[That, being ill, I
should grow worse, than that, being well, I should grow ill.]—The
words I utter in mishap are words of anger: my courage sets up its
bristles, instead of letting them down; and, contrary to others, I am more
devout in good than in evil fortune, according to the precept of Xenophon,
if not according to his reason; and am more ready to turn up my eyes to
heaven to return thanks, than to crave. I am more solicitous to improve my
health, when I am well, than to restore it when I am sick; prosperities
are the same discipline and instruction to me that adversities and rods
are to others. As if good fortune were a thing inconsistent with good
conscience, men never grow good but in evil fortune. Good fortune is to me
a singular spur to modesty and moderation: an entreaty wins, a threat
checks me; favour makes me bend, fear stiffens me.
Amongst human conditions this is common enough: to be better pleased with
foreign things than with our own, and to love innovation and change:
"Ipsa dies ideo nos grato perluit haustu,
Quod permutatis hora recurrit equis:"
["The light of day itself shines more pleasantly upon us because it
changes its horses every hour." Spoke of a water hour-glass,
adds Cotton.]
I have my share. Those who follow the other extreme, of being quite
satisfied and pleased with and in themselves, of valuing what they have
above all the rest, and of concluding no beauty can be greater than what
they see, if they are not wiser than we, are really more happy; I do not
envy their wisdom, but their good fortune.
This greedy humour of new and unknown things helps to nourish in me the
desire of travel; but a great many more circumstances contribute to it; I
am very willing to quit the government of my house. There is, I confess, a
kind of convenience in commanding, though it were but in a barn, and in
being obeyed by one's people; but 'tis too uniform and languid a pleasure,
and is, moreover, of necessity mixed with a thousand vexatious thoughts:
one while the poverty and the oppression of your tenants: another,
quarrels amongst neighbours: another, the trespasses they make upon you
afflict you;
"Aut verberatae grandine vineae,
Fundusque mendax, arbore nunc aquas
Culpante, nunc torrentia agros
Sidera, nunc hyemes iniquas."
["Or hail-smitten vines and the deceptive farm; now trees damaged
by the rains, or years of dearth, now summer's heat burning up the
petals, now destructive winters."—Horatius, Od., iii. I, 29.]
and that God scarce in six months sends a season wherein your bailiff can
do his business as he should; but that if it serves the vines, it spoils
the meadows:
"Aut nimiis torret fervoribus aetherius sol,
Aut subiti perimunt imbres, gelidoeque pruinae,
Flabraque ventorum violento turbine vexant;"
["Either the scorching sun burns up your fields, or sudden rains or
frosts destroy your harvests, or a violent wind carries away all
before it."—Lucretius, V. 216.]
to which may be added the new and neat-made shoe of the man of old, that
hurts your foot,
[Leclerc maliciously suggests that this is a sly hit at Montaigne's
wife, the man of old being the person mentioned in Plutarch's Life
of Paulus Emilius, c. 3, who, when his friends reproached him for
repudiating his wife, whose various merits they extolled, pointed to
his shoe, and said, "That looks a nice well-made shoe to you; but I
alone know where it pinches."]
and that a stranger does not understand how much it costs you, and what
you contribute to maintain that show of order that is seen in your family,
and that peradventure you buy too dear.
I came late to the government of a house: they whom nature sent into the
world before me long eased me of that trouble; so that I had already taken
another bent more suitable to my humour. Yet, for so much as I have seen,
'tis an employment more troublesome than hard; whoever is capable of
anything else, will easily do this. Had I a mind to be rich, that way
would seem too long; I had served my kings, a more profitable traffic than
any other. Since I pretend to nothing but the reputation of having got
nothing or dissipated nothing, conformably to the rest of my life,
improper either to do good or ill of any moment, and that I only desire to
pass on, I can do it, thanks be to God, without any great endeavour. At
the worst, evermore prevent poverty by lessening your expense; 'tis that
which I make my great concern, and doubt not but to do it before I shall
be compelled. As to the rest, I have sufficiently settled my thoughts to
live upon less than I have, and live contentedly:
"Non aestimatione census, verum victu atque cultu,
terminantur pecunix modus."
["'Tis not by the value of possessions, but by our daily subsistence
and tillage, that our riches are truly estimated."
—Cicero, Paradox, vi. 3.]
My real need does not so wholly take up all I have, that Fortune has not
whereon to fasten her teeth without biting to the quick. My presence,
heedless and ignorant as it is, does me great service in my domestic
affairs; I employ myself in them, but it goes against the hair, finding
that I have this in my house, that though I burn my candle at one end by
myself, the other is not spared.
Journeys do me no harm but only by their expense, which is great, and more
than I am well able to bear, being always wont to travel with not only a
necessary, but a handsome equipage; I must make them so much shorter and
fewer; I spend therein but the froth, and what I have reserved for such
uses, delaying and deferring my motion till that be ready. I will not that
the pleasure of going abroad spoil the pleasure of being retired at home;
on the contrary, I intend they shall nourish and favour one another.
Fortune has assisted me in this, that since my principal profession in
this life was to live at ease, and rather idly than busily, she has
deprived me of the necessity of growing rich to provide for the multitude
of my heirs. If there be not enough for one, of that whereof I had so
plentifully enough, at his peril be it: his imprudence will not deserve
that I should wish him any more. And every one, according to the example
of Phocion, provides sufficiently for his children who so provides for
them as to leave them as much as was left him. I should by no means like
Crates' way. He left his money in the hands of a banker with this
condition—that if his children were fools, he should then give it to
them; if wise, he should then distribute it to the most foolish of the
people; as if fools, for being less capable of living without riches, were
more capable of using them.
At all events, the damage occasioned by my absence seems not to deserve,
so long as I am able to support it, that I should waive the occasions of
diverting myself by that troublesome assistance.
There is always something that goes amiss. The affairs, one while of one
house, and then of another, tear you to pieces; you pry into everything
too near; your perspicacity hurts you here, as well as in other things. I
steal away from occasions of vexing myself, and turn from the knowledge of
things that go amiss; and yet I cannot so order it, but that every hour I
jostle against something or other that displeases me; and the tricks that
they most conceal from me, are those that I the soonest come to know; some
there are that, not to make matters worse, a man must himself help to
conceal. Vain vexations; vain sometimes, but always vexations. The
smallest and slightest impediments are the most piercing: and as little
letters most tire the eyes, so do little affairs most disturb us. The rout
of little ills more offend than one, how great soever. By how much
domestic thorns are numerous and slight, by so much they prick deeper and
without warning, easily surprising us when least we suspect them.
[Now Homer shews us clearly enough how surprise gives the advantage;
who represents Ulysses weeping at the death of his dog; and not
weeping at the tears of his mother; the first accident, trivial as
it was, got the better of him, coming upon him quite unexpectedly;
he sustained the second, though more potent, because he was prepared
for it. 'Tis light occasions that humble our lives. ]
I am no philosopher; evils oppress me according to their weight, and they
weigh as much according to the form as the matter, and very often more. If
I have therein more perspicacity than the vulgar, I have also more
patience; in short, they weigh with me, if they do not hurt me. Life is a
tender thing, and easily molested. Since my age has made me grow more
pensive and morose,
"Nemo enim resistit sibi, cum caeperit impelli,"
["For no man resists himself when he has begun to be driven
forward."—Seneca, Ep., 13.]
for the most trivial cause imaginable, I irritate that humour, which
afterwards nourishes and exasperates itself of its own motion; attracting
and heaping up matter upon matter whereon to feed:
"Stillicidi casus lapidem cavat:"
["The ever falling drop hollows out a stone."—Lucretius, i. 314.]
these continual tricklings consume and ulcerate me. Ordinary
inconveniences are never light; they are continual and inseparable,
especially when they spring from the members of a family, continual and
inseparable. When I consider my affairs at distance and in gross, I find,
because perhaps my memory is none of the best, that they have gone on
hitherto improving beyond my reason or expectation; my revenue seems
greater than it is; its prosperity betrays me: but when I pry more
narrowly into the business, and see how all things go:
"Tum vero in curas animum diducimus omnes;"
["Indeed we lead the mind into all sorts of cares."
—AEneid, v. 720.]
I have a thousand things to desire and to fear. To give them quite over,
is very easy for me to do: but to look after them without trouble, is very
hard. 'Tis a miserable thing to be in a place where everything you see
employs and concerns you; and I fancy that I more cheerfully enjoy the
pleasures of another man's house, and with greater and a purer relish,
than those of my own. Diogenes answered according to my humour him who
asked him what sort of wine he liked the best: "That of another," said he.—[Diogenes
Laertius, vi. 54.]
My father took a delight in building at Montaigne, where he was born; and
in all the government of domestic affairs I love to follow his example and
rules, and I shall engage those who are to succeed me, as much as in me
lies, to do the same. Could I do better for him, I would; and am proud
that his will is still performing and acting by me. God forbid that in my
hands I should ever suffer any image of life, that I am able to render to
so good a father, to fail. And wherever I have taken in hand to strengthen
some old foundations of walls, and to repair some ruinous buildings, in
earnest I have done it more out of respect to his design, than my own
satisfaction; and am angry at myself that I have not proceeded further to
finish the beginnings he left in his house, and so much the more because I
am very likely to be the last possessor of my race, and to give the last
hand to it. For, as to my own particular application, neither the pleasure
of building, which they say is so bewitching, nor hunting, nor gardens,
nor the other pleasures of a retired life, can much amuse me. And 'tis
what I am angry at myself for, as I am for all other opinions that are
incommodious to me; which I would not so much care to have vigorous and
learned, as I would have them easy and convenient for life, they are true
and sound enough, if they are useful and pleasing. Such as hear me declare
my ignorance in husbandry, whisper in my ear that it is disdain, and that
I neglect to know its instruments, its seasons, its order, how they dress
my vines, how they graft, and to know the names and forms of herbs and
fruits, and the preparing the meat on which I live, the names and prices
of the stuffs I wear, because, say they; I have set my heart upon some
higher knowledge; they kill me in saying so. It is not disdain; it is
folly, and rather stupidity than glory; I had rather be a good horseman
than a good logician:
"Quin to aliquid saltem potius, quorum indiget usus,
Viminibus mollique paras detexere junco."
["'Dost thou not rather do something which is required, and make
osier and reed basket."—Virgil, Eclog., ii. 71.]
We occupy our thoughts about the general, and about universal causes and
conducts, which will very well carry on themselves without our care; and
leave our own business at random, and Michael much more our concern than
man. Now I am, indeed, for the most part at home; but I would be there
better pleased than anywhere else:
"Sit meae sedes utinam senectae,
Sit modus lasso maris, et viarum,
Militiaeque."
["Let my old age have a fixed seat; let there be a limit to fatigues
from the sea, journeys, warfare."—Horace, Od., ii. 6, 6.]
I know not whether or no I shall bring it about. I could wish that,
instead of some other member of his succession, my father had resigned to
me the passionate affection he had in his old age to his household
affairs; he was happy in that he could accommodate his desires to his
fortune, and satisfy himself with what he had; political philosophy may to
much purpose condemn the meanness and sterility of my employment, if I can
once come to relish it, as he did. I am of opinion that the most
honourable calling is to serve the public, and to be useful to many,
"Fructus enim ingenii et virtutis, omnisque praestantiae,
tum maximus capitur, quum in proximum quemque confertur:"
["For the greatest enjoyment of evil and virtue, and of all
excellence, is experienced when they are conferred on some one
nearest."—Cicero, De Amicil., c.]
for myself, I disclaim it; partly out of conscience (for where I see the
weight that lies upon such employments, I perceive also the little means I
have to supply it; and Plato, a master in all political government
himself, nevertheless took care to abstain from it), and partly out of
cowardice. I content myself with enjoying the world without bustle;
only-to live an excusable life, and such as may neither be a burden to
myself nor to any other.
Never did any man more fully and feebly suffer himself to be governed by a
third person than I should do, had I any one to whom to entrust myself.
One of my wishes at this time should be, to have a son-in-law that knew
handsomely how to cherish my old age, and to rock it asleep; into whose
hands I might deposit, in full sovereignty, the management and use of all
my goods, that he might dispose of them as I do, and get by them what I
get, provided that he on his part were truly acknowledging, and a friend.
But we live in a world where loyalty of one's own children is unknown.
He who has the charge of my purse in his travels, has it purely and
without control; he could cheat me thoroughly, if he came to reckoning;
and, if he is not a devil, I oblige him to deal faithfully with me by so
entire a trust:
"Multi fallere do cuerunt, dum timent falli;
et aliis jus peccandi suspicando fecerunt."
["Many have taught others to deceive, while they fear to be
deceived, and, by suspecting them, have given them a title to do
ill."—Seneca, Epist., 3.]
The most common security I take of my people is ignorance; I never presume
any to be vicious till I have first found them so; and repose the most
confidence in the younger sort, that I think are least spoiled by ill
example. I had rather be told at two months' end that I have spent four
hundred crowns, than to have my ears battered every night with three,
five, seven: and I have been, in this way, as little robbed as another. It
is true, I am willing enough not to see it; I, in some sort, purposely,
harbour a kind of perplexed, uncertain knowledge of my money: up to a
certain point, I am content to doubt. One must leave a little room for the
infidelity or indiscretion of a servant; if you have left enough, in
gross, to do your business, let the overplus of Fortune's liberality run a
little more freely at her mercy; 'tis the gleaner's portion. After all, I
do not so much value the fidelity of my people as I contemn their injury.
What a mean and ridiculous thing it is for a man to study his money, to
delight in handling and telling it over and over again! 'Tis by this
avarice makes its approaches.
In eighteen years that I have had my estate in my, own hands, I could
never prevail with myself either to read over my deeds or examine my
principal affairs, which ought, of necessity, to pass under my knowledge
and inspection. 'Tis not a philosophical disdain of worldly and transitory
things; my taste is not purified to that degree, and I value them at as
great a rate, at least, as they are worth; but 'tis, in truth, an
inexcusable and childish laziness and negligence. What would I not rather
do than read a contract? or than, as a slave to my own business, tumble
over those dusty writings? or, which is worse, those of another man, as so
many do nowadays, to get money? I grudge nothing but care and trouble, and
endeavour nothing so much, as to be careless and at ease. I had been much
fitter, I believe, could it have been without obligation and servitude, to
have lived upon another man's fortune than my own: and, indeed, I do not
know, when I examine it nearer, whether, according to my humour, what I
have to suffer from my affairs and servants, has not in it something more
abject, troublesome, and tormenting than there would be in serving a man
better born than myself, who would govern me with a gentle rein, and a
little at my own case:
"Servitus obedientia est fracti animi et abjecti,
arbitrio carentis suo."
["Servitude is the obedience of a subdued and abject mind, wanting
its own free will."—Cicero, Paradox, V. I.]
Crates did worse, who threw himself into the liberty of poverty, only to
rid himself of the inconveniences and cares of his house. This is what I
would not do; I hate poverty equally with pain; but I could be content to
change the kind of life I live for another that was humbler and less
chargeable.
When absent from home, I divest myself of all these thoughts, and should
be less concerned for the ruin of a tower, than I am, when present, at the
fall of a tile. My mind is easily composed at distance, but suffers as
much as that of the meanest peasant when I am at home; the reins of my
bridle being wrongly put on, or a strap flapping against my leg, will keep
me out of humour a day together. I raise my courage, well enough against
inconveniences: lift up my eyes I cannot:
"Sensus, o superi, sensus."
["The senses, O ye gods, the senses."]
I am at home responsible for whatever goes amiss. Few masters (I speak of
those of medium condition such as mine), and if there be any such, they
are more happy, can rely so much upon another, but that the greatest part
of the burden will lie upon their own shoulders. This takes much from my
grace in entertaining visitors, so that I have, peradventure, detained
some rather out of expectation of a good dinner, than by my own behaviour;
and lose much of the pleasure I ought to reap at my own house from the
visitation and assembling of my friends. The most ridiculous carriage of a
gentleman in his own house, is to see him bustling about the business of
the place, whispering one servant, and looking an angry look at another:
it ought insensibly to slide along, and to represent an ordinary current;
and I think it unhandsome to talk much to our guests of their
entertainment, whether by way of bragging or excuse. I love order and
cleanliness—
"Et cantharus et lanx
Ostendunt mihi me"—
["The dishes and the glasses shew me my own reflection."
—Horace, Ep., i. 5, 23]
more than abundance; and at home have an exact regard to necessity, little
to outward show. If a footman falls to cuffs at another man's house, or
stumble and throw a dish before him as he is carrying it up, you only
laugh and make a jest on't; you sleep whilst the master of the house is
arranging a bill of fare with his steward for your morrow's entertainment.
I speak according as I do myself; quite appreciating, nevertheless, good
husbandry in general, and how pleasant quiet and prosperous household
management, carried regularly on, is to some natures; and not wishing to
fasten my own errors and inconveniences to the thing; nor to give Plato
the lie, who looks upon it as the most pleasant employment to every one to
do his particular affairs without wrong to another.
When I travel I have nothing to care for but myself, and the laying out my
money; which is disposed of by one single precept; too many things are
required to the raking it together; in that I understand nothing; in
spending, I understand a little, and how to give some show to my expense,
which is indeed its principal use; but I rely too ambitiously upon it,
which renders it unequal and difform, and, moreover, immoderate in both
the one and the other aspect; if it makes a show, if it serve the turn, I
indiscreetly let it run; and as indiscreetly tie up my purse-strings, if
it does not shine, and does not please me. Whatever it be, whether art or
nature, that imprints in us the condition of living by reference to
others, it does us much more harm than good; we deprive ourselves of our
own utilities, to accommodate appearances to the common opinion: we care
not so much what our being is, as to us and in reality, as what it is to
the public observation. Even the properties of the mind, and wisdom
itself, seem fruitless to us, if only enjoyed by ourselves, and if it
produce not itself to the view and approbation of others. There is a sort
of men whose gold runs in streams underground imperceptibly; others expose
it all in plates and branches; so that to the one a liard is worth a
crown, and to the others the inverse: the world esteeming its use and
value, according to the show. All over-nice solicitude about riches smells
of avarice: even the very disposing of it, with a too systematic and
artificial liberality, is not worth a painful superintendence and
solicitude: he, that will order his expense to just so much, makes it too
pinched and narrow. The keeping or spending are, of themselves,
indifferent things, and receive no colour of good or ill, but according to
the application of the will.
The other cause that tempts me out to these journeys is, inaptitude for
the present manners in our state. I could easily console myself for this
corruption in regard to the public interest:
"Pejoraque saecula ferri
Temporibus, quorum sceleri non invenit ipsa
Nomen, et a nullo posuit natura metallo;"
["And, worse than the iron ages, for whose crimes there is no
similitude in any of Nature's metals."—Juvenal, xiii. 28.]
but not to my own. I am, in particular, too much oppressed by them: for,
in my neighbourhood, we are, of late, by the long licence of our civil
wars, grown old in so riotous a form of state,
"Quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas,"
["Where wrong and right have changed places."
—Virgil, Georg., i. 504.]
that in earnest, 'tis a wonder how it can subsist:
"Armati terram exercent, semperque recentes
Convectare juvat praedas; et vivere rapto."
["Men plough, girt with arms; ever delighting in fresh robberies,
and living by rapine."—AEneid, vii. 748.]
In fine, I see by our example, that the society of men is maintained and
held together, at what price soever; in what condition soever they are
placed, they still close and stick together, both moving and in heaps; as
ill united bodies, that, shuffled together without order, find of
themselves a means to unite and settle, often better than they could have
been disposed by art. King Philip mustered up a rabble of the most wicked
and incorrigible rascals he could pick out, and put them all together into
a city he had caused to be built for that purpose, which bore their name:
I believe that they, even from vices themselves, erected a government
amongst them, and a commodious and just society. I see, not one action, or
three, or a hundred, but manners, in common and received use, so
ferocious, especially in inhumanity and treachery, which are to me the
worst of all vices, that I have not the heart to think of them without
horror; and almost as much admire as I detest them: the exercise of these
signal villainies carries with it as great signs of vigour and force of
soul, as of error and disorder. Necessity reconciles and brings men
together; and this accidental connection afterwards forms itself into
laws: for there have been such, as savage as any human opinion could
conceive, who, nevertheless, have maintained their body with as much
health and length of life as any Plato or Aristotle could invent. And
certainly, all these descriptions of polities, feigned by art, are found
to be ridiculous and unfit to be put in practice.
These great and tedious debates about the best form of society, and the
most commodious rules to bind us, are debates only proper for the exercise
of our wits; as in the arts there are several subjects which have their
being in agitation and controversy, and have no life but there. Such an
idea of government might be of some value in a new world; but we take a
world already made, and formed to certain customs; we do not beget it, as
Pyrrha or Cadmus did. By what means soever we may have the privilege to
redress and reform it anew, we can hardly writhe it from its wonted bent,
but we shall break all. Solon being asked whether he had established the
best laws he could for the Athenians; "Yes," said he, "of those they would
have received." Varro excuses himself after the same manner: "that if he
were to begin to write of religion, he would say what he believed; but
seeing it was already received, he would write rather according to use
than nature."
Not according to opinion, but in truth and reality, the best and most
excellent government for every nation is that under which it is
maintained: its form and essential convenience depend upon custom. We are
apt to be displeased at the present condition; but I, nevertheless,
maintain that to desire command in a few—[an oligarchy.]— in a
republic, or another sort of government in monarchy than that already
established, is both vice and folly:
"Ayme l'estat, tel que to le veois estre
S'il est royal ayme la royaute;
S'il est de peu, ou biers communaute,
Ayme l'aussi; car Dieu t'y a faict naistre."
["Love the government, such as you see it to be. If it be royal,
love royalty; if it is a republic of any sort, still love it; for
God himself created thee therein."]
So wrote the good Monsieur de Pibrac, whom we have lately lost, a man of
so excellent a wit, such sound opinions, and such gentle manners. This
loss, and that at the same time we have had of Monsieur de Foix, are of so
great importance to the crown, that I do not know whether there is another
couple in France worthy to supply the places of these two Gascons in
sincerity and wisdom in the council of our kings. They were both variously
great men, and certainly, according to the age, rare and great, each of
them in his kind: but what destiny was it that placed them in these times,
men so remote from and so disproportioned to our corruption and intestine
tumults?
Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation: change only gives form
to injustice and tyranny. When any piece is loosened, it may be proper to
stay it; one may take care that the alteration and corruption natural to
all things do not carry us too far from our beginnings and principles: but
to undertake to found so great a mass anew, and to change the foundations
of so vast a building, is for them to do, who to make clean, efface; who
reform particular defects by an universal confusion, and cure diseases by
death:
"Non tam commutandarum quam evertendarum rerum cupidi."
["Not so desirous of changing as of overthrowing things."
—Cicero, De Offic., ii. i.]
The world is unapt to be cured; and so impatient of anything that presses
it, that it thinks of nothing but disengaging itself at what price soever.
We see by a thousand examples, that it ordinarily cures itself to its
cost. The discharge of a present evil is no cure, if there be not a
general amendment of condition. The surgeon's end is not only to cut away
the dead flesh; that is but the progress of his cure; he has a care, over
and above, to fill up the wound with better and more natural flesh, and to
restore the member to its due state. Whoever only proposes to himself to
remove that which offends him, falls short: for good does not necessarily
succeed evil; another evil may succeed, and a worse, as it happened to
Caesar's murderers, who brought the republic to such a pass, that they had
reason to repent the meddling with the matter. The same has since happened
to several others, even down to our own times: the French, my
contemporaries, know it well enough. All great mutations shake and
disorder a state.
Whoever would look direct at a cure, and well consider of it before he
began, would be very willing to withdraw his hands from meddling in it.
Pacuvius Calavius corrected the vice of this proceeding by a notable
example. His fellow-citizens were in mutiny against their magistrates; he
being a man of great authority in the city of Capua, found means one day
to shut up the Senators in the palace; and calling the people together in
the market-place, there told them that the day was now come wherein at
full liberty they might revenge themselves on the tyrants by whom they had
been so long oppressed, and whom he had now, all alone and unarmed, at his
mercy. He then advised that they should call these out, one by one, by
lot, and should individually determine as to each, causing whatever should
be decreed to be immediately executed; with this proviso, that they
should, at the same time, depute some honest man in the place of him who
was condemned, to the end there might be no vacancy in the Senate. They
had no sooner heard the name of one senator but a great cry of universal
dislike was raised up against him. "I see," says Pacuvius, "that we must
put him out; he is a wicked fellow; let us look out a good one in his
room." Immediately there was a profound silence, every one being at a
stand whom to choose. But one, more impudent than the rest, having named
his man, there arose yet a greater consent of voices against him, an
hundred imperfections being laid to his charge, and as many just reasons
why he should not stand. These contradictory humours growing hot, it fared
worse with the second senator and the third, there being as much
disagreement in the election of the new, as consent in the putting out of
the old. In the end, growing weary of this bustle to no purpose, they
began, some one way and some another, to steal out of the assembly: every
one carrying back this resolution in his mind, that the oldest and best
known evil was ever more supportable than one that was, new and untried.
Seeing how miserably we are agitated (for what have we not done!)
"Eheu! cicatricum, et sceleris pudet,
Fratrumque: quid nos dura refugimus
AEtas? quid intactum nefasti
Liquimus? Unde manus inventus
Metu Deorum continuit? quibus
Pepercit aris."
["Alas! our crimes and our fratricides are a shame to us! What
crime does this bad age shrink from? What wickedness have we left
undone? What youth is restrained from evil by the fear of the gods?
What altar is spared?"—Horace, Od., i. 33, 35]
I do not presently conclude,
"Ipsa si velit Salus,
Servare prorsus non potest hanc familiam;"
["If the goddess Salus herself wish to save this family, she
absolutely cannot"—Terence, Adelph., iv. 7, 43.]
we are not, peradventure, at our last gasp. The conservation of states is
a thing that, in all likelihood, surpasses our understanding;—a
civil government is, as Plato says, a mighty and puissant thing, and hard
to be dissolved; it often continues against mortal and intestine diseases,
against the injury of unjust laws, against tyranny, the corruption and
ignorance of magistrates, the licence and sedition of the people. In all
our fortunes, we compare ourselves to what is above us, and still look
towards those who are better: but let us measure ourselves with what is
below us: there is no condition so miserable wherein a man may not find a
thousand examples that will administer consolation. 'Tis our vice that we
more unwillingly look upon what is above, than willingly upon what is
below; and Solon was used to say, that "whoever would make a heap of all
the ills together, there is no one who would not rather choose to bear
away the ills he has than to come to an equal division with all other men
from that heap, and take his share." Our government is, indeed, very sick,
but there have been others more sick without dying. The gods play at ball
with us and bandy us every way:
"Enimvero Dii nos homines quasi pilas habent."
The stars fatally destined the state of Rome for an example of what they
could do in this kind: in it are comprised all the forms and adventures
that concern a state: all that order or disorder, good or evil fortune,
can do. Who, then, can despair of his condition, seeing the shocks and
commotions wherewith Rome was tumbled and tossed, and yet withstood them
all? If the extent of dominion be the health of a state (which I by no
means think it is, and Isocrates pleases me when he instructs Nicocles not
to envy princes who have large dominions, but those who know how to
preserve those which have fallen into their hands), that of Rome was never
so sound, as when it was most sick. The worst of her forms was the most
fortunate; one can hardly discern any image of government under the first
emperors; it is the most horrible and tumultuous confusion that can be
imagined; it endured it, notwithstanding, and therein continued,
preserving not a monarchy limited within its own bounds, but so many
nations so differing, so remote, so disaffected, so confusedly commanded,
and so unjustly conquered:
"Nec gentibus ullis
Commodat in populum, terra pelagique potentem,
Invidiam fortuna suam."
["Fortune never gave it to any nation to satisfy its hatred against
the people, masters of the seas and of the earth."—Lucan, i. 32.]
Everything that totters does not fall. The contexture of so great a body
holds by more nails than one; it holds even by its antiquity, like old
buildings, from which the foundations are worn away by time, without
rough-cast or mortar, which yet live and support themselves by their own
weight:
"Nec jam validis radicibus haerens,
Pondere tuta suo est."
Moreover, it is not rightly to go to work, to examine only the flank and
the foss, to judge of the security of a place; we must observe which way
approaches can be made to it, and in what condition the assailant is: few
vessels sink with their own weight, and without some exterior violence.
Now, let us everyway cast our eyes; everything about us totters; in all
the great states, both of Christendom and elsewhere, that are known to us,
if you will but look, you will there see evident menace of alteration and
ruin:
"Et sua sunt illis incommoda; parque per omnes
Tempestas."
["They all share in the mischief; the tempest rages
everywhere."—AEneid, ii.]
Astrologers may very well, as they do, warn us of great revolutions and
imminent mutations: their prophecies are present and palpable, they need
not go to heaven to foretell this. There is not only consolation to be
extracted from this universal combination of ills and menaces, but,
moreover, some hopes of the continuation of our state, forasmuch as,
naturally, nothing falls where all falls: universal sickness is particular
health: conformity is antagonistic to dissolution. For my part, I despair
not, and fancy that I discover ways to save us:
"Deus haec fortasse benigna
Reducet in sedem vice."
["The deity will perchance by a favourable turn restore us to our
former position."—Horace, Epod., xiii. 7.]
Who knows but that God will have it happen, as in human bodies that purge
and restore themselves to a better state by long and grievous maladies,
which render them more entire and perfect health than that they took from
them? That which weighs the most with me is, that in reckoning the
symptoms of our ill, I see as many natural ones, and that Heaven sends us,
and properly its own, as of those that our disorder and human imprudence
contribute to it. The very stars seem to declare that we have already
continued long enough, and beyond the ordinary term. This also afflicts
me, that the mischief which nearest threatens us, is not an alteration in
the entire and solid mass, but its dissipation and divulsion, which is the
most extreme of our fears.
I, moreover, fear, in these fantasies of mine, the treachery of my memory,
lest, by inadvertence, it should make me write the same thing twice. I
hate to examine myself, and never review, but very unwillingly, what has
once escaped my pen. I here set down nothing new. These are common
thoughts, and having, peradventure, conceived them an hundred times, I am
afraid I have set them down somewhere else already. Repetition is
everywhere troublesome, though it were in Homer; but 'tis ruinous in
things that have only a superficial and transitory show. I do not love
over-insisting, even in the most profitable things, as in Seneca; and the
usage of his stoical school displeases me, to repeat, upon every subject,
at full length and width the principles and presuppositions that serve in
general, and always to realledge anew common and universal reasons.
My memory grows cruelly worse every day:
"Pocula Lethaeos ut si ducentia somnos,
Arente fauce traxerim;"
["As if my dry throat had drunk seducing cups of Lethaean
oblivion."—Horace, Epod., xiv. 3.]
I must be fain for the time to come (for hitherto, thanks be to God,
nothing has happened much amiss), whereas others seek time and opportunity
to think of what they have to say, to avoid all preparation, for fear of
tying myself to some obligation upon which I must insist. To be tied and
bound to a thing puts me quite out, and to depend upon so weak an
instrument as my memory. I never read this following story that I am not
offended at it with a personal and natural resentment: Lyncestes, accused
of conspiracy against Alexander, the day that he was brought out before
the army, according to the custom, to be heard as to what he could say for
himself, had learned a studied speech, of which, hesitating and
stammering, he pronounced some words. Whilst growing more and more
perplexed, whilst struggling with his memory, and trying to recollect what
he had to say, the soldiers nearest to him charged their pikes against him
and killed him, looking upon him as convict; his confusion and silence
served them for a confession; for having had so much leisure to prepare
himself in prison, they concluded that it was not his memory that failed
him, but that his conscience tied up his tongue and stopped his mouth.
And, truly, well said; the place, the assembly, the expectation, astound a
man, even when he has but the ambition to speak well; what can a man do
when 'tis an harangue upon which his life depends?
For my part, the very being tied to what I am to say is enough to loose me
from it. When I wholly commit and refer myself to my memory, I lay so much
stress upon it that it sinks under me: it grows dismayed with the burden.
So much as I trust to it, so much do I put myself out of my own power,
even to the finding it difficult to keep my own countenance; and have been
sometimes very much put to it to conceal the slavery wherein I was
engaged; whereas my design is to manifest, in speaking, a perfect calmness
both of face and accent, and casual and unpremeditated motions, as rising
from present occasions, choosing rather to say nothing to purpose than to
show that I came prepared to speak well, a thing especially unbecoming a
man of my profession, and of too great obligation on him who cannot retain
much. The preparation begets a great deal more expectation than it will
satisfy. A man often strips himself to his doublet to leap no farther than
he would have done in his gown:
"Nihil est his, qui placere volunt, turn adversarium,
quam expectatio."
["Nothing is so adverse to those who make it their business to
please as expectation"—Cicero, Acad., ii. 4]
It is recorded of the orator Curio, that when he proposed the division of
his oration into three or four parts, or three or four arguments or
reasons, it often happened either that he forgot some one, or added one or
two more. I have always avoided falling into this inconvenience, having
ever hated these promises and prescriptions, not only out of distrust of
my memory, but also because this method relishes too much of the artist:
"Simpliciora militares decent."
["Simplicity becomes warriors."—Quintilian, Instit. Orat., xi. I.]
'Tis enough that I have promised to myself never again to take upon me to
speak in a place of respect, for as to speaking, when a man reads his
speech, besides that it is very absurd, it is a mighty disadvantage to
those who naturally could give it a grace by action; and to rely upon the
mercy of my present invention, I would much less do it; 'tis heavy and
perplexed, and such as would never furnish me in sudden and important
necessities.
Permit, reader, this essay its course also, and this third sitting to
finish the rest of my picture: I add, but I correct not. First, because I
conceive that a man having once parted with his labours to the world, he
has no further right to them; let him do better if he can, in some new
undertaking, but not adulterate what he has already sold. Of such dealers
nothing should be bought till after they are dead. Let them well consider
what they do before they, produce it to the light who hastens them? My
book is always the same, saving that upon every new edition (that the
buyer may not go away quite empty) I take the liberty to add (as 'tis but
an ill jointed marqueterie) some supernumerary emblem; it is but
overweight, that does not disfigure the primitive form of the essays, but,
by a little artful subtlety, gives a kind of particular value to every one
of those that follow. Thence, however, will easily happen some
transposition of chronology, my stories taking place according to their
opportuneness, not always according to their age.
Secondly, because as to what concerns myself, I fear to lose by change: my
understanding does not always go forward, it goes backward too. I do not
much less suspect my fancies for being the second or the third, than for
being the first, or present, or past; we often correct ourselves as
foolishly as we do others. I am grown older by a great many years since my
first publications, which were in the year 1580; but I very much doubt
whether I am grown an inch the wiser. I now, and I anon, are two several
persons; but whether better, I cannot determine. It were a fine thing to
be old, if we only travelled towards improvement; but 'tis a drunken,
stumbling, reeling, infirm motion: like that of reeds, which the air
casually waves to and fro at pleasure. Antiochus had in his youth strongly
written in favour of the Academy; in his old age he wrote as much against
it; would not, which of these two soever I should follow, be still
Antiochus? After having established the uncertainty, to go about to
establish the certainty of human opinions, was it not to establish doubt,
and not certainty, and to promise, that had he had yet another age to
live, he would be always upon terms of altering his judgment, not so much
for the better, as for something else?
The public favour has given me a little more confidence than I expected;
but what I 'most fear is, lest I should glut the world with my writings; I
had rather, of the two, pique my reader than tire him, as a learned man of
my time has done. Praise is always pleasing, let it come from whom, or
upon what account it will; yet ought a man to understand why he is
commended, that he may know how to keep up the same reputation still:
imperfections themselves may get commendation. The vulgar and common
estimation is seldom happy in hitting; and I am much mistaken if, amongst
the writings of my time, the worst are not those which have most gained
the popular applause. For my part, I return my thanks to those
good-natured men who are pleased to take my weak endeavours in good part;
the faults of the workmanship are nowhere so apparent as in a matter which
of itself has no recommendation. Blame not me, reader, for those that slip
in here by the fancy or inadvertency of others; every hand, every artisan,
contribute their own materials; I neither concern myself with orthography
(and only care to have it after the old way) nor pointing, being very
inexpert both in the one and the other. Where they wholly break the sense,
I am very little concerned, for they at least discharge me; but where they
substitute a false one, as they so often do, and wrest me to their
conception, they ruin me. When the sentence, nevertheless, is not strong
enough for my proportion, a civil person ought to reject it as spurious,
and none of mine. Whoever shall know how lazy I am, and how indulgent to
my own humour, will easily believe that I had rather write as many more
essays, than be tied to revise these over again for so childish a
correction.
I said elsewhere, that being planted in the very centre of this new
religion, I am not only deprived of any great familiarity with men of
other kind of manners than my own, and of other opinions, by which they
hold together, as by a tie that supersedes all other obligations; but
moreover I do not live without danger, amongst men to whom all things are
equally lawful, and of whom the most part cannot offend the laws more than
they have already done; from which the extremist degree of licence
proceeds. All the particular being summed up together, I do not find one
man of my country, who pays so dear for the defence of our laws both in
loss and damages (as the lawyers say) as myself; and some there are who
vapour and brag of their zeal and constancy, that if things were justly
weighed, do much less than I. My house, as one that has ever been open and
free to all comers, and civil to all (for I could never persuade myself to
make it a garrison of war, war being a thing that I prefer to see as
remote as may be), has sufficiently merited popular kindness, and so that
it would be a hard matter justly to insult over me upon my own dunghill;
and I look upon it as a wonderful and exemplary thing that it yet
continues a virgin from blood and plunder during so long a storm, and so
many neighbouring revolutions and tumults. For to confess the truth, it
had been possible enough for a man of my complexion to have shaken hands
with any one constant and continued form whatever; but the contrary
invasions and incursions, alternations and vicissitudes of fortune round
about me, have hitherto more exasperated than calmed and mollified the
temper of the country, and involved me, over and over again, with
invincible difficulties and dangers.
I escape, 'tis true, but am troubled that it is more by chance, and
something of my own prudence, than by justice; and am not satisfied to be
out of the protection of the laws, and under any other safeguard than
theirs. As matters stand, I live, above one half, by the favour of others,
which is an untoward obligation. I do not like to owe my safety either to
the generosity or affection of great persons, who allow me my legality and
my liberty, or to the obliging manners of my predecessors, or my own: for
what if I were another kind of man? If my deportment, and the frankness of
my conversation or relationship, oblige my neighbours, 'tis that that they
should acquit themselves of obligation in only permitting me to live, and
they may say, "We allow him the free liberty of having divine service read
in his own private chapel, when it is interdicted in all churches round
about, and allow him the use of his goods and his life, as one who
protects our wives and cattle in time of need." For my house has for many
descents shared in the reputation of Lycurgus the Athenian, who was the
general depository and guardian of the purses of his fellow-citizens. Now
I am clearly of opinion that a man should live by right and by authority,
and not either by recompense or favour. How many gallant men have rather
chosen to lose their lives than to be debtors for them? I hate to subject
myself to any sort of obligation, but above all, to that which binds me by
the duty of honour. I think nothing so dear as what has been given me, and
this because my will lies at pawn under the title of gratitude, and more
willingly accept of services that are to be sold; I feel that for the last
I give nothing but money, but for the other I give myself.
The knot that binds me by the laws of courtesy binds me more than that of
civil constraint; I am much more at ease when bound by a scrivener, than
by myself. Is it not reason that my conscience should be much more engaged
when men simply rely upon it? In a bond, my faith owes nothing, because it
has nothing lent it; let them trust to the security they have taken
without me. I had much rather break the wall of a prison and the laws
themselves than my own word. I am nice, even to superstition, in keeping
my promises, and, therefore, upon all occasions have a care to make them
uncertain and conditional. To those of no great moment, I add the jealousy
of my own rule, to make them weight; it wracks and oppresses me with its
own interest. Even in actions wholly my own and free, if I once say a
thing, I conceive that I have bound myself, and that delivering it to the
knowledge of another, I have positively enjoined it my own performance.
Methinks I promise it, if I but say it: and therefore am not apt to say
much of that kind. The sentence that I pass upon myself is more severe
than that of a judge, who only considers the common obligation; but my
conscience looks upon it with a more severe and penetrating eye. I lag in
those duties to which I should be compelled if I did not go:
"Hoc ipsum ita justum est, quod recte fit, si est voluntarium."
["This itself is so far just, that it is rightly done, if it is
voluntary."—Cicero, De Offic., i. 9.]
If the action has not some splendour of liberty, it has neither grace nor
honour:
"Quod vos jus cogit, vix voluntate impetrent:"
["That which the laws compel us to do, we scarcely do with a will."
—Terence, Adelph., iii. 3, 44.]
where necessity draws me, I love to let my will take its own course:
"Quia quicquid imperio cogitur, exigenti magis,
quam praestanti, acceptum refertur."
["For whatever is compelled by power, is more imputed to him that
exacts than to him that performs."—Valerius Maximus, ii. 2, 6.]
I know some who follow this rule, even to injustice; who will sooner give
than restore, sooner lend than pay, and will do them the least good to
whom they are most obliged. I don't go so far as that, but I'm not far
off.
I so much love to disengage and disobligate myself, that I have sometimes
looked upon ingratitudes, affronts, and indignities which I have received
from those to whom either by nature or accident I was bound in some way of
friendship, as an advantage to me; taking this occasion of their
ill-usage, for an acquaintance and discharge of so much of my debt. And
though I still continue to pay them all the external offices of public
reason, I, notwithstanding, find a great saving in doing that upon the
account of justice which I did upon the score of affection, and am a
little eased of the attention and solicitude of my inward will:
"Est prudentis sustinere, ut currum, sic impetum benevolentia;"
["'Tis the part of a wise man to keep a curbing hand upon the
impetus of friendship, as upon that of his horse."
—Cicero, De Amicit., c. 17.]
'tis in me, too urging and pressing where I take; at least, for a man who
loves not to be strained at all. And this husbanding my friendship serves
me for a sort of consolation in the imperfections of those in whom I am
concerned. I am very sorry they are not such as I could wish they were,
but then I also am spared somewhat of my application and engagement
towards them. I approve of a man who is the less fond of his child for
having a scald head, or for being crooked; and not only when he is
ill-conditioned, but also when he is of unhappy disposition, and imperfect
in his limbs (God himself has abated so much from his value and natural
estimation), provided he carry himself in this coldness of affection with
moderation and exact justice: proximity, with me, lessens not defects, but
rather aggravates them.
After all, according to what I understand in the science of benefit and
acknowledgment, which is a subtle science, and of great use, I know no
person whatever more free and less indebted than I am at this hour. What I
do owe is simply to foreign obligations and benefits; as to anything else,
no man is more absolutely clear:
"Nec sunt mihi nota potentum
Munera."
["The gifts of great men are unknown to me."—AEneid, xii. 529.]
Princes give me a great deal if they take nothing from me; and do me good
enough if they do me no harm; that's all I ask from them. O how am I
obliged to God, that he has been pleased I should immediately receive from
his bounty all I have, and specially reserved all my obligation to
himself. How earnestly do I beg of his holy compassion that I may never
owe essential thanks to any one. O happy liberty wherein I have thus far
lived. May it continue with me to the last. I endeavour to have no express
need of any one:
"In me omnis spec est mihi."
["All my hope is in myself."—Terence, Adelph., iii. 5, 9.]
'Tis what every one may do in himself, but more easily they whom God has
placed in a condition exempt from natural and urgent necessities. It is a
wretched and dangerous thing to depend upon others; we ourselves, in whom
is ever the most just and safest dependence, are not sufficiently sure.
I have nothing mine but myself, and yet the possession is, in part,
defective and borrowed. I fortify myself both in courage, which is the
strongest assistant, and also in fortune, therein wherewith to satisfy
myself, though everything else should forsake me. Hippias of Elis not only
furnished himself with knowledge, that he might, at need, cheerfully
retire from all other company to enjoy the Muses: nor only with the
knowledge of philosophy, to teach his soul to be contented with itself,
and bravely to subsist without outward conveniences, when fate would have
it so; he was, moreover, so careful as to learn to cook, to shave himself,
to make his own clothes, his own shoes and drawers, to provide for all his
necessities in himself, and to wean himself from the assistance of others.
A man more freely and cheerfully enjoys borrowed conveniences, when it is
not an enjoyment forced and constrained by need; and when he has, in his
own will and fortune, the means to live without them. I know myself very
well; but 'tis hard for me to imagine any so pure liberality of any one
towards me, any so frank and free hospitality, that would not appear to me
discreditable, tyrannical, and tainted with reproach, if necessity had
reduced me to it. As giving is an ambitious and authoritative quality, so
is accepting a quality of submission; witness the insulting and
quarrelsome refusal that Bajazet made of the presents that Tamerlane sent
him; and those that were offered on the part of the Emperor Solyman to the
Emperor of Calicut, so angered him, that he not only rudely rejected them,
saying that neither he nor any of his predecessors had ever been wont to
take, and that it was their office to give; but, moreover, caused the
ambassadors sent with the gifts to be put into a dungeon. When Thetis,
says Aristotle, flatters Jupiter, when the Lacedaemonians flatter the
Athenians, they do not put them in mind of the good they have done them,
which is always odious, but of the benefits they have received from them.
Such as I see so frequently employ every one in their affairs, and thrust
themselves into so much obligation, would never do it, did they but relish
as I do the sweetness of a pure liberty, and did they but weigh, as wise:
men should, the burden of obligation: 'tis sometimes, peradventure, fully
paid, but 'tis never dissolved. 'Tis a miserable slavery to a man who
loves to be at full liberty in all reapects. Such as know me, both above
and below me in station, are able to say whether they have ever known a
man less importuning, soliciting, entreating, and pressing upon others
than I. If I am so, and a degree beyond all modern example, 'tis no great
wonder, so many parts of my manners contributing to it: a little natural
pride, an impatience at being refused, the moderation of my desires and
designs, my incapacity for business, and my most beloved qualities,
idleness and freedom; by all these together I have conceived a mortal
hatred to being obliged to any other, or by any other than myself. I leave
no stone unturned, to do without it, rather than employ the bounty of
another in any light or important occasion or necessity whatever. My
friends strangely trouble me when they ask me to ask a third person; and I
think it costs me little less to disengage him who is indebted to me, by
making use of him, than to engage myself to him who owes me nothing. These
conditions being removed, and provided they require of me nothing if any
great trouble or care (for I have declared mortal war against all care), I
am very ready to do every one the best service I can. I have been very
willing to seek occasion to do people a good turn, and to attach them to
me; and methinks there is no more agreeable employment for our means. But
I have yet more avoided receiving than sought occasions of giving, and
moreover, according to Aristotle, it is more easy., My fortune has allowed
me but little to do others good withal, and the little it can afford, is
put into a pretty close hand. Had I been born a great person, I should
have been ambitious to have made myself beloved, not to make myself feared
or admired: shall I more plainly express it? I should more have
endeavoured to please than to profit others. Cyrus very wisely, and by the
mouth of a great captain, and still greater philosopher, prefers his
bounty and benefits much before his valour and warlike conquests; and the
elder Scipio, wherever he would raise himself in esteem, sets a higher
value upon his affability and humanity, than on his prowess and victories,
and has always this glorious saying in his mouth: "That he has given his
enemies as much occasion to love him as his friends." I will then say,
that if a man must, of necessity, owe something, it ought to be by a more
legitimate title than that whereof I am speaking, to which the necessity
of this miserable war compels me; and not in so great a debt as that of my
total preservation both of life and fortune: it overwhelms me.
I have a thousand times gone to bed in my own house with an apprehension
that I should be betrayed and murdered that very night; compounding with
fortune, that it might be without terror and with quick despatch; and,
after my Paternoster, I have cried out,
"Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit!"
["Shall impious soldiers have these new-ploughed grounds?"
—Virgil, Ecl., i. 71.]
What remedy? 'tis the place of my birth, and that of most of my ancestors;
they have here fixed their affection and name. We inure ourselves to
whatever we are accustomed to; and in so miserable a condition as ours is,
custom is a great bounty of nature, which benumbs out senses to the
sufferance of many evils. A civil war has this with it worse than other
wars have, to make us stand sentinels in our own houses.
"Quam miserum, porta vitam muroque tueri,
Vixque suae tutum viribus esse domus!"
["'Tis miserable to protect one's life by doors and walls, and to be
scarcely safe in one's own house."—Ovid, Trist., iv. I, 69.]
'Tis a grievous extremity for a man to be jostled even in his own house
and domestic repose. The country where I live is always the first in arms
and the last that lays them down, and where there is never an absolute
peace:
"Tunc quoque, cum pax est, trepidant formidine belli....
Quoties Romam fortuna lacessit;
Hac iter est bellis.... Melius, Fortuna, dedisses
Orbe sub Eco sedem, gelidaque sub Arcto,
Errantesque domos."
["Even when there's peace, there is here still the dear of war when
Fortune troubles peace, this is ever the way by which war passes."
—Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 67.]
["We might have lived happier in the remote East or in the icy
North, or among the wandering tribes."—Lucan, i. 255.]
I sometimes extract the means to fortify myself against these
considerations from indifference and indolence, which, in some sort, bring
us on to resolution. It often befalls me to imagine and expect mortal
dangers with a kind of delight: I stupidly plunge myself headlong into
death, without considering or taking a view of it, as into a deep and
obscure abyss which swallows me up at one leap, and involves me in an
instant in a profound sleep, without any sense of pain. And in these short
and violent deaths, the consequence that I foresee administers more
consolation to me than the effect does fear. They say, that as life is not
better for being long, so death is better for being not long. I do not so
much evade being dead, as I enter into confidence with dying. I wrap and
shroud myself into the storm that is to blind and carry me away with the
fury of a sudden and insensible attack. Moreover, if it should fall out
that, as some gardeners say, roses and violets spring more odoriferous
near garlic and onions, by reason that the last suck and imbibe all the
ill odour of the earth; so, if these depraved natures should also attract
all the malignity of my air and climate, and render it so much better and
purer by their vicinity, I should not lose all. That cannot be: but there
may be something in this, that goodness is more beautiful and attractive
when it is rare; and that contrariety and diversity fortify and
consolidate well-doing within itself, and inflame it by the jealousy of
opposition and by glory. Thieves and robbers, of their special favour,
have no particular spite at me; no more have I to them: I should have my
hands too full. Like consciences are lodged under several sorts of robes;
like cruelty, disloyalty, rapine; and so much the worse, and more falsely,
when the more secure and concealed under colour of the laws. I less hate
an open professed injury than one that is treacherous; an enemy in arms,
than an enemy in a gown. Our fever has seized upon a body that is not much
the worse for it; there was fire before, and now 'tis broken out into a
flame; the noise is greater, not the evil. I ordinarily answer such as ask
me the reason of my travels, "That I know very well what I fly from, but
not what I seek." If they tell me that there may be as little soundness
amongst foreigners, and that their manners are no better than ours: I
first reply, that it is hard to be believed;
"Tam multa: scelerum facies!"
["There are so many forms of crime."—Virgil, Georg., i. 506.]
secondly, that it is always gain to change an ill condition for one that
is uncertain; and that the ills of others ought not to afflict us so much
as our own.
I will not here omit, that I never mutiny so much against France, that I
am not perfectly friends with Paris; that city has ever had my heart from
my infancy, and it has fallen out, as of excellent things, that the more
beautiful cities I have seen since, the more the beauty of this still wins
upon my affection. I love her for herself, and more in her own native
being, than in all the pomp of foreign and acquired embellishments. I love
her tenderly, even to her warts and blemishes. I am a Frenchman only
through this great city, great in people, great in the felicity of her
situation; but, above all, great and incomparable in variety and diversity
of commodities: the glory of France, and one of the most noble ornaments
of the world. May God drive our divisions far from her. Entire and united,
I think her sufficiently defended from all other violences. I give her
caution that, of all sorts of people, those will be the worst that shall
set her in discord; I have no fear for her, but of herself, and,
certainly, I have as much fear for her as for any other part of the
kingdom. Whilst she shall continue, I shall never want a retreat, where I
may stand at bay, sufficient to make me amends for parting with any other
retreat.
Not because Socrates has said so, but because it is in truth my own
humour, and peradventure not without some excess, I look upon all men as
my compatriots, and embrace a Polander as a Frenchman, preferring the
universal and common tie to all national ties whatever. I am not much
taken with the sweetness of a native air: acquaintance wholly new and
wholly my own appear to me full as good as the other common and fortuitous
ones with Four neighbours: friendships that are purely of our own
acquiring ordinarily carry it above those to which the communication of
climate or of blood oblige us. Nature has placed us in the world free and
unbound; we imprison ourselves in certain straits, like the kings of
Persia, who obliged themselves to drink no other water but that of the
river Choaspes, foolishly quitted claim to their right in all other
streams, and, so far as concerned themselves, dried up all the other
rivers of the world. What Socrates did towards his end, to look upon a
sentence of banishment as worse than a sentence of death against him, I
shall, I think, never be either so decrepid or so strictly habituated to
my own country to be of that opinion. These celestial lives have images
enough that I embrace more by esteem than affection; and they have some
also so elevated and extraordinary that I cannot embrace them so much as
by esteem, forasmuch as I cannot conceive them. That fancy was singular in
a man who thought the whole world his city; it is true that he disdained
travel, and had hardly ever set his foot out of the Attic territories.
What say you to his complaint of the money his friends offered to save his
life, and that he refused to come out of prison by the mediation of
others, in order not to disobey the laws in a time when they were
otherwise so corrupt? These examples are of the first kind for me; of the
second, there are others that I could find out in the same person: many of
these rare examples surpass the force of my action, but some of them,
moreover, surpass the force of my judgment.
Besides these reasons, travel is in my opinion a very profitable exercise;
the soul is there continually employed in observing new and unknown
things, and I do not know, as I have often said a better school wherein to
model life than by incessantly exposing to it the diversity of so many
other lives, fancies, and usances, and by making it relish a perpetual
variety of forms of human nature. The body is, therein, neither idle nor
overwrought; and that moderate agitation puts it in breath. I can keep on
horseback, tormented with the stone as I am, without alighting or being
weary, eight or ten hours together:
"Vires ultra sorternque senectae."
["Beyond the strength and lot of age."—AEneid, vi. 114.]
No season is enemy to me but the parching heat of a scorching sun; for the
umbrellas made use of in Italy, ever since the time of the ancient Romans,
more burden a man's arm than they relieve his head. I would fain know how
it was that the Persians, so long ago and in the infancy of luxury, made
ventilators where they wanted them, and planted shades, as Xenophon
reports they did. I love rain, and to dabble in the dirt, as well as ducks
do. The change of air and climate never touches me; every sky is alike; I
am only troubled with inward alterations which I breed within myself, and
those are not so frequent in travel. I am hard to be got out, but being
once upon the road, I hold out as well as the best. I take as much pains
in little as in great attempts, and am as solicitous to equip myself for a
short journey, if but to visit a neighbour, as for the longest voyage. I
have learned to travel after the Spanish fashion, and to make but one
stage of a great many miles; and in excessive heats I always travel by
night, from sun set to sunrise. The other method of baiting by the way, in
haste and hurry to gobble up a dinner, is, especially in short days, very
inconvenient. My horses perform the better; never any horse tired under me
that was able to hold out the first day's journey. I water them at every
brook I meet, and have only a care they have so much way to go before I
come to my inn, as will digest the water in their bellies. My
unwillingness to rise in a morning gives my servants leisure to dine at
their ease before they set out; for my own part, I never eat too late; my
appetite comes to me in eating, and not else; I am never hungry but at
table.
Some of my friends blame me for continuing this travelling humour, being
married and old. But they are out in't; 'tis the best time to leave a
man's house, when he has put it into a way of continuing without him, and
settled such order as corresponds with its former government. 'Tis much
greater imprudence to abandon it to a less faithful housekeeper, and who
will be less solicitous to look after your affairs.
The most useful and honourable knowledge and employment for the mother of
a family is the science of good housewifery. I see some that are covetous
indeed, but very few that are good managers. 'Tis the supreme quality of a
woman, which a man ought to seek before any other, as the only dowry that
must ruin or preserve our houses. Let men say what they will, according to
the experience I have learned, I require in married women the economical
virtue above all other virtues; I put my wife to't, as a concern of her
own, leaving her, by my absence, the whole government of my affairs. I
see, and am vexed to see, in several families I know, Monsieur about noon
come home all jaded and ruffled about his affairs, when Madame is still
dressing her hair and tricking up herself, forsooth, in her closet: this
is for queens to do, and that's a question, too: 'tis ridiculous and
unjust that the laziness of our wives should be maintained with our sweat
and labour. No man, so far as in me lie, shall have a clearer, a more
quiet and free fruition of his estate than I. If the husband bring matter,
nature herself will that the wife find the form.
As to the duties of conjugal friendship, that some think to be impaired by
these absences, I am quite of another opinion. It is, on the contrary, an
intelligence that easily cools by a too frequent and assiduous
companionship. Every strange woman appears charming, and we all find by
experience that being continually together is not so pleasing as to part
for a time and meet again. These interruptions fill me with fresh
affection towards my family, and render my house more pleasant to me.
Change warms my appetite to the one and then to the other. I know that the
arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of the world
to the other, and especially this, where there is a continual
communication of offices that rouse the obligation and remembrance. The
Stoics say that there is so great connection and relation amongst the
sages, that he who dines in France nourishes his companion in Egypt; and
that whoever does but hold out his finger, in what part of the world
soever, all the sages upon the habitable earth feel themselves assisted by
it. Fruition and possession principally appertain to the imagination; it
more fervently and constantly embraces what it is in quest of, than what
we hold in our arms. Cast up your daily amusements; you will find that you
are most absent from your friend when he is present with you; his presence
relaxes your attention, and gives you liberty to absent yourself at every
turn and upon every occasion. When I am away at Rome, I keep and govern my
house, and the conveniences I there left; see my walls rise, my trees
shoot, and my revenue increase or decrease, very near as well as when I am
there:
"Ante oculos errat domus, errat forma locorum."
["My house and the forms of places float before my eyes"
—Ovid, Trist, iii. 4, 57.]
If we enjoy nothing but what we touch, we may say farewell to the money in
our chests, and to our sons when they are gone a hunting. We will have
them nearer to us: is the garden, or half a day's journey from home, far?
What is ten leagues: far or near? If near, what is eleven, twelve, or
thirteen, and so by degrees. In earnest, if there be a woman who can tell
her husband what step ends the near and what step begins the remote, I
would advise her to stop between;
"Excludat jurgia finis . . . .
Utor permisso; caudaeque pilos ut equinae
Paulatim vello, et demo unum, demo etiam unum
Dum cadat elusus ratione ruentis acervi:"
["Let the end shut out all disputes . . . . I use what is
permitted; I pluck out the hairs of the horse's tail one by one;
while I thus outwit my opponent."—Horace, Ep., ii, I, 38, 45]
and let them boldly call philosophy to their assistance; in whose teeth it
may be cast that, seeing it neither discerns the one nor the other end of
the joint, betwixt the too much and the little, the long and the short,
the light and the heavy, the near and the remote; that seeing it discovers
neither the beginning nor the end, it must needs judge very uncertainly of
the middle:
"Rerum natura nullam nobis dedit cognitionem finium."
["Nature has green to us no knowledge of the end of things."
—Cicero, Acad., ii. 29.]
Are they not still wives and friends to the dead who are not at the end of
this but in the other world? We embrace not only the absent, but those who
have been, and those who are not yet. We do not promise in marriage to be
continually twisted and linked together, like some little animals that we
see, or, like the bewitched folks of Karenty,—[Karantia, a town in
the isle of Rugen. See Saxo-Grammaticus, Hist. of Denmark, book xiv.]—tied
together like dogs; and a wife ought not to be so greedily enamoured of
her husband's foreparts, that she cannot endure to see him turn his back,
if occasion be. But may not this saying of that excellent painter of
woman's humours be here introduced, to show the reason of their
complaints?
"Uxor, si cesses, aut to amare cogitat,
Aut tete amari, aut potare, aut animo obsequi;
Et tibi bene esse soli, cum sibi sit male;"
["Your wife, if you loiter, thinks that you love or are beloved; or
that you are drinking or following your inclination; and that it is
well for you when it is ill for her (all the pleasure is yours and
hers all the care)."
—Terence, Adelph., act i., sc. I, v. 7.]
or may it not be, that of itself opposition and contradiction entertain
and nourish them, and that they sufficiently accommodate themselves,
provided they incommodate you?
In true friendship, wherein I am perfect, I more give myself to my friend,
than I endeavour to attract him to me. I am not only better pleased in
doing him service than if he conferred a benefit upon me, but, moreover,
had rather he should do himself good than me, and he most obliges me when
he does so; and if absence be either more pleasant or convenient for him,
'tis also more acceptable to me than his presence; neither is it properly
absence, when we can write to one another: I have sometimes made good use
of our separation from one another: we better filled and further extended
the possession of life in being parted. He—[La Boetie.]—lived,
enjoyed, and saw for me, and I for him, as fully as if he had himself been
there; one part of us remained idle, and we were too much blended in one
another when we were together; the distance of place rendered the
conjunction of our wills more rich. This insatiable desire of personal
presence a little implies weakness in the fruition of souls.
As to what concerns age, which is alleged against me, 'tis quite contrary;
'tis for youth to subject itself to common opinions, and to curb itself to
please others; it has wherewithal to please both the people and itself; we
have but too much ado to please ourselves alone. As natural conveniences
fail, let us supply them with those that are artificial. 'Tis injustice to
excuse youth for pursuing its pleasures, and to forbid old men to seek
them. When young, I concealed my wanton passions with prudence; now I am
old, I chase away melancholy by debauch. And thus do the platonic laws
forbid men to travel till forty or fifty years old, so that travel might
be more useful and instructive in so mature an age. I should sooner
subscribe to the second article of the same Laws, which forbids it after
threescore.
"But, at such an age, you will never return from so long a journey." What
care I for that? I neither undertake it to return, nor to finish it my
business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me; I
only walk for the walk's sake. They who run after a benefit or a hare, run
not; they only run who run at base, and to exercise their running. My
design is divisible throughout: it is not grounded upon any great hopes:
every day concludes my expectation: and the journey of my life is carried
on after the same manner. And yet I have seen places enough a great way
off, where I could have wished to have stayed. And why not, if Chrysippus,
Cleanthes, Diogenes, Zeno, Antipater, so many sages of the sourest sect,
readily abandoned their country, without occasion of complaint, and only
for the enjoyment of another air. In earnest, that which most displeases
me in all my travels is, that I cannot resolve to settle my abode where I
should best like, but that I must always propose to myself to return, to
accommodate myself to the common humour.
If I feared to die in any other place than that of my birth; if I thought
I should die more uneasily remote from my own family, I should hardly go
out of France; I should not, without fear, step out of my parish; I feel
death always pinching me by the throat or by the back. But I am otherwise
constituted; 'tis in all places alike to me. Yet, might I have my choice,
I think I should rather choose to die on horseback than in bed; out of my
own house, and far from my own people. There is more heartbreaking than
consolation in taking leave of one's friends; I am willing to omit that
civility, for that, of all the offices of friendship, is the only one that
is unpleasant; and I could, with all my heart, dispense with that great
and eternal farewell. If there be any convenience in so many standers-by,
it brings an hundred inconveniences along with it. I have seen many dying
miserably surrounded with all this train: 'tis a crowd that chokes them.
'Tis against duty, and is a testimony of little kindness and little care,
to permit you to die in repose; one torments your eyes, another your ears,
another your tongue; you have neither sense nor member that is not worried
by them. Your heart is wounded with compassion to hear the mourning of
friends, and, perhaps with anger, to hear the counterfeit condolings of
pretenders. Who ever has been delicate and sensitive, when well, is much
more so when ill. In such a necessity, a gentle hand is required,
accommodated to his sentiment, to scratch him just in the place where he
itches, otherwise scratch him not at all. If we stand in need of a wise
woman—[midwife, Fr. 'sage femme'.]—to bring us into the world,
we have much more need of a still wiser man to help us out of it. Such a
one, and a friend to boot, a man ought to purchase at any cost for such an
occasion. I am not yet arrived to that pitch of disdainful vigour that is
fortified in itself, that nothing can assist or disturb; I am of a lower
form; I endeavour to hide myself, and to escape from this passage, not by
fear, but by art. I do not intend in this act of dying to make proof and
show of my constancy. For whom should I do it? all the right and interest
I have in reputation will then cease. I content myself with a death
involved within itself, quiet, solitary, and all my own, suitable to my
retired and private life; quite contrary to the Roman superstition, where
a man was looked upon as unhappy who died without speaking, and who had
not his nearest relations to close his eyes. I have enough to do to
comfort myself, without having to console others; thoughts enough in my
head, not to need that circumstances should possess me with new; and
matter enough to occupy me without borrowing. This affair is out of the
part of society; 'tis the act of one single person. Let us live and be
merry amongst our friends; let us go repine and die amongst strangers; a
man may find those, for his money, who will shift his pillow and rub his
feet, and will trouble him no more than he would have them; who will
present to him an indifferent countenance, and suffer him to govern
himself, and to complain according to his own method.
I wean myself daily by my reason from this childish and inhuman humour, of
desiring by our sufferings to move the compassion and mourning of our
friends: we stretch our own incommodities beyond their just extent when we
extract tears from others; and the constancy which we commend in every one
in supporting his adverse fortune, we accuse and reproach in our friends
when the evil is our own; we are not satisfied that they should be
sensible of our condition only, unless they be, moreover, afflicted. A man
should diffuse joy, but, as much as he can, smother grief. He who makes
himself lamented without reason is a man not to be lamented when there
shall be real cause: to be always complaining is the way never to be
lamented; by making himself always in so pitiful a taking, he is never
commiserated by any. He who makes himself out dead when he is alive, is
subject to be thought living when he is dying. I have seen some who have
taken it ill when they have been told that they looked well, and that
their pulse was good; restrain their smiles, because they betrayed a
recovery, and be angry, at their health because it was not to be lamented:
and, which is a great deal more, these were not women. I describe my
infirmities, such as they really are, at most, and avoid all expressions
of evil prognostic and composed exclamations. If not mirth, at least a
temperate countenance in the standers-by, is proper in the presence of a
wise sick man: he does not quarrel with health, for, seeing himself in a
contrary condition, he is pleased to contemplate it sound and entire in
others, and at least to enjoy it for company: he does not, for feeling
himself melt away, abandon all living thoughts, nor avoid ordinary
discourse. I would study sickness whilst I am well; when it has seized me,
it will make its impression real enough, without the help of my
imagination. We prepare ourselves beforehand for the journeys we
undertake, and resolve upon them; we leave the appointment of the hour
when to take horse to the company, and in their favour defer it.
I find this unexpected advantage in the publication of my manners, that it
in some sort serves me for a rule. I have, at times, some consideration of
not betraying the history of my life: this public declaration obliges me
to keep my way, and not to give the lie to the image I have drawn of my
qualities, commonly less deformed and contradictory than consists with the
malignity and infirmity of the judgments of this age. The uniformity and
simplicity of my manners produce a face of easy interpretation; but
because the fashion is a little new and not in use, it gives too great
opportunity to slander. Yet so it is, that whoever would fairly assail me,
I think I so sufficiently assist his purpose in my known and avowed
imperfections, that he may that way satisfy his ill-nature without
fighting with the wind. If I myself, to anticipate accusation and
discovery, confess enough to frustrate his malice, as he conceives, 'tis
but reason that he make use of his right of amplification, and to
wire-draw my vices as far as he can; attack has its rights beyond justice;
and let him make the roots of those errors I have laid open to him shoot
up into trees: let him make his use, not only of those I am really
affected with, but also of those that only threaten me; injurious vices,
both in quality and number; let him cudgel me that way. I should willingly
follow the example of the philosopher Bion: Antigonus being about to
reproach him with the meanness of his birth, he presently cut him short
with this declaration: "I am," said he, "the son of a slave, a butcher,
and branded, and of a strumpet my father married in the lowest of his
fortune; both of them were whipped for offences they had committed. An
orator bought me, when a child, and finding me a pretty and hopeful boy,
bred me up, and when he died left me all his estate, which I have
transported into this city of Athens, and here settled myself to the study
of philosophy. Let the historians never trouble themselves with inquiring
about me: I will tell them about it." A free and generous confession
enervates reproach and disarms slander. So it is that, one thing with
another, I fancy men as often commend as undervalue me beyond reason; as,
methinks also, from my childhood, in rank and degree of honour, they have
given me a place rather above than below my right. I should find myself
more at ease in a country where these degrees were either regulated or not
regarded. Amongst men, when an altercation about the precedence either of
walking or sitting exceeds three replies, 'tis reputed uncivil. I never
stick at giving or taking place out of rule, to avoid the trouble of such
ceremony; and never any man had a mind to go before me, but I permitted
him to do it.
Besides this profit I make of writing of myself, I have also hoped for
this other advantage, that if it should fall out that my humour should
please or jump with those of some honest man before I die, he would then
desire and seek to be acquainted with me. I have given him a great deal of
made-way; for all that he could have, in many years, acquired by close
familiarity, he has seen in three days in this memorial, and more surely
and exactly. A pleasant fancy: many things that I would not confess to any
one in particular, I deliver to the public, and send my best friends to a
bookseller's shop, there to inform themselves concerning my most secret
thoughts;
"Excutienda damus praecordia."
["We give our hearts to be examined."—Persius, V. 22.]
Did I, by good direction, know where to seek any one proper for my
conversation, I should certainly go a great way to find him out: for the
sweetness of suitable and agreeable company cannot; in my opinion, be
bought too dear. O what a thing is a true friend! how true is that old
saying, that the use of a friend is more pleasing and necessary than the
elements of water and fire!
To return to my subject: there is, then, no great harm in dying privately
and far from home; we conceive ourselves obliged to retire for natural
actions less unseemly and less terrible than this. But, moreover, such as
are reduced to spin out a long languishing life, ought not, perhaps, to
wish to trouble a great family with their continual miseries; therefore
the Indians, in a certain province, thought it just to knock a man on the
head when reduced to such a necessity; and in another of their provinces,
they all forsook him to shift for himself as well as he could. To whom do
they not, at last, become tedious and insupportable? the ordinary offices
of fife do not go that length. You teach your best friends to be cruel
perforce; hardening wife and children by long use neither to regard nor to
lament your sufferings. The groans of the stone are grown so familiar to
my people, that nobody takes any notice of them. And though we should
extract some pleasure from their conversation (which does not always
happen, by reason of the disparity of conditions, which easily begets
contempt or envy toward any one whatever), is it not too much to make
abuse of this half a lifetime? The more I should see them constrain
themselves out of affection to be serviceable to me, the more I should be
sorry for their pains. We have liberty to lean, but not to lay our whole
weight upon others, so as to prop ourselves by their ruin; like him who
caused little children's throats to be cut to make use of their blood for
the cure of a disease he had, or that other, who was continually supplied
with tender young girls to keep his old limbs warm in the night, and to
mix the sweetness of their breath with his, sour and stinking. I should
readily advise Venice as a retreat in this decline of life. Decrepitude is
a solitary quality. I am sociable even to excess, yet I think it
reasonable that I should now withdraw my troubles from the sight of the
world and keep them to myself. Let me shrink and draw up myself in my own
shell, like a tortoise, and learn to see men without hanging upon them. I
should endanger them in so slippery a passage: 'tis time to turn my back
to company.
"But, in these travels, you will be taken ill in some wretched place,
where nothing can be had to relieve you." I always carry most things
necessary about me; and besides, we cannot evade Fortune if she once
resolves to attack us. I need nothing extraordinary when I am sick. I will
not be beholden to my bolus to do that for me which nature cannot. At the
very beginning of my fevers and sicknesses that cast me down, whilst still
entire, and but little, disordered in health, I reconcile myself to
Almighty God by the last Christian, offices, and find myself by so doing
less oppressed and more easy, and have got, methinks, so much the better
of my disease. And I have yet less need of a notary or counsellor than of
a physician. What I have not settled of my affairs when I was in health,
let no one expect I should do it when I am sick. What I will do for the
service of death is always done; I durst not so much as one day defer it;
and if nothing be done, 'tis as much as to say either that doubt hindered
my choice (and sometimes 'tis well chosen not to choose), or that I was
positively resolved not to do anything at all.
I write my book for few men and for few years. Had it been matter of
duration, I should have put it into firmer language. According to the
continual variation that ours has been subject to, up to this day, who can
expect that its present form should be in use fifty years hence? It slips
every day through our fingers, and since I was born, it is altered above
one-half. We say that it is now perfect; and every age says the same of
its own. I shall hardly trust to that, so long as it varies and changes as
it does. 'Tis for good and useful writings to rivet it to them, and its
reputation will go according to the fortune of our state. For which reason
I am not afraid to insert in it several private articles, which will spend
their use amongst the men that are now living, and that concern the
particular knowledge of some who will see further into them than every
common reader. I will not, after all, as I often hear dead men spoken of,
that men should say of me: "He judged, he lived so and so; he would have
done this or that; could he have spoken when he was dying, he would have
said so or so, and have given this thing or t'other; I knew him better
than any." Now, as much as decency permits, I here discover my
inclinations and affections; but I do more willingly and freely by word of
mouth to any one who desires to be informed. So it is that in these
memoirs, if any one observe, he will find that I have either told or
designed to tell all; what I cannot express, I point out with my finger:
"Verum animo satis haec vestigia parva sagaci
Sunt, per quae possis cognoscere caetera tute"
["By these footsteps a sagacious mind many easily find all other
matters (are sufficient to enable one to learn the rest well.)"
—Lucretius, i. 403.]
I leave nothing to be desired or to be guessed at concerning me. If people
must be talking of me, I would have it to be justly and truly; I would
come again, with all my heart, from the other world to give any one the
lie who should report me other than I was, though he did it to honour me.
I perceive that people represent, even living men, quite another thing
than what they really are; and had I not stoutly defended a friend whom I
have lost,—[De la Boetie.]—they would have torn him into a
thousand contrary pieces.
To conclude the account of my poor humours, I confess that in my travels I
seldom reach my inn but that it comes into my mind to consider whether I
could there be sick and dying at my ease. I desire to be lodged in some
private part of the house, remote from all noise, ill scents, and smoke. I
endeavour to flatter death by these frivolous circumstances; or, to say
better, to discharge myself from all other incumbrances, that I may have
nothing to do, nor be troubled with anything but that which will lie heavy
enough upon me without any other load. I would have my death share in the
ease and conveniences of my life; 'tis a great part of it, and of great
importance, and I hope it will not in the future contradict the past.
Death has some forms that are more easy than others, and receives divers
qualities, according to every one's fancy. Amongst the natural deaths,
that which proceeds from weakness and stupor I think the most favourable;
amongst those that are violent, I can worse endure to think of a precipice
than of the fall of a house that will crush me in a moment, and of a wound
with a sword than of a harquebus shot; I should rather have chosen to
poison myself with Socrates, than stab myself with Cato. And, though it,
be all one, yet my imagination makes as great a difference as betwixt
death and life, betwixt throwing myself into a burning furnace and
plunging into the channel of a river: so idly does our fear more concern
itself in the means than the effect. It is but an instant, 'tis true, but
withal an instant of such weight, that I would willingly give a great many
days of my life to pass it over after my own fashion. Since every one's
imagination renders it more or less terrible, and since every one has some
choice amongst the several forms of dying, let us try a little further to
find some one that is wholly clear from all offence. Might not one render
it even voluptuous, like the Commoyientes of Antony and Cleopatra? I set
aside the brave and exemplary efforts produced by philosophy and religion;
but, amongst men of little mark there have been found some, such as
Petronius and Tigellinus at Rome, condemned to despatch themselves, who
have, as it were, rocked death asleep with the delicacy of their
preparations; they have made it slip and steal away in the height of their
accustomed diversions amongst girls and good fellows; not a word of
consolation, no mention of making a will, no ambitious affectation of
constancy, no talk of their future condition; amongst sports, feastings,
wit, and mirth, common and indifferent discourses, music, and amorous
verses. Were it not possible for us to imitate this resolution after a
more decent manner? Since there are deaths that are good for fools, deaths
good for the wise, let us find out such as are fit for those who are
betwixt both. My imagination suggests to me one that is easy, and, since
we must die, to be desired. The Roman tyrants thought they did, in a
manner, give a criminal life when they gave him the choice of his death.
But was not Theophrastus, that so delicate, so modest, and so wise a
philosopher, compelled by reason, when he durst say this verse, translated
by Cicero:
"Vitam regit fortuna, non sapientia?"
["Fortune, not wisdom, sways human life."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., V. 31.]
Fortune assists the facility of the bargain of my life, having placed it
in such a condition that for the future it can be neither advantage nor
hindrance to those who are concerned in me; 'tis a condition that I would
have accepted at any time of my life; but in this occasion of trussing up
my baggage, I am particularly pleased that in dying I shall neither do
them good nor harm. She has so ordered it, by a cunning compensation, that
they who may pretend to any considerable advantage by my death will, at
the same time, sustain a material inconvenience. Death sometimes is more
grievous to us, in that it is grievous to others, and interests us in
their interest as much as in our own, and sometimes more.
In this conveniency of lodging that I desire, I mix nothing of pomp and
amplitude—I hate it rather; but a certain plain neatness, which is
oftenest found in places where there is less of art, and that Nature has
adorned with some grace that is all her own:
"Non ampliter, sea munditer convivium."
["To eat not largely, but cleanly."—Nepos, Life of Atticus, c. 13]
"Plus salis quam sumptus."
["Rather enough than costly (More wit than cost)"—Nonius, xi. 19.]
And besides, 'tis for those whose affairs compel them to travel in the
depth of winter through the Grisons country to be surprised upon the way
with great inconveniences. I, who, for the most part, travel for my
pleasure, do not order my affairs so ill. If the way be foul on my right
hand, I turn on my left; if I find myself unfit to ride, I stay where I
am; and, so doing, in earnest I see nothing that is not as pleasant and
commodious as my own house. 'Tis true that I always find superfluity
superfluous, and observe a kind of trouble even in abundance itself. Have
I left anything behind me unseen, I go back to see it; 'tis still on my
way; I trace no certain line, either straight or crooked.—[Rousseau
has translated this passage in his Emile, book v.]—Do I not find in
the place to which I go what was reported to me—as it often falls
out that the judgments of others do not jump with mine, and that I have
found their reports for the most part false—I never complain of
losing my labour: I have, at least, informed myself that what was told me
was not true.
I have a constitution of body as free, and a palate as indifferent, as any
man living: the diversity of manners of several nations only affects me in
the pleasure of variety: every usage has its reason. Let the plate and
dishes be pewter, wood, or earth; my meat be boiled or roasted; let them
give me butter or oil, of nuts or olives, hot or cold, 'tis all one to me;
and so indifferent, that growing old, I accuse this generous faculty, and
would wish that delicacy and choice should correct the indiscretion of my
appetite, and sometimes soothe my stomach. When I have been abroad out of
France and that people, out of courtesy, have asked me if I would be
served after the French manner, I laughed at the question, and always
frequented tables the most filled with foreigners. I am ashamed to see our
countrymen besotted with this foolish humour of quarrelling with forms
contrary to their own; they seem to be out of their element when out of
their own village: wherever they go, they keep to their own fashions and
abominate those of strangers. Do they meet with a compatriot in Hungary? O
the happy chance! They are henceforward inseparable; they cling together,
and their whole discourse is to condemn the barbarous manners they see
about them. Why barbarous, because they are not French? And those have
made the best use of their travels who have observed most to speak
against. Most of them go for no other end but to come back again; they
proceed in their travel with vast gravity and circumspection, with a
silent and incommunicable prudence, preserving themselves from the
contagion of an unknown air. What I am saying of them puts me in mind of
something like it I have at times observed in some of our young courtiers;
they will not mix with any but men of their own sort, and look upon us as
men of another world, with disdain or pity. Put them upon any discourse
but the intrigues of the court, and they are utterly at a loss; as very
owls and novices to us as we are to them. 'Tis truly said that a well-bred
man is a compound man. I, on the contrary, travel very much sated with our
own fashions; I do not look for Gascons in Sicily; I have left enough of
them at home; I rather seek for Greeks and Persians; they are the men I
endeavour to be acquainted with and the men I study; 'tis there that I
bestow and employ myself. And which is more, I fancy that I have met but
with few customs that are not as good as our own; I have not, I confess,
travelled very far; scarce out of the sight of the vanes of my own house.
As to the rest, most of the accidental company a man falls into upon the
road beget him more trouble than pleasure; I waive them as much as I
civilly can, especially now that age seems in some sort to privilege and
sequester me from the common forms. You suffer for others or others suffer
for you; both of them inconveniences of importance enough, but the latter
appears to me the greater. 'Tis a rare fortune, but of inestimable solace;
to have a worthy man, one of a sound judgment and of manners conformable
to your own, who takes a delight to bear you company. I have been at an
infinite loss for such upon my travels. But such a companion should be
chosen and acquired from your first setting out. There can be no pleasure
to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought
comes into my mind, that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and
that I have no one to communicate it to:
"Si cum hac exceptione detur sapientia,
ut illam inclusam teneam, nec enuntiem, rejiciam."
["If wisdom be conferred with this reservation, that I must keep it
to myself, and not communicate it to others, I would none of it."
—Seneca, Ep., 6.]
This other has strained it one note higher:
"Si contigerit ea vita sapienti, ut ommum rerum afliuentibus copiis,
quamvis omnia, quae cognitione digna sunt, summo otio secum ipse
consideret et contempletur, tamen, si solitudo tanta sit, ut hominem
videre non possit, excedat a vita."
["If such a condition of life should happen to a wise man, that in
the greatest plenty of all conveniences he might, at the most
undisturbed leisure, consider and contemplate all things worth the
knowing, yet if his solitude be such that he must not see a man, let
him depart from life."—Cicero, De Offic., i. 43.]
Architas pleases me when he says, "that it would be unpleasant, even in
heaven itself, to wander in those great and divine celestial bodies
without a companion. But yet 'tis much better to be alone than in foolish
and troublesome company. Aristippus loved to live as a stranger in all
places:
"Me si fata meis paterentur ducere vitam
Auspiciis,"
["If the fates would let me live in my own way."—AEneid, iv. 340.]
I should choose to pass away the greatest part of my life on horseback:
"Visere gestiens,
Qua pane debacchentur ignes,
Qua nebula, pluviique rores."
["Visit the regions where the sun burns, where are the thick
rain-clouds and the frosts."—Horace, Od., iii. 3, 54.]
"Have you not more easy diversions at home? What do you there want? Is not
your house situated in a sweet and healthful air, sufficiently furnished,
and more than sufficiently large? Has not the royal majesty been more than
once there entertained with all its train? Are there not more below your
family in good ease than there are above it in eminence? Is there any
local, extraordinary, indigestible thought that afflicts you?"
"Qua to nunc coquat, et vexet sub pectore fixa."
["That may now worry you, and vex, fixed in your breast."
—Cicero, De Senect, c. 1, Ex Ennio.]
"Where do you think to live without disturbance?"
"Nunquam simpliciter Fortuna indulget."
["Fortune is never simply complaisant (unmixed)."
—Quintus Curtius, iv. 14]
You see, then, it is only you that trouble yourself; you will everywhere
follow yourself, and everywhere complain; for there is no satisfaction
here below, but either for brutish or for divine souls. He who, on so just
an occasion, has no contentment, where will he think to find it? How many
thousands of men terminate their wishes in such a condition as yours? Do
but reform yourself; for that is wholly in your own power! whereas you
have no other right but patience towards fortune:
"Nulla placida quies est, nisi quam ratio composuit."
["There is no tranquillity but that which reason has conferred."
—Seneca, Ep., 56.]
I see the reason of this advice, and see it perfectly well; but he might
sooner have done, and more pertinently, in bidding me in one word be wise;
that resolution is beyond wisdom; 'tis her precise work and product. Thus
the physician keeps preaching to a poor languishing patient to "be
cheerful"; but he would advise him a little more discreetly in bidding him
"be well." For my part, I am but a man of the common sort. 'Tis a
wholesome precept, certain and easy to be understood, "Be content with
what you have," that is to say, with reason: and yet to follow this advice
is no more in the power of the wise men of the world than in me. 'Tis a
common saying, but of a terrible extent: what does it not comprehend? All
things fall under discretion and qualification. I know very well that, to
take it by the letter, this pleasure of travelling is a testimony of
uneasiness and irresolution, and, in sooth, these two are our governing
and predominating qualities. Yes, I confess, I see nothing, not so much as
in a dream, in a wish, whereon I could set up my rest: variety only, and
the possession of diversity, can satisfy me; that is, if anything can. In
travelling, it pleases me that I may stay where I like, without
inconvenience, and that I have a place wherein commodiously to divert
myself. I love a private life, because 'tis my own choice that I love it,
not by any dissenting from or dislike of public life, which, peradventure,
is as much according to my complexion. I serve my prince more cheerfully
because it is by the free election of my own judgment and reason, without
any particular obligation; and that I am not reduced and constrained so to
do for being rejected or disliked by the other party; and so of all the
rest. I hate the morsels that necessity carves me; any commodity upon
which I had only to depend would have me by the throat;
"Alter remus aquas, alter mihi radat arenas;"
["Let me have one oar in the water, and with the other rake the
shore."—Propertius, iii. 3, 23.]
one cord will never hold me fast enough. You will say, there is vanity in
this way of living. But where is there not? All these fine precepts are
vanity, and all wisdom is vanity:
"Dominus novit cogitationes sapientum, quoniam vanae sunt."
["The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain."
—Ps. xciii. II; or I Cor. iii. 20.]
These exquisite subtleties are only fit for sermons; they are discourses
that will send us all saddled into the other world. Life is a material and
corporal motion, an action imperfect and irregular of its own proper
essence; I make it my business to serve it according to itself:
"Quisque suos patimur manes."
["We each of us suffer our own particular demon."—AEneid, vi. 743.]
"Sic est faciendum, ut contra naturam universam nihil contendamus;
ea tamen conservata propriam sequamur."
["We must so order it as by no means to contend against universal
nature; but yet, that rule being observed, to follow our own."
—Cicero, De Offcc., i. 31.]
To what end are these elevated points of philosophy, upon which no human
being can rely? and those rules that exceed both our use and force?
I see often that we have theories of life set before us which neither the
proposer nor those who hear him have any hope, nor, which is more, any
inclination to follow. Of the same sheet of paper whereon the judge has
but just written a sentence against an adulterer, he steals a piece
whereon to write a love-letter to his companion's wife. She whom you have
but just now illicitly embraced will presently, even in your hearing, more
loudly inveigh against the same fault in her companion than a Portia would
do;—[The chaste daughter of Cato of Utica.]—and men there are
who will condemn others to death for crimes that they themselves do not
repute so much as faults. I have, in my youth, seen a man of good rank
with one hand present to the people verses that excelled both in wit and
debauchery, and with the other, at the same time, the most ripe and
pugnacious theological reformation that the world has been treated withal
these many years. And so men proceed; we let the laws and precepts follow
their way; ourselves keep another course, not only from debauchery of
manners, but ofttimes by judgment and contrary opinion. Do but hear a
philosophical lecture; the invention, eloquence, pertinency immediately
strike upon your mind and move you; there is nothing that touches or
stings your conscience; 'tis not to this they address themselves. Is not
this true? It made Aristo say, that neither a bath nor a lecture did aught
unless it scoured and made men clean. One may stop at the skin; but it is
after the marrow is picked out as, after we have swallowed good wine out
of a fine cup, we examine the designs and workmanship. In all the courts
of ancient philosophy, this is to be found, that the same teacher
publishes rules of temperance and at the same time lessons in love and
wantonness; Xenophon, in the very bosom of Clinias, wrote against the
Aristippic virtue. 'Tis not that there is any miraculous conversion in it
that makes them thus wavering; 'tis that Solon represents himself,
sometimes in his own person, and sometimes in that of a legislator; one
while he speaks for the crowd, and another for himself; taking the free
and natural rules for his own share, feeling assured of a firm and entire
health:
"Curentur dubii medicis majoribus aegri."
["Desperate maladies require the best doctors."
—Juvenal, xiii. 124.]
Antisthenes allows a sage to love, and to do whatever he thinks
convenient, without regard to the laws, forasmuch as he is better advised
than they, and has a greater knowledge of virtue. His disciple Diogenes
said, that "men to perturbations were to oppose reason: to fortune,
courage: to the laws, nature." For tender stomachs, constrained and
artificial recipes must be prescribed: good and strong stomachs serve
themselves simply with the prescriptions of their own natural appetite;
after this manner do our physicians proceed, who eat melons and drink iced
wines, whilst they confine their patients to syrups and sops. "I know
not," said the courtezan Lais, "what they may talk of books, wisdom, and
philosophy; but these men knock as often at my door as any others." At the
same rate that our licence carries us beyond what is lawful and allowed,
men have, often beyond universal reason, stretched the precepts and rules
of our life:
"Nemo satis credit tantum delinquere, quantum
Permittas."
["No one thinks he has done ill to the full extent of what he may."
—Juvenal, xiv. 233.]
It were to be wished that there was more proportion betwixt the command
and the obedience; and the mark seems to be unjust to which one cannot
attain. There is no so good man, who so squares all his thoughts and
actions to the laws, that he is not faulty enough to deserve hanging ten
times in his life; and he may well be such a one, as it were great
injustice and great harm to punish and ruin:
"Ole, quid ad te
De cute quid faciat ille vel ille sua?"
["Olus, what is it to thee what he or she does with their skin?"
—Martial, vii. 9, I.]
and such an one there may be, who has no way offended the laws, who,
nevertheless, would not deserve the character of a virtuous man, and whom
philosophy would justly condemn to be whipped; so unequal and perplexed is
this relation. We are so far from being good men, according to the laws of
God, that we cannot be so according to our own human wisdom never yet
arrived at the duties it had itself prescribed; and could it arrive there,
it would still prescribe to itself others beyond, to which it would ever
aspire and pretend; so great an enemy to consistency is our human
condition. Man enjoins himself to be necessarily in fault: he is not very
discreet to cut out his own duty by the measure of another being than his
own. To whom does he prescribe that which he does not expect any one
should perform? is he unjust in not doing what it is impossible for him to
do? The laws which condemn us not to be able, condemn us for not being
able.
At the worst, this difform liberty of presenting ourselves two several
ways, the actions after one manner and the reasoning after another, may be
allowed to those who only speak of things; but it cannot be allowed to
those who speak of themselves, as I do: I must march my pen as I do my
feet. Common life ought to have relation to the other lives: the virtue of
Cato was vigorous beyond the reason of the age he lived in; and for a man
who made it his business to govern others, a man dedicated to the public
service, it might be called a justice, if not unjust, at least vain and
out of season. Even my own manners, which differ not above an inch from
those current amongst us, render me, nevertheless, a little rough and
unsociable at my age. I know not whether it be without reason that I am
disgusted with the world I frequent; but I know very well that it would be
without reason, should I complain of its being disgusted with me, seeing I
am so with it. The virtue that is assigned to the affairs of the world is
a virtue of many wavings, corners, and elbows, to join and adapt itself to
human frailty, mixed and artificial, not straight, clear, constant, nor
purely innocent. Our annals to this very day reproach one of our kings for
suffering himself too simply to be carried away by the conscientious
persuasions of his confessor: affairs of state have bolder precepts;
"Exeat aula,
Qui vult esse pius."
["Let him who will be pious retire from the court."
—Lucan, viii. 493]
I formerly tried to employ in the service of public affairs opinions and
rules of living, as rough, new, unpolished or unpolluted, as they were
either born with me, or brought away from my education, and wherewith I
serve my own turn, if not so commodiously, at least securely, in my own
particular concerns: a scholastic and novice virtue; but I have found them
unapt and dangerous. He who goes into a crowd must now go one way and then
another, keep his elbows close, retire or advance, and quit the straight
way, according to what he encounters; and must live not so much according
to his own method as to that of others; not according to what he proposes
to himself, but according to what is proposed to him, according to the
time, according to the men, according to the occasions. Plato says, that
whoever escapes from the world's handling with clean breeches, escapes by
miracle: and says withal, that when he appoints his philosopher the head
of a government, he does not mean a corrupt one like that of Athens, and
much less such a one as this of ours, wherein wisdom itself would be to
seek. A good herb, transplanted into a soil contrary to its own nature,
much sooner conforms itself to the soil than it reforms the soil to it. I
found that if I had wholly to apply myself to such employments, it would
require a great deal of change and new modelling in me before I could be
any way fit for it: And though I could so far prevail upon myself (and why
might I not with time and diligence work such a feat), I would not do it.
The little trial I have had of public employment has been so much disgust
to me; I feel at times temptations toward ambition rising in my soul, but
I obstinately oppose them:
"At tu, Catulle, obstinatus obdura."
["But thou, Catullus, be obstinately firm."—Catullus, viii. 19.]
I am seldom called to it, and as seldom offer myself uncalled; liberty and
laziness, the qualities most predominant in me, are qualities
diametrically contrary to that trade. We cannot well distinguish the
faculties of men; they have divisions and limits hard and delicate to
choose; to conclude from the discreet conduct of a private life a capacity
for the management of public affairs is to conclude ill; a man may govern
himself well who cannot govern others so, and compose Essays who could not
work effects: men there may be who can order a siege well, who would ill
marshal a battle; who can speak well in private, who would ill harangue a
people or a prince; nay, 'tis peradventure rather a testimony in him who
can do the one that he cannot do the other, than otherwise. I find that
elevated souls are not much more proper for mean things than mean souls
are for high ones. Could it be imagined that Socrates should have
administered occasion of laughter, at the expense of his own reputation,
to the Athenians for: having never been able to sum up the votes of his
tribe, to deliver it to the council? Truly, the veneration I have for the
perfections of this great man deserves that his fortune should furnish,
for the excuse of my principal imperfections, so magnificent an example.
Our sufficiency is cut out into small parcels; mine has no latitude, and
is also very contemptible in number. Saturninus, to those who had
conferred upon him the command in chief: "Companions," said he, "you have
lost a good captain, to make of him a bad general."
Whoever boasts, in so sick a time as this, to employ a true and sincere
virtue in the world's service, either knows not what it is, opinions
growing corrupt with manners (and, in truth, to hear them describe it, to
hear the most of them glorify themselves in their deportments, and lay
down their rules; instead of painting virtue, they paint pure vice and
injustice, and so represent it false in the education of princes); or if
he does know it, boasts unjustly and let him say what he will, does a
thousand things of which his own conscience must necessarily accuse him. I
should willingly take Seneca's word on the experience he made upon the
like occasion, provided he would deal sincerely with me. The most
honourable mark of goodness in such a necessity is freely to confess both
one's own faults and those of others; with the power of its virtue to stay
one's inclination towards evil; unwillingly to follow this propension; to
hope better, to desire better. I perceive that in these divisions wherein
we are involved in France, every one labours to defend his cause; but even
the very best of them with dissimulation and disguise: he who would write
roundly of the true state of the quarrel, would write rashly and wrongly.
The most just party is at best but a member of a decayed and worm-eaten
body; but of such a body, the member that is least affected calls itself
sound, and with good reason, forasmuch as our qualities have no title but
in comparison; civil innocence is measured according to times and places.
Imagine this in Xenophon, related as a fine commendation of Agesilaus:
that, being entreated by a neighbouring prince with whom he had formerly
had war, to permit him to pass through his country, he granted his
request, giving him free passage through Peloponnesus; and not only did
not imprison or poison him, being at his mercy, but courteously received
him according to the obligation of his promise, without doing him the
least injury or offence. To such ideas as theirs this were an act of no
especial note; elsewhere and in another age, the frankness and unanimity
of such an action would be thought wonderful; our monkeyish capets
[Capets, so called from their short capes, were the students of
Montaigne College at Paris, and were held in great contempt.]
would have laughed at it, so little does the Spartan innocence resemble
that of France. We are not without virtuous men, but 'tis according to our
notions of virtue. Whoever has his manners established in regularity above
the standard of the age he lives in, let him either wrest or blunt his
rules, or, which I would rather advise him to, let him retire, and not
meddle with us at all. What will he get by it?
"Egregium sanctumque virum si cerno, bimembri
Hoc monstrum puero, et miranti jam sub aratro
Piscibus inventis, et foetae comparo mulae."
["If I see an exemplary and good man, I liken it to a two-headed
boy, or a fish turned up by the plough, or a teeming mule."
—Juvenal, xiii. 64.]
One may regret better times, but cannot fly from the present; we may wish
for other magistrates, but we must, notwithstanding, obey those we have;
and, peradventure, 'tis more laudable to obey the bad than the good. So
long as the image of the ancient and received laws of this monarchy shall
shine in any corner of the kingdom, there will I be. If they unfortunately
happen to thwart and contradict one another, so as to produce two parts,
of doubtful and difficult choice, I will willingly choose to withdraw and
escape the tempest; in the meantime nature or the hazards of war may lend
me a helping hand. Betwixt Caesar and Pompey, I should frankly have
declared myself; but, as amongst the three robbers who came after,—[Octavius,
Mark Antony, and Lepidus.]—a man must have been necessitated either
to hide himself, or have gone along with the current of the time, which I
think one may fairly do when reason no longer guides:
"Quo diversus abis?"
["Whither dost thou run wandering?"—AEneid, v. 166.]
This medley is a little from my theme; I go out of my way; but 'tis rather
by licence than oversight; my fancies follow one another, but sometimes at
a great distance, and look towards one another, but 'tis with an oblique
glance. I have read a dialogue of Plato,—[The Phaedrus.]—of
the like motley and fantastic composition, the beginning about love, and
all the rest to the end about rhetoric; they fear not these variations,
and have a marvellous grace in letting themselves be carried away at the
pleasure of the wind, or at least to seem as if they were. The titles of
my chapters do not always comprehend the whole matter; they often denote
it by some mark only, as these others, Andria, Eunuchus; or these, Sylla,
Cicero, Toyquatus. I love a poetic progress, by leaps and skips; 'tis an
art, as Plato says, light, nimble, demoniac. There are pieces in Plutarch
where he forgets his theme; where the proposition of his argument is only
found by incidence, stuffed and half stifled in foreign matter. Observe
his footsteps in the Daemon of Socrates. O God! how beautiful are these
frolicsome sallies, those variations and digressions, and all the more
when they seem most fortuitous and careless. 'Tis the indiligent reader
who loses my subject, and not I; there will always be found some word or
other in a corner that is to the purpose, though it lie very close. I
ramble indiscreetly and tumultuously; my style and my wit wander at the
same rate. He must fool it a little who would not be deemed wholly a fool,
say both the precepts, and, still more, the examples of our masters. A
thousand poets flag and languish after a prosaic manner; but the best old
prose (and I strew it here up and down indifferently for verse) shines
throughout with the lustre, vigour, and boldness of poetry, and not
without some air of its fury. And certainly prose ought to have the
pre-eminence in speaking. The poet, says Plato, seated upon the muses
tripod, pours out with fury whatever comes into his mouth, like the pipe
of a fountain, without considering and weighing it; and things escape him
of various colours, of contrary substance, and with an irregular torrent.
Plato himself is throughout poetical; and the old theology, as the learned
tell us, is all poetry; and the first philosophy is the original language
of the gods. I would have my matter distinguish itself; it sufficiently
shows where it changes, where it concludes, where it begins, and where it
rejoins, without interlacing it with words of connection introduced for
the relief of weak or negligent ears, and without explaining myself. Who
is he that had not rather not be read at all than after a drowsy or
cursory manner?
"Nihil est tam utile, quod intransitu prosit."
["Nothing is so useful as that which is cursorily so."
—Seneca, Ep., 2.]
If to take books in hand were to learn them: to look upon them were to
consider them: and to run these slightly over were to grasp them, I were
then to blame to make myself out so ignorant as I say I am. Seeing I
cannot fix the attention of my reader by the weight of what I write,
'manco male', if I should chance to do it by my intricacies. "Nay, but he
will afterwards repent that he ever perplexed himself about it." 'Tis very
true, but he will yet be there perplexed. And, besides, there are some
humours in which comprehension produces disdain; who will think better of
me for not understanding what I say, and will conclude the depth of my
sense by its obscurity; which, to speak in good sooth, I mortally hate,
and would avoid it if I could. Aristotle boasts somewhere in his writings
that he affected it: a vicious affectation. The frequent breaks into
chapters that I made my method in the beginning of my book, having since
seemed to me to dissolve the attention before it was raised, as making it
disdain to settle itself to so little, I, upon that account, have made
them longer, such as require proposition and assigned leisure. In such an
employment, to whom you will not give an hour you give nothing; and you do
nothing for him for whom you only do it whilst you are doing something
else. To which may be added that I have, peradventure, some particular
obligation to speak only by halves, to speak confusedly and discordantly.
I am therefore angry at this trouble-feast reason, and its extravagant
projects that worry one's life, and its opinions, so fine and subtle,
though they be all true, I think too dear bought and too inconvenient. On
the contrary, I make it my business to bring vanity itself in repute, and
folly too, if it produce me any pleasure; and let myself follow my own
natural inclinations, without carrying too strict a hand upon them.
I have seen elsewhere houses in ruins, and statues both of gods and men:
these are men still. 'Tis all true; and yet, for all that, I cannot so
often revisit the tomb of that so great and so puissant city,—[Rome]—
that I do not admire and reverence it. The care of the dead is recommended
to us; now, I have been bred up from my infancy with these dead; I had
knowledge of the affairs of Rome long before I had any of those of my own
house; I knew the Capitol and its plan before I knew the Louvre, and the
Tiber before I knew the Seine. The qualities and fortunes of Lucullus,
Metellus, and Scipio have ever run more in my head than those of any of my
own country; they are all dead; so is my father as absolutely dead as
they, and is removed as far from me and life in eighteen years as they are
in sixteen hundred: whose memory, nevertheless, friendship and society, I
do not cease to embrace and utilise with a perfect and lively union. Nay,
of my own inclination, I pay more service to the dead; they can no longer
help themselves, and therefore, methinks, the more require my assistance:
'tis there that gratitude appears in its full lustre. The benefit is not
so generously bestowed, where there is retrogradation and reflection.
Arcesilaus, going to visit Ctesibius, who was sick, and finding him in a
very poor condition, very finely conveyed some money under his pillow,
and, by concealing it from him, acquitted him, moreover, from the
acknowledgment due to such a benefit. Such as have merited from me
friendship and gratitude have never lost these by being no more; I have
better and more carefully paid them when gone and ignorant of what I did;
I speak most affectionately of my friends when they can no longer know it.
I have had a hundred quarrels in defending Pompey and for the cause of
Brutus; this acquaintance yet continues betwixt us; we have no other hold
even on present things but by fancy. Finding myself of no use to this age,
I throw myself back upon that other, and am so enamoured of it, that the
free, just, and flourishing state of that ancient Rome (for I neither love
it in its birth nor its old age) interests and impassionates me; and
therefore I cannot so often revisit the sites of their streets and houses,
and those ruins profound even to the Antipodes, that I am not interested
in them. Is it by nature, or through error of fancy, that the sight of
places which we know to have been frequented and inhabited by persons
whose memories are recommended in story, moves us in some sort more than
to hear a recital of their—acts or to read their writings?
"Tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis....Et id quidem in hac urbe
infinitum; quacumque enim ingredimur, in aliquam historiam vestigium
ponimus."
["So great a power of reminiscence resides in places; and that truly
in this city infinite, for which way soever we go, we find the
traces of some story."—Cicero, De Fin., v. I, 2.]
It pleases me to consider their face, bearing, and vestments: I pronounce
those great names betwixt my teeth, and make them ring in my ears:
"Ego illos veneror, et tantis nominibus semper assurgo."
["I reverence them, and always rise to so great names."
—Seneca, Ep., 64.]
Of things that are in some part great and admirable, I admire even the
common parts: I could wish to see them in familiar relations, walk, and
sup. It were ingratitude to contemn the relics and images of so many
worthy and valiant men as I have seen live and die, and who, by their
example, give us so many good instructions, knew we how to follow them.
And, moreover, this very Rome that we now see, deserves to be beloved, so
long and by so many titles allied to our crown; the only common and
universal city; the sovereign magistrate that commands there is equally
acknowledged elsewhere 'tis the metropolitan city of all the Christian
nations the Spaniard and Frenchman is there at home: to be a prince of
that state, there needs no more but to be of Christendom wheresoever.
There is no place upon earth that heaven has embraced with such an
influence and constancy of favour; her very ruins are grand and glorious,
"Laudandis pretiosior ruinis."
["More precious from her glorious ruins."
—Sidonius Apollinaris, Carm., xxiii.; Narba, v. 62.]
she yet in her very tomb retains the marks and images of empire:
"Ut palam sit, uno in loco gaudentis opus esse naturx."
["That it may be manifest that there is in one place the work of
rejoicing nature."—Pliny, Nat. Hist., iii. 5.]
Some would blame and be angry at themselves to perceive themselves tickled
with so vain a pleasure our humours are never too vain that are pleasant
let them be what they may, if they constantly content a man of common
understanding, I could not have the heart to blame him.
I am very much obliged to Fortune, in that, to this very hour, she has
offered me no outrage beyond what I was well able to bear. Is it not her
custom to let those live in quiet by whom she is not importuned?
"Quanto quisque sibi plum negaverit,
A diis plum feret: nil cupientium
Nudus castra peto . . . .
Multa petentibus
Desunt multa."
["The more each man denies himself, the more the gods give him.
Poor as I am, I seek the company of those who ask nothing; they who
desire much will be deficient in much."
—Horace, Od., iii. 16,21,42.]
If she continue her favour, she will dismiss me very well satisfied:
"Nihil supra
Deos lacesso."
["I trouble the gods no farther."—Horace, Od., ii. 18, 11.]
But beware a shock: there are a thousand who perish in the port. I easily
comfort myself for what shall here happen when I shall be gone, present
things trouble me enough:
"Fortunae caetera mando."
["I leave the rest to fortune."—Ovid, Metam., ii. 140.]
Besides, I have not that strong obligation that they say ties men to the
future, by the issue that succeeds to their name and honour; and
peradventure, ought less to covet them, if they are to be so much desired.
I am but too much tied to the world, and to this life, of myself: I am
content to be in Fortune's power by circumstances properly necessary to my
being, without otherwise enlarging her jurisdiction over me; and have
never thought that to be without children was a defect that ought to
render life less complete or less contented: a sterile vocation has its
conveniences too. Children are of the number of things that are not so
much to be desired, especially now that it would be so hard to make them
good:
"Bona jam nec nasci licet, ita corrupta Bunt semina;"
["Nothing good can be born now, the seed is so corrupt."
—Tertullian, De Pudicita.]
and yet they are justly to be lamented by such as lose them when they have
them.
He who left me my house in charge, foretold that I was like to ruin it,
considering my humour so little inclined to look after household affairs.
But he was mistaken; for I am in the same condition now as when I first
entered into it, or rather somewhat better; and yet without office or any
place of profit.
As to the rest, if Fortune has never done me any violent or extraordinary
injury, neither has she done me any particular favour; whatever we derive
from her bounty, was there above a hundred years before my time: I have,
as to my own particular, no essential and solid good, that I stand
indebted for to her liberality. She has, indeed, done me some airy
favours, honorary and titular favours, without substance, and those in
truth she has not granted, but offered me, who, God knows, am all
material, and who take nothing but what is real, and indeed massive too,
for current pay: and who, if I durst confess so much, should not think
avarice much less excusable than ambition: nor pain less to be avoided
than shame; nor health less to be coveted than learning, or riches than
nobility.
Amongst those empty favours of hers, there is none that so much pleases
vain humour natural to my country, as an authentic bull of a Roman
burgess-ship, that was granted me when I was last there, glorious in seals
and gilded letters, and granted with all gracious liberality. And because
'tis couched in a mixt style, more or less favourable, and that I could
have been glad to have seen a copy of it before it had passed the seal.
Being before burgess of no city at all, I am glad to be created one of the
most noble that ever was or ever shall be. If other men would consider
themselves at the rate I do, they would, as I do, discover themselves to
be full of inanity and foppery; to rid myself of it, I cannot, without
making myself away. We are all steeped in it, as well one as another; but
they who are not aware on't, have somewhat the better bargain; and yet I
know not whether they have or no.
This opinion and common usage to observe others more than ourselves has
very much relieved us that way: 'tis a very displeasing object: we can
there see nothing but misery and vanity: nature, that we may not be
dejected with the sight of our own deformities, has wisely thrust the
action of seeing outward. We go forward with the current, but to turn back
towards ourselves is a painful motion; so is the sea moved and troubled
when the waves rush against one another. Observe, says every one, the
motions of the heavens, of public affairs; observe the quarrel of such a
person, take notice of such a one's pulse, of such another's last will and
testament; in sum, be always looking high or low, on one side, before or
behind you. It was a paradoxical command anciently given us by that god of
Delphos: "Look into yourself; discover yourself; keep close to yourself;
call back your mind and will, that elsewhere consume themselves into
yourself; you run out, you spill yourself; carry a more steady hand: men
betray you, men spill you, men steal you from yourself. Dost thou not see
that this world we live in keeps all its sight confined within, and its
eyes open to contemplate itself? 'Tis always vanity for thee, both within
and without; but 'tis less vanity when less extended. Excepting thee, O
man, said that god, everything studies itself first, and has bounds to its
labours and desires, according to its need. There is nothing so empty and
necessitous as thou, who embracest the universe; thou art the investigator
without knowledge, the magistrate without jurisdiction, and, after all,
the fool of the farce."
CHAPTER X——OF MANAGING THE WILL
Few things, in comparison of what commonly affect other men, move, or, to
say better, possess me: for 'tis but reason they should concern a man,
provided they do not possess him. I am very solicitous, both by study and
argument, to enlarge this privilege of insensibility, which is in me
naturally raised to a pretty degree, so that consequently I espouse and am
very much moved with very few things. I have a clear sight enough, but I
fix it upon very few objects; I have a sense delicate and tender enough;
but an apprehension and application hard and negligent. I am very
unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myself wholly
on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb and
restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears into it, it
being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and over which
fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which I so much
value, 'tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately to covet and
heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable. A man ought to moderate
himself betwixt the hatred of pain and the love of pleasure: and Plato
sets down a middle path of life betwixt the two. But against such
affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere,
against those, I say, I oppose myself with my utmost power. 'Tis my
opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself to
himself. Were my will easy to lend itself out and to be swayed, I should
not stick there; I am too tender both by nature and use:
"Fugax rerum, securaque in otia natus."
["Avoiding affairs and born to secure ease."
—Ovid, De Trist., iii. 2, 9.]
Hot and obstinate disputes, wherein my adversary would at last have the
better, the issue that would render my heat and obstinacy disgraceful
would peradventure vex me to the last degree. Should I set myself to it at
the rate that others do, my soul would never have the force to bear the
emotion and alarms of those who grasp at so much; it would immediately be
disordered by this inward agitation. If, sometimes, I have been put upon
the management of other men's affairs, I have promised to take them in
hand, but not into my lungs and liver; to take them upon me, not to
incorporate them; to take pains, yes: to be impassioned about it, by no
means; I have a care of them, but I will not sit upon them. I have enough
to do to order and govern the domestic throng of those that I have in my
own veins and bowels, without introducing a crowd of other men's affairs;
and am sufficiently concerned about my own proper and natural business,
without meddling with the concerns of others. Such as know how much they
owe to themselves, and how many offices they are bound to of their own,
find that nature has cut them out work enough of their own to keep them
from being idle. "Thou hast business enough at home: look to that."
Men let themselves out to hire; their faculties are not for themselves,
but for those to whom they have enslaved themselves; 'tis their tenants
occupy them, not themselves. This common humour pleases not me. We must be
thrifty of the liberty of our souls, and never let it out but upon just
occasions, which are very few, if we judge aright. Do but observe such as
have accustomed themselves to be at every one's call: they do it
indifferently upon all, as well little as great, occasions; in that which
nothing concerns them; as much as in what imports them most. They thrust
themselves in indifferently wherever there is work to do and obligation,
and are without life when not in tumultuous bustle:
"In negotiis sunt, negotii cause,"
["They are in business for business' sake."—Seneca, Ep., 22.]
It is not so much that they will go, as it is that they cannot stand
still: like a rolling stone that cannot stop till it can go no further.
Occupation, with a certain sort of men, is a mark of understanding and
dignity: their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being
rocked in a cradle; they may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their
friends, as they are troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his
money to others, but every one distributes his time and his life: there is
nothing of which we are so prodigal as of these two things, of which to be
thrifty would be both commendable and useful. I am of a quite contrary
humour; I look to myself, and commonly covet with no great ardour what I
do desire, and desire little; and I employ and busy myself at the same
rate, rarely and temperately. Whatever they take in hand, they do it with
their utmost will and vehemence. There are so many dangerous steps, that,
for the more safety, we must a little lightly and superficially glide over
the world, and not rush through it. Pleasure itself is painful in
profundity:
"Incedis per ignes,
Suppositos cineri doloso."
["You tread on fire, hidden under deceitful ashes."
—Horace, Od., ii. i, 7.]
The Parliament of Bordeaux chose me mayor of their city at a time when I
was at a distance from France,—[At Bagno Della Villa, near Lucca,
September 1581]—and still more remote from any such thought. I
entreated to be excused, but I was told by my friends that I had committed
an error in so doing, and the greater because the king had, moreover,
interposed his command in that affair. 'Tis an office that ought to be
looked upon so much more honourable, as it has no other salary nor
advantage than the bare honour of its execution. It continues two years,
but may be extended by a second election, which very rarely happens; it
was to me, and had never been so but twice before: some years ago to
Monsieur de Lansac, and lately to Monsieur de Biron, Marshal of France, in
whose place I succeeded; and, I left mine to Monsieur de Matignon, Marshal
of France also: proud of so noble a fraternity—
"Uterque bonus pacis bellique minister."
["Either one a good minister in peace and war."
—AEneid, xi. 658.]
Fortune would have a hand in my promotion, by this particular circumstance
which she put in of her own, not altogether vain; for Alexander disdained
the ambassadors of Corinth, who came to offer him a burgess-ship of their
city; but when they proceeded to lay before him that Bacchus and Hercules
were also in the register, he graciously thanked them.
At my arrival, I faithfully and conscientiously represented myself to them
for such as I find myself to be—a man without memory, without
vigilance, without experience, and without vigour; but withal, without
hatred, without ambition, without avarice, and without violence; that they
might be informed of my qualities, and know what they were to expect from
my service. And whereas the knowledge they had had of my late father, and
the honour they had for his memory, had alone incited them to confer this
favour upon me, I plainly told them that I should be very sorry anything
should make so great an impression upon me as their affairs and the
concerns of their city had made upon him, whilst he held the government to
which they had preferred me. I remembered, when a boy, to have seen him in
his old age cruelly tormented with these public affairs, neglecting the
soft repose of his own house, to which the declension of his age had
reduced him for several years before, the management of his own affairs,
and his health; and certainly despising his own life, which was in great
danger of being lost, by being engaged in long and painful journeys on
their behalf. Such was he; and this humour of his proceeded from a
marvellous good nature; never was there a more charitable and popular
soul. Yet this proceeding which I commend in others, I do not love to
follow myself, and am not without excuse.
He had learned that a man must forget himself for his neighbour, and that
the particular was of no manner of consideration in comparison with the
general. Most of the rules and precepts of the world run this way; to
drive us out of ourselves into the street for the benefit of public
society; they thought to do a great feat to divert and remove us from
ourselves, assuming we were but too much fixed there, and by a too natural
inclination; and have said all they could to that purpose: for 'tis no new
thing for the sages to preach things as they serve, not as they are. Truth
has its obstructions, inconveniences, and incompatibilities with us; we
must often deceive that we may not deceive ourselves; and shut our eyes
and our understandings to redress and amend them:
"Imperiti enim judicant, et qui frequenter
in hoc ipsum fallendi sunt, ne errent."
["For the ignorant judge, and therefore are oft to be deceived,
less they should err."—Quintil., Inst. Orat., xi. 17.]
When they order us to love three, four, or fifty degrees of things above
ourselves, they do like archers, who, to hit the white, take their aim a
great deal higher than the butt; to make a crooked stick straight, we bend
it the contrary way.
I believe that in the Temple of Pallas, as we see in all other religions,
there were apparent mysteries to be exposed to the people; and others,
more secret and high, that were only to be shown to such as were
professed; 'tis likely that in these the true point of friendship that
every one owes to himself is to be found; not a false friendship, that
makes us embrace glory, knowledge, riches, and the like, with a principal
and immoderate affection, as members of our being; nor an indiscreet and
effeminate friendship, wherein it happens, as with ivy, that it decays and
ruins the walls it embraces; but a sound and regular friendship, equally
useful and pleasant. He who knows the duties of this friendship and
practises them is truly of the cabinet of the Muses, and has attained to
the height of human wisdom and of our happiness, such an one, exactly
knowing what he owes to himself, will on his part find that he ought to
apply to himself the use of the world and of other men; and to do this, to
contribute to public society the duties and offices appertaining to him.
He who does not in some sort live for others, does not live much for
himself:
"Qui sibi amicus est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse."
["He who is his own friend, is a friend to everybody else."
—Seneca, Ep., 6.]
The principal charge we have is, to every one his own conduct; and 'tis
for this only that we here are. As he who should forget to live a virtuous
and holy life, and should think he acquitted himself of his duty in
instructing and training others up to it, would be a fool; even so he who
abandons his own particular healthful and pleasant living to serve others
therewith, takes, in my opinion, a wrong and unnatural course.
I would not that men should refuse, in the employments they take upon
them, their attention, pains, eloquence, sweat, and blood if need be:
"Non ipse pro caris amicis
Aut patria, timidus perire:"
["Himself not afraid to die for beloved friends, or for his
country."—Horace, Od., iv. 9, 51.]
but 'tis only borrowed, and accidentally; his mind being always in repose
and in health; not without action, but without vexation, without passion.
To be simply acting costs him so little, that he acts even sleeping; but
it must be set on going with discretion; for the body receives the offices
imposed upon it just according to what they are; the mind often extends
and makes them heavier at its own expense, giving them what measure it
pleases. Men perform like things with several sorts of endeavour, and
different contention of will; the one does well enough without the other;
for how many people hazard themselves every day in war without any concern
which way it goes; and thrust themselves into the dangers of battles, the
loss of which will not break their next night's sleep? and such a man may
be at home, out of the danger which he durst not have looked upon, who is
more passionately concerned for the issue of this war, and whose soul is
more anxious about events than the soldier who therein stakes his blood
and his life. I could have engaged myself in public employments without
quitting my own matters a nail's breadth, and have given myself to others
without abandoning myself. This sharpness and violence of desires more
hinder than they advance the execution of what we undertake; fill us with
impatience against slow or contrary events, and with heat and suspicion
against those with whom we have to do. We never carry on that thing well
by which we are prepossessed and led:
"Male cuncta ministrat
Impetus."
["Impulse manages all things ill."—Statius, Thebaid, x. 704.]
He who therein employs only his judgment and address proceeds more
cheerfully: he counterfeits, he gives way, he defers quite at his ease,
according to the necessities of occasions; he fails in his attempt without
trouble and affliction, ready and entire for a new enterprise; he always
marches with the bridle in his hand. In him who is intoxicated with this
violent and tyrannical intention, we discover, of necessity, much
imprudence and injustice; the impetuosity of his desire carries him away;
these are rash motions, and, if fortune do not very much assist, of very
little fruit. Philosophy directs that, in the revenge of injuries
received, we should strip ourselves of choler; not that the chastisement
should be less, but, on the contrary, that the revenge may be the better
and more heavily laid on, which, it conceives, will be by this impetuosity
hindered. For anger not only disturbs, but, of itself, also wearies the
arms of those who chastise; this fire benumbs and wastes their force; as
in precipitation, "festinatio tarda est,"—haste trips up its own
heels, fetters, and stops itself:
"Ipsa se velocitas implicat."—Seneca, Ep. 44
For example, according to what I commonly see, avarice has no greater
impediment than itself; the more bent and vigorous it is, the less it
rakes together, and commonly sooner grows rich when disguised in a visor
of liberality.
A very excellent gentleman, and a friend of mine, ran a risk of impairing
his faculties by a too passionate attention and affection to the affairs
of a certain prince his master;—[Probably the King of Navarre,
afterward Henry IV.]—which master has thus portrayed himself to me;
"that he foresees the weight of accidents as well as another, but that in
those for which there is no remedy, he presently resolves upon suffering;
in others, having taken all the necessary precautions which by the
vivacity of his understanding he can presently do, he quietly awaits what
may follow." And, in truth, I have accordingly seen him maintain a great
indifferency and liberty of actions and serenity of countenance in very
great and difficult affairs: I find him much greater, and of greater
capacity in adverse than in prosperous fortune; his defeats are to him
more glorious than his victories, and his mourning than his triumph.
Consider, that even in vain and frivolous actions, as at chess, tennis,
and the like, this eager and ardent engaging with an impetuous desire,
immediately throws the mind and members into indiscretion and disorder: a
man astounds and hinders himself; he who carries himself more moderately,
both towards gain and loss, has always his wits about him; the less
peevish and passionate he is at play, he plays much more advantageously
and surely.
As to the rest, we hinder the mind's grasp and hold, in giving it so many
things to seize upon; some things we should only offer to it; tie it to
others, and with others incorporate it. It can feel and discern all
things, but ought to feed upon nothing but itself; and should be
instructed in what properly concerns itself, and that is properly of its
own having and substance. The laws of nature teach us what justly we need.
After the sages have told us that no one is indigent according to nature,
and that every one is so according to opinion, they very subtly
distinguish betwixt the desires that proceed from her, and those that
proceed from the disorder of our own fancy: those of which we can see the
end are hers; those that fly before us, and of which we can see no end,
are our own: the poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the soul
is irreparable:
"Nam si, quod satis est homini, id satis esse potesset
Hoc sat erat: nunc, quum hoc non est, qui credimus porro
Divitias ullas animum mi explere potesse?"
["For if what is for man enough, could be enough, it were enough;
but since it is not so, how can I believe that any wealth can give
my mind content."—Lucilius aped Nonium Marcellinum, V. sec. 98.]
Socrates, seeing a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furniture carried
in pomp through his city: "How many things," said he, "I do not desire!"—[Cicero,
Tusc. Quaes., V. 32.]—Metrodorus lived on twelve ounces a day,
Epicurus upon less; Metrocles slept in winter abroad amongst sheep, in
summer in the cloisters of churches:
"Sufficit ad id natura, quod poscit."
["Nature suffices for what he requires."—Seneca, Ep., 90.]
Cleanthes lived by the labour of his own hands, and boasted that
Cleanthes, if he would, could yet maintain another Cleanthes.
If that which nature exactly and originally requires of us for the
conservation of our being be too little (as in truth what it is, and how
good cheap life may be maintained, cannot be better expressed than by this
consideration, that it is so little that by its littleness it escapes the
gripe and shock of fortune), let us allow ourselves a little more; let us
call every one of our habits and conditions nature; let us rate and treat
ourselves by this measure; let us stretch our appurtenances and accounts
so far; for so far, I fancy, we have some excuse. Custom is a second
nature, and no less powerful. What is wanting to my custom, I reckon is
wanting to me; and I should be almost as well content that they took away
my life as cut me short in the way wherein I have so long lived. I am no
longer in condition for any great change, nor to put myself into a new and
unwonted course, not even to augmentation. 'Tis past the time for me to
become other than what I am; and as I should complain of any great good
hap that should now befall me, that it came not in time to be enjoyed:
"Quo mihi fortunas, si non conceditur uti?"
["What is the good fortune to me, if it is not granted to me
to use it."—Horace, Ep., i. 5, 12.]
so should I complain of any inward acquisition. It were almost better
never, than so late, to become an honest man, and well fit to live, when
one has no longer to live. I, who am about to make my exit out of the
world, would easily resign to any newcomer, who should desire it, all the
prudence I am now acquiring in the world's commerce; after meat, mustard.
I have no need of goods of which I can make no use; of what use is
knowledge to him who has lost his head? 'Tis an injury and unkindness in
fortune to tender us presents that will only inspire us with a just
despite that we had them not in their due season. Guide me no more; I can
no longer go. Of so many parts as make up a sufficiency, patience is the
most sufficient. Give the capacity of an excellent treble to the chorister
who has rotten lungs, and eloquence to a hermit exiled into the deserts of
Arabia. There needs no art to help a fall; the end finds itself of itself
at the conclusion of every affair. My world is at an end, my form expired;
I am totally of the past, and am bound to authorise it, and to conform my
outgoing to it. I will here declare, by way of example, that the Pope's
late ten days' diminution
[Gregory XIII., in 1582, reformed the Calendar, and, in consequence,
in France they all at once passed from the 9th to the 20th
December.]
has taken me so aback that I cannot well reconcile myself to it; I belong
to the years wherein we kept another kind of account. So ancient and so
long a custom challenges my adherence to it, so that I am constrained to
be somewhat heretical on that point incapable of any, though corrective,
innovation. My imagination, in spite of my teeth, always pushes me ten
days forward or backward, and is ever murmuring in my ears: "This rule
concerns those who are to begin to be." If health itself, sweet as it is,
returns to me by fits, 'tis rather to give me cause of regret than
possession of it; I have no place left to keep it in. Time leaves me;
without which nothing can be possessed. Oh, what little account should I
make of those great elective dignities that I see in such esteem in the
world, that are never conferred but upon men who are taking leave of it;
wherein they do not so much regard how well the man will discharge his
trust, as how short his administration will be: from the very entry they
look at the exit. In short, I am about finishing this man, and not
rebuilding another. By long use, this form is in me turned into substance,
and fortune into nature.
I say, therefore, that every one of us feeble creatures is excusable in
thinking that to be his own which is comprised under this measure; but
withal, beyond these limits, 'tis nothing but confusion; 'tis the largest
extent we can grant to our own claims. The more we amplify our need and
our possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows of
Fortune and adversities. The career of our desires ought to be
circumscribed and restrained to a short limit of the nearest and most
contiguous commodities; and their course ought, moreover, to be performed
not in a right line, that ends elsewhere, but in a circle, of which the
two points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves. Actions
that are carried on without this reflection—a near and essential
reflection, I mean—such as those of ambitious and avaricious men,
and so many more as run point-blank, and to whose career always carries
them before themselves, such actions, I say; are erroneous and sickly.
Most of our business is farce:
"Mundus universus exercet histrioniam."
—[Petronius Arbiter, iii. 8.]
We must play our part properly, but withal as a part of a borrowed
personage; we must not make real essence of a mask and outward appearance;
nor of a strange person, our own; we cannot distinguish the skin from the
shirt: 'tis enough to meal the face, without mealing the breast. I see
some who transform and transubstantiate themselves into as many new shapes
and new beings as they undertake new employments; and who strut and fume
even to the heart and liver, and carry their state along with them even to
the close-stool: I cannot make them distinguish the salutations made to
themselves from those made to their commission, their train, or their
mule:
"Tantum se fortunx permittunt, etiam ut naturam dediscant."
["They so much give themselves up to fortune, as even to unlearn
nature."—Quintus Curtius, iii. 2.]
They swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking,
according to the height of their magisterial place. The Mayor of Bordeaux
and Montaigne have ever been two by very manifest separation. Because one
is an advocate or a financier, he must not ignore the knavery there is in
such callings; an honest man is not accountable for the vice or absurdity
of his employment, and ought not on that account refuse to take the
calling upon him: 'tis the usage of his country, and there is money to be
got by it; a man must live by the world; and make his best of it, such as
it is. But the judgment of an emperor ought to be above his empire, and
see and consider it as a foreign accident; and he ought to know how to
enjoy himself apart from it, and to communicate himself as James and
Peter, to himself, at all events.
I cannot engage myself so deep and so entire; when my will gives me to
anything, 'tis not with so violent an obligation that my judgment is
infected with it. In the present broils of this kingdom, my own interest
has not made me blind to the laudable qualities of our adversaries, nor to
those that are reproachable in those men of our party. Others adore all of
their own side; for my part, I do not so much as excuse most things in
those of mine: a good work has never the worst grace with me for being
made against me. The knot of the controversy excepted, I have always kept
myself in equanimity and pure indifference:
"Neque extra necessitates belli praecipuum odium gero;"
["Nor bear particular hatred beyond the necessities of war."]
for which I am pleased with myself; and the more because I see others
commonly fail in the contrary direction. Such as extend their anger and
hatred beyond the dispute in question, as most men do, show that they
spring from some other occasion and private cause; like one who, being
cured of an ulcer, has yet a fever remaining, by which it appears that the
ulcer had another more concealed beginning. The reason is that they are
not concerned in the common cause, because it is wounding to the state and
general interest; but are only nettled by reason of their particular
concern. This is why they are so especially animated, and to a degree so
far beyond justice and public reason:
"Non tam omnia universi, quam ea, quae ad quemque pertinent,
singuli carpebant."
["Every one was not so much angry against things in general, as
against those that particularly concern himself."
—Livy, xxxiv. 36.]
I would have the advantage on our side; but if it be not, I shall not run
mad. I am heartily for the right party; but I do not want to be taken
notice of as an especial enemy to others, and beyond the general quarrel.
I marvellously challenge this vicious form of opinion: "He is of the
League because he admires the graciousness of Monsieur de Guise; he is
astonished at the King of Navarre's energy, therefore he is a Huguenot; he
finds this to say of the manners of the king, he is therefore seditious in
his heart." And I did not grant to the magistrate himself that he did well
in condemning a book because it had placed a heretic —[Theodore de
Beza.]—amongst the best poets of the time. Shall we not dare to say
of a thief that he has a handsome leg? If a woman be a strumpet, must it
needs follow that she has a foul smell? Did they in the wisest ages revoke
the proud title of Capitolinus they had before conferred on Marcus Manlius
as conservator of religion and the public liberty, and stifle the memory
of his liberality, his feats of arms, and military recompenses granted to
his valour, because he, afterwards aspired to the sovereignty, to the
prejudice of the laws of his country? If we take a hatred against an
advocate, he will not be allowed the next day to be eloquent. I have
elsewhere spoken of the zeal that pushed on worthy men to the like faults.
For my part, I can say, "Such an one does this thing ill, and another
thing virtuously and well." So in the prognostication or sinister events
of affairs they would have every one in his party blind or a blockhead,
and that our persuasion and judgment should subserve not truth, but to the
project of our desires. I should rather incline towards the other extreme;
so much I fear being suborned by my desire; to which may be added that I
am a little tenderly distrustful of things that I wish.
I have in my time seen wonders in the indiscreet and prodigious facility
of people in suffering their hopes and belief to be led and governed,
which way best pleased and served their leaders, despite a hundred
mistakes one upon another, despite mere dreams and phantasms. I no more
wonder at those who have been blinded and seduced by the fooleries of
Apollonius and Mahomet. Their sense and understanding are absolutely taken
away by their passion; their discretion has no more any other choice than
that which smiles upon them and encourages their cause. I had principally
observed this in the beginning of our intestine distempers; that other,
which has sprung up since, in imitating, has surpassed it; by which I am
satisfied that it is a quality inseparable from popular errors; after the
first, that rolls, opinions drive on one another like waves with the wind:
a man is not a member of the body, if it be in his power to forsake it,
and if he do not roll the common way. But, doubtless, they wrong the just
side when they go about to assist it with fraud; I have ever been against
that practice: 'tis only fit to work upon weak heads; for the sound, there
are surer and more honest ways to keep up their courage and to excuse
adverse accidents.
Heaven never saw a greater animosity than that betwixt Caesar and Pompey,
nor ever shall; and yet I observe, methinks, in those brave souls, a great
moderation towards one another: it was a jealousy of honour and command,
which did not transport them to a furious and indiscreet hatred, and was
without malignity and detraction: in their hottest exploits upon one
another, I discover some remains of respect and good-will: and am
therefore of opinion that, had, it been possible, each of them would
rather have done his business without the ruin of the other than with it.
Take notice how much otherwise matters went with Marius and Sylla.
We must not precipitate ourselves so headlong after our affections and
interests. As, when I was young, I opposed myself to the progress of love
which I perceived to advance too fast upon me, and had a care lest it
should at last become so pleasing as to force, captivate, and wholly
reduce me to its mercy: so I do the same upon all other occasions where my
will is running on with too warm an appetite. I lean opposite to the side
it inclines to; as I find it going to plunge and make itself drunk with
its own wine; I evade nourishing its pleasure so far, that I cannot
recover it without infinite loss. Souls that, through their own stupidity,
only discern things by halves, have this happiness, that they smart less
with hurtful things: 'tis a spiritual leprosy that has some show of
health, and such a health as philosophy does not altogether contemn; but
yet we have no reason to call it wisdom, as we often do. And after this
manner some one anciently mocked Diogeries, who, in the depth of winter
and quite naked, went embracing an image of snow for a trial of his
endurance: the other seeing him in this position, "Art thou now very
cold?" said he. "Not at all," replied Diogenes. "Why, then," pursued the
other, "what difficult and exemplary thing dost thou think thou doest in
embracing that snow?" To take a true measure of constancy, one must
necessarily know what the suffering is.
But souls that are to meet with adverse events and the injuries of
fortune, in their depth and sharpness, that are to weigh and taste them
according to their natural weight and bitterness, let such show their
skill in avoiding the causes and diverting the blow. What did King Cotys
do? He paid liberally for the rich and beautiful vessel that had been
presented to him, but, seeing it was exceedingly brittle, he immediately
broke it betimes, to prevent so easy a matter of displeasure against his
servants. In like manner, I have willingly avoided all confusion in my
affairs, and never coveted to have my estate contiguous to those of my
relations, and such with whom I coveted a strict friendship; for thence
matter of unkindness and falling out often proceeds. I formerly loved
hazardous games of cards and dice; but have long since left them off, only
for this reason that, with whatever good air I carried my losses, I could
not help feeling vexed within. A man of honour, who ought to be touchily
sensible of the lie or of an insult, and who is not to take a scurvy
excuse for satisfaction, should avoid occasions of dispute. I shun
melancholy, crabbed men, as I would the plague; and in matters I cannot
talk of without emotion and concern I never meddle, if not compelled by my
duty:
"Melius non incipient, quam desinent."
["They had better never to begin than to have to desist."
—Seneca, Ep., 72.]
The surest way, therefore, is to prepare one's self beforehand for
occasions.
I know very well that some wise men have taken another way, and have not
feared to grapple and engage to the utmost upon several subjects these are
confident of their own strength, under which they protect themselves in
all ill successes, making their patience wrestle and contend with
disaster:
"Velut rupes, vastum quae prodit in aequor,
Obvia ventorum furiis, expostaque ponto,
Vim cunctam atque minas perfert coelique marisque;
Ipsa immota manens."
["As a rock, which projects into the vast ocean, exposed to the
furious winds and the raging sea, defies the force and menaces of
sky and sea, itself unshaken."—Virgil, AEneid, x. 693.]
Let us not attempt these examples; we shall never come up to them. They
set themselves resolutely, and without agitation, to behold the ruin of
their country, which possessed and commanded all their will: this is too
much, and too hard a task for our commoner souls. Cato gave up the noblest
life that ever was upon this account; we meaner spirits must fly from the
storm as far as we can; we must provide for sentiment, and not for
patience, and evade the blows we cannot meet. Zeno, seeing Chremonides, a
young man whom he loved, draw near to sit down by him, suddenly started
up; and Cleanthes demanding of him the reason why he did so, "I hear,"
said he, "that physicians especially order repose, and forbid emotion in
all tumours." Socrates does not say: "Do not surrender to the charms of
beauty; stand your ground, and do your utmost to oppose it." "Fly it,"
says he; "shun the fight and encounter of it, as of a powerful poison that
darts and wounds at a distance." And his good disciple, feigning or
reciting, but, in my opinion, rather reciting than feigning, the rare
perfections of the great Cyrus, makes him distrustful of his own strength
to resist the charms of the divine beauty of that illustrous Panthea, his
captive, and committing the visiting and keeping her to another, who could
not have so much liberty as himself. And the Holy Ghost in like manner:
"Ne nos inducas in tentationem."
["Lead us not into temptation."—St. Matthew, vi. 13.]
We do not pray that our reason may not be combated and overcome by
concupiscence, but that it should not be so much as tried by it; that we
should not be brought into a state wherein we are so much as to suffer the
approaches, solicitations, and temptations of sin: and we beg of Almighty
God to keep our consciences quiet, fully and perfectly delivered from all
commerce of evil.
Such as say that they have reason for their revenging passion, or any
other sort of troublesome agitation of mind, often say true, as things now
are, but not as they were: they speak to us when the causes of their error
are by themselves nourished and advanced; but look backward—recall
these causes to their beginning—and there you will put them to a
nonplus. Will they have their faults less, for being of longer
continuance; and that of an unjust beginning, the sequel can be just?
Whoever shall desire the good of his country, as I do, without fretting or
pining himself, will be troubled, but will not swoon to see it threatening
either its own ruin, or a no less ruinous continuance; poor vessel, that
the waves, the winds, and the pilot toss and steer to so contrary designs!
"In tam diversa magister
Ventus et unda trahunt."
He who does not gape after the favour of princes, as after a thing he
cannot live without, does not much concern himself at the coldness of
their reception and countenance, nor at the inconstancy of their wills. He
who does not brood over his children or his honours with a slavish
propension, ceases not to live commodiously enough after their loss. He
who does good principally for his own satisfaction will not be much
troubled to see men judge of his actions contrary to his merit. A quarter
of an ounce of patience will provide sufficiently against such
inconveniences. I find ease in this receipt, redeeming myself in the
beginning as good cheap as I can; and find that by this means I have
escaped much trouble and many difficulties. With very little ado I stop
the first sally of my emotions, and leave the subject that begins to be
troublesome before it transports me. He who stops not the start will never
be able to stop the course; he who cannot keep them out will never, get
them out when they are once got in; and he who cannot arrive at the
beginning will never arrive at the end of all. Nor will he bear the fall
who cannot sustain the shock:
"Etenim ipsae se impellunt, ubi semel a ratione discessum est;
ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur
imprudens, nec reperit locum consistendi."
["For they throw themselves headlong when once they lose their
reason; and infirmity so far indulges itself, and from want of
prudence is carried out into deep water, nor finds a place to
shelter it."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 18.]
I am betimes sensible of the little breezes that begin to sing and whistle
within, forerunners of the storm:
"Ceu flamina prima
Cum deprensa fremunt sylvis et caeca volutant
Murmura, venturos nautis prodentia ventos."
["As the breezes, pent in the woods, first send out dull murmurs,
announcing the approach of winds to mariners."—AEneid, x. 97.]
How often have I done myself a manifest injustice to avoid the hazard of
having yet a worse done me by the judges, after an age of vexations, dirty
and vile practices, more enemies to my nature than fire or the rack?
"Convenit a litibus, quantum licet, et nescio an paulo plus etiam
quam licet, abhorrentem esse: est enim non modo liberale, paululum
nonnunquam de suo jure decedere, sed interdum etiam fructuosum."
["A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may, and I know not
whether not something more; for 'tis not only liberal, but sometimes
also advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right.
—"Cicero, De Offic., ii. 18.]
Were we wise, we ought to rejoice and boast, as I one day heard a young
gentleman of a good family very innocently do, that his mother had lost
her cause, as if it had been a cough, a fever, or something very
troublesome to keep. Even the favours that fortune might have given me
through relationship or acquaintance with those who have sovereign
authority in those affairs, I have very conscientiously and very carefully
avoided employing them to the prejudice of others, and of advancing my
pretensions above their true right. In fine, I have so much prevailed by
my endeavours (and happily I may say it) that I am to this day a virgin
from all suits in law; though I have had very fair offers made me, and
with very just title, would I have hearkened to them, and a virgin from
quarrels too. I have almost passed over a long life without any offence of
moment, either active or passive, or without ever hearing a worse word
than my own name: a rare favour of Heaven.
Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes: what ruin did
our last Duke of Burgundy run into about a cartload of sheepskins! And was
not the graving of a seal the first and principal cause of the greatest
commotion that this machine of the world ever underwent? —[The civil
war between Marius and Sylla; see Plutarch's Life of Marius, c. 3.]—for
Pompey and Caesar were but the offsets and continuation of the two others:
and I have in my time seen the wisest heads in this kingdom assembled with
great ceremony, and at the public expense, about treaties and agreements,
of which the true decision, in the meantime, absolutely depended upon the
ladies' cabinet council, and the inclination of some bit of a woman.
The poets very well understood this when they put all Greece and Asia to
fire and sword about an apple. Look why that man hazards his life and
honour upon the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him acquaint you
with the occasion of the quarrel; he cannot do it without blushing: the
occasion is so idle and frivolous.
A little thing will engage you in it; but being once embarked, all the
cords draw; great provisions are then required, more hard and more
important. How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out?
Now we should proceed contrary to the reed, which, at its first springing,
produces a long and straight shoot, but afterwards, as if tired and out of
breath, it runs into thick and frequent joints and knots, as so many
pauses which demonstrate that it has no more its first vigour and
firmness; 'twere better to begin gently and coldly, and to keep one's
breath and vigorous efforts for the height and stress of the business. We
guide affairs in their beginnings, and have them in our own power; but
afterwards, when they are once at work, 'tis they that guide and govern
us, and we are to follow them.
Yet do I not mean to say that this counsel has discharged me of all
difficulty, and that I have not often had enough to do to curb and
restrain my passions; they are not always to be governed according to the
measure of occasions, and often have their entries very sharp and violent.
But still good fruit and profit may thence be reaped; except for those who
in well-doing are not satisfied with any benefit, if reputation be
wanting; for, in truth, such an effect is not valued but by every one to
himself; you are better contented, but not more esteemed, seeing you
reformed yourself before you got into the whirl of the dance, or that the
provocative matter was in sight. Yet not in this only, but in all other
duties of life also, the way of those who aim at honour is very different
from that they proceed by, who propose to themselves order and reason. I
find some who rashly and furiously rush into the lists and cool in the
course. As Plutarch says, that those who, through false shame, are soft
and facile to grant whatever is desired of them, are afterwards as facile
to break their word and to recant; so he who enters lightly into a quarrel
is apt to go as lightly out of it. The same difficulty that keeps me from
entering into it, would, when once hot and engaged in quarrel, incite me
to maintain it with great obstinacy and resolution. 'Tis the tyranny of
custom; when a man is once engaged; he must go through with it, or die.
"Undertake coolly," said Bias, "but pursue with ardour." For want of
prudence, men fall into want of courage, which is still more intolerable.
Most accommodations of the quarrels of these days of ours are shameful and
false; we only seek to save appearances, and in the meantime betray and
disavow our true intentions; we salve over the fact. We know very well how
we said the thing, and in what sense we spoke it, and the company know it,
and our friends whom we have wished to make sensible of our advantage,
understand it well enough too: 'tis at the expense of our frankness and of
the honour of our courage, that we disown our thoughts, and seek refuge in
falsities, to make matters up. We give ourselves the lie, to excuse the
lie we have given to another. You are not to consider if your word or
action may admit of another interpretation; 'tis your own true and sincere
interpretation, your real meaning in what you said or did, that you are
thenceforward to maintain, whatever it cost you. Men speak to your virtue
and conscience, which are not things to be put under a mask; let us leave
these pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of the law. The excuses
and reparations that I see every day made and given to repair
indiscretion, seem to me more scandalous than the indiscretion itself. It
were better to affront your adversary a second time than to offend
yourself by giving him so unmanly a satisfaction. You have braved him in
your heat and anger, and you would flatter and appease him in your cooler
and better sense; and by that means lay yourself lower and at his feet,
whom before you pretended to overtop. I do not find anything a gentleman
can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said is infamous, when
to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him; forasmuch as obstinacy
is more excusable in a man of honour than pusillanimity. Passions are as
easy for me to evade, as they are hard for me to moderate:
"Exscinduntur facilius ammo, quam temperantur."
["They are more easily to be eradicated than governed."]
He who cannot attain the noble Stoical impassibility, let him secure
himself in the bosom of this popular stolidity of mine; what they
performed by virtue, I inure myself to do by temperament. The middle
region harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophers and
peasants, concur in tranquillity and happiness:
"Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!
Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,
Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!"
["Happy is he who could discover the causes of things, and place
under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of
rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan,
and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs."—Virgil, Georg., ii. 490.]
The births of all things are weak and tender; and therefore we should have
our eyes intent on beginnings; for as when, in its infancy, the danger is
not perceived, so when it is grown up, the remedy is as little to be
found. I had every day encountered a million of crosses, harder to digest
in the progress of ambition, than it has been hard for me to curb the
natural propension that inclined me to it:
"Jure perhorrui
Lath conspicuum tollere verticem."
["I ever justly feared to raise my head too high."
—Horace, Od.,iii. 16, 18.]
All public actions are subject to uncertain and various interpretations;
for too many heads judge of them. Some say of this civic employment of
mine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it is worth
so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), that I have
behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languid
temperament; and they have some colour for what they say. I endeavoured to
keep my mind and my thoughts in repose;
"Cum semper natura, tum etiam aetate jam quietus;"
["As being always quiet by nature, so also now by age."
—Cicero, De Petit. Consul., c. 2.]
and if they sometimes lash out upon some rude and sensible impression,
'tis in truth without my advice. Yet from this natural heaviness of mine,
men ought not to conclude a total inability in me (for want of care and
want of sense are two very different things), and much less any unkindness
or ingratitude towards that corporation who employed the utmost means they
had in their power to oblige me, both before they knew me and after; and
they did much more for me in choosing me anew than in conferring that
honour upon me at first. I wish them all imaginable good; and assuredly
had occasion been, there is nothing I would have spared for their service;
I did for them as I would have done for myself. 'Tis a good, warlike, and
generous people, but capable of obedience and discipline, and of whom the
best use may be made, if well guided. They say also that my administration
passed over without leaving any mark or trace. Good! They moreover accuse
my cessation in a time when everybody almost was convicted of doing too
much. I am impatient to be doing where my will spurs me on; but this
itself is an enemy to perseverance. Let him who will make use of me
according to my own way, employ me in affairs where vigour and liberty are
required, where a direct, short, and, moreover, a hazardous conduct are
necessary; I may do something; but if it must be long, subtle, laborious,
artificial and intricate, he had better call in somebody else. All
important offices are not necessarily difficult: I came prepared to do
somewhat rougher work, had there been great occasion; for it is in my
power to do something more than I do, or than I love to do. I did not, to
my knowledge, omit anything that my duty really required. I easily forgot
those offices that ambition mixes with duty and palliates with its title;
these are they that, for the most part, fill the eyes and ears, and give
men the most satisfaction; not the thing but the appearance contents them;
if they hear no noise, they think men sleep. My humour is no friend to
tumult; I could appease a commotion without commotion, and chastise a
disorder without being myself disorderly; if I stand in need of anger and
inflammation, I borrow it, and put it on. My manners are languid, rather
faint than sharp. I do not condemn a magistrate who sleeps, provided the
people under his charge sleep as well as he: the laws in that case sleep
too. For my part, I commend a gliding, staid, and silent life:
"Neque submissam et abjectam, neque se efferentem;"
["Neither subject and abject, nor obtrusive."
—Cicero, De Offic., i. 34]
my fortune will have it so. I am descended from a family that has lived
without lustre or tumult, and, time out of mind, particularly ambitious of
a character for probity.
Our people nowadays are so bred up to bustle and ostentation, that good
nature, moderation, equability, constancy, and such like quiet and obscure
qualities, are no more thought on or regarded. Rough bodies make
themselves felt; the smooth are imperceptibly handled: sickness is felt,
health little or not at all; no more than the oils that foment us, in
comparison of the pains for which we are fomented. 'Tis acting for one's
particular reputation and profit, not for the public good, to refer that
to be done in the public squares which one may do in the council chamber;
and to noon day what might have been done the night before; and to be
jealous to do that himself which his colleague can do as well as he; so
were some surgeons of Greece wont to perform their operations upon
scaffolds in the sight of the people, to draw more practice and profit.
They think that good rules cannot be understood but by the sound of
trumpet. Ambition is not a vice of little people, nor of such modest means
as ours. One said to Alexander: "Your father will leave you a great
dominion, easy and pacific"; this youth was emulous of his father's
victories and of the justice of his government; he would not have enjoyed
the empire of the world in ease and peace. Alcibiades, in Plato, had
rather die young, beautiful, rich, noble, and learned, and all this in
full excellence, than to stop short of such condition; this disease is,
peradventure, excusable in so strong and so full a soul. When wretched and
dwarfish little souls cajole and deceive themselves, and think to spread
their fame for having given right judgment in an affair, or maintained the
discipline of the guard of a gate of their city, the more they think to
exalt their heads the more they show their tails. This little well-doing
has neither body nor life; it vanishes in the first mouth, and goes no
further than from one street to another. Talk of it by all means to your
son or your servant, like that old fellow who, having no other auditor of
his praises nor approver of his valour, boasted to his chambermaid,
crying, "O Perrete, what a brave, clever man hast thou for thy master!" At
the worst, talk of it to yourself, like a councillor of my acquaintance,
who, having disgorged a whole cartful of law jargon with great heat and as
great folly, coming out of the council chamber to make water, was heard
very complacently to mutter betwixt his teeth:
"Non nobis, domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam."
["Not unto us, O Lord, not to us: but unto Thy name be the glory."
—Psalm cxiii. I.]
He who gets it of nobody else, let him pay himself out of his own purse.
Fame is not prostituted at so cheap a rate: rare and exemplary actions, to
which it is due, would not endure the company of this prodigious crowd of
petty daily performances. Marble may exalt your titles, as much as you
please, for having repaired a rod of wall or cleansed a public sewer; but
not men of sense. Renown does not follow all good deeds, if novelty and
difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere esteem, according to the
Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds from virtue; nor will
they allow him bare thanks who, out of temperance, abstains from an old
blear-eyed crone. Those who have known the admirable qualities of Scipio
Africanus, deny him the glory that Panaetius attributes to him, of being
abstinent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of his age. We
have pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those of grandeur:
our own are more natural, and by so much more solid and sure, as they are
lower. If not for that of conscience, yet at least for ambition's sake,
let us reject ambition; let us disdain that thirst of honour and renown,
so low and mendicant, that it makes us beg it of all sorts of people:
"Quae est ista laus quae: possit e macello peti?"
["What praise is that which is to be got in the market-place (meat
market)?" Cicero, De Fin., ii. 15.]
by abject means, and at what cheap rate soever: 'tis dishonour to be so
honoured. Let us learn to be no more greedy, than we are capable, of
glory. To be puffed up with every action that is innocent or of use, is
only for those with whom such things are extraordinary and rare: they will
value it as it costs them. The more a good effect makes a noise, the more
do I abate of its goodness as I suspect that it was more performed for the
noise, than upon account of the goodness: exposed upon the stall, 'tis
half sold. Those actions have much more grace and lustre, that slip from
the hand of him that does them, negligently and without noise, and that
some honest man thereafter finds out and raises from the shade, to produce
it to the light upon its own account,
"Mihi quidem laudabiliora videntur omnia, quae sine
venditatione, et sine populo teste fiunt,"
["All things truly seem more laudable to me that are performed
without ostentation, and without the testimony of the people."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 26.]
says the most ostentatious man that ever lived.
I had but to conserve and to continue, which are silent and insensible
effects: innovation is of great lustre; but 'tis interdicted in this age,
when we are pressed upon and have nothing to defend ourselves from but
novelties. To forbear doing is often as generous as to do; but 'tis less
in the light, and the little good I have in me is of this kind. In fine,
occasions in this employment of mine have been confederate with my humour,
and I heartily thank them for it. Is there any who desires to be sick,
that he may see his physician at work? and would not the physician deserve
to be whipped who should wish the plague amongst us, that he might put his
art in practice? I have never been of that wicked humour, and common
enough, to desire that troubles and disorders in this city should elevate
and honour my government; I have ever heartily contributed all I could to
their tranquillity and ease.
He who will not thank me for the order, the sweet and silent calm that has
accompanied my administration, cannot, however, deprive me of the share
that belongs to me by title of my good fortune. And I am of such a
composition, that I would as willingly be lucky as wise, and had rather
owe my successes purely to the favour of Almighty God, than to any
operation of my own. I had sufficiently published to the world my
unfitness for such public offices; but I have something in me yet worse
than incapacity itself; which is, that I am not much displeased at it, and
that I do not much go about to cure it, considering the course of life
that I have proposed to myself.
Neither have I satisfied myself in this employment; but I have very near
arrived at what I expected from my own performance, and have much
surpassed what I promised them with whom I had to do: for I am apt to
promise something less than what I am able to do, and than what I hope to
make good. I assure myself that I have left no offence or hatred behind
me; to leave regret or desire for me amongst them, I at least know very
well that I never much aimed at it:
"Mene huic confidere monstro!
Mene salis placidi vultum, fluctusque quietos
Ignorare?"
["Should I place confidence in this monster? Should I be ignorant
of the dangers of that seeming placid sea, those now quiet waves?"
—Virgil, Aeneid, V. 849.]
CHAPTER XI——OF CRIPPLES
'Tis now two or three years ago that they made the year ten days shorter
in France.—[By the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.]—How
many changes may we expect should follow this reformation! it was really
moving heaven and earth at once. Yet nothing for all that stirs from its
place my neighbours still find their seasons of sowing and reaping, the
opportunities of doing their business, the hurtful and propitious days,
dust at the same time where they had, time out of mind, assigned them;
there was no more error perceived in our old use, than there is amendment
found in the alteration; so great an uncertainty there is throughout; so
gross, obscure, and obtuse is our perception. 'Tis said that this
regulation might have been carried on with less inconvenience, by
subtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, the
Bissextile, which is in some sort a day of impediment and trouble, till we
had exactly satisfied this debt, the which itself is not done by this
correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear: and yet, by this means,
such order might be taken for the future, arranging that after the
revolution of such or such a number of years, the supernumerary day might
be always thrown out, so that we could not, henceforward, err above
four-and-twenty hours in our computation. We have no other account of time
but years; the world has for many ages made use of that only; and yet it
is a measure that to this day we are not agreed upon, and one that we
still doubt what form other nations have variously given to it, and what
was the true use of it. What does this saying of some mean, that the
heavens in growing old bow themselves down nearer towards us, and put us
into an uncertainty even of hours and days? and that which Plutarch says
of the months, that astrology had not in his time determined as to the
motion of the moon; what a fine condition are we in to keep records of
things past.
I was just now ruminating, as I often do, what a free and roving thing
human reason is. I ordinarily see that men, in things propounded to them,
more willingly study to find out reasons than to ascertain truth: they
slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination of consequences;
they leave the things, and fly to the causes. Pleasant talkers! The
knowledge of causes only concerns him who has the conduct of things; not
us, who are merely to undergo them, and who have perfectly full and
accomplished use of them, according to our need, without penetrating into
the original and essence; wine is none the more pleasant to him who knows
its first faculties. On the contrary, both the body and the soul interrupt
and weaken the right they have of the use of the world and of themselves,
by mixing with it the opinion of learning; effects concern us, but the
means not at all. To determine and to distribute appertain to superiority
and command; as it does to subjection to accept. Let me reprehend our
custom. They commonly begin thus: "How is such a thing done?" Whereas they
should say, "Is such a thing done?" Our reason is able to create a hundred
other worlds, and to find out the beginnings and contexture; it needs
neither matter nor foundation: let it but run on, it builds as well in the
air as on the earth, and with inanity as well as with matter:
"Dare pondus idonea fumo."
["Able to give weight to smoke."—Persius, v. 20.]
I find that almost throughout we should say, "there is no such thing," and
should myself often make use of this answer, but I dare not: for they cry
that it is an evasion produced from ignorance and weakness of
understanding; and I am fain, for the most part, to juggle for company,
and prate of frivolous subjects and tales that I believe not a word of;
besides that, in truth, 'tis a little rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny
a stated fact; and few people but will affirm, especially in things hard
to be believed, that they have seen them, or at least will name witnesses
whose authority will stop our mouths from contradiction. In this way, we
know the foundations and means of things that never were; and the world
scuffles about a thousand questions, of which both the Pro and the Con are
false.
"Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in praecipitem
locum non debeat se sapiens committere."
["False things are so near the true, that a wise man should not
trust himself in a precipitous place"—Cicero, Acad., ii. 21.]
Truth and lies are faced alike; their port, taste, and proceedings are the
same, and we look upon them with the same eye. I find that we are not only
remiss in defending ourselves from deceit, but that we seek and offer
ourselves to be gulled; we love to entangle ourselves in vanity, as a
thing conformable to our being.
I have seen the birth of many miracles in my time; which, although they
were abortive, yet have we not failed to foresee what they would have come
to, had they lived their full age. 'Tis but finding the end of the clew,
and a man may wind off as much as he will; and there is a greater distance
betwixt nothing and the least thing in the world than there is betwixt
this and the greatest. Now the first that are imbued with this beginning
of novelty, when they set out with their tale, find, by the oppositions
they meet with, where the difficulty of persuasion lies, and so caulk up
that place with some false piece;
[Voltaire says of this passage, "He who would learn to doubt should
read this whole chapter of Montaigne, the least methodical of all
philosophers, but the wisest and most amiable."
—Melanges Historiques, xvii. 694, ed. of Lefevre.]
besides that:
"Insita hominibus libido alendi de industria rumores,"
["Men having a natural desire to nourish reports."
—Livy, xxviii. 24.]
we naturally make a conscience of restoring what has been lent us, without
some usury and accession of our own. The particular error first makes the
public error, and afterwards, in turn, the public error makes the
particular one; and thus all this vast fabric goes forming and piling
itself up from hand to hand, so that the remotest witness knows more about
it than those who were nearest, and the last informed is better persuaded
than the first.
'Tis a natural progress; for whoever believes anything, thinks it a work
of charity to persuade another into the same opinion; which the better to
do, he will make no difficulty of adding as much of his own invention as
he conceives necessary to his tale to encounter the resistance or want of
conception he meets with in others. I myself, who make a great conscience
of lying, and am not very solicitous of giving credit and authority to
what I say, yet find that in the arguments I have in hand, being heated
with the opposition of another, or by the proper warmth of my own
narration, I swell and puff up my subject by voice, motion, vigour, and
force of words, and moreover, by extension and amplification, not without
some prejudice to the naked truth; but I do it conditionally withal, that
to the first who brings me to myself, and who asks me the plain and bare
truth, I presently surrender my passion, and deliver the matter to him
without exaggeration, without emphasis, or any painting of my own. A quick
and earnest way of speaking, as mine is, is apt to run into hyperbole.
There is nothing to which men commonly are more inclined than to make way
for their own opinions; where the ordinary means fail us, we add command,
force, fire, and sword. 'Tis a misfortune to be at such a pass, that the
best test of truth is the multitude of believers in a crowd, where the
number of fools so much exceeds the wise:
"Quasi vero quidquam sit tam valde, quam nil sapere, vulgare."
["As if anything were so common as ignorance."
—Cicero, De Divin., ii.]
"Sanitatis patrocinium est, insanientium turba."
["The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise."
—St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, vi. 10.]
'Tis hard to resolve a man's judgment against the common opinions: the
first persuasion, taken from the very subject itself, possesses the
simple, and from them diffuses itself to the wise, under the authority of
the number and antiquity of the witnesses. For my part, what I should not
believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred and one: and I do
not judge opinions by years.
'Tis not long since one of our princes, in whom the gout had spoiled an
excellent nature and sprightly disposition, suffered himself to be so far
persuaded with the report made to him of the marvellous operations of a
certain priest who by words and gestures cured all sorts of diseases, as
to go a long journey to seek him out, and by the force of his mere
imagination, for some hours so persuaded and laid his legs asleep, as to
obtain that service from them they had long time forgotten. Had fortune
heaped up five or six such-like incidents, it had been enough to have
brought this miracle into nature. There was afterwards discovered so much
simplicity and so little art in the author of these performances, that he
was thought too contemptible to be punished, as would be thought of most
such things, were they well examined:
"Miramur ex intervallo fallentia."
["We admire after an interval (or at a distance) things that
deceive."—Seneca, Ep., 118, 2.]
So does our sight often represent to us strange images at a distance that
vanish on approaching near:
"Nunquam ad liquidum fama perducitur."
["Report is never fully substantiated."
—Quintus Curtius, ix. 2.]
'Tis wonderful from how many idle beginnings and frivolous causes such
famous impressions commonly, proceed. This it is that obstructs
information; for whilst we seek out causes and solid and weighty ends,
worthy of so great a name, we lose the true ones; they escape our sight by
their littleness. And, in truth, a very prudent, diligent, and subtle
inquisition is required in such searches, indifferent, and not
prepossessed. To this very hour, all these miracles and strange events
have concealed themselves from me: I have never seen greater monster or
miracle in the world than myself: one grows familiar with all strange
things by time and custom, but the more I frequent and the better I know
myself, the more does my own deformity astonish me, the less I understand
myself.
The principal right of advancing and producing such accidents is reserved
to fortune. Passing the day before yesterday through a village two leagues
from my house, I found the place yet warm with a miracle that had lately
failed of success there, where with first the neighbourhood had been
several months amused; then the neighbouring provinces began to take it
up, and to run thither in great companies of all sorts of people. A young
fellow of the place had one night in sport counterfeited the voice of a
spirit in his own house, without any other design at present, but only for
sport; but this having succeeded with him better than he expected, to
extend his farce with more actors he associated with him a stupid silly
country girl, and at last there were three of them of the same age and
understanding, who from domestic, proceeded to public, preachings, hiding
themselves under the altar of the church, never speaking but by night, and
forbidding any light to be brought. From words which tended to the
conversion of the world, and threats of the day of judgment (for these are
subjects under the authority and reverence of which imposture most
securely lurks), they proceeded to visions and gesticulations so simple
and ridiculous that—nothing could hardly be so gross in the sports
of little children. Yet had fortune never so little favoured the design,
who knows to what height this juggling might have at last arrived? These
poor devils are at present in prison, and are like shortly to pay for the
common folly; and I know not whether some judge will not also make them
smart for his. We see clearly into this, which is discovered; but in many
things of the like nature that exceed our knowledge, I am of opinion that
we ought to suspend our judgment, whether as to rejection or as to
reception.
Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the
abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of
professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we
are not able to refute: we speak of all things by precepts and decisions.
The style at Rome was that even that which a witness deposed to having
seen with his own eyes, and what a judge determined with his most certain
knowledge, was couched in this form of speaking: "it seems to me." They
make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon me
as infallible. I love these words which mollify and moderate the temerity
of our propositions: "peradventure; in some sort; some; 'tis said, I
think," and the like: and had I been set to train up children I had put
this way of answering into their mouths, inquiring and not resolving:
"What does this mean? I understand it not; it may be: is it true?" so that
they should rather have retained the form of pupils at threescore years
old than to go out doctors, as they do, at ten. Whoever will be cured of
ignorance must confess it.
Iris is the daughter of Thaumas;
["That is, of Admiration. She (Iris, the rainbow) is beautiful, and
for that reason, because she has a face to be admired, she is said
to have been the daughter of Thamus."
—Cicero, De Nat. Deor., iii. 20.]
admiration is the foundation of all philosophy, inquisition the progress,
ignorance the end. But there is a sort of ignorance, strong and generous,
that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge; an ignorance which
to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge itself.
I read in my younger years a trial that Corras,
[A celebrated Calvinist lawyer, born at Toulouse; 1513, and
assassinated there, 4th October 1572.]
a councillor of Toulouse, printed, of a strange incident, of two men who
presented themselves the one for the other. I remember (and I hardly
remember anything else) that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of
him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful and so far exceeding both
our knowledge and his own, who was the judge, that I thought it a very
bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged. Let us have some form of
decree that says, "The court understands nothing of the matter" more
freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who, finding themselves
perplexed with a cause they could not unravel, ordered the parties to
appear again after a hundred years.
The witches of my neighbourhood run the hazard of their lives upon the
report of every new author who seeks to give body to their dreams. To
accommodate the examples that Holy Writ gives us of such things, most
certain and irrefragable examples, and to tie them to our modern events,
seeing that we neither see the causes nor the means, will require another
sort-of wit than ours. It, peradventure, only appertains to that sole
all-potent testimony to tell us. "This is, and that is, and not that
other." God ought to be believed; and certainly with very good reason; but
not one amongst us for all that who is astonished at his own narration
(and he must of necessity be astonished if he be not out of his wits),
whether he employ it about other men's affairs or against himself.
I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable, avoiding
those ancient reproaches:
"Majorem fidem homines adhibent iis, quae non intelligunt;
—Cupidine humani ingenii libentius obscura creduntur."
["Men are most apt to believe what they least understand: and from
the acquisitiveness of the human intellect, obscure things are more
easily credited." The second sentence is from Tacitus, Hist. 1. 22.]
I see very well that men get angry, and that I am forbidden to doubt upon
pain of execrable injuries; a new way of persuading! Thank God, I am not
to be cuffed into belief. Let them be angry with those who accuse their
opinion of falsity; I only accuse it of difficulty and boldness, and
condemn the opposite affirmation equally, if not so imperiously, with
them. He who will establish this proposition by authority and huffing
discovers his reason to be very weak. For a verbal and scholastic
altercation let them have as much appearance as their contradictors;
"Videantur sane, non affirmentur modo;"
["They may indeed appear to be; let them not be affirmed (Let them
state the probabilities, but not affirm.)"
—Cicero, Acad., n. 27.]
but in the real consequence they draw from it these have much the
advantage. To kill men, a clear and strong light is required, and our life
is too real and essential to warrant these supernatural and fantastic
accidents.
As to drugs and poisons, I throw them out of my count, as being the worst
sort of homicides: yet even in this, 'tis said, that men are not always to
rely upon the personal confessions of these people; for they have
sometimes been known to accuse themselves of the murder of persons who
have afterwards been found living and well. In these other extravagant
accusations, I should be apt to say, that it is sufficient a man, what
recommendation soever he may have, be believed as to human things; but of
what is beyond his conception, and of supernatural effect, he ought then
only to be believed when authorised by a supernatural approbation. The
privilege it has pleased Almighty God to give to some of our witnesses,
ought not to be lightly communicated and made cheap. I have my ears
battered with a thousand such tales as these: "Three persons saw him such
a day in the east three, the next day in the west: at such an hour, in
such a place, and in such habit"; assuredly I should not believe it
myself. How much more natural and likely do I find it that two men should
lie than that one man in twelve hours' time should fly with the wind from
east to west? How much more natural that our understanding should be
carried from its place by the volubility of our disordered minds, than
that one of us should be carried by a strange spirit upon a broomstaff,
flesh and bones as we are, up the shaft of a chimney? Let not us seek
illusions from without and unknown, we who are perpetually agitated with
illusions domestic and our own. Methinks one is pardonable in disbelieving
a miracle, at least, at all events where one can elude its verification as
such, by means not miraculous; and I am of St. Augustine's opinion, that,
"'tis better to lean towards doubt than assurance, in things hard to prove
and dangerous to believe."
'Tis now some years ago that I travelled through the territories of a
sovereign prince, who, in my favour, and to abate my incredulity, did me
the honour to let me see, in his own presence, and in a private place, ten
or twelve prisoners of this kind, and amongst others, an old woman, a real
witch in foulness and deformity, who long had been famous in that
profession. I saw both proofs and free confessions, and I know not what
insensible mark upon the miserable creature: I examined and talked with
her and the rest as much and as long as I would, and gave the best and
soundest attention I could, and I am not a man to suffer my judgment to be
made captive by prepossession. In the end, and in all conscience, I should
rather have prescribed them hellebore than hemlock;
"Captisque res magis mentibus, quam consceleratis similis visa;"
["The thing was rather to be attributed to madness, than malice."
("The thing seemed to resemble minds possessed rather than guilty.")
—Livy, viii, 18.]
justice has its corrections proper for such maladies. As to the
oppositions and arguments that worthy men have made to me, both there, and
often in other places, I have met with none that have convinced me, and
that have not admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions. It
is true, indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded upon
experience and fact, I do not go about to untie, neither have they any
end; I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot. After all, 'tis
setting a man's conjectures at a very high price upon them to cause a man
to be roasted alive.
We are told by several examples, as Praestantius of his father, that being
more profoundly, asleep than men usually are, he fancied himself to be a
mare, and that he served the soldiers for a sumpter; and what he fancied
himself to be, he really proved. If sorcerers dream so materially; if
dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with effects, still I
cannot believe that therefore our will should be accountable to justice;
which I say as one who am neither judge nor privy councillor, and who
think myself by many degrees unworthy so to be, but a man of the common
sort, born and avowed to the obedience of the public reason, both in its
words and acts. He who should record my idle talk as being to the
prejudice of the pettiest law, opinion, or custom of his parish, would do
himself a great deal of wrong, and me much more; for, in what I say, I
warrant no other certainty, but that 'tis what I had then in my thought, a
tumultuous and wavering thought. All I say is by way of discourse, and
nothing by way of advice:
"Nec me pudet, ut istos fateri nescire, quod nesciam;"
["Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what
I do not know."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 25.]
I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed; and so I
told a great man, who complained of the tartness and contentiousness of my
exhortations. Perceiving you to be ready and prepared on one part, I
propose to you the other, with all the diligence and care I can, to clear
your judgment, not to compel it. God has your hearts in His hands, and
will furnish you with the means of choice. I am not so presumptuous even
as to desire that my opinions should bias you—in a thing of so great
importance: my fortune has not trained them up to so potent and elevated
conclusions. Truly, I have not only a great many humours, but also a great
many opinions, that I would endeavour to make my son dislike, if I had
one. What, if the truest are not always the most commodious to man, being
of so wild a composition?
Whether it be to the purpose or not, tis no great matter: 'tis a common
proverb in Italy, that he knows not Venus in her perfect sweetness who has
never lain with a lame mistress. Fortune, or some particular incident,
long ago put this saying into the mouths of the people; and the same is
said of men as well as of women; for the queen of the Amazons answered the
Scythian who courted her to love, "Lame men perform best." In this
feminine republic, to evade the dominion of the males, they lamed them in
their infancy—arms, legs, and other members that gave them advantage
over them, and only made use of them in that wherein we, in these parts of
the world, make use of them. I should have been apt to think; that the
shuffling pace of the lame mistress added some new pleasure to the work,
and some extraordinary titillation to those who were at the sport; but I
have lately learnt that ancient philosophy has itself determined it, which
says that the legs and thighs of lame women, not receiving, by reason of
their imperfection, their due aliment, it falls out that the genital parts
above are fuller and better supplied and much more vigorous; or else that
this defect, hindering exercise, they who are troubled with it less
dissipate their strength, and come more entire to the sports of Venus;
which also is the reason why the Greeks decried the women-weavers as being
more hot than other women by reason of their sedentary trade, which they
carry on without any great exercise of the body. What is it we may not
reason of at this rate? I might also say of these, that the jaggling about
whilst so sitting at work, rouses and provokes their desire, as the
swinging and jolting of coaches does that of our ladies.
Do not these examples serve to make good what I said at first: that our
reasons often anticipate the effect, and have so infinite an extent of
jurisdiction that they judge and exercise themselves even on inanity
itself and non-existency? Besides the flexibility of our invention to
forge reasons of all sorts of dreams, our imagination is equally facile to
receive impressions of falsity by very frivolous appearances; for, by the
sole authority of the ancient and common use of this proverb, I have
formerly made myself believe that I have had more pleasure in a woman by
reason she was not straight, and accordingly reckoned that deformity
amongst her graces.
Torquato Tasso, in the comparison he makes betwixt France and Italy, says
that he has observed that our legs are generally smaller than those of the
Italian gentlemen, and attributes the cause of it to our being continually
on horseback; which is the very same cause from which Suetonius draws a
quite opposite conclusion; for he says, on the contrary, that Germanicus
had made his legs bigger by the continuation of the same exercise.
Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding; it is the shoe of
Theramenes, fit for all feet. It is double and diverse, and the matters
are double and diverse too. "Give me a drachm of silver," said a Cynic
philosopher to Antigonus. "That is not a present befitting a king,"
replied he. "Give me then a talent," said the other. "That is not a
present befitting a Cynic."
"Seu plures calor ille vias et caeca relaxat
Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in herbas
Seu durat magis, et venas astringit hiantes;
Ne tenues pluviae, rapidive potentia colic
Acrior, aut Boreae penetrabile frigus adurat."
["Whether the heat opens more passages and secret pores through
which the sap may be derived into the new-born herbs; or whether it
rather hardens and binds the gaping veins that the small showers and
keen influence of the violent sun or penetrating cold of Boreas may
not hurt them."—Virg., Georg., i. 89.]
"Ogni medaglia ha il suo rovescio."
["Every medal has its reverse."—Italian Proverb.]
This is the reason why Clitomachus said of old that Carneades had outdone
the labours of Hercules, in having eradicated consent from men, that is to
say, opinion and the courage of judging. This so vigorous fancy of
Carneades sprang, in my opinion, anciently from the impudence of those who
made profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit. AEsop
was set to sale with two other slaves; the buyer asked the first of these
what he could do; he, to enhance his own value, promised mountains and
marvels, saying he could do this and that, and I know not what; the second
said as much of himself or more: when it came to AEsop's turn, and that he
was also asked what he could do; "Nothing," said he, "for these two have
taken up all before me; they know everything." So has it happened in the
school of philosophy: the pride of those who attributed the capacity of
all things to the human mind created in others, out of despite and
emulation, this opinion, that it is capable of nothing: the one maintain
the same extreme in ignorance that the others do in knowledge; to make it
undeniably manifest that man is immoderate throughout, and can never stop
but of necessity and the want of ability to proceed further.
CHAPTER XII——OF PHYSIOGNOMY
Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and trust; and 'tis
not amiss; we could not choose worse than by ourselves in so weak an age.
That image of Socrates' discourses, which his friends have transmitted to
us, we approve upon no other account than a reverence to public sanction:
'tis not according to our own knowledge; they are not after our way; if
anything of the kind should spring up now, few men would value them. We
discern no graces that are not pointed and puffed out and inflated by art;
such as glide on in their own purity and simplicity easily escape so gross
a sight as ours; they have a delicate and concealed beauty, such as
requires a clear and purified sight to discover its secret light. Is not
simplicity, as we take it, cousin-german to folly and a quality of
reproach? Socrates makes his soul move a natural and common motion: a
peasant said this; a woman said that; he has never anybody in his mouth
but carters, joiners, cobblers, and masons; his are inductions and
similitudes drawn from the most common and known actions of men; every one
understands him. We should never have recognised the nobility and
splendour of his admirable conceptions under so mean a form; we, who think
all things low and flat that are not elevated, by learned doctrine, and
who discern no riches but in pomp and show. This world of ours is only
formed for ostentation: men are only puffed up with wind, and are bandied
to and fro like tennis-balls. He proposed to himself no vain and idle
fancies; his design was to furnish us with precepts and things that more
really and fitly serve to the use of life;
"Servare modum, finemque tenere,
Naturamque sequi."
["To keep a just mean, to observe a just limit,
and to follow Nature."—Lucan, ii. 381.]
He was also always one and the same, and raised himself, not by starts but
by complexion, to the highest pitch of vigour; or, to say better, mounted
not at all, but rather brought down, reduced, and subjected all asperities
and difficulties to his original and natural condition; for in Cato 'tis
most manifest that 'tis a procedure extended far beyond the common ways of
men: in the brave exploits of his life, and in his death, we find him
always mounted upon the great horse; whereas the other ever creeps upon
the ground, and with a gentle and ordinary pace, treats of the most useful
matters, and bears himself, both at his death and in the rudest
difficulties that could present themselves, in the ordinary way of human
life.
It has fallen out well that the man most worthy to be known and to be
presented to the world for example should be he of whom we have the most
certain knowledge; he has been pried into by the most clear-sighted men
that ever were; the testimonies we have of him are admirable both in
fidelity and fulness. 'Tis a great thing that he was able so to order the
pure imaginations of a child, that, without altering or wresting them, he
thereby produced the most beautiful effects of our soul: he presents it
neither elevated nor rich; he only represents it sound, but assuredly with
a brisk and full health. By these common and natural springs, by these
ordinary and popular fancies, without being moved or put out, he set up
not only the most regular, but the most high and vigorous beliefs,
actions, and manners that ever were. 'Tis he who brought again from
heaven, where she lost her time, human wisdom, to restore her to man with
whom her most just and greatest business lies. See him plead before his
judges; observe by what reasons he rouses his courage to the hazards of
war; with what arguments he fortifies his patience against calumny,
tyranny, death, and the perverseness of his wife: you will find nothing in
all this borrowed from arts and sciences: the simplest may there discover
their own means and strength; 'tis not possible more to retire or to creep
more low. He has done human nature a great kindness in showing it how much
it can do of itself.
We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow
and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of
our own. Man can in nothing fix himself to his actual necessity: of
pleasure, wealth, and power, he grasps at more than he can hold; his
greediness is incapable of moderation. And I find that in curiosity of
knowing he is the same; he cuts himself out more work than he can do, and
more than he needs to do: extending the utility of knowledge to the full
of its matter:
"Ut omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque, intemperantia laboramus."
["We carry intemperance into the study of literature, as well as
into everything else."—Seneca, Ep., 106.]
And Tacitus had reason to commend the mother of Agricola for having
restrained her son in his too violent appetite for learning.
Tis a good, if duly considered, which has in it, as the other goods of men
have, a great deal of vanity and weakness, proper and natural to itself,
and that costs very dear. Its acquisition is far more hazardous than that
of all other meat or drink; for, as to other things, what we have bought
we carry home in some vessel, and there have full leisure to examine our
purchase, how much we shall eat or drink of it, and when: but sciences we
can, at the very first, stow into no other vessel than the soul; we
swallow them in buying, and return from the market, either already
infected or amended: there are some that only burden and overcharge the
stomach, instead of nourishing; and, moreover, some that, under colour of
curing, poison us. I have been pleased, in places where I have been, to
see men in devotion vow ignorance as well as chastity, poverty, and
penitence: 'tis also a gelding of our unruly appetites, to blunt this
cupidity that spurs us on to the study of books, and to deprive the soul
of this voluptuous complacency that tickles us with the opinion of
knowledge: and 'tis plenarily to accomplish the vow of poverty, to add
unto it that of the mind. We need little doctrine to live at our ease; and
Socrates teaches us that this is in us, and the way how to find it, and
the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency which exceeds the natural is
well-nigh superfluous and vain: 'tis much if it does not rather burden and
cumber us than do us good:
"Paucis opus est literis ad mentem bonam:"
["Little learning is needed to form a sound mind."
—Seneca, Ep., 106.]
'tis a feverish excess of the mind; a tempestuous and unquiet instrument.
Do but recollect yourself, and you will find in yourself natural arguments
against death, true, and the fittest to serve you in time of necessity:
'tis they that make a peasant, and whole nations, die with as much
firmness as a philosopher. Should I have died less cheerfully before I had
read Cicero's Tusculan Quastiones? I believe not; and when I find myself
at the best, I perceive that my tongue is enriched indeed, but my courage
little or nothing elevated by them; that is just as nature framed it at
first, and defends itself against the conflict only after a natural and
ordinary way. Books have not so much served me for instruction as
exercise. What if knowledge, trying to arm us with new defences against
natural inconveniences, has more imprinted in our fancies their weight and
greatness, than her reasons and subtleties to secure us from them? They
are subtleties, indeed, with which she often alarms us to little purpose.
Do but observe how many slight and frivolous, and, if nearly examined,
incorporeal arguments, the closest and wisest authors scatter about one
good one: they are but verbal quirks and fallacies to amuse and gull us:
but forasmuch as it may be with some profit, I will sift them no further;
many of that sort are here and there dispersed up and down this book,
either borrowed or by imitation. Therefore one ought to take a little heed
not to call that force which is only a pretty knack of writing, and that
solid which is only sharp, or that good which is only fine:
"Quae magis gustata quam potata, delectant,"
["Which more delight in the tasting than in being drunk."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 5.]
everything that pleases does not nourish:
"Ubi non ingenii, sed animi negotium agitur."
["Where the question is not about the wit, but about the soul."
—Seneca, Ep., 75.]
To see the trouble that Seneca gives himself to fortify himself against
death; to see him so sweat and pant to harden and encourage himself, and
bustle so long upon this perch, would have lessened his reputation with
me, had he not very bravely held himself at the last. His so ardent and
frequent agitations discover that he was in himself impetuous and
passionate,
"Magnus animus remissius loquitur, et securius . . .
non est alius ingenio, alius ammo color;"
["A great courage speaks more calmly and more securely. There is
not one complexion for the wit and another for the mind."
—Seneca, Ep. 114, 115]
he must be convinced at his own expense; and he in some sort discovers
that he was hard pressed by his enemy. Plutarch's way, by how much it is
more disdainful and farther stretched, is, in my opinion, so much more
manly and persuasive: and I am apt to believe that his soul had more
assured and more regular motions. The one more sharp, pricks and makes us
start, and more touches the soul; the other more constantly solid, forms,
establishes, and supports us, and more touches the understanding. That
ravishes the judgment, this wins it. I have likewise seen other writings,
yet more reverenced than these, that in the representation of the conflict
they maintain against the temptations of the flesh, paint them, so sharp,
so powerful and invincible, that we ourselves, who are of the common herd,
are as much to wonder at the strangeness and unknown force of their
temptation, as at the resisting it.
To what end do we so arm ourselves with this harness of science? Let us
look down upon the poor people that we see scattered upon the face of the
earth, prone and intent upon their business, that neither know Aristotle
nor Cato, example nor precept; from these nature every day extracts
effects of constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we so
inquisitively study in the schools: how many do I ordinarily see who
slight poverty? how many who desire to die, or who die without alarm or
regret? He who is now digging in my garden, has this morning buried his
father or his son. The very names by which they call diseases sweeten and
mollify the sharpness of them: the phthisic is with them no more than a
cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, as they
gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very great and
grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they never keep
their beds but to die:
"Simplex illa et aperta virtus in obscuram et solertem
scientiam versa est."
["That overt and simple virtue is converted into an obscure and
subtle science."—Seneca, Ep., 95.]
I was writing this about the time when a great load of our intestine
troubles for several months lay with all its weight upon me; I had the
enemy at my door on one side, and the freebooters, worse enemies, on the
other,
"Non armis, sed vitiis, certatur;"
["The fight is not with arms, but with vices."—Seneca, Ep. 95.]
and underwent all sorts of military injuries at once:
"Hostis adest dextra laevaque a parte timendus.
Vicinoque malo terret utrumque latus."
["Right and left a formidable enemy is to be feared, and threatens
me on both sides with impending danger."—Ovid, De Ponto, i. 3, 57.]
A monstrous war! Other wars are bent against strangers, this against
itself, destroying itself with its own poison. It is of so malignant and
ruinous a nature, that it ruins itself with the rest; and with its own
rage mangles and tears itself to pieces. We more often see it dissolve of
itself than through scarcity of any necessary thing or by force of the
enemy. All discipline evades it; it comes to compose sedition, and is
itself full of it; would chastise disobedience, and itself is the example;
and, employed for the defence of the laws, rebels against its own. What a
condition are we in! Our physic makes us sick!
"Nostre mal s'empoisonne
Du secours qu'on luy donne."
"Exuperat magis, aegrescitque medendo."
["Our disease is poisoned with its very remedies"—AEnead, xii. 46.]
"Omnia fanda, nefanda, malo permista furore,
Justificam nobis mentem avertere deorum."
["Right and wrong, all shuffled together in this wicked fury, have
deprived us of the gods' protection."
—Catullus, De Nuptiis Pelei et Thetidos, V. 405.]
In the beginning of these popular maladies, one may distinguish the sound
from the sick; but when they come to continue, as ours have done, the
whole body is then infected from head to foot; no part is free from
corruption, for there is no air that men so greedily draw in that diffuses
itself so soon and that penetrates so deep as that of licence. Our armies
only subsist and are kept together by the cement of foreigners; for of
Frenchmen there is now no constant and regular army to be made. What a
shame it is! there is no longer any discipline but what we see in the
mercenary soldiers. As to ourselves, our conduct is at discretion, and
that not of the chief, but every one at his own. The general has a harder
game to play within than he has without; he it is who has to follow, to
court the soldiers, to give way to them; he alone has to obey: all the
rest if disolution and free licence. It pleases me to observe how much
pusillanimity and cowardice there is in ambition; by how abject and
servile ways it must arrive at its end; but it displeases me to see good
and generous natures, and that are capable of justice, every day corrupted
in the management and command of this confusion. Long toleration begets
habit; habit, consent and imitation. We had ill-formed souls enough,
without spoiling those that were generous and good; so that, if we hold
on, there will scarcely remain any with whom to intrust the health of this
State of ours, in case fortune chance to restore it:
"Hunc saltem everso juvenem succurrere seclo,
Ne prohibete."
["Forbid not, at least, that this young man repair this ruined age."
—Virgil, Georg., i. 500. Montaigne probably refers to Henry, king
of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV.]
What has become of the old precept, "That soldiers ought more to fear
their chief than the enemy"?—[Valerius Maximus, Ext. 2.]—and
of that wonderful example, that an orchard being enclosed within the
precincts of a camp of the Roman army, was seen at their dislodgment the
next day in the same condition, not an apple, though ripe and delicious,
being pulled off, but all left to the possessor? I could wish that our
youth, instead of the time they spend in less fruitful travels and less
honourable employments, would bestow one half of that time in being an
eye-witness of naval exploits, under some good captain of Rhodes, and the
other half in observing the discipline of the Turkish armies; for they
have many differences and advantages over ours; one of these is, that our
soldiers become more licentious in expeditions, theirs more temperate and
circumspect; for the thefts and insolencies committed upon the common
people, which are only punished with a cudgel in peace, are capital in
war; for an egg taken by a Turkish soldier without paying for it, fifty
blows with a stick is the fixed rate; for anything else, of what sort or
how trivial soever, not necessary to nourishment, they are presently
impaled or beheaded without mercy. I am astonished, in the history of
Selim, the most cruel conqueror that ever was, to see that when he subdued
Egypt, the beautiful gardens about Damascus being all open, and in a
conquered land, and his army encamped upon the very place, should be left
untouched by the hands of the soldiers, by reason they had not received
the signal of pillage.
But is there any disease in a government that it is worth while to physic
with such a mortal drug?—[i.e. as civil war.]—No, said
Favonius, not even the tyrannical usurpation of a Commonwealth. Plato,
likewise, will not consent that a man should violate the peace of his
country in order to cure it, and by no means approves of a reformation
that disturbs and hazards all, and that is to be purchased at the price of
the citizens' blood and ruin; determining it to be the duty of a good
patriot in such a case to let it alone, and only to pray to God for his
extraordinary assistance: and he seems to be angry with his great friend
Dion, for having proceeded somewhat after another manner. I was a
Platonist in this point before I knew there had ever been such a man as
Plato in the world. And if this person ought absolutely to be rejected
from our society (he who by the sincerity of his conscience merited from
the divine favour to penetrate so far into the Christian light, through
the universal darkness wherein the world was involved in his time), I do
not think it becomes us to suffer ourselves to be instructed by a heathen,
how great an impiety it is not to expect from God any relief simply his
own and without our co-operation. I often doubt, whether amongst so many
men as meddle in such affairs, there is not to be found some one of so
weak understanding as to have been really persuaded that he went towards
reformation by the worst of deformations; and advanced towards salvation
by the most express causes that we have of most assured damnation; that by
overthrowing government, the magistracy, and the laws, in whose protection
God has placed him, by dismembering his good mother, and giving her limbs
to be mangled by her old enemies, filling fraternal hearts with parricidal
hatreds, calling devils and furies to his aid, he can assist the most holy
sweetness and justice of the divine law. Ambition, avarice, cruelty, and
revenge have not sufficient natural impetuosity of their own; let us bait
them with the glorious titles of justice and devotion. There cannot a
worse state of things be imagined than where wickedness comes to be
legitimate, and assumes, with the magistrates' permission, the cloak of
virtue:
"Nihil in speciem fallacius, quam prava religio,
ubi deorum numen prxtenditur sceleribus."
["Nothing has a more deceiving face than false religion, where the
divinity of the gods is obscured by crimes."—Livy, xxxix. 16.]
The extremest sort of injustice, according to Plato, is where that which
is unjust should be reputed for just.
The common people then suffered very much, and not present damage only:
"Undique totis
Usque adeo turbatur agris,"
["Such great disorders overtake our fields on every side."
—Virgil, Eclog., i. II.]
but future too; the living were to suffer, and so were they who were yet
unborn; they stript them, and consequently myself, even of hope, taking
from them all they had laid up in store to live on for many years:
"Quae nequeunt secum ferre aut abducere, perdunt;
Et cremat insontes turba scelesta casas . . .
Muris nulla fides, squalent populatibus agri."
["What they cannot bear away, they spoil; and the wicked mob burn
harmless houses; walls cannot secure their masters, and the fields
are squalid with devastation."
—Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 35; Claudianus, In Eutyop., i. 244.]
Besides this shock, I suffered others: I underwent the inconveniences that
moderation brings along with it in such a disease: I was robbed on all
hands; to the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, and to the Guelph a Ghibelline;
one of my poets expresses this very well, but I know not where it is.
["So Tories called me Whig, and Whigs a Tory."—Pope, after Horace.]
The situation of my house, and my friendliness with my neighbours,
presented me with one face; my life and my actions with another. They did
not lay formal accusations to my charge, for they had no foundation for so
doing; I never hide my head from the laws, and whoever would have
questioned me, would have done himself a greater prejudice than me; they
were only mute suspicions that were whispered about, which never want
appearance in so confused a mixture, no more than envious or idle heads. I
commonly myself lend a hand to injurious presumptions that fortune
scatters abroad against me, by a way I have ever had of evading to
justify, excuse, or explain myself; conceiving that it were to compromise
my conscience to plead in its behalf:
"Perspicuitas enim argumentatione elevatur;"
["For perspicuity is lessened by argument."
("The clearness of a cause is clouded by argumentation.")
—Cicero, De Nat. Deor., iii. 4.]
and, as if every one saw as clearly into me as I do myself, instead of
retiring from an accusation, I step up to meet it, and rather give it some
kind of colour by an ironical and scoffing confession, if I do not sit
totally mute, as of a thing not worth my answer. But such as look upon
this kind of behaviour of mine as too haughty a confidence, have as little
kindness for me as they who interpret the weakness of an indefensible
cause; namely, the great folks, towards whom want of submission is the
great fault, harsh towards all justice that knows and feels itself, and is
not submissive humble, and suppliant; I have often knocked my head against
this pillar. So it is that at what then befell me, an ambitious man would
have hanged himself, and a covetous man would have done the same. I have
no manner of care of getting;
"Si mihi, quod nunc est, etiam minus; et mihi vivam
Quod superest aevi, si quid superesse volent dii:"
["If I may have what I now own, or even less, and may live for
myself what of life remains, if the gods grant me remaining years."
—Horace, Ep., i. 18, 107.]
but the losses that befall me by the injury of others, whether by theft or
violence, go almost as near my heart as they would to that of the most
avaricious man. The offence troubles me, without comparison, more than the
loss. A thousand several sorts of mischiefs fell upon me in the neck of
one another; I could more cheerfully have borne them all at once.
I was already considering to whom, amongst my friends, I might commit a
necessitous and discredited old age; and having turned my eyes quite
round, I found myself bare. To let one's self fall plump down, and from so
great a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, and
fortunate friendship: these are very rare, if there be any. At last, I saw
that it was safest for me to trust to myself in my necessity; and if it
should so fall out, that I should be but upon cold terms in Fortune's
favour, I should so much the more pressingly recommend me to my own, and
attach myself and look to myself all the more closely. Men on all
occasions throw themselves upon foreign assistance to spare their own,
which is alone certain and sufficient to him who knows how therewith to
arm himself. Every one runs elsewhere, and to the future, forasmuch as no
one is arrived at himself. And I was satisfied that they were profitable
inconveniences; forasmuch as, first, ill scholars are to be admonished
with the rod, when reason will not do, as a crooked piece of wood is by
fire and straining reduced to straightness. I have a great while preached
to myself to stick close to my own concerns, and separate myself from the
affairs of others; yet I am still turning my eyes aside. A bow, a
favourable word, a kind look from a great person tempts me; of which God
knows if there is scarcity in these days, and what they signify. I,
moreover, without wrinkling my forehead, hearken to the persuasions
offered me, to draw me into the marketplace, and so gently refuse, as if I
were half willing to be overcome. Now for so indocile a spirit blows are
required; this vessel which thus chops and cleaves, and is ready to fall
one piece from another, must have the hoops forced down with good sound
strokes of a mallet. Secondly, that this accident served me for exercise
to prepare me for worse, if I, who both by the benefit of fortune, and by
the condition of my manners, hoped to be among the last, should happen to
be one of the first assailed by this storm; instructing myself betimes to
constrain my life, and fit it for a new state. The true liberty is to be
able to do what a man will with himself:
"Potentissimus est, qui se habet in potestate."
["He is most potent who is master of himself."—Seneca, Ep., 94.]
In an ordinary and quiet time, a man prepares himself for moderate and
common accidents; but in the confusion wherein we have been for these
thirty years, every Frenchman, whether personal or in general, sees
himself every hour upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of his
fortune: by so much the more ought he to have his courage supplied with
the strongest and most vigorous provisions. Let us thank fortune, that has
not made us live in an effeminate, idle, and languishing age; some who
could never have been so by other means will be made famous by their
misfortunes. As I seldom read in histories the confusions of other states
without regret that I was not present, the better to consider them, so
does my curiosity make me in some sort please myself in seeing with my own
eyes this notable spectacle of our public death, its form and symptoms;
and since I cannot hinder it, I am content to have been destined to be
present therein, and thereby to instruct myself. So do we eagerly covet to
see, though but in shadow and the fables of theatres, the pomp of tragic
representations of human fortune; 'tis not without compassion at what we
hear, but we please ourselves in rousing our displeasure, by the rarity of
these pitiable events. Nothing tickles that does not pinch. And good
historians skip over, as stagnant water and dead sea, calm narrations, to
return to seditions, to wars, to which they know that we invite them.
I question whether I can decently confess with how small a sacrifice of
its repose and tranquillity I have passed over above the one half of my
life amid the ruin of my country. I lend myself my patience somewhat too
cheap, in accidents that do not privately assail me; and do not so much
regard what they take from me, as what remains safe, both within and
without. There is comfort in evading, one while this, another while that,
of the evils that are levelled at ourselves too, at last, but at present
hurt others only about us; as also, that in matters of public interest,
the more universally my affection is dispersed, the weaker it is: to which
may be added, that it is half true:
"Tantum ex publicis malis sentimus,
quantum ad privatas res pertinet;"
["We are only so far sensible of public evils as they respect our
private affairs."—Livy, xxx. 44.]
and that the health from which we fell was so ill, that itself relieves
the regret we should have for it. It was health, but only in comparison
with the sickness that has succeeded it: we are not fallen from any great
height; the corruption and brigandage which are in dignity and office seem
to me the least supportable: we are less injuriously rifled in a wood than
in a place of security. It was an universal juncture of particular
members, each corrupted by emulation of the others, and most of them with
old ulcers, that neither received nor required any cure. This convulsion,
therefore, really more animated than pressed me, by the assistance of my
conscience, which was not only at peace within itself, but elevated, and I
did not find any reason to complain of myself. Also, as God never sends
evils, any more than goods, absolutely pure to men, my health continued at
that time more than usually good; and, as I can do nothing without it,
there are few things that I cannot do with it. It afforded me means to
rouse up all my faculties, and to lay my hand before the wound that would
else, peradventure, have gone farther; and I experienced, in my patience,
that I had some stand against fortune, and that it must be a great shock
could throw me out of the saddle. I do not say this to provoke her to give
me a more vigorous charge: I am her humble servant, and submit to her
pleasure: let her be content, in God's name. Am I sensible of her
assaults? Yes, I am. But, as those who are possessed and oppressed with
sorrow sometimes suffer themselves, nevertheless, by intervals to taste a
little pleasure, and are sometimes surprised with a smile, so have I so
much power over myself, as to make my ordinary condition quiet and free
from disturbing thoughts; yet I suffer myself, withal, by fits to be
surprised with the stings of those unpleasing imaginations that assault
me, whilst I am arming myself to drive them away, or at least to wrestle
with them.
But behold another aggravation of the evil which befell me in the tail of
the rest: both without doors and within I was assailed with a most violent
plague, violent in comparison of all others; for as sound bodies are
subject to more grievous maladies, forasmuch as they, are not to be forced
but by such, so my very healthful air, where no contagion, however near,
in the memory of man, ever took footing, coming to be corrupted, produced
strange effects:
"Mista senum et juvenum densentur funera; nullum
Saeva caput Proserpina fugit;"
["Old and young die in mixed heaps. Cruel Proserpine forbears
none."—Horace, Od., i. 28, 19.]
I had to suffer this pleasant condition, that the sight of my house, was
frightful to me; whatever I had there was without guard, and left to the
mercy of any one who wished to take it. I myself, who am so hospitable,
was in very great distress for a retreat for my family; a distracted
family, frightful both to its friends and itself, and filling every place
with horror where it attempted to settle, having to shift its abode so
soon as any one's finger began but to ache; all diseases are then
concluded to be the plague, and people do not stay to examine whether they
are so or no. And the mischief on't is that, according to the rules of
art, in every danger that a man comes near, he must undergo a quarantine
in fear of the evil, your imagination all the while tormenting you at
pleasure, and turning even your health itself into a fever. Yet all this
would have much less affected me had I not withal been compelled to be
sensible of the sufferings of others, and miserably to serve six months
together for a guide to this caravan; for I carry my own antidotes within
myself, which are resolution and patience. Apprehension, which is
particularly feared in this disease, does not much trouble me; and, if
being alone, I should have been taken, it had been a less cheerless and
more remote departure; 'tis a kind of death that I do not think of the
worst sort; 'tis commonly short, stupid, without pain, and consoled by the
public condition; without ceremony, without mourning, without a crowd. But
as to the people about us, the hundredth part of them could not be saved:
"Videas desertaque regna
Pastorum, et longe saltus lateque vacantes."
["You would see shepherds' haunts deserted, and far and wide empty
pastures."—Virgil, Georg., iii. 476.]
In this place my largest revenue is manual: what an hundred men ploughed
for me, lay a long time fallow.
But then, what example of resolution did we not see in the simplicity of
all this people? Generally, every one renounced all care of life; the
grapes, the principal wealth of the country, remained untouched upon the
vines; every man indifferently prepared for and expected death, either
to-night or to-morrow, with a countenance and voice so far from fear, as
if they had come to terms with this necessity, and that it was an
universal and inevitable sentence. 'Tis always such; but how slender hold
has the resolution of dying? The distance and difference of a few hours,
the sole consideration of company, renders its apprehension various to us.
Observe these people; by reason that they die in the same month, children,
young people, and old, they are no longer astonished at it; they no longer
lament. I saw some who were afraid of staying behind, as in a dreadful
solitude; and I did not commonly observe any other solicitude amongst them
than that of sepulture; they were troubled to see the dead bodies
scattered about the fields, at the mercy of the wild beasts that presently
flocked thither. How differing are the fancies of men; the Neorites, a
nation subjected by Alexander, threw the bodies of their dead into the
deepest and less frequented part of their woods, on purpose to have them
there eaten; the only sepulture reputed happy amongst them. Some, who were
yet in health, dug their own graves; others laid themselves down in them
whilst alive; and a labourer of mine, in dying, with his hands and feet
pulled the earth upon him. Was not this to nestle and settle himself to
sleep at greater ease? A bravery in some sort like that of the Roman
soldiers who, after the battle of Cannae, were found with their heads
thrust into holes in the earth, which they had made, and in suffocating
themselves, with their own hands pulled the earth about their ears. In
short, a whole province was, by the common usage, at once brought to a
course nothing inferior in undauntedness to the most studied and
premeditated resolution.
Most of the instructions of science to encourage us herein have in them
more of show than of force, and more of ornament than of effect. We have
abandoned Nature, and will teach her what to do; teach her who so happily
and so securely conducted us; and in the meantime, from the footsteps of
her instruction, and that little which, by the benefit of ignorance,
remains of her image imprinted in the life of this rustic rout of
unpolished men, science is constrained every day to borrow patterns for
her disciples of constancy, tranquillity, and innocence. It is pretty to
see that these persons, full of so much fine knowledge, have to imitate
this foolish simplicity, and this in the primary actions of virtue; and
that our wisdom must learn even from beasts the most profitable
instructions in the greatest and most necessary concerns of our life; as,
how we are to live and die, manage our property, love and bring up our
children, maintain justice: a singular testimony of human infirmity; and
that this reason we so handle at our pleasure, finding evermore some
diversity and novelty, leaves in us no apparent trace of nature. Men have
done with nature as perfumers with oils; they have sophisticated her with
so many argumentations and far-fetched discourses, that she is become
variable and particular to each, and has lost her proper, constant, and
universal face; so that we must seek testimony from beasts, not subject to
favour, corruption, or diversity of opinions. It is, indeed, true that
even these themselves do not always go exactly in the path of nature, but
wherein they swerve, it is so little that you may always see the track; as
horses that are led make many bounds and curvets, but 'tis always at the
length of the halter, and still follow him that leads them; and as a young
hawk takes its flight, but still under the restraint of its tether:
"Exsilia, torments, bells, morbos, naufragia meditare . . .
ut nullo sis malo tiro."
["To meditate upon banishments, tortures, wars, diseases, and
shipwrecks, that thou mayest not be a novice in any disaster."
—Seneca, Ep., 91, 107.]
What good will this curiosity do us, to anticipate all the inconveniences
of human nature, and to prepare ourselves with so much trouble against
things which, peradventure, will never befall us?
"Parem passis tristitiam facit, pati posse;"
["It troubles men as much that they may possibly suffer,
as if they really did suffer."—Idem, ibid., 74.]
not only the blow, but the wind of the blow strikes us: or, like phrenetic
people—for certainly it is a phrensy—to go immediately and
whip yourself, because it may so fall out that Fortune may one day make
you undergo it; and to put on your furred gown at Midsummer, because you
will stand in need of it at Christmas! Throw yourselves, say they, into
the experience of all the evils, the most extreme evils that can possibly
befall you, and so be assured of them. On the contrary, the most easy and
most natural way would be to banish even the thoughts of them; they will
not come soon enough; their true being will not continue with us long
enough; our mind must lengthen and extend them; we must incorporate them
in us beforehand, and there entertain them, as if they would not otherwise
sufficiently press upon our senses. "We shall find them heavy enough when
they come," says one of our masters, of none of the tender sects, but of
the most severe; "in the meantime, favour thyself; believe what pleases
thee best; what good will it do thee to anticipate thy ill fortune, to
lose the present for fear of the future: and to make thyself miserable
now, because thou art to be so in time?" These are his words. Science,
indeed, does us one good office in instructing us exactly as to the
dimensions of evils,
"Curis acuens mortalia corda!"
["Probing mortal hearts with cares."—Virgil, Georg., i. 23.]
'Twere pity that any part of their greatness should escape our sense and
knowledge.
'Tis certain that for the most part the preparation for death has
administered more torment than the thing itself. It was of old truly said,
and by a very judicious author:
"Minus afficit sensus fatigatio, quam cogitatio."
["Suffering itself less afflicts the senses than the apprehension
of suffering."—Quintilian, Inst. Orat., i. 12.]
The sentiment of present death sometimes, of itself, animates us with a
prompt resolution not to avoid a thing that is utterly inevitable: many
gladiators have been seen in the olden time, who, after having fought
timorously and ill, have courageously entertained death, offering their
throats to the enemies' sword and bidding them despatch. The sight of
future death requires a courage that is slow, and consequently hard to be
got. If you know not how to die, never trouble yourself; nature will, at
the time, fully and sufficiently instruct you: she will exactly do that
business for you; take you no care—
"Incertam frustra, mortales, funeris horam,
Quaeritis et qua sit mors aditura via....
Poena minor certam subito perferre ruinam;
Quod timeas, gravius sustinuisse diu."
["Mortals, in vain you seek to know the uncertain hour of death,
and by what channel it will come upon you."—Propertius, ii. 27, 1.
"'Tis less painful to undergo sudden destruction; 'tis hard to bear
that which you long fear."—Incert. Auct.]
We trouble life by the care of death, and death by the care of life: the
one torments, the other frights us. It is not against death that we
prepare, that is too momentary a thing; a quarter of an hour's suffering,
without consequence and without damage, does not deserve especial
precepts: to say the truth, we prepare ourselves against the preparations
of death. Philosophy ordains that we should always have death before our
eyes, to see and consider it before the time, and then gives us rules and
precautions to provide that this foresight and thought do us no harm; just
so do physicians, who throw us into diseases, to the end they may have
whereon to employ their drugs and their art. If we have not known how to
live, 'tis injustice to teach us how to die, and make the end difform from
all the rest; if we have known how to live firmly and quietly, we shall
know how to die so too. They may boast as much as they please:
"Tota philosophorum vita commentatio mortis est;"
["The whole life of philosophers is the meditation of death."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 30.]
but I fancy that, though it be the end, it is not the aim of life; 'tis
its end, its extremity, but not, nevertheless, its object; it ought itself
to be its own aim and design; its true study is to order, govern, and
suffer itself. In the number of several other offices, that the general
and principal chapter of Knowing how to live comprehends, is this article
of Knowing how to die; and, did not our fears give it weight, one of the
lightest too.
To judge of them by utility and by the naked truth, the lessons of
simplicity are not much inferior to those which learning teaches us: nay,
quite the contrary. Men differ in sentiment and force; we must lead them
to their own good according to their capacities and by various ways:
"Quo me comque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes."
["Wherever the season takes me,(where the tempest drives me)
there I am carried as a guest."—Horace, Ep., i. i, 15.]
I never saw any peasant among my neighbours cogitate with what countenance
and assurance he should pass over his last hour; nature teaches him not to
think of death till he is dying; and then he does it with a better grace
than Aristotle, upon whom death presses with a double weight, both of
itself and from so long a premeditation; and, therefore, it was the
opinion of Caesar, that the least premeditated death was the easiest and
the most happy:
"Plus dolet quam necesse est, qui ante dolet, quam necesse est."
["He grieves more than is necessary, who grieves before it is
necessary."—Seneca, Ep., 98.]
The sharpness of this imagination springs from our curiosity: 'tis thus we
ever impede ourselves, desiring to anticipate and regulate natural
prescripts. It is only for the doctors to dine worse for it, when in the
best health, and to frown at the image of death; the common sort stand in
need of no remedy or consolation, but just in the shock, and when the blow
comes; and consider on't no more than just what they endure. Is it not
then, as we say, that the stolidity and want of apprehension in the vulgar
give them that patience m present evils, and that profound carelessness of
future sinister accidents? That their souls, in being more gross and dull,
are less penetrable and not so easily moved? If it be so, let us
henceforth, in God's name, teach nothing but ignorance; 'tis the utmost
fruit the sciences promise us, to which this stolidity so gently leads its
disciples.
We have no want of good masters, interpreters of natural simplicity.
Socrates shall be one; for, as I remember, he speaks something to this
purpose to the judges who sat upon his life and death.
[That which follows is taken from the Apology of Socrates in Plato,
chap. 17, &c.]
"I am afraid, my masters, that if I entreat you not to put me to death, I
shall confirm the charge of my accusers, which is, that I pretend to be
wiser than others, as having some more secret knowledge of things that are
above and below us. I have neither frequented nor known death, nor have
ever seen any person that has tried its qualities, from whom to inform
myself. Such as fear it, presuppose they know it; as for my part, I
neither know what it is, nor what they do in the other world. Death is,
peradventure, an indifferent thing; peradventure, a thing to be desired.
'Tis nevertheless to be believed, if it be a transmigration from one place
to another, that it is a bettering of one's condition to go and live with
so many great persons deceased, and to be exempt from having any more to
do with unjust and corrupt judges; if it be an annihilation of our being,
'tis yet a bettering of one's condition to enter into a long and peaceable
night; we find nothing more sweet in life than quiet repose and a profound
sleep without dreams. The things that I know to be evil, as to injure
one's neighbour and to disobey one's superior, whether it be God or man, I
carefully avoid; such as I do not know whether they be good or evil, I
cannot fear them. If I am to die and leave you alive, the gods alone only
know whether it will go better with you or with me. Wherefore, as to what
concerns me, you may do as you shall think fit. But according to my method
of advising just and profitable things, I say that you will do your
consciences more right to set me at liberty, unless you see further into
my cause than I do; and, judging according to my past actions, both public
and private, according to my intentions, and according to the profit that
so many of our citizens, both young and old, daily extract from my
conversation, and the fruit that you all reap from me, you cannot more
duly acquit yourselves towards my merit than in ordering that, my poverty
considered, I should be maintained at the Prytanaeum, at the public
expense, a thing that I have often known you, with less reason, grant to
others. Do not impute it to obstinacy or disdain that I do not, according
to the custom, supplicate and go about to move you to commiseration. I
have both friends and kindred, not being, as Homer says, begotten of wood
or of stone, no more than others, who might well present themselves before
you with tears and mourning, and I have three desolate children with whom
to move you to compassion; but I should do a shame to our city at the age
I am, and in the reputation of wisdom which is now charged against me, to
appear in such an abject form. What would men say of the other Athenians?
I have always admonished those who have frequented my lectures, not to
redeem their lives by an unbecoming action; and in the wars of my country,
at Amphipolis, Potidea, Delia, and other expeditions where I have been, I
have effectually manifested how far I was from securing my safety by my
shame. I should, moreover, compromise your duty, and should invite you to
unbecoming things; for 'tis not for my prayers to persuade you, but for
the pure and solid reasons of justice. You have sworn to the gods to keep
yourselves upright; and it would seem as if I suspected you, or would
recriminate upon you that I do not believe that you are so; and I should
testify against myself, not to believe them as I ought, mistrusting their
conduct, and not purely committing my affair into their hands. I wholly
rely upon them; and hold myself assured they will do in this what shall be
most fit both for you and for me: good men, whether living or dead, have
no reason to fear the gods."
Is not this an innocent child's pleading of an unimaginable loftiness,
true, frank, and just, unexampled?—and in what a necessity employed!
Truly, he had very good reason to prefer it before that which the great
orator Lysias had penned for him: admirably couched, indeed, in the
judiciary style, but unworthy of so noble a criminal. Had a suppliant
voice been heard out of the mouth of Socrates, that lofty virtue had
struck sail in the height of its glory; and ought his rich and powerful
nature to have committed her defence to art, and, in her highest proof,
have renounced truth and simplicity, the ornaments of his speaking, to
adorn and deck herself with the embellishments of figures and the
flourishes of a premeditated speech? He did very wisely, and like himself,
not to corrupt the tenor of an incorrupt life, and so sacred an image of
the human form, to spin out his decrepitude another year, and to betray
the immortal memory of that glorious end. He owed his life not to himself,
but to the example of the world; had it not been a public damage, that he
should have concluded it after a lazy and obscure manner? Assuredly, that
careless and indifferent consideration of his death deserved that
posterity should consider it so much the more, as indeed they did; and
there is nothing so just in justice than that which fortune ordained for
his recommendation; for the Athenians abominated all those who had been
causers of his death to such a degree, that they avoided them as
excommunicated persons, and looked upon everything as polluted that had
been touched by them; no one would wash with them in the public baths,
none would salute or own acquaintance with them: so that, at last, unable
longer to support this public hatred, they hanged themselves.
If any one shall think that, amongst so many other examples that I had to
choose out of in the sayings of Socrates for my present purpose, I have
made an ill choice of this, and shall judge this discourse of his elevated
above common conceptions, I must tell them that I have properly selected
it; for I am of another opinion, and hold it to be a discourse, in rank
and simplicity, much below and behind common conceptions. He represents,
in an inartificial boldness and infantine security, the pure and first
impression and ignorance of nature; for it is to be believed that we have
naturally a fear of pain, but not of death, by reason of itself; 'tis a
part of our being, and no less essential than living.
To what end should nature have begotten in us a hatred to it and a horror
of it, considering that it is of so great utility to her in maintaining
the succession and vicissitude of her works? and that in this universal
republic, it conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss or ruin?
"Sic rerum summa novatur."
"Mille animas una necata dedit."
"The failing of one life is the passage to a thousand other lives."
Nature has imprinted in beasts the care of themselves and of their
conservation; they proceed so far as hitting or hurting to be timorous of
being worse, of themselves, of our haltering and beating them, accidents
subject to their sense and experience; but that we should kill them, they
cannot fear, nor have they the faculty to imagine and conclude such a
thing as death; it is said, indeed, that we see them not only cheerfully
undergo it, horses for the most part neighing and swans singing when they
die, but, moreover, seek it at need, of which elephants have given many
examples.
Besides, the method of arguing, of which Socrates here makes use, is it
not equally admirable both in simplicity and vehemence? Truly it is much
more easy to speak like Aristotle and to live like Caesar than to speak
and live as Socrates did; there lies the extreme degree of perfection and
difficulty; art cannot reach it. Now, our faculties are not so trained up;
we do not try, we do not know them; we invest ourselves with those of
others, and let our own lie idle; as some one may say of me, that I have
here only made a nosegay of foreign flowers, having furnished nothing of
my own but the thread to tie them.
Certainly I have so far yielded to public opinion, that those borrowed
ornaments accompany me; but I do not mean that they shall cover me and
hide me; that is quite contrary to my design, who desire to make a show of
nothing but what is my own, and what is my own by nature; and had I taken
my own advice, I had at all hazards spoken purely alone, I more and more
load myself every day,
[In fact, the first edition of the Essays (Bordeaux, 1580) has very
few quotations. These became more numerous in the edition of 1588;
but the multitude of classical texts which at times encumber
Montaigne's text, only dates from the posthumous edition of 1595, he
had made these collections in the four last years of his life, as an
amusement of his "idleness."—Le Clerc. They grow, however, more
sparing in the Third Book.]
beyond my purpose and first method, upon the account of idleness and the
humour of the age. If it misbecome me, as I believe it does, 'tis no
matter; it may be of use to some others. Such there are who quote Plato
and Homer, who never saw either of them; and I also have taken things out
of places far enough distant from their source. Without pains and without
learning, having a thousand volumes about me in the place where I write, I
can presently borrow, if I please, from a dozen such scrap-gatherers,
people about whom I do not much trouble myself, wherewith to trick up this
treatise of Physiognomy; there needs no more but a preliminary epistle of
a German to stuff me with quotations. And so it is we go in quest of a
tickling story to cheat the foolish world. These lumber pies of
commonplaces, wherewith so many furnish their studies, are of little use
but to common subjects, and serve but to show us, and not to direct us: a
ridiculous fruit of learning, that Socrates so pleasantly discusses
against Euthydemus. I have seen books made of things that were never
either studied or understood; the author committing to several of his
learned friends the examination of this and t'other matter to compile it,
contenting himself, for his share, with having projected the design, and
by his industry to have tied together this faggot of unknown provisions;
the ink and paper, at least, are his. This is to buy or borrow a book, and
not to make one; 'tis to show men not that he can make a book, but that,
whereof they may be in doubt, he cannot make one. A president, where I
was, boasted that he had amassed together two hundred and odd commonplaces
in one of his judgments; in telling which, he deprived himself of the
glory he had got by it: in my opinion, a pusillanimous and absurd vanity
for such a subject and such a person. I do the contrary; and amongst so
many borrowed things, am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering
it for some new service; at the hazard of having it said that 'tis for
want of understanding its natural use; I give it some particular touch of
my own hand, to the end it may not be so absolutely foreign. These set
their thefts in show and value themselves upon them, and so have more
credit with the laws than I have: we naturalists I think that there is a
great and incomparable preference in the honour of invention over that of
allegation.
If I would have spoken by learning, I had spoken sooner; I had written of
the time nearer to my studies, when I had more wit and better memory, and
should sooner have trusted to the vigour of that age than of this, would I
have made a business of writing. And what if this gracious favour —[His
acquaintance with Mademoiselle de Gournay.]—which Fortune has lately
offered me upon the account of this work, had befallen me in that time of
my life, instead of this, wherein 'tis equally desirable to possess, soon
to be lost! Two of my acquaintance, great men in this faculty, have, in my
opinion, lost half, in refusing to publish at forty years old, that they
might stay till threescore. Maturity has its defects as well as green
years, and worse; and old age is as unfit for this kind of business as any
other. He who commits his decrepitude to the press plays the fool if he
think to squeeze anything out thence that does not relish of dreaming,
dotage, and drivelling; the mind grows costive and thick in growing old. I
deliver my ignorance in pomp and state, and my learning meagrely and
poorly; this accidentally and accessorily, that principally and expressly;
and write specifically of nothing but nothing, nor of any science but of
that inscience. I have chosen a time when my life, which I am to give an
account of, lies wholly before me; what remains has more to do with death;
and of my death itself, should I find it a prating death, as others do, I
would willingly give an account at my departure.
Socrates was a perfect exemplar in all great qualities, and I am vexed
that he had so deformed a face and body as is said, and so unsuitable to
the beauty of his soul, himself being so amorous and such an admirer of
beauty: Nature did him wrong. There is nothing more probable than the
conformity and relation of the body to the soul:
"Ipsi animi magni refert, quali in corpore locati sint: multo enim a
corpore existunt, qux acuant mentem: multa qua obtundant;"
["It is of great consequence in what bodies minds are placed, for
many things spring from the body that may sharpen the mind, and many
that may blunt it."—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 33.]
this refers to an unnatural ugliness and deformity of limbs; but we call
ugliness also an unseemliness at first sight, which is principally lodged
in the face, and disgusts us on very slight grounds: by the complexion, a
spot, a rugged countenance, for some reasons often wholly inexplicable, in
members nevertheless of good symmetry and perfect. The deformity, that
clothed a very beautiful soul in La Boetie, was of this predicament: that
superficial ugliness, which nevertheless is always the most imperious, is
of least prejudice to the state of the mind, and of little certainty in
the opinion of men. The other, which is never properly called deformity,
being more substantial, strikes deeper in. Not every shoe of smooth
shining leather, but every shoe well-made, shews the shape of the foot
within. As Socrates said of his, it betrayed equal ugliness in his soul,
had he not corrected it by education; but in saying so, I hold he was in
jest, as his custom was; never so excellent a soul formed itself.
I cannot often enough repeat how great an esteem I have for beauty, that
potent and advantageous quality; he (La Boetie) called it "a short
tyranny," and Plato, "the privilege of nature." We have nothing that
excels it in reputation; it has the first place in the commerce of men; it
presents itself in the front; seduces and prepossesses our judgments with
great authority and wonderful impression. Phryne had lost her cause in the
hands of an excellent advocate, if, opening her robe, she had not
corrupted her judges by the lustre of her beauty. And I find that Cyrus,
Alexander, and Caesar, the three masters of the world, never neglected
beauty in their greatest affairs; no more did the first Scipio. The same
word in Greek signifies both fair and good; and the Holy Word often says
good when it means fair: I should willingly maintain the priority in good
things, according to the song that Plato calls an idle thing, taken out of
some ancient poet: "health, beauty, riches." Aristotle says that the right
of command appertains to the beautiful; and that, when there is a person
whose beauty comes near the images of the gods, veneration is equally due
to him. To him who asked why people oftener and longer frequent the
company of handsome persons: "That question," said he, "is only to be
asked by the blind." Most of the philosophers, and the greatest, paid for
their schooling, and acquired wisdom by the favour and mediation of their
beauty. Not only in the men that serve me, but also in the beasts, I
consider it within two fingers' breadth of goodness.
And yet I fancy that those features and moulds of face, and those
lineaments, by which men guess at our internal complexions and our
fortunes to come, is a thing that does not very directly and simply lie
under the chapter of beauty and deformity, no more than every good odour
and serenity of air promises health, nor all fog and stink infection in a
time of pestilence. Such as accuse ladies of contradicting their beauty by
their manners, do not always hit right; for, in a face which is none of
the best, there may dwell some air of probity and trust; as, on the
contrary, I have read, betwixt two beautiful eyes, menaces of a dangerous
and malignant nature. There are favourable physiognomies, so that in a
crowd of victorious enemies, you shall presently choose, amongst men you
never saw before, one rather than another to whom to surrender, and with
whom to intrust your life; and yet not properly upon the consideration of
beauty.
A person's look is but a feeble warranty; and yet it is something
considerable too; and if I had to lash them, I would most severely scourge
the wicked ones who belie and betray the promises that nature has planted
in their foreheads; I should with greater severity punish malice under a
mild and gentle aspect. It seems as if there were some lucky and some
unlucky faces; and I believe there is some art in distinguishing affable
from merely simple faces, severe from rugged, malicious from pensive,
scornful from melancholic, and such other bordering qualities. There are
beauties which are not only haughty, but sour, and others that are not
only gentle, but more than that, insipid; to prognosticate from them
future events is a matter that I shall leave undecided.
I have, as I have said elsewhere as to my own concern, simply and
implicitly embraced this ancient rule, "That we cannot fail in following
Nature," and that the sovereign precept is to conform ourselves to her. I
have not, as Socrates did, corrected my natural composition by the force
of reason, and have not in the least disturbed my inclination by art; I
have let myself go as I came: I contend not; my two principal parts live,
of their own accord, in peace and good intelligence, but my nurse's milk,
thank God, was tolerably wholesome and good. Shall I say this by the way,
that I see in greater esteem than 'tis worth, and in use solely among
ourselves, a certain image of scholastic probity, a slave to precepts, and
fettered with hope and fear? I would have it such as that laws and
religions should not make, but perfect and authorise it; that finds it has
wherewithal to support itself without help, born and rooted in us from the
seed of universal reason, imprinted in every man by nature. That reason
which strengthens Socrates from his vicious bend renders him obedient to
the gods and men of authority in his city: courageous in death, not
because his soul is immortal, but because he is mortal. 'Tis a doctrine
ruinous to all government, and much more hurtful than ingenious and
subtle, which persuades the people that a religious belief is alone
sufficient, and without conduct, to satisfy the divine justice. Use
demonstrates to us a vast distinction betwixt devotion and conscience.
I have a favourable aspect, both in form and in interpretation:
"Quid dixi, habere me? imo habui, Chreme."
["What did I say? that I have? no, Chremes, I had."
—Terence, Heaut., act i., sec. 2, v. 42.]
"Heu! tantum attriti corporis ossa vides;"
["Alas! of a worn body thou seest only the bones"]
and that makes a quite contrary show to that of Socrates. It has often
befallen me, that upon the mere credit of my presence and air, persons who
had no manner of knowledge of me have put a very great confidence in me,
whether in their own affairs or mine; and I have in foreign parts thence
obtained singular and rare favours. But the two following examples are,
peradventure, worth particular relation. A certain person planned to
surprise my house and me in it; his scheme was to come to my gates alone,
and to be importunate to be let in. I knew him by name, and had fair
reason to repose confidence in him, as being my neighbour and something
related to me. I caused the gates to be opened to him, as I do to every
one. There I found him, with every appearance of alarm, his horse panting
and very tired. He entertained me with this story: "That, about half a
league off, he had met with a certain enemy of his, whom I also knew, and
had heard of their quarrel; that his enemy had given him a very brisk
chase, and that having been surprised in disorder, and his party being too
weak, he had fled to my gates for refuge; and that he was in great trouble
for his followers, whom (he said) he concluded to be all either dead or
taken." I innocently did my best to comfort, assure, and refresh him.
Shortly after came four or five of his soldiers, who presented themselves
in the same countenance and affright, to get in too; and after them more,
and still more, very well mounted and armed, to the number of
five-and-twenty or thirty, pretending that they had the enemy at their
heels. This mystery began a little to awaken my suspicion; I was not
ignorant what an age I lived in, how much my house might be envied, and I
had several examples of others of my acquaintance to whom a mishap of this
sort had happened. But thinking there was nothing to be got by having
begun to do a courtesy, unless I went through with it, and that I could
not disengage myself from them without spoiling all, I let myself go the
most natural and simple way, as I always do, and invited them all to come
in. And in truth I am naturally very little inclined to suspicion and
distrust; I willingly incline towards excuse and the gentlest
interpretation; I take men according to the common order, and do not more
believe in those perverse and unnatural inclinations, unless convinced by
manifest evidence, than I do in monsters and miracles; and I am, moreover,
a man who willingly commit myself to Fortune, and throw myself headlong
into her arms; and I have hitherto found more reason to applaud than to
blame myself for so doing, having ever found her more discreet about, and
a greater friend to, my affairs than I am myself. There are some actions
in my life whereof the conduct may justly be called difficult, or, if you
please, prudent; of these, supposing the third part to have been my own,
doubtless the other two-thirds were absolutely hers. We make, methinks, a
mistake in that we do not enough trust Heaven with our affairs, and
pretend to more from our own conduct than appertains to us; and therefore
it is that our designs so often miscarry. Heaven is jealous of the extent
that we attribute to the right of human prudence above its own, and cuts
it all the shorter by how much the more we amplify it. The last comers
remained on horseback in my courtyard, whilst their leader, who was with
me in the parlour, would not have his horse put up in the stable, saying
he should immediately retire, so soon as he had news of his men. He saw
himself master of his enterprise, and nothing now remained but its
execution. He has since several times said (for he was not ashamed to tell
the story himself) that my countenance and frankness had snatched the
treachery out of his hands. He again mounted his horse; his followers, who
had their eyes intent upon him, to see when he would give the signal,
being very much astonished to find him come away and leave his prey behind
him.
Another time, relying upon some truce just published in the army, I took a
journey through a very ticklish country. I had not ridden far, but I was
discovered, and two or three parties of horse, from various places, were
sent out to seize me; one of them overtook me on the third day, and I was
attacked by fifteen or twenty gentlemen in vizors, followed at a distance
by a band of foot-soldiers. I was taken, withdrawn into the thick of a
neighbouring forest, dismounted, robbed, my trunks rifled, my money-box
taken, and my horses and equipage divided amongst new masters. We had, in
this copse, a very long contest about my ransom, which they set so high,
that it was manifest that I was not known to them. They were, moreover, in
a very great debate about my life; and, in truth, there were various
circumstances that clearly showed the danger I was in:
"Tunc animis opus, AEnea, tunc pectore firmo."
["Then, AEneas, there is need of courage, of a firm heart."
—AEneid, vi. 261.]
I still insisted upon the truce, too willing they should have the gain of
what they had already taken from me, which was not to be despised, without
promise of any other ransom. After two or three hours that we had been in
this place, and that they had mounted me upon a horse that was not likely
to run from them, and committed me to the guard of fifteen or twenty
harquebusiers, and dispersed my servants to others, having given order
that they should carry us away prisoners several ways, and I being already
got some two or three musket-shots from the place,
"Jam prece Pollucis, jam Castoris, implorata,"
["By a prayer addressed now to Pollux, now to Castor."
—Catullus, lxvi. 65.]
behold a sudden and unexpected alteration; I saw the chief return to me
with gentler language, making search amongst the troopers for my scattered
property, and causing as much as could be recovered to be restored to me,
even to my money-box; but the best present they made was my liberty, for
the rest did not much concern me at that time. The true cause of so sudden
a change, and of this reconsideration, without any apparent impulse, and
of so miraculous a repentance, in such a time, in a planned and deliberate
enterprise, and become just by usage (for, at the first dash, I plainly
confessed to them of what party I was, and whither I was going), truly, I
do not yet rightly understand. The most prominent amongst them, who pulled
off his vizor and told me his name, repeatedly told me at the time, over
and over again, that I owed my deliverance to my countenance, and the
liberty and boldness of my speech, that rendered me unworthy of such a
misadventure, and should secure me from its repetition. 'Tis possible that
the Divine goodness willed to make use of this vain instrument for my
preservation; and it, moreover, defended me the next day from other and
worse ambushes, of which these my assailants had given me warning. The
last of these two gentlemen is yet living himself to tell the story; the
first was killed not long ago.
If my face did not answer for me, if men did not read in my eyes and in my
voice the innocence of intention, I had not lived so long without quarrels
and without giving offence, seeing the indiscreet whatever comes into my
head, and to judge so rashly of things. This way may, with reason, appear
uncivil, and ill adapted to our way of conversation; but I have never met
with any who judged it outrageous or malicious, or that took offence at my
liberty, if he had it from my own mouth; words repeated have another kind
of sound and sense. Nor do I hate any person; and I am so slow to offend,
that I cannot do it, even upon the account of reason itself; and when
occasion has required me to sentence criminals, I have rather chosen to
fail in point of justice than to do it:
"Ut magis peccari nolim, quam satis animi
ad vindicanda peccata habeam."
["So that I had rather men should not commit faults than that I
should have sufficient courage to condemn them."—-Livy, xxxix. 21.]
Aristotle, 'tis said, was reproached for having been too merciful to a
wicked man: "I was indeed," said he, "merciful to the man, but not to his
wickedness." Ordinary judgments exasperate themselves to punishment by the
horror of the fact: but it cools mine; the horror of the first murder
makes me fear a second; and the deformity of the first cruelty makes me
abhor all imitation of it.' That may be applied to me, who am but a Squire
of Clubs, which was said of Charillus, king of Sparta: "He cannot be good,
seeing he is not evil even to the wicked." Or thus—for Plutarch
delivers it both these ways, as he does a thousand other things, variously
and contradictorily—"He must needs be good, because he is so even to
the wicked." Even as in lawful actions I dislike to employ myself when for
such as are displeased at it; so, to say the truth, in unlawful things I
do not make conscience enough of employing myself when it is for such as
are willing.
CHAPTER XIII——OF EXPERIENCE
There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge. We try all ways
that can lead us to it; where reason is wanting, we therein employ
experience,
"Per varios usus artem experientia fecit,
Exemplo monstrante viam,"
["By various trials experience created art, example shewing the
way."—Manilius, i. 59.]
which is a means much more weak and cheap; but truth is so great a thing
that we ought not to disdain any mediation that will guide us to it.
Reason has so many forms that we know not to which to take; experience has
no fewer; the consequence we would draw from the comparison of events is
unsure, by reason they are always unlike. There is no quality so universal
in this image of things as diversity and variety. Both the Greeks and the
Latins and we, for the most express example of similitude, employ that of
eggs; and yet there have been men, particularly one at Delphos, who could
distinguish marks of difference amongst eggs so well that he never mistook
one for another, and having many hens, could tell which had laid it.
Dissimilitude intrudes itself of itself in our works; no art can arrive at
perfect similitude: neither Perrozet nor any other can so carefully polish
and blanch the backs of his cards that some gamesters will not distinguish
them by seeing them only shuffled by another. Resemblance does not so much
make one as difference makes another. Nature has obliged herself to make
nothing other that was not unlike.
And yet I am not much pleased with his opinion, who thought by the
multitude of laws to curb the authority of judges in cutting out for them
their several parcels; he was not aware that there is as much liberty and
latitude in the interpretation of laws as in their form; and they but fool
themselves, who think to lessen and stop our disputes by recalling us to
the express words of the Bible: forasmuch as our mind does not find the
field less spacious wherein to controvert the sense of another than to
deliver his own; and as if there were less animosity and tartness in
commentary than in invention. We see how much he was mistaken, for we have
more laws in France than all the rest of the world put together, and more
than would be necessary for the government of all the worlds of Epicurus:
"Ut olim flagitiis, sic nunc legibus, laboramus."
["As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by
laws."—Tacitus, Annal., iii. 25.]
and yet we have left so much to the opinions and decisions of our judges
that there never was so full a liberty or so full a license. What have our
legislators gained by culling out a hundred thousand particular cases, and
by applying to these a hundred thousand laws? This number holds no manner
of proportion with the infinite diversity of human actions; the
multiplication of our inventions will never arrive at the variety of
examples; add to these a hundred times as many more, it will still not
happen that, of events to come, there shall one be found that, in this
vast number of millions of events so chosen and recorded, shall so tally
with any other one, and be so exactly coupled and matched with it that
there will not remain some circumstance and diversity which will require a
diverse judgment. There is little relation betwixt our actions, which are
in perpetual mutation, and fixed and immutable laws; the most to be
desired are those that are the most rare, the most simple and general; and
I am even of opinion that we had better have none at all than to have them
in so prodigious a number as we have.
Nature always gives them better and happier than those we make ourselves;
witness the picture of the Golden Age of the Poets and the state wherein
we see nations live who have no other. Some there are, who for their only
judge take the first passer-by that travels along their mountains, to
determine their cause; and others who, on their market day, choose out
some one amongst them upon the spot to decide their controversies. What
danger would there be that the wisest amongst us should so determine ours,
according to occurrences and at sight, without obligation of example and
consequence? For every foot its own shoe. King Ferdinand, sending colonies
to the Indies, wisely provided that they should not carry along with them
any students of jurisprudence, for fear lest suits should get footing in
that new world, as being a science in its own nature, breeder of
altercation and division; judging with Plato, "that lawyers and physicians
are bad institutions of a country."
Whence does it come to pass that our common language, so easy for all
other uses, becomes obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts? and
that he who so clearly expresses himself in whatever else he speaks or
writes, cannot find in these any way of declaring himself that does not
fall into doubt and contradiction? if it be not that the princes of that
art, applying themselves with a peculiar attention to cull out portentous
words and to contrive artificial sentences, have so weighed every
syllable, and so thoroughly sifted every sort of quirking connection that
they are now confounded and entangled in the infinity of figures and
minute divisions, and can no more fall within any rule or prescription,
nor any certain intelligence:
"Confusum est, quidquid usque in pulverem sectum est."
["Whatever is beaten into powder is undistinguishable (confused)."
—Seneca, Ep., 89.]
As you see children trying to bring a mass of quicksilver to a certain
number of parts, the more they press and work it and endeavour to reduce
it to their own will, the more they irritate the liberty of this generous
metal; it evades their endeavour and sprinkles itself into so many
separate bodies as frustrate all reckoning; so is it here, for in
subdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doubts; they
put us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties, and lengthen
and disperse them. In sowing and retailing questions they make the world
fructify and increase in uncertainties and disputes, as the earth is made
fertile by being crumbled and dug deep.
"Difficultatem facit doctrina."
["Learning (Doctrine) begets difficulty."
—Quintilian, Insat. Orat., x. 3.]
We doubted of Ulpian, and are still now more perplexed with Bartolus and
Baldus. We should efface the trace of this innumerable diversity of
opinions; not adorn ourselves with it, and fill posterity with crotchets.
I know not what to say to it; but experience makes it manifest, that so
many interpretations dissipate truth and break it. Aristotle wrote to be
understood; if he could not do this, much less will another that is not so
good at it; and a third than he, who expressed his own thoughts. We open
the matter, and spill it in pouring out: of one subject we make a
thousand, and in multiplying and subdividing them, fall again into the
infinity of atoms of Epicurus. Never did two men make the same judgment of
the same thing; and 'tis impossible to find two opinions exactly alike,
not only in several men, but in the same man, at diverse hours. I often
find matter of doubt in things of which the commentary has disdained to
take notice; I am most apt to stumble in an even country, like some horses
that I have known, that make most trips in the smoothest way.
Who will not say that glosses augment doubts and ignorance, since there's
no book to be found, either human or divine, which the world busies itself
about, whereof the difficulties are cleared by interpretation. The
hundredth commentator passes it on to the next, still more knotty and
perplexed than he found it. When were we ever agreed amongst ourselves:
"This book has enough; there is now no more to be said about it"? This is
most apparent in the law; we give the authority of law to infinite
doctors, infinite decrees, and as many interpretations; yet do we find any
end of the need of interpretating? is there, for all that, any progress or
advancement towards peace, or do we stand in need of any fewer advocates
and judges than when this great mass of law was yet in its first infancy?
On the contrary, we darken and bury intelligence; we can no longer
discover it, but at the mercy of so many fences and barriers. Men do not
know the natural disease of the mind; it does nothing but ferret and
inquire, and is eternally wheeling, juggling, and perplexing itself like
silkworms, and then suffocates itself in its work; "Mus in pice."—["A
mouse in a pitch barrel."]—It thinks it discovers at a great
distance, I know not what glimpses of light and imaginary truth: but
whilst running to it, so many difficulties, hindrances, and new
inquisitions cross it, that it loses its way, and is made drunk with the
motion: not much unlike AEsop's dogs, that seeing something like a dead
body floating in the sea, and not being able to approach it, set to work
to drink the water and lay the passage dry, and so choked themselves. To
which what one Crates' said of the writings of Heraclitus falls pat
enough, "that they required a reader who could swim well," so that the
depth and weight of his learning might not overwhelm and stifle him. 'Tis
nothing but particular weakness that makes us content with what others or
ourselves have found out in this chase after knowledge: one of better
understanding will not rest so content; there is always room for one to
follow, nay, even for ourselves; and another road; there is no end of our
inquisitions; our end is in the other world. 'Tis a sign either that the
mind has grown shortsighted when it is satisfied, or that it has got
weary. No generous mind can stop in itself; it will still tend further and
beyond its power; it has sallies beyond its effects; if it do not advance
and press forward, and retire, and rush and wheel about, 'tis but half
alive; its pursuits are without bound or method; its aliment is
admiration, the chase, ambiguity, which Apollo sufficiently declared in
always speaking to us in a double, obscure, and oblique sense: not
feeding, but amusing and puzzling us. 'Tis an irregular and perpetual
motion, without model and without aim; its inventions heat, pursue, and
interproduce one another:
Estienne de la Boetie; thus translated by Cotton:
"So in a running stream one wave we see
After another roll incessantly,
And as they glide, each does successively
Pursue the other, each the other fly
By this that's evermore pushed on, and this
By that continually preceded is:
The water still does into water swill,
Still the same brook, but different water still."
There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things,
and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing but
comment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; of authors
there is great scarcity. Is it not the principal and most reputed
knowledge of our later ages to understand the learned? Is it not the
common and final end of all studies? Our opinions are grafted upon one
another; the first serves as a stock to the second, the second to the
third, and so forth; thus step by step we climb the ladder; whence it
comes to pass that he who is mounted highest has often more honour than
merit, for he is got up but an inch upon the shoulders of the last, but
one.
How often, and, peradventure, how foolishly, have I extended my book to
make it speak of itself; foolishly, if for no other reason but this, that
it should remind me of what I say of others who do the same: that the
frequent amorous glances they cast upon their work witness that their
hearts pant with self-love, and that even the disdainful severity
wherewith they scourge them are but the dandlings and caressings of
maternal love; as Aristotle, whose valuing and undervaluing himself often
spring from the same air of arrogance. My own excuse is, that I ought in
this to have more liberty than others, forasmuch as I write specifically
of myself and of my writings, as I do of my other actions; that my theme
turns upon itself; but I know not whether others will accept this excuse.
I observed in Germany that Luther has left as many divisions and disputes
about the doubt of his opinions, and more, than he himself raised upon the
Holy Scriptures. Our contest is verbal: I ask what nature is, what
pleasure, circle, and substitution are? the question is about words, and
is answered accordingly. A stone is a body; but if a man should further
urge: "And what is a body?"—"Substance"; "And what is substance?"
and so on, he would drive the respondent to the end of his Calepin.
[Calepin (Ambrogio da Calepio), a famous lexicographer of the
fifteenth century. His Polyglot Dictionary became so famous, that
Calepin became a common appellation for a lexicon]
We exchange one word for another, and often for one less understood. I
better know what man is than I know what Animal is, or Mortal, or
Rational. To satisfy one doubt, they give me three; 'tis the Hydra's head.
Socrates asked Menon, "What virtue was." "There is," says Menon, "the
virtue of a man and of a woman, of a magistrate and of a private person,
of an old man and of a child." "Very fine," cried Socrates, "we were in
quest of one virtue, and thou hast brought us a whole swarm." We put one
question, and they return us a whole hive. As no event, no face, entirely
resembles another, so do they not entirely differ: an ingenious mixture of
nature. If our faces were not alike, we could not distinguish man from
beast; if they were not unlike, we could not distinguish one man from
another; all things hold by some similitude; every example halts, and the
relation which is drawn from experience is always faulty and imperfect.
Comparisons are ever-coupled at one end or other: so do the laws serve,
and are fitted to every one of our affairs, by some wrested, biassed, and
forced interpretation.
Since the ethic laws, that concern the particular duty of every one in
himself, are so hard to be framed, as we see they are, 'tis no wonder if
those which govern so many particulars are much more so. Do but consider
the form of this justice that governs us; 'tis a true testimony of human
weakness, so full is it of error and contradiction. What we find to be
favour and severity in justice—and we find so much of them both,
that I know not whether the medium is as often met with are sickly and
unjust members of the very body and essence of justice. Some country
people have just brought me news in great haste, that they presently left
in a forest of mine a man with a hundred wounds upon him, who was yet
breathing, and begged of them water for pity's sake, and help to carry him
to some place of relief; they tell me they durst not go near him, but have
run away, lest the officers of justice should catch them there; and as
happens to those who are found near a murdered person, they should be
called in question about this accident, to their utter ruin, having
neither money nor friends to defend their innocence. What could I have
said to these people? 'Tis certain that this office of humanity would have
brought them into trouble.
How many innocent people have we known that have been punished, and this
without the judge's fault; and how many that have not arrived at our
knowledge? This happened in my time: certain men were condemned to die for
a murder committed; their sentence, if not pronounced, at least determined
and concluded on. The judges, just in the nick, are informed by the
officers of an inferior court hard by, that they have some men in custody,
who have directly confessed the murder, and made an indubitable discovery
of all the particulars of the fact. Yet it was gravely deliberated whether
or not they ought to suspend the execution of the sentence already passed
upon the first accused: they considered the novelty of the example
judicially, and the consequence of reversing judgments; that the sentence
was passed, and the judges deprived of repentance; and in the result,
these poor devils were sacrificed by the forms of justice. Philip, or some
other, provided against a like inconvenience after this manner. He had
condemned a man in a great fine towards another by an absolute judgment.
The truth some time after being discovered, he found that he had passed an
unjust sentence. On one side was the reason of the cause; on the other
side, the reason of the judicial forms: he in some sort satisfied both,
leaving the sentence in the state it was, and out of his own purse
recompensing the condemned party. But he had to do with a reparable
affair; my men were irreparably hanged. How many condemnations have I seen
more criminal than the crimes themselves?
All which makes me remember the ancient opinions, "That 'tis of necessity
a man must do wrong by retail who will do right in gross; and injustice in
little things, who would come to do justice in great: that human justice
is formed after the model of physic, according to which, all that is
useful is also just and honest: and of what is held by the Stoics, that
Nature herself proceeds contrary to justice in most of her works: and of
what is received by the Cyrenaics, that there is nothing just of itself,
but that customs and laws make justice: and what the Theodorians held that
theft, sacrilege, and all sorts of uncleanness, are just in a sage, if he
knows them to be profitable to him." There is no remedy: I am in the same
case that Alcibiades was, that I will never, if I can help it, put myself
into the hands of a man who may determine as to my head, where my life and
honour shall more depend upon the skill and diligence of my attorney than
on my own innocence. I would venture myself with such justice as would
take notice of my good deeds, as well as my ill; where I had as much to
hope as to fear: indemnity is not sufficient pay to a man who does better
than not to do amiss. Our justice presents to us but one hand, and that
the left hand, too; let him be who he may, he shall be sure to come off
with loss.
In China, of which kingdom the government and arts, without commerce with
or knowledge of ours, surpass our examples in several excellent features,
and of which the history teaches me how much greater and more various the
world is than either the ancients or we have been able to penetrate, the
officers deputed by the prince to visit the state of his provinces, as
they punish those who behave themselves ill in their charge, so do they
liberally reward those who have conducted themselves better than the
common sort, and beyond the necessity of their duty; these there present
themselves, not only to be approved but to get; not simply to be paid, but
to have a present made to them.
No judge, thank God, has ever yet spoken to me in the quality of a judge,
upon any account whatever, whether my own or that of a third party,
whether criminal or civil; nor no prison has ever received me, not even to
walk there. Imagination renders the very outside of a jail displeasing to
me; I am so enamoured of liberty, that should I be interdicted the access
to some corner of the Indies, I should live a little less at my ease; and
whilst I can find earth or air open elsewhere, I shall never lurk in any
place where I must hide myself. My God! how ill should I endure the
condition wherein I see so many people, nailed to a corner of the kingdom,
deprived of the right to enter the principal cities and courts, and the
liberty of the public roads, for having quarrelled with our laws. If those
under which I live should shake a finger at me by way of menace, I would
immediately go seek out others, let them be where they would. All my
little prudence in the civil wars wherein we are now engaged is employed
that they may not hinder my liberty of going and coming.
Now, the laws keep up their credit, not for being just, but because they
are laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have no
other, and it well answers their purpose. They are often made by fools,
still oftener by men who, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity, but
always by men, vain and irresolute authors. There is nothing so much, nor
so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty, as the laws. Whoever obeys them
because they are just, does not justly obey them as he ought. Our French
laws, by their irregularity and deformity, lend, in some sort, a helping
hand to the disorder and corruption that all manifest in their
dispensation and execution: the command is so perplexed and inconstant,
that it in some sort excuses alike disobedience and defect in the
interpretation, the administration and the observation of it. What fruit
then soever we may extract from experience, that will little advantage our
institution, which we draw from foreign examples, if we make so little
profit of that we have of our own, which is more familiar to us, and,
doubtless, sufficient to instruct us in that whereof we have need. I study
myself more than any other subject; 'tis my metaphysic, my physic:
"Quis deus hanc mundi temperet arte domum:
Qua venit exoriens, qua deficit: unde coactis
Cornibus in plenum menstrua luna redit
Unde salo superant venti, quid flamine captet
Eurus, et in nubes unde perennis aqua;
Sit ventura dies mundi quae subruat arces...."
["What god may govern with skill this dwelling of the world? whence
rises the monthly moon, whither wanes she? how is it that her horns
are contracted and reopen? whence do winds prevail on the main?
what does the east wind court with its blasts? and whence are the
clouds perpetually supplied with water? is a day to come which may
undermine the world?"—Propertius, iii. 5, 26.]
"Quaerite, quos agitat mundi labor."
["Ask whom the cares of the world trouble"—Lucan, i. 417.]
In this universality, I suffer myself to be ignorantly and negligently led
by the general law of the world: I shall know it well enough when I feel
it; my learning cannot make it alter its course; it will not change itself
for me; 'tis folly to hope it, and a greater folly to concern one's self
about it, seeing it is necessarily alike public and common. The goodness
and capacity of the governor ought absolutely to discharge us of all care
of the government: philosophical inquisitions and contemplations serve for
no other use but to increase our curiosity. The philosophers; with great
reason, send us back to the rules of nature; but they have nothing to do
with so sublime a knowledge; they falsify them, and present us her face
painted with too high and too adulterate a complexion, whence spring so
many different pictures of so uniform a subject. As she has given us feet
to walk with, so has she given us prudence to guide us in life: not so
ingenious, robust, and pompous a prudence as that of their invention; but
yet one that is easy, quiet, and salutary, and that very well performs
what the other promises, in him who has the good luck to know how to
employ it sincerely and regularly, that is to say, according to nature.
The most simply to commit one's self to nature is to do it most wisely.
Oh, what a soft, easy, and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity,
whereon to repose a well-ordered head!
I had rather understand myself well in myself, than in Cicero. Of the
experience I have of myself, I find enough to make me wise, if I were but
a good scholar: whoever will call to mind the excess of his past anger,
and to what a degree that fever transported him, will see the deformity of
this passion better than in Aristotle, and conceive a more just hatred
against it; whoever will remember the ills he has undergone, those that
have threatened him, and the light occasions that have removed him from
one state to another, will by that prepare himself for future changes, and
the knowledge of his condition. The life of Caesar has no greater example
for us than our own: though popular and of command, 'tis still a life
subject to all human accidents. Let us but listen to it; we apply to
ourselves all whereof we have principal need; whoever shall call to memory
how many and many times he has been mistaken in his own judgment, is he
not a great fool if he does not ever after suspect it? When I find myself
convinced, by the reason of another, of a false opinion, I do not so much
learn what he has said to me that is new and the particular ignorance—that
would be no great acquisition—as, in general, I learn my own
debility and the treachery of my understanding, whence I extract the
reformation of the whole mass. In all my other errors I do the same, and
find from this rule great utility to life; I regard not the species and
individual as a stone that I have stumbled at; I learn to suspect my steps
throughout, and am careful to place them right. To learn that a man has
said or done a foolish thing is nothing: a man must learn that he is
nothing but a fool, a much more ample, and important instruction. The
false steps that my memory has so often made, even then when it was most
secure and confident of itself, are not idly thrown away; it vainly swears
and assures me I shake my ears; the first opposition that is made to its
testimony puts me into suspense, and I durst not rely upon it in anything
of moment, nor warrant it in another person's concerns: and were it not
that what I do for want of memory, others do more often for want of good
faith, I should always, in matter of fact, rather choose to take the truth
from another's mouth than from my own. If every one would pry into the
effects and circumstances of the passions that sway him, as I have done
into those which I am most subject to, he would see them coming, and would
a little break their impetuosity and career; they do not always seize us
on a sudden; there is threatening and degrees
"Fluctus uti primo coepit cum albescere vento,
Paulatim sese tollit mare, et altius undas
Erigit, inde imo consurgit ad aethera fundo."
["As with the first wind the sea begins to foam, and swells, thence
higher swells, and higher raises the waves, till the ocean rises
from its depths to the sky."—AEneid, vii. 528.]
Judgment holds in me a magisterial seat; at least it carefully endeavours
to make it so: it leaves my appetites to take their own course, hatred and
friendship, nay, even that I bear to myself, without change or corruption;
if it cannot reform the other parts according to its own model, at least
it suffers not itself to be corrupted by them, but plays its game apart.
The advice to every one, "to know themselves," should be of important
effect, since that god of wisdom and light' caused it to be written on the
front of his temple,—[At Delphi]—as comprehending all he had
to advise us. Plato says also, that prudence is no other thing than the
execution of this ordinance; and Socrates minutely verifies it in
Xenophon. The difficulties and obscurity are not discerned in any science
but by those who are got into it; for a certain degree of intelligence is
required to be able to know that a man knows not, and we must push against
a door to know whether it be bolted against us or no: whence this Platonic
subtlety springs, that "neither they who know are to enquire, forasmuch as
they know; nor they who do not know, forasmuch as to inquire they must
know what they inquire of." So in this, "of knowing a man's self," that
every man is seen so resolved and satisfied with himself, that every man
thinks himself sufficiently intelligent, signifies that every one knows
nothing about the matter; as Socrates gives Euthydemus to understand. I,
who profess nothing else, therein find so infinite a depth and variety,
that all the fruit I have reaped from my learning serves only to make me
sensible how much I have to learn. To my weakness, so often confessed, I
owe the propension I have to modesty, to the obedience of belief
prescribed me, to a constant coldness and moderation of opinions, and a
hatred of that troublesome and wrangling arrogance, wholly believing and
trusting in itself, the capital enemy of discipline and truth. Do but hear
them domineer; the first fopperies they utter, 'tis in the style wherewith
men establish religions and laws:
"Nihil est turpius, quam cognitioni et perceptions
assertionem approbationemque praecurrere."
["Nothing is worse than that assertion and decision should precede
knowledge and perception."—Cicero, Acad., i. 13.]
Aristarchus said that anciently there were scarce seven sages to be found
in the world, and in his time scarce so many fools: have not we more
reason than he to say so in this age of ours? Affirmation and obstinacy
are express signs of want of wit. This fellow may have knocked his nose
against the ground a hundred times in a day, yet he will be at his Ergo's
as resolute and sturdy as before. You would say he had had some new soul
and vigour of understanding infused into him since, and that it happened
to him, as to that ancient son of the earth, who took fresh courage and
vigour by his fall;
"Cui cum tetigere parentem,
jam defecta vigent renovata robore membra:"
["Whose broken limbs, when they touched his mother earth,
immediately new force acquired."—Lucan, iv. 599.]
does not this incorrigible coxcomb think that he assumes a new
understanding by undertaking a new dispute? 'Tis by my own experience that
I accuse human ignorance, which is, in my opinion, the surest part of the
world's school. Such as will not conclude it in themselves, by so vain an
example as mine, or their own, let them believe it from Socrates, the
master of masters; for the philosopher Antisthenes said to his disciples,
"Let us go and hear Socrates; there I will be a pupil with you"; and,
maintaining this doctrine of the Stoic sect, "that virtue was sufficient
to make a life completely happy, having no need of any other thing
whatever"; except of the force of Socrates, added he.
That long attention that I employ in considering myself, also fits rile to
judge tolerably enough of others; and there are few things whereof I speak
better and with better excuse. I happen very often more exactly to see and
distinguish the qualities of my friends than they do themselves: I have
astonished some with the pertinence of my description, and have given them
warning of themselves. By having from my infancy been accustomed to
contemplate my own life in those of others, I have acquired a complexion
studious in that particular; and when I am once interit upon it, I let few
things about me, whether countenances, humours, or discourses, that serve
to that purpose, escape me. I study all, both what I am to avoid and what
I am to follow. Also in my friends, I discover by their productions their
inward inclinations; not by arranging this infinite variety of so diverse
and unconnected actions into certain species and chapters, and distinctly
distributing my parcels and divisions under known heads and classes;
"Sed neque quam multae species, nec nomina quae sint,
Est numerus."
["But neither can we enumerate how many kinds there what are their
names."—Virgil, Georg., ii. 103.]
The wise speak and deliver their fancies more specifically, and piece by
piece; I, who see no further into things than as use informs me, present
mine generally without rule and experimentally: I pronounce my opinion by
disjointed articles, as a thing that cannot be spoken at once and in
gross; relation and conformity are not to be found in such low and common
souls as ours. Wisdom is a solid and entire building, of which every piece
keeps its place and bears its mark:
"Sola sapientia in se tota conversa est."
["Wisdom only is wholly within itself"—Cicero, De Fin., iii. 7.]
I leave it to artists, and I know not whether or no they will be able to
bring it about, in so perplexed, minute, and fortuitous a thing, to
marshal into distinct bodies this infinite diversity of faces, to settle
our inconstancy, and set it in order. I do not only find it hard to piece
our actions to one another, but I moreover find it hard properly to design
each by itself by any principal quality, so ambiguous and variform they
are with diverse lights. That which is remarked for rare in Perseus, king
of Macedon, "that his mind, fixing itself to no one condition, wandered in
all sorts of living, and represented manners so wild and erratic that it
was neither known to himself or any other what kind of man he was," seems
almost to fit all the world; and, especially, I have seen another of his
make, to whom I think this conclusion might more properly be applied; no
moderate settledness, still running headlong from one extreme to another,
upon occasions not to be guessed at; no line of path without traverse and
wonderful contrariety: no one quality simple and unmixed; so that the best
guess men can one day make will be, that he affected and studied to make
himself known by being not to be known. A man had need have sound ears to
hear himself frankly criticised; and as there are few who can endure to
hear it without being nettled, those who hazard the undertaking it to us
manifest a singular effect of friendship; for 'tis to love sincerely
indeed, to venture to wound and offend us, for our own good. I think it
harsh to judge a man whose ill qualities are more than his good ones:
Plato requires three things in him who will examine the soul of another:
knowledge, benevolence, boldness.
I was sometimes asked, what I should have thought myself fit for, had any
one designed to make use of me, while I was of suitable years:
"Dum melior vires sanguis dabat, aemula necdum
Temporibus geminis canebat sparsa senectus:"
["Whilst better blood gave me vigour, and before envious old age
whitened and thinned my temples."—AEneid, V. 415.]
"for nothing," said I; and I willingly excuse myself from knowing anything
which enslaves me to others. But I had told the truth to my master,—[Was
this Henri VI.? D.W.]—and had regulated his manners, if he had so
pleased, not in gross, by scholastic lessons, which I understand not, and
from which I see no true reformation spring in those that do; but by
observing them by leisure, at all opportunities, and simply and naturally
judging them as an eye-witness, distinctly one by one; giving him to
understand upon what terms he was in the common opinion, in opposition to
his flatterers. There is none of us who would not be worse than kings, if
so continually corrupted as they are with that sort of canaille. How, if
Alexander, that great king and philosopher, cannot defend himself from
them!
I should have had fidelity, judgment, and freedom enough for that purpose.
It would be a nameless office, otherwise it would lose its grace and its
effect; and 'tis a part that is not indifferently fit for all men; for
truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times and
indiscriminately; its use, noble as it is, has its circumspections and
limits. It often falls out, as the world goes, that a man lets it slip
into the ear of a prince, not only to no purpose, but moreover injuriously
and unjustly; and no man shall make me believe that a virtuous
remonstrance may not be viciously applied, and that the interest of the
substance is not often to give way to that of the form.
For such a purpose, I would have a man who is content with his own
fortune:
"Quod sit, esse velit, nihilque malit,"
["Who is pleased with what he is and desires nothing further."
—Martial, x. ii, 18.]
and of moderate station; forasmuch as, on the one hand, he would not be
afraid to touch his master's heart to the quick, for fear by that means of
losing his preferment: and, on the other hand, being of no high quality,
he would have more easy communication with all sorts of people. I would
have this office limited to only one person; for to allow the privilege of
his liberty and privacy to many, would beget an inconvenient irreverence;
and of that one, I would above all things require the fidelity of silence.
A king is not to be believed when he brags of his constancy in standing
the shock of the enemy for his glory, if for his profit and amendment he
cannot stand the liberty of a friend's advice, which has no other power
but to pinch his ear, the remainder of its effect being still in his own
hands. Now, there is no condition of men whatever who stand in so great
need of true and free advice and warning, as they do: they sustain a
public life, and have to satisfy the opinion of so many spectators, that,
as those about them conceal from them whatever should divert them from
their own way, they insensibly find themselves involved in the hatred and
detestation of their people, often upon occasions which they might have
avoided without any prejudice even of their pleasures themselves, had they
been advised and set right in time. Their favourites commonly have more
regard to themselves than to their master; and indeed it answers with
them, forasmuch as, in truth, most offices of real friendship, when
applied to the sovereign, are under a rude and dangerous hazard, so that
therein there is great need, not only of very great affection and freedom,
but of courage too.
In fine, all this hodge-podge which I scribble here, is nothing but a
register of the essays of my own life, which, for the internal soundness,
is exemplary enough to take instruction against the grain; but as to
bodily health, no man can furnish out more profitable experience than I,
who present it pure, and no way corrupted and changed by art or opinion.
Experience is properly upon its own dunghill in the subject of physic,
where reason wholly gives it place: Tiberius said that whoever had lived
twenty years ought to be responsible to himself for all things that were
hurtful or wholesome to him, and know how to order himself without physic;
[All that Suetonius says in his Life of Tiberius is that this
emperor, after he was thirty years old, governed his health without
the aid of physicians; and what Plutarch tells us, in his essay on
the Rules and Precepts of Health, is that Tiberius said that the man
who, having attained sixty years, held out his pulse to a physician
was a fool.]
and he might have learned it of Socrates, who, advising his disciples to
be solicitous of their health as a chief study, added that it was hard if
a man of sense, having a care to his exercise and diet, did not better
know than any physician what was good or ill for him. And physic itself
professes always to have experience for the test of its operations: so
Plato had reason to say that, to be a right physician, it would be
necessary that he who would become such, should first himself have passed
through all the diseases he pretends to cure, and through all the
accidents and circumstances whereof he is to judge. 'Tis but reason they
should get the pox, if they will know how to cure it; for my part, I
should put myself into such hands; the others but guide us, like him who
paints seas and rocks and ports sitting at table, and there makes the
model of a ship sailing in all security; but put him to the work itself,
he knows not at which end to begin. They make such a description of our
maladies as a town crier does of a lost horse or dog—such a color,
such a height, such an ear—but bring it to him and he knows it not,
for all that. If physic should one day give me some good and visible
relief, then truly I will cry out in good earnest:
"Tandem effcaci do manus scientiae."
["Show me and efficacious science, and I will take it by the hand."
—Horace, xvii. I.]
The arts that promise to keep our bodies and souls in health promise a
great deal; but, withal, there are none that less keep their promise. And,
in our time, those who make profession of these arts amongst us, less
manifest the effects than any other sort of men; one may say of them, at
the most, that they sell medicinal drugs; but that they are physicians, a
man cannot say.
[The edition of 1588 adds: "Judging by themselves, and those
who are ruled by them."]
I have lived long enough to be able to give an account of the custom that
has carried me so far; for him who has a mind to try it, as his taster, I
have made the experiment. Here are some of the articles, as my memory
shall supply me with them; I have no custom that has not varied according
to circumstances; but I only record those that I have been best acquainted
with, and that hitherto have had the greatest possession of me.
My form of life is the same in sickness as in health; the same bed, the
same hours, the same meat, and even the same drink, serve me in both
conditions alike; I add nothing to them but the moderation of more or
less, according to my strength and appetite. My health is to maintain my
wonted state without disturbance. I see that sickness puts me off it on
one side, and if I will be ruled by the physicians, they will put me off
on the other; so that by fortune and by art I am out of my way. I believe
nothing more certainly than this, that I cannot be hurt by the use of
things to which I have been so long accustomed. 'Tis for custom to give a
form to a man's life, such as it pleases him; she is all in all in that:
'tis the potion of Circe, that varies our nature as she best pleases. How
many nations, and but three steps from us, think the fear of the
night-dew, that so manifestly is hurtful to us, a ridiculous fancy; and
our own watermen and peasants laugh at it. You make a German sick if you
lay him upon a mattress, as you do an Italian if you lay him on a
feather-bed, and a Frenchman, if without curtains or fire. A Spanish
stomach cannot hold out to eat as we can, nor ours to drink like the
Swiss. A German made me very merry at Augsburg, by finding fault with our
hearths, by the same arguments which we commonly make use of in decrying
their stoves: for, to say the truth, the smothered heat, and then the
smell of that heated matter of which the fire is composed, very much
offend such as are not used to them; not me; and, indeed, the heat being
always equal, constant, and universal, without flame, without smoke, and
without the wind that comes down our chimneys, they may many ways sustain
comparison with ours. Why do we not imitate the Roman architecture? for
they say that anciently fires were not made in the houses, but on the
outside, and at the foot of them, whence the heat was conveyed to the
whole fabric by pipes contrived in the wall, which were drawn twining
about the rooms that were to be warmed: which I have seen plainly
described somewhere in Seneca. This German hearing me commend the
conveniences and beauties of his city, which truly deserves it, began to
compassionate me that I had to leave it; and the first inconvenience he
alleged to me was, the heaviness of head that the chimneys elsewhere would
bring upon me. He had heard some one make this complaint, and fixed it
upon us, being by custom deprived of the means of perceiving it at home.
All heat that comes from the fire weakens and dulls me. Evenus said that
fire was the best condiment of life: I rather choose any other way of
making myself warm.
We are afraid to drink our wines, when toward the bottom of the cask; in
Portugal those fumes are reputed delicious, and it is the beverage of
princes. In short, every nation has many customs and usages that are not
only unknown to other nations, but savage and miraculous in their sight.
What should we do with those people who admit of no evidence that is not
in print, who believe not men if they are not in a book, nor truth if it
be not of competent age? we dignify our fopperies when we commit them to
the press: 'tis of a great deal more weight to say, "I have read such a
thing," than if you only say, "I have heard such a thing." But I, who no
more disbelieve a man's mouth than his pen, and who know that men write as
indiscreetly as they speak, and who look upon this age as one that is
past, as soon quote a friend as Aulus Gelliusor Macrobius; and what I have
seen, as what they have written. And, as 'tis held of virtue, that it is
not greater for having continued longer, so do I hold of truth, that for
being older it is none the wiser. I often say, that it is mere folly that
makes us run after foreign and scholastic examples; their fertility is the
same now that it was in the time of Homer and Plato. But is it not that we
seek more honour from the quotation, than from the truth of the matter in
hand? As if it were more to the purpose to borrow our proofs from the
shops of Vascosan or Plantin, than from what is to be seen in our own
village; or else, indeed, that we have not the wit to cull out and make
useful what we see before us, and to judge of it clearly enough to draw it
into example: for if we say that we want authority to give faith to our
testimony, we speak from the purpose; forasmuch as, in my opinion, of the
most ordinary, common, and known things, could we but find out their
light, the greatest miracles of nature might be formed, and the most
wonderful examples, especially upon the subject of human actions.
Now, upon this subject, setting aside the examples I have gathered from
books, and what Aristotle says of Andron the Argian, that he travelled
over the arid sands of Lybia without drinking: a gentleman, who has very
well behaved himself in several employments, said, in a place where I was,
that he had ridden from Madrid to Lisbon, in the heat of summer, without
any drink at all. He is very healthful and vigorous for his age, and has
nothing extraordinary in the use of his life, but this, to live sometimes
two or three months, nay, a whole year, as he has told me, without
drinking. He is sometimes thirsty, but he lets it pass over, and he holds
that it is an appetite which easily goes off of itself; and he drinks more
out of caprice than either for need or pleasure.
Here is another example: 'tis not long ago that I found one of the
learnedest men in France, among those of not inconsiderable fortune,
studying in a corner of a hall that they had separated for him with
tapestry, and about him a rabble of his servants full of licence. He told
me, and Seneca almost says the same of himself, he made an advantage of
this hubbub; that, beaten with this noise, he so much the more collected
and retired himself into himself for contemplation, and that this tempest
of voices drove back his thoughts within himself. Being a student at
Padua, he had his study so long situated amid the rattle of coaches and
the tumult of the square, that he not only formed himself to the contempt,
but even to the use of noise, for the service of his studies. Socrates
answered Alcibiades, who was astonished how he could endure the perpetual
scolding of his wife, "Why," said he, "as those do who are accustomed to
the ordinary noise of wheels drawing water." I am quite otherwise; I have
a tender head and easily discomposed; when 'tis bent upon anything, the
least buzzing of a fly murders it.
Seneca in his youth having warmly espoused the example of Sextius, of
eating nothing that had died, for a whole year dispensed with such food,
and, as he said, with pleasure, and discontinued it that he might not be
suspected of taking up this rule from some new religion by which it was
prescribed: he adopted, in like manner, from the precepts of Attalus a
custom not to lie upon any sort of bedding that gave way under his weight,
and, even to his old age, made use of such as would not yield to any
pressure. What the usage of his time made him account roughness, that of
ours makes us look upon as effeminacy.
Do but observe the difference betwixt the way of living of my labourers
and my own; the Scythians and Indians have nothing more remote both from
my capacity and my form. I have picked up charity boys to serve me: who
soon after have quitted both my kitchen and livery, only that they might
return to their former course of life; and I found one afterwards, picking
mussels out of the sewer for his dinner, whom I could neither by
entreaties nor threats reclaim from the sweetness he found in indigence.
Beggars have their magnificences and delights, as well as the rich, and,
'tis said, their dignities and polities. These are the effects of custom;
she can mould us, not only into what form she pleases (the sages say we
ought to apply ourselves to the best, which she will soon make easy to
us), but also to change and variation, which is the most noble and most
useful instruction of all she teaches us. The best of my bodily conditions
is that I am flexible and not very obstinate: I have inclinations more my
own and ordinary, and more agreeable than others; but I am diverted from
them with very little ado, and easily slip into a contrary course. A young
man ought to cross his own rules, to awaken his vigour and to keep it from
growing faint and rusty; and there is no course of life so weak and
sottish as that which is carried on by rule and discipline;
"Ad primum lapidem vectari quum placet, hora
Sumitur ex libro; si prurit frictus ocelli
Angulus, inspecta genesi, collyria quaerit;"
["When he is pleased to have himself carried to the first milestone,
the hour is chosen from the almanac; if he but rub the corner of his
eye, his horoscope having been examined, he seeks the aid of
salves."—-Juvenal, vi. 576.]
he shall often throw himself even into excesses, if he will take my
advice; otherwise the least debauch will destroy him, and render him
troublesome and disagreeable in company. The worst quality in a well-bred
man is over-fastidiousness, and an obligation to a certain particular way;
and it is particular, if not pliable and supple. It is a kind of reproach,
not to be able, or not to dare, to do what we see those about us do; let
such as these stop at home. It is in every man unbecoming, but in a
soldier vicious and intolerable: who, as Philopcemen said, ought to
accustom himself to every variety and inequality of life.
Though I have been brought up, as much as was possible, to liberty and
independence, yet so it is that, growing old, and having by indifference
more settled upon certain forms (my age is now past instruction, and has
henceforward nothing to do but to keep itself up as well as it can),
custom has already, ere I was aware, so imprinted its character in me in
certain things, that I look upon it as a kind of excess to leave them off;
and, without a force upon myself, cannot sleep in the daytime, nor eat
between meals, nor breakfast, nor go to bed, without a great interval
betwixt eating and sleeping,—[Gastroesophogeal Reflux. D.W.]—as
of three hours after supper; nor get children but before I sleep, nor get
them standing; nor endure my own sweat; nor quench my thirst either with
pure water or pure wine; nor keep my head long bare, nor cut my hair after
dinner; and I should be as uneasy without my gloves as without my shirt,
or without washing when I rise from table or out of my bed; and I could
not lie without a canopy and curtains, as if they were essential things. I
could dine without a tablecloth, but without a clean napkin, after the
German fashion, very incommodiously; I foul them more than the Germans or
Italians do, and make but little use either of spoon or fork. I complain
that they did not keep up the fashion, begun after the example of kings,
to change our napkin at every service, as they do our plate. We are told
of that laborious soldier Marius that, growing old, he became nice in his
drink, and never drank but out of a particular cup of his own I, in like
manner, have suffered myself to fancy a certain form of glasses, and not
willingly to drink in common glasses, no more than from a strange common
hand: all metal offends me in comparison of a clear and transparent
matter: let my eyes taste, too, according to their capacity. I owe several
other such niceties to custom. Nature has also, on the other side, helped
me to some of hers: as not to be able to endure more than two full meals
in one day, without overcharging my stomach, nor a total abstinence from
one of those meals without filling myself with wind, drying up my mouth,
and dulling my appetite; the finding great inconvenience from overmuch
evening air; for of late years, in night marches, which often happen to be
all night long, after five or six hours my stomach begins to be queasy,
with a violent pain in my head, so that I always vomit before the day can
break. When the others go to breakfast, I go to sleep; and when I rise, I
am as brisk and gay as before. I had always been told that the night dew
never rises but in the beginning of the night; but for some years past,
long and familiar intercourse with a lord, possessed with the opinion that
the night dew is more sharp and dangerous about the declining of the sun,
an hour or two before it sets, which he carefully avoids, and despises
that of the night, he almost impressed upon me, not so much his reasoning
as his experiences. What, shall mere doubt and inquiry strike our
imagination, so as to change us? Such as absolutely and on a sudden give
way to these propensions, draw total destruction upon themselves. I am
sorry for several gentlemen who, through the folly of their physicians,
have in their youth and health wholly shut themselves up: it were better
to endure a cough, than, by disuse, for ever to lose the commerce of
common life in things of so great utility. Malignant science, to interdict
us the most pleasant hours of the day! Let us keep our possession to the
last; for the most part, a man hardens himself by being obstinate, and
corrects his constitution, as Caesar did the falling sickness, by dint of
contempt. A man should addict himself to the best rules, but not enslave
himself to them, except to such, if there be any such, where obligation
and servitude are of profit.
Both kings and philosophers go to stool, and ladies too; public lives are
bound to ceremony; mine, that is obscure and private, enjoys all natural
dispensation; soldier and Gascon are also qualities a little subject to
indiscretion; wherefore I shall say of this act of relieving nature, that
it is desirable to refer it to certain prescribed and nocturnal hours, and
compel one's self to this by custom, as I have done; but not to subject
one's self, as I have done in my declining years, to a particular
convenience of place and seat for that purpose, and make it troublesome by
long sitting; and yet, in the fouler offices, is it not in some measure
excusable to require more care and cleanliness?
"Naturt homo mundum et elegans animal est."
["Man is by nature a clean and delicate creature."—Seneca, Ep., 92.]
Of all the actions of nature, I am the most impatient of being interrupted
in that. I have seen many soldiers troubled with the unruliness of their
bellies; whereas mine and I never fail of our punctual assignation, which
is at leaping out of bed, if some indispensable business or sickness does
not molest us.
I think then, as I said before, that sick men cannot better place
themselves anywhere in more safety, than in sitting still in that course
of life wherein they have been bred and trained up; change, be it what it
will, distempers and puts one out. Do you believe that chestnuts can hurt
a Perigordin or a Lucchese, or milk and cheese the mountain people? We
enjoin them not only a new, but a contrary, method of life; a change that
the healthful cannot endure. Prescribe water to a Breton of threescore and
ten; shut a seaman up in a stove; forbid a Basque footman to walk: you
will deprive them of motion, and in the end of air and light:
"An vivere tanti est?
Cogimur a suetis animum suspendere rebus,
Atque, ut vivamus, vivere desinimus. .
Hos superesse reor, quibus et spirabilis aer
Et lux, qua regimur, redditur ipsa gravis."
["Is life worth so much? We are compelled to withhold the mind
from things to which we are accustomed; and, that we may live, we
cease to live . . . . Do I conceive that they still live, to
whom the respirable air, and the light itself, by which we are
governed, is rendered oppressive?"
—Pseudo-Gallus, Eclog., i. 155, 247.]
If they do no other good, they do this at least, that they prepare
patients betimes for death, by little and little undermining and cutting
off the use of life.
Both well and sick, I have ever willingly suffered myself to obey the
appetites that pressed upon me. I give great rein to my desires and
propensities; I do not love to cure one disease by another; I hate
remedies that are more troublesome than the disease itself. To be subject
to the colic and subject to abstain from eating oysters are two evils
instead of one; the disease torments us on the one side, and the remedy on
the other. Since we are ever in danger of mistaking, let us rather run the
hazard of a mistake, after we have had the pleasure. The world proceeds
quite the other way, and thinks nothing profitable that is not painful; it
has great suspicion of facility. My appetite, in various things, has of
its own accord happily enough accommodated itself to the health of my
stomach. Relish and pungency in sauces were pleasant to me when young; my
stomach disliking them since, my taste incontinently followed. Wine is
hurtful to sick people, and 'tis the first thing that my mouth then finds
distasteful, and with an invincible dislike. Whatever I take against my
liking does me harm; and nothing hurts me that I eat with appetite and
delight. I never received harm by any action that was very pleasant to me;
and accordingly have made all medicinal conclusions largely give way to my
pleasure; and I have, when I was young,
"Quem circumcursans huc atque huc saepe Cupido
Fulgebat crocink splendidus in tunic."
["When Cupid, fluttering round me here and there, shone in his rich
purple mantle."—Catullus, lxvi. 133.]
given myself the rein as licentiously and inconsiderately to the desire
that was predominant in me, as any other whomsoever:
"Et militavi non sine gloria;"
["And I have played the soldier not ingloriously."
—Horace, Od., iii. 26, 2.]
yet more in continuation and holding out, than in sally:
"Sex me vix memini sustinuisse vices."
["I can scarcely remember six bouts in one night"
—Ovid, Amor., iii. 7, 26.]
'Tis certainly a misfortune and a miracle at once to confess at what a
tender age I first came under the subjection of love: it was, indeed, by
chance; for it was long before the years of choice or knowledge; I do not
remember myself so far back; and my fortune may well be coupled with that
of Quartilla, who could not remember when she was a maid:
"Inde tragus, celeresque pili, mirandaque matri
Barba meae."
["Thence the odour of the arm-pits, the precocious hair, and the
beard which astonished my mother."—Martial, xi. 22, 7.]
Physicians modify their rules according to the violent longings that
happen to sick persons, ordinarily with good success; this great desire
cannot be imagined so strange and vicious, but that nature must have a
hand in it. And then how easy a thing is it to satisfy the fancy? In my
opinion; this part wholly carries it, at least, above all the rest. The
most grievous and ordinary evils are those that fancy loads us with; this
Spanish saying pleases me in several aspects:
"Defenda me Dios de me."
["God defend me from myself."]
I am sorry when I am sick, that I have not some longing that might give me
the pleasure of satisfying it; all the rules of physic would hardly be
able to divert me from it. I do the same when I am well; I can see very
little more to be hoped or wished for. 'Twere pity a man should be so weak
and languishing, as not to have even wishing left to him.
The art of physic is not so fixed, that we need be without authority for
whatever we do; it changes according to climates and moons, according to
Fernel and to Scaliger.—[Physicians to Henry II.]—If your
physician does not think it good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to
eat such and such meats, never trouble yourself; I will find you another
that shall not be of his opinion; the diversity of medical arguments and
opinions embraces all sorts and forms. I saw a miserable sick person
panting and burning for thirst, that he might be cured, who was afterwards
laughed at for his pains by another physician, who condemned that advice
as prejudicial to him: had he not tormented himself to good purpose? There
lately died of the stone a man of that profession, who had made use of
extreme abstinence to contend with his disease: his fellow-physicians say
that, on the contrary, this abstinence had dried him up and baked the
gravel in his kidneys.
I have observed, that both in wounds and sicknesses, speaking discomposes
and hurts me, as much as any irregularity I can commit. My voice pains and
tires me, for 'tis loud and forced; so that when I have gone to a whisper
some great persons about affairs of consequence, they have often desired
me to moderate my voice.
This story is worth a diversion. Some one in a certain Greek school
speaking loud as I do, the master of the ceremonies sent to him to speak
softly: "Tell him, then, he must send me," replied the other, "the tone he
would have me speak in." To which the other replied, "That he should take
the tone from the ears of him to whom he spake." It was well said, if it
is to be understood: "Speak according to the affair you are speaking about
to your auditor," for if it mean, "'tis sufficient that he hear you, or
govern yourself by him," I do not find it to be reason. The tone and
motion of my voice carries with it a great deal of the expression and
signification of my meaning, and 'tis I who am to govern it, to make
myself understood: there is a voice to instruct, a voice to flatter, and a
voice to reprehend. I will not only that my voice reach him, but,
peradventure, that it strike and pierce him. When I rate my valet with
sharp and bitter language, it would be very pretty for him to say; "Pray,
master, speak lower; I hear you very well":
"Est quaedam vox ad auditum accommodata,
non magnitudine, sed proprietate."
["There is a certain voice accommodated to the hearing, not by its
loudness, but by its propriety."—Quintilian, xi. 3.]
Speaking is half his who speaks, and half his who hears; the latter ought
to prepare himself to receive it, according to its bias; as with
tennis-players, he who receives the ball, shifts and prepares, according
as he sees him move who strikes the stroke, and according to the stroke
itself.
Experience has, moreover, taught me this, that we ruin ourselves by
impatience. Evils have their life and limits, their diseases and their
recovery.
The constitution of maladies is formed by the pattern of the constitution
of animals; they have their fortune and their days limited from their
birth; he who attempts imperiously to cut them short by force in the
middle of their course, lengthens and multiplies them, and incenses
instead of appeasing them. I am of Crantor's opinion, that we are neither
obstinately and deafly to oppose evils, nor succumb to them from want of
courage; but that we are naturally to give way to them, according to their
condition and our own. We ought to grant free passage to diseases; I find
they stay less with me, who let them alone; and I have lost some, reputed
the most tenacious and obstinate, by their own decay, without help and
without art, and contrary to its rules. Let us a little permit Nature to
take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we. But such
an one died of it; and so shall you: if not of that disease, of another.
And how many have not escaped dying, who have had three physicians at
their tails? Example is a vague and universal mirror, and of various
reflections. If it be a delicious medicine, take it: 'tis always so much
present good. I will never stick at the name nor the colour, if it be
pleasant and grateful to the palate: pleasure is one of the chiefest kinds
of profit. I have suffered colds, gouty defluxions, relaxations,
palpitations of the heart, megrims, and other accidents, to grow old and
die in time a natural death. I have so lost them when I was half fit to
keep them: they are sooner prevailed upon by courtesy than huffing. We
must patiently suffer the laws of our condition; we are born to grow old,
to grow weak, and to be sick, in despite of all medicine. 'Tis the first
lesson the Mexicans teach their children; so soon as ever they are born
they thus salute them: "Thou art come into the world, child, to endure:
endure, suffer, and say nothing." 'Tis injustice to lament that which has
befallen any one which may befall every one:
"Indignare, si quid in to inique proprio constitutum est."
["Then be angry, when there is anything unjustly decreed against
thee alone."—Seneca, Ep., 91.]
See an old man who begs of God that he will maintain his health vigorous
and entire; that is to say, that he restore him to youth:
"Stulte, quid haec frustra votis puerilibus optas?"
["Fool! why do you vainly form these puerile wishes?"
—Ovid., Trist., 111. 8, II.]
is it not folly? his condition is not capable of it. The gout, the stone,
and indigestion are symptoms of long years; as heat, rains, and winds are
of long journeys. Plato does not believe that AEsculapius troubled himself
to provide by regimen to prolong life in a weak and wasted body, useless
to his country and to his profession, or to beget healthful and robust
children; and does not think this care suitable to the Divine justice and
prudence, which is to direct all things to utility. My good friend, your
business is done; nobody can restore you; they can, at the most, but patch
you up, and prop you a little, and by that means prolong your misery an
hour or two:
"Non secus instantem cupiens fulcire ruinam,
Diversis contra nititur obiicibus;
Donec certa dies, omni compage soluta,
Ipsum cum rebus subruat auxilium."
["Like one who, desiring to stay an impending ruin, places various
props against it, till, in a short time, the house, the props, and
all, giving way, fall together."—Pseudo-Gallus, i. 171.]
We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmony
of the world, is composed of contrary things—of diverse tones, sweet
and harsh, sharp and flat, sprightly and solemn: the musician who should
only affect some of these, what would he be able to do? he must know how
to make use of them all, and to mix them; and so we should mingle the
goods and evils which are consubstantial with our life; our being cannot
subsist without this mixture, and the one part is no less necessary to it
than the other. To attempt to combat natural necessity, is to represent
the folly of Ctesiphon, who undertook to kick with his mule.—[Plutarch,
How to restrain Anger, c. 8.]
I consult little about the alterations I feel: for these doctors take
advantage; when they have you at their mercy, they surfeit your ears with
their prognostics; and formerly surprising me, weakened with sickness,
injuriously handled me with their dogmas and magisterial fopperies—one
while menacing me with great pains, and another with approaching death.
Hereby I was indeed moved and shaken, but not subdued nor jostled from my
place; and though my judgment was neither altered nor distracted, yet it
was at least disturbed: 'tis always agitation and combat.
Now, I use my imagination as gently as I can, and would discharge it, if I
could, of all trouble and contest; a man must assist, flatter, and deceive
it, if he can; my mind is fit for that office; it needs no appearances
throughout: could it persuade as it preaches, it would successfully
relieve me. Will you have an example? It tells me: "that 'tis for my good
to have the stone: that the structure of my age must naturally suffer some
decay, and it is now time it should begin to disjoin and to confess a
breach; 'tis a common necessity, and there is nothing in it either
miraculous or new; I therein pay what is due to old age, and I cannot
expect a better bargain; that society ought to comfort me, being fallen
into the most common infirmity of my age; I see everywhere men tormented
with the same disease, and am honoured by the fellowship, forasmuch as men
of the best quality are most frequently afflicted with it: 'tis a noble
and dignified disease: that of such as are struck with it, few have it to
a less degree of pain; that these are put to the trouble of a strict diet
and the daily taking of nauseous potions, whereas I owe my better state
purely to my good fortune; for some ordinary broths of eringo or
burst-wort that I have twice or thrice taken to oblige the ladies, who,
with greater kindness than my pain was sharp, would needs present me half
of theirs, seemed to me equally easy to take and fruitless in operation,
the others have to pay a thousand vows to AEsculapius, and as many crowns
to their physicians, for the voiding a little gravel, which I often do by
the aid of nature: even the decorum of my countenance is not disturbed in
company; and I can hold my water ten hours, and as long as any man in
health. The fear of this disease," says my mind, "formerly affrighted
thee, when it was unknown to thee; the cries and despairing groans of
those who make it worse by their impatience, begot a horror in thee. 'Tis
an infirmity that punishes the members by which thou hast most offended.
Thou art a conscientious fellow;"
"Quae venit indigne poena, dolenda venit:"
["We are entitled to complain of a punishment that we have not
deserved."—Ovid, Heroid., v. 8.]
"consider this chastisement: 'tis very easy in comparison of others, and
inflicted with a paternal tenderness: do but observe how late it comes; it
only seizes on and incommodes that part of thy life which is, one way and
another, sterile and lost; having, as it were by composition, given time
for the licence and pleasures of thy youth. The fear and the compassion
that the people have of this disease serve thee for matter of glory; a
quality whereof if thou bast thy judgment purified, and that thy reason
has somewhat cured it, thy friends notwithstanding, discern some tincture
in thy complexion. 'Tis a pleasure to hear it said of oneself what
strength of mind, what patience! Thou art seen to sweat with pain, to turn
pale and red, to tremble, to vomit blood, to suffer strange contractions
and convulsions, at times to let great tears drop from thine eyes, to
urine thick, black, and dreadful water, or to have it suppressed by some
sharp and craggy stone, that cruelly pricks and tears the neck of the
bladder, whilst all the while thou entertainest the company with an
ordinary countenance; droning by fits with thy people; making one in a
continuous discourse, now and then making excuse for thy pain, and
representing thy suffering less than it is. Dost thou call to mind the men
of past times, who so greedily sought diseases to keep their virtue in
breath and exercise? Put the case that nature sets thee on and impels thee
to this glorious school, into which thou wouldst never have entered of thy
own free will. If thou tellest me that it is a dangerous and mortal
disease, what others are not so? for 'tis a physical cheat to expect any
that they say do not go direct to death: what matters if they go thither
by accident, or if they easily slide and slip into the path that leads us
to it? But thou dost not die because thou art sick; thou diest because
thou art living: death kills thee without the help of sickness: and
sickness has deferred death in some, who have lived longer by reason that
they thought themselves always dying; to which may be added, that as in
wounds, so in diseases, some are medicinal and wholesome. The stone is
often no less long-lived than you; we see men with whom it has continued
from their infancy even to their extreme old age; and if they had not
broken company, it would have been with them longer still; you more often
kill it than it kills you. And though it should present to you the image
of approaching death, were it not a good office to a man of such an age,
to put him in mind of his end? And, which is worse, thou hast no longer
anything that should make thee desire to be cured. Whether or no, common
necessity will soon call thee away. Do but consider how skilfully and
gently she puts thee out of concern with life, and weans thee from the
world; not forcing thee with a tyrannical subjection, like so many other
infirmities which thou seest old men afflicted withal, that hold them in
continual torment, and keep them in perpetual and unintermitted weakness
and pains, but by warnings and instructions at intervals, intermixing long
pauses of repose, as it were to give thee opportunity to meditate and
ruminate upon thy lesson, at thy own ease and leisure. To give thee means
to judge aright, and to assume the resolution of a man of courage, it
presents to thee the state of thy entire condition, both in good and evil;
and one while a very cheerful and another an insupportable life, in one
and the same day. If thou embracest not death, at least thou shakest hands
with it once a month; whence thou hast more cause to hope that it will one
day surprise thee without menace; and that being so often conducted to the
water-side, but still thinking thyself to be upon the accustomed terms,
thou and thy confidence will at one time or another be unexpectedly wafted
over. A man cannot reasonably complain of diseases that fairly divide the
time with health."
I am obliged to Fortune for having so often assaulted me with the same
sort of weapons: she forms and fashions me by use, hardens and habituates
me, so that I can know within a little for how much I shall be quit. For
want of natural memory, I make one of paper; and as any new symptom
happens in my disease, I set it down, whence it falls out that, having now
almost passed through all sorts of examples, if anything striking
threatens me, turning over these little loose notes, as the Sybilline
leaves, I never fail of finding matter of consolation from some favourable
prognostic in my past experience. Custom also makes me hope better for the
time to come; for, the conduct of this clearing out having so long
continued, 'tis to be believed that nature will not alter her course, and
that no other worse accident will happen than what I already feel. And
besides, the condition of this disease is not unsuitable to my prompt and
sudden complexion: when it assaults me gently, I am afraid, for 'tis then
for a great while; but it has, naturally, brisk and vigorous excesses; it
claws me to purpose for a day or two. My kidneys held out an age without
alteration; and I have almost now lived another, since they changed their
state; evils have their periods, as well as benefits: peradventure, the
infirmity draws towards an end. Age weakens the heat of my stomach, and,
its digestion being less perfect, sends this crude matter to my kidneys;
why, at a certain revolution, may not the heat of my kidneys be also
abated, so that they can no more petrify my phlegm, and nature find out
some other way of purgation. Years have evidently helped me to drain
certain rheums; and why not these excrements which furnish matter for
gravel? But is there anything delightful in comparison of this sudden
change, when from an excessive pain, I come, by the voiding of a stone, to
recover, as by a flash of lightning, the beautiful light of health, so
free and full, as it happens in our sudden and sharpest colics? Is there
anything in the pain suffered, that one can counterpoise to the pleasure
of so sudden an amendment? Oh, how much does health seem the more pleasant
to me, after a sickness so near and so contiguous, that I can distinguish
them in the presence of one another, in their greatest show; when they
appear in emulation, as if to make head against and dispute it with one
another! As the Stoics say that vices are profitably introduced to give
value to and to set off virtue, we can, with better reason and less
temerity of conjecture, say that nature has given us pain for the honour
and service of pleasure and indolence. When Socrates, after his fetters
were knocked off, felt the pleasure of that itching which the weight of
them had caused in his legs, he rejoiced to consider the strict alliance
betwixt pain and pleasure; how they are linked together by a necessary
connection, so that by turns they follow and mutually beget one another;
and cried out to good AEsop, that he ought out of this consideration to
have taken matter for a fine fable.
The worst that I see in other diseases is, that they are not so grievous
in their effect as they are in their issue: a man is a whole year in
recovering, and all the while full of weakness and fear. There is so much
hazard, and so many steps to arrive at safety, that there is no end on't
before they have unmuffled you of a kerchief, and then of a cap, before
they allow you to walk abroad and take the air, to drink wine, to lie with
your wife, to eat melons, 'tis odds you relapse into some new distemper.
The stone has this privilege, that it carries itself clean off: whereas
the other maladies always leave behind them some impression and alteration
that render the body subject to a new disease, and lend a hand to one
another. Those are excusable that content themselves with possessing us,
without extending farther and introducing their followers; but courteous
and kind are those whose passage brings us any profitable issue. Since I
have been troubled with the stone, I find myself freed from all other
accidents, much more, methinks, than I was before, and have never had any
fever since; I argue that the extreme and frequent vomitings that I am
subject to purge me: and, on the other hand, my distastes for this and
that, and the strange fasts I am forced to keep, digest my peccant
humours, and nature, with those stones, voids whatever there is in me
superfluous and hurtful. Let them never tell me that it is a medicine too
dear bought: for what avail so many stinking draughts, so many caustics,
incisions, sweats, setons, diets, and so many other methods of cure, which
often, by reason we are not able to undergo their violence and
importunity, bring us to our graves? So that when I have the stone, I look
upon it as physic; when free from it, as an absolute deliverance.
And here is another particular benefit of my disease; which is, that it
almost plays its game by itself, and lets 'me play mine, if I have only
courage to do it; for, in its greatest fury, I have endured it ten hours
together on horseback. Do but endure only; you need no other regimen play,
run, dine, do this and t'other, if you can; your debauch will do you more
good than harm; say as much to one that has the pox, the gout, or hernia!
The other diseases have more universal obligations; rack our actions after
another kind of manner, disturb our whole order, and to their
consideration engage the whole state of life: this only pinches the skin;
it leaves the understanding and the will wholly at our own disposal, and
the tongue, the hands, and the feet; it rather awakens than stupefies you.
The soul is struck with the ardour of a fever, overwhelmed with an
epilepsy, and displaced by a sharp megrim, and, in short, astounded by all
the diseases that hurt the whole mass and the most noble parts; this never
meddles with the soul; if anything goes amiss with her, 'tis her own
fault; she betrays, dismounts, and abandons herself. There are none but
fools who suffer themselves to be persuaded that this hard and massive
body which is baked in our kidneys is to be dissolved by drinks;
wherefore, when it is once stirred, there is nothing to be done but to
give it passage; and, for that matter, it will itself make one.
I moreover observe this particular convenience in it, that it is a disease
wherein we have little to guess at: we are dispensed from the trouble into
which other diseases throw us by the uncertainty of their causes,
conditions, and progress; a trouble that is infinitely painful: we have no
need of consultations and doctoral interpretations; the senses well enough
inform us both what it is and where it is.
By suchlike arguments, weak and strong, as Cicero with the disease of his
old age, I try to rock asleep and amuse my imagination, and to dress its
wounds. If I find them worse tomorrow, I will provide new stratagems. That
this is true: I am come to that pass of late, that the least motion forces
pure blood out of my kidneys: what of that? I move about, nevertheless, as
before, and ride after my hounds with a juvenile and insolent ardour; and
hold that I have very good satisfaction for an accident of that
importance, when it costs me no more but a dull heaviness and uneasiness
in that part; 'tis some great stone that wastes and consumes the substance
of my kidneys and my life, which I by little and little evacuate, not
without some natural pleasure, as an excrement henceforward superfluous
and troublesome. Now if I feel anything stirring, do not fancy that I
trouble myself to consult my pulse or my urine, thereby to put myself upon
some annoying prevention; I shall soon enough feel the pain, without
making it more and longer by the disease of fear. He who fears he shall
suffer, already suffers what he fears. To which may be added that the
doubts and ignorance of those who take upon them to expound the designs of
nature and her internal progressions, and the many false prognostics of
their art, ought to give us to understand that her ways are inscrutable
and utterly unknown; there is great uncertainty, variety, and obscurity in
what she either promises or threatens. Old age excepted, which is an
indubitable sign of the approach of death, in all other accidents I see
few signs of the future, whereon we may ground our divination. I only
judge of myself by actual sensation, not by reasoning: to what end, since
I am resolved to bring nothing to it but expectation and patience? Will
you know how much I get by this? observe those who do otherwise, and who
rely upon so many diverse persuasions and counsels; how often the
imagination presses upon them without any bodily pain. I have many times
amused myself, being well and in safety, and quite free from these
dangerous attacks in communicating them to the physicians as then
beginning to discover themselves in me; I underwent the decree of their
dreadful conclusions, being all the while quite at my ease, and so much
the more obliged to the favour of God and better satisfied of the vanity
of this art.
There is nothing that ought so much to be recommended to youth as activity
and vigilance our life is nothing but movement. I bestir myself with great
difficulty, and am slow in everything, whether in rising, going to bed, or
eating: seven of the clock in the morning is early for me, and where I
rule, I never dine before eleven, nor sup till after six. I formerly
attributed the cause of the fevers and other diseases I fell into to the
heaviness that long sleeping had brought upon me, and have ever repented
going to sleep again in the morning. Plato is more angry at excess of
sleeping than at excess of drinking. I love to lie hard and alone, even
without my wife, as kings do; pretty well covered with clothes. They never
warm my bed, but since I have grown old they give me at need cloths to lay
to my feet and stomach. They found fault with the great Scipio that he was
a great sleeper; not, in my opinion, for any other reason than that men
were displeased that he alone should have nothing in him to be found fault
with. If I am anything fastidious in my way of living 'tis rather in my
lying than anything else; but generally I give way and accommodate myself
as well as any one to necessity. Sleeping has taken up a great part of my
life, and I yet continue, at the age I now am, to sleep eight or nine
hours at one breath. I wean myself with utility from this proneness to
sloth, and am evidently the better for so doing. I find the change a
little hard indeed, but in three days 'tis over; and I see but few who
live with less sleep, when need requires, and who more constantly exercise
themselves, or to whom long journeys are less troublesome. My body is
capable of a firm, but not of a violent or sudden agitation. I escape of
late from violent exercises, and such as make me sweat: my limbs grow
weary before they are warm. I can stand a whole day together, and am never
weary of walking; but from my youth I have ever preferred to ride upon
paved roads; on foot, I get up to the haunches in dirt, and little fellows
as I am are subject in the streets to be elbowed and jostled for want of
presence; I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying,
with my heels as high or higher than my seat.
There is no profession as pleasant as the military, a profession both
noble in its execution (for valour is the stoutest, proudest, and most
generous of all virtues), and noble in its cause: there is no utility
either more universal or more just than the protection of the peace and
greatness of one's country. The company of so many noble, young, and
active men delights you; the ordinary sight of so many tragic spectacles;
the freedom of the conversation, without art; a masculine and
unceremonious way of living, please you; the variety of a thousand several
actions; the encouraging harmony of martial music that ravishes and
inflames both your ears and souls; the honour of this occupation, nay,
even its hardships and difficulties, which Plato holds so light that in
his Republic he makes women and children share in them, are delightful to
you. You put yourself voluntarily upon particular exploits and hazards,
according as you judge of their lustre and importance; and, a volunteer,
find even life itself excusably employed:
"Pulchrumque mori succurrit in armis."
["'Tis fine to die sword in hand." ("And he remembers that it
is honourable to die in arms.")—AEneid, ii. 317.]
To fear common dangers that concern so great a multitude of men; not to
dare to do what so many sorts of souls, what a whole people dare, is for a
heart that is poor and mean beyond all measure: company encourages even
children. If others excel you in knowledge, in gracefulness, in strength,
or fortune, you have alternative resources at your disposal; but to give
place to them in stability of mind, you can blame no one for that but
yourself. Death is more abject, more languishing and troublesome, in bed
than in a fight: fevers and catarrhs as painful and mortal as a
musket-shot. Whoever has fortified himself valiantly to bear the accidents
of common life need not raise his courage to be a soldier:
"Vivere, mi Lucili, militare est."
["To live, my Lucilius, is (to make war) to be a soldier."
—Seneca, Ep., 96.]
I do not remember that I ever had the itch, and yet scratching is one of
nature's sweetest gratifications, and so much at hand; but repentance
follows too near. I use it most in my ears, which are at intervals apt to
itch.
I came into the world with all my senses entire, even to perfection. My
stomach is commodiously good, as also is my head and my breath; and, for
the most part, uphold themselves so in the height of fevers. I have passed
the age to which some nations, not without reason, have prescribed so just
a term of life that they would not suffer men to exceed it; and yet I have
some intermissions, though short and inconstant, so clean and sound as to
be little inferior to the health and pleasantness of my youth. I do not
speak of vigour and sprightliness; 'tis not reason they should follow me
beyond their limits:
"Non hoc amplius est liminis, aut aquae
Coelestis, patiens latus."
["I am no longer able to stand waiting at a door in the rain."
—Horace, Od., iii. 10, 9.]
My face and eyes presently discover my condition; all my alterations begin
there, and appear somewhat worse than they really are; my friends often
pity me before I feel the cause in myself. My looking-glass does not
frighten me; for even in my youth it has befallen me more than once to
have a scurvy complexion and of ill augury, without any great consequence,
so that the physicians, not finding any cause within answerable to that
outward alteration, attributed it to the mind and to some secret passion
that tormented me within; but they were deceived. If my body would govern
itself as well, according to my rule, as my mind does, we should move a
little more at our ease. My mind was then not only free from trouble, but,
moreover, full of joy and satisfaction, as it commonly is, half by its
complexion, half by its design:
"Nec vitiant artus aegrae contagia mentis."
["Nor do the troubles of the body ever affect my mind."
—Ovid, Trist., iii. 8, 25.]
I am of the opinion that this temperature of my soul has often raised my
body from its lapses; this is often depressed; if the other be not brisk
and gay, 'tis at least tranquil and at rest. I had a quartan ague four or
five months, that made me look miserably ill; my mind was always, if not
calm, yet pleasant. If the pain be without me, the weakness and languor do
not much afflict me; I see various corporal faintings, that beget a horror
in me but to name, which yet I should less fear than a thousand passions
and agitations of the mind that I see about me. I make up my mind no more
to run; 'tis enough that I can crawl along; nor do I more complain of the
natural decadence that I feel in myself:
"Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus?"
["Who is surprised to see a swollen goitre in the Alps?"
—Juvenal, xiii. 162.]
than I regret that my duration shall not be as long and entire as that of
an oak.
I have no reason to complain of my imagination; I have had few thoughts in
my life that have so much as broken my sleep, except those of desire,
which have awakened without afflicting me. I dream but seldom, and then of
chimaeras and fantastic things, commonly produced from pleasant thoughts,
and rather ridiculous than sad; and I believe it to be true that dreams
are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there is art required
to sort and understand them
"Res, quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident,
Quaeque agunt vigilantes, agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt,
Minus mirandum est."
["'Tis less wonder, what men practise, think, care for, see, and do
when waking, (should also run in their heads and disturb them when
they are asleep) and which affect their feelings, if they happen to
any in sleep."—Attius, cited in Cicero, De Divin., i. 22.]
Plato, moreover, says, that 'tis the office of prudence to draw
instructions of divination of future things from dreams: I don't know
about this, but there are wonderful instances of it that Socrates,
Xenophon, and Aristotle, men of irreproachable authority, relate.
Historians say that the Atlantes never dream; who also never eat any
animal food, which I add, forasmuch as it is, peradventure, the reason why
they never dream, for Pythagoras ordered a certain preparation of diet to
beget appropriate dreams. Mine are very gentle, without any agitation of
body or expression of voice. I have seen several of my time wonderfully
disturbed by them. Theon the philosopher walked in his sleep, and so did
Pericles servant, and that upon the tiles and top of the house.
I hardly ever choose my dish at table, but take the next at hand, and
unwillingly change it for another. A confusion of meats and a clatter of
dishes displease me as much as any other confusion: I am easily satisfied
with few dishes: and am an enemy to the opinion of Favorinus, that in a
feast they should snatch from you the meat you like, and set a plate of
another sort before you; and that 'tis a pitiful supper, if you do not
sate your guests with the rumps of various fowls, the beccafico only
deserving to be all eaten. I usually eat salt meats, yet I prefer bread
that has no salt in it; and my baker never sends up other to my table,
contrary to the custom of the country. In my infancy, what they had most
to correct in me was the refusal of things that children commonly best
love, as sugar, sweetmeats, and march-panes. My tutor contended with this
aversion to delicate things, as a kind of over-nicety; and indeed 'tis
nothing else but a difficulty of taste, in anything it applies itself to.
Whoever cures a child of an obstinate liking for brown bread, bacon, or
garlic, cures him also of pampering his palate. There are some who affect
temperance and plainness by wishing for beef and ham amongst the
partridges; 'tis all very fine; this is the delicacy of the delicate; 'tis
the taste of an effeminate fortune that disrelishes ordinary and
accustomed things.
"Per qux luxuria divitiarum taedio ludit."
["By which the luxury of wealth causes tedium."—Seneca, Ep., 18.]
Not to make good cheer with what another is enjoying, and to be curious in
what a man eats, is the essence of this vice:
"Si modica coenare times olus omne patella."
["If you can't be content with herbs in a small dish for supper."
—Horace, Ep., i. 5, 2.]
There is indeed this difference, that 'tis better to oblige one's appetite
to things that are most easy to be had; but 'tis always vice to oblige
one's self. I formerly said a kinsman of mine was overnice, who, by being
in our galleys, had unlearned the use of beds and to undress when he went
to sleep.
If I had any sons, I should willingly wish them my fortune. The good
father that God gave me (who has nothing of me but the acknowledgment of
his goodness, but truly 'tis a very hearty one) sent me from my cradle to
be brought up in a poor village of his, and there continued me all the
while I was at nurse, and still longer, bringing me up to the meanest and
most common way of living:
"Magna pars libertatis est bene moratus venter."
["A well-governed stomach is a great part of liberty."
—Seneca,Ep., 123.]
Never take upon yourselves, and much less give up to your wives, the care
of their nurture; leave the formation to fortune, under popular and
natural laws; leave it to custom to train them up to frugality and
hardship, that they may rather descend from rigour than mount up to it.
This humour of his yet aimed at another end, to make me familiar with the
people and the condition of men who most need our assistance; considering
that I should rather regard them who extend their arms to me, than those
who turn their backs upon me; and for this reason it was that he provided
to hold me at the font persons of the meanest fortune, to oblige and
attach me to them.
Nor has his design succeeded altogether ill; for, whether upon the account
of the more honour in such a condescension, or out of a natural compassion
that has a very great power over me, I have an inclination towards the
meaner sort of people. The faction which I should condemn in our wars, I
should more sharply condemn, flourishing and successful; it will somewhat
reconcile me to it, when I shall see it miserable and overwhelmed. How
willingly do I admire the fine humour of Cheilonis, daughter and wife to
kings of Sparta. Whilst her husband Cleombrotus, in the commotion of her
city, had the advantage over Leonidas her father, she, like a good
daughter, stuck close to her father in all his misery and exile, in
opposition to the conqueror. But so soon as the chance of war turned, she
changed her will with the change of fortune, and bravely turned to her
husband's side, whom she accompanied throughout, where his ruin carried
him: admitting, as it appears to me, no other choice than to cleave to the
side that stood most in need of her, and where she could best manifest her
compassion. I am naturally more apt to follow the example of Flaminius,
who rather gave his assistance to those who had most need of him than to
those who had power to do him good, than I do to that of Pyrrhus, who was
of an humour to truckle under the great and to domineer over the poor.
Long sittings at table both trouble me and do me harm; for, be it that I
was so accustomed when a child, I eat all the while I sit. Therefore it is
that at my own house, though the meals there are of the shortest, I
usually sit down a little while after the rest, after the manner of
Augustus, but I do not imitate him in rising also before the rest; on the
contrary, I love to sit still a long time after, and to hear them talk,
provided I am none of the talkers: for I tire and hurt myself with
speaking upon a full stomach, as much as I find it very wholesome and
pleasant to argue and to strain my voice before dinner.
The ancient Greeks and Romans had more reason than we in setting apart for
eating, which is a principal action of life, if they were not prevented by
other extraordinary business, many hours and the greatest part of the
night; eating and drinking more deliberately than we do, who perform all
our actions post-haste; and in extending this natural pleasure to more
leisure and better use, intermixing with profitable conversation.
They whose concern it is to have a care of me, may very easily hinder me
from eating anything they think will do me harm; for in such matters I
never covet nor miss anything I do not see; but withal, if it once comes
in my sight, 'tis in vain to persuade me to forbear; so that when I design
to fast I must be kept apart from the suppers, and must have only so much
given me as is required for a prescribed collation; for if to table, I
forget my resolution. When I order my cook to alter the manner of dressing
any dish, all my family know what it means, that my stomach is out of
order, and that I shall not touch it.
I love to have all meats, that will endure it, very little boiled or
roasted, and prefer them very high, and even, as to several, quite gone.
Nothing but hardness generally offends me (of any other quality I am as
patient and indifferent as any man I have known); so that, contrary to the
common humour, even in fish it often happens that I find them both too
fresh and too firm; not for want of teeth, which I ever had good, even to
excellence, and which age does not now begin to threaten; I have always
been used every morning to rub them with a napkin, and before and after
dinner. God is favourable to those whom He makes to die by degrees; 'tis
the only benefit of old age; the last death will be so much the less
painful; it will kill but a half or a quarter of a man. There is one tooth
lately fallen out without drawing and without pain; it was the natural
term of its duration; in that part of my being and several others, are
already dead, others half dead, of those that were most active and in the
first rank during my vigorous years; 'tis so I melt and steal away from
myself. What a folly it would be in my understanding to apprehend the
height of this fall, already so much advanced, as if it were from the very
top! I hope I shall not. I, in truth, receive a principal consolation in
meditating my death, that it will be just and natural, and that
henceforward I cannot herein either require or hope from Destiny any other
but unlawful favour. Men make themselves believe that we formerly had
longer lives as well as greater stature. But they deceive themselves; and
Solon, who was of those elder times, limits the duration of life to
threescore and ten years. I, who have so much and so universally adored
that "The mean is best," of the passed time, and who have concluded the
most moderate measures to be the most perfect, shall I pretend to an
immeasurable and prodigious old age? Whatever happens contrary to the
course of nature may be troublesome; but what comes according to her
should always be pleasant:
"Omnia, quae secundum naturam fiunt, sunt habenda in bonis."
["All things that are done according to nature
are to be accounted good."—Cicero, De Senect., c. 19.]
And so, says Plato, the death which is occasioned by wounds and diseases
is violent; but that which comes upon us, old age conducting us to it, is
of all others the most easy, and in some sort delicious:
"Vitam adolescentibus vis aufert, senibus maturitas."
["Young men are taken away by violence, old men by maturity."
—Cicero, ubi sup.]
Death mixes and confounds itself throughout with life; decay anticipates
its hour, and shoulders itself even into the course of our advance. I have
portraits of myself taken at five-and-twenty and five-and-thirty years of
age. I compare them with that lately drawn: how many times is it no longer
me; how much more is my present image unlike the former, than unlike my
dying one? It is too much to abuse nature, to make her trot so far that
she must be forced to leave us, and abandon our conduct, our eyes, teeth,
legs, and all the rest to the mercy of a foreign and haggard countenance,
and to resign us into the hands of art, being weary of following us
herself.
I am not excessively fond either of salads or fruits, except melons. My
father hated all sorts of sauces; I love them all. Eating too much hurts
me; but, as to the quality of what I eat, I do not yet certainly know that
any sort of meat disagrees with me; neither have I observed that either
full moon or decrease, autumn or spring, have any influence upon me. We
have in us motions that are inconstant and unknown; for example, I found
radishes first grateful to my stomach, since that nauseous, and now again
grateful. In several other things, I find my stomach and appetite vary
after the same manner; I have changed again and again from white wine to
claret, from claret to white wine.
I am a great lover of fish, and consequently make my fasts feasts and
feasts fasts; and I believe what some people say, that it is more easy of
digestion than flesh. As I make a conscience of eating flesh upon
fish-days, so does my taste make a conscience of mixing fish and flesh;
the difference betwixt them seems to me too remote.
From my youth, I have sometimes kept out of the way at meals; either to
sharpen my appetite against the next morning (for, as Epicurus fasted and
made lean meals to accustom his pleasure to make shift without abundance,
I, on the contrary, do it to prepare my pleasure to make better and more
cheerful use of abundance); or else I fasted to preserve my vigour for the
service of some action of body or mind: for both the one and the other of
these is cruelly dulled in me by repletion; and, above all things, I hate
that foolish coupling of so healthful and sprightly a goddess with that
little belching god, bloated with the fumes of his liquor—[
Montaigne did not approve of coupling Bacchus with Venus.]— or to
cure my sick stomach, or for want of fit company; for I say, as the same
Epicurus did, that one is not so much to regard what he eats, as with
whom; and I commend Chilo, that he would not engage himself to be at
Periander's feast till he was first informed who were to be the other
guests; no dish is so acceptable to me, nor no sauce so appetising, as
that which is extracted from society. I think it more wholesome to eat
more leisurely and less, and to eat oftener; but I would have appetite and
hunger attended to; I should take no pleasure to be fed with three or four
pitiful and stinted repasts a day, after a medicinal manner: who will
assure me that, if I have a good appetite in the morning, I shall have the
same at supper? But we old fellows especially, let us take the first
opportune time of eating, and leave to almanac-makers hopes and
prognostics. The utmost fruit of my health is pleasure; let us take hold
of the present and known. I avoid the invariable in these laws of fasting;
he who would have one form serve him, let him avoid the continuing it; we
harden ourselves in it; our strength is there stupefied and laid asleep;
six months after, you shall find your stomach so inured to it, that all
you have got is the loss of your liberty of doing otherwise but to your
prejudice.
I never keep my legs and thighs warmer in winter than in summer; one
simple pair of silk stockings is all. I have suffered myself, for the
relief of my colds, to keep my head warmer, and my belly upon the account
of my colic: my diseases in a few days habituate themselves thereto, and
disdained my ordinary provisions: we soon get from a coif to a kerchief
over it, from a simple cap to a quilted hat; the trimmings of the doublet
must not merely serve for ornament: there must be added a hare's skin or a
vulture's skin, and a cap under the hat: follow this gradation, and you
will go a very fine way to work. I will do nothing of the sort, and would
willingly leave off what I have begun. If you fall into any new
inconvenience, all this is labour lost; you are accustomed to it; seek out
some other. Thus do they destroy themselves who submit to be pestered with
these enforced and superstitious rules; they must add something more, and
something more after that; there is no end on't.
For what concerns our affairs and pleasures, it is much more commodious,
as the ancients did, to lose one's dinner, and defer making good cheer
till the hour of retirement and repose, without breaking up a day; and so
was I formerly used to do. As to health, I since by experience find, on
the contrary, that it is better to dine, and that the digestion is better
while awake. I am not very used to be thirsty, either well or sick; my
mouth is, indeed, apt to be dry, but without thirst; and commonly I never
drink but with thirst that is created by eating, and far on in the meal; I
drink pretty well for a man of my pitch: in summer, and at a relishing
meal, I do not only exceed the limits of Augustus, who drank but thrice
precisely; but not to offend Democritus rule, who forbade that men should
stop at four times as an unlucky number, I proceed at need to the fifth
glass, about three half-pints; for the little glasses are my favourites,
and I like to drink them off, which other people avoid as an unbecoming
thing. I mix my wine sometimes with half, sometimes with the third part
water; and when I am at home, by an ancient custom that my father's
physician prescribed both to him and himself, they mix that which is
designed for me in the buttery, two or three hours before 'tis brought in.
'Tis said that Cranabs, king of Attica, was the inventor of this custom of
diluting wine; whether useful or no, I have heard disputed. I think it
more decent and wholesome for children to drink no wine till after sixteen
or eighteen years of age. The most usual and common method of living is
the most becoming; all particularity, in my opinion, is to be avoided; and
I should as much hate a German who mixed water with his wine, as I should
a Frenchman who drank it pure. Public usage gives the law in these things.
I fear a mist, and fly from smoke as from the plague: the first repairs I
fell upon in my own house were the chimneys and houses of office, the
common and insupportable defects of all old buildings; and amongst the
difficulties of war I reckon the choking dust they made us ride in a whole
day together. I have a free and easy respiration, and my colds for the
most part go off without offence to the lungs and without a cough.
The heat of summer is more an enemy to me than the cold of winter; for,
besides the incommodity of heat, less remediable than cold, and besides
the force of the sunbeams that strike upon the head, all glittering light
offends my eyes, so that I could not now sit at dinner over against a
flaming fire.
To dull the whiteness of paper, in those times when I was more wont to
read, I laid a piece of glass upon my book, and found my eyes much
relieved by it. I am to this hour—to the age of fifty-four—Ignorant
of the use of spectacles; and I can see as far as ever I did, or any
other. 'Tis true that in the evening I begin to find a little disturbance
and weakness in my sight if I read, an exercise I have always found
troublesome, especially by night. Here is one step back, and a very
manifest one; I shall retire another: from the second to the third, and so
to the fourth, so gently, that I shall be stark blind before I shall be
sensible of the age and decay of my sight: so artificially do the Fatal
Sisters untwist our lives. And so I doubt whether my hearing begins to
grow thick; and you will see I shall have half lost it, when I shall still
lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me. A man must screw up
his soul to a high pitch to make it sensible how it ebbs away.
My walking is quick and firm; and I know not which of the two, my mind or
my body, I have most to do to keep in the same state. That preacher is
very much my friend who can fix my attention a whole sermon through: in
places of ceremony, where every one's countenance is so starched, where I
have seen the ladies keep even their eyes so fixed, I could never order it
so, that some part or other of me did not lash out; so that though I was
seated, I was never settled; and as to gesticulation, I am never without a
switch in my hand, walking or riding. As the philosopher Chrysippus' maid
said of her master, that he was only drunk in his legs, for it was his
custom to be always kicking them about in what place soever he sat; and
she said it when, the wine having made all his companions drunk, he found
no alteration in himself at all; it may have been said of me from my
infancy, that I had either folly or quicksilver in my feet, so much
stirring and unsettledness there is in them, wherever they are placed.
'Tis indecent, besides the hurt it does to one's health, and even to the
pleasure of eating, to eat greedily as I do; I often bite my tongue, and
sometimes my fingers, in my haste. Diogenes, meeting a boy eating after
that manner, gave his tutor a box on the ear! There were men at Rome that
taught people to chew, as well as to walk, with a good grace. I lose
thereby the leisure of speaking, which gives great relish to the table,
provided the discourse be suitable, that is, pleasant and short.
There is jealousy and envy amongst our pleasures; they cross and hinder
one another. Alcibiades, a man who well understood how to make good cheer,
banished even music from the table, that it might not disturb the
entertainment of discourse, for the reason, as Plato tells us, "that it is
the custom of ordinary people to call fiddlers and singing men to feasts,
for want of good discourse and pleasant talk, with which men of
understanding know how to entertain one another." Varro requires all this
in entertainments: "Persons of graceful presence and agreeable
conversation, who are neither silent nor garrulous; neatness and delicacy,
both of meat and place; and fair weather." The art of dining well is no
slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure; neither the greatest
captains nor the greatest philosophers have disdained the use or science
of eating well. My imagination has delivered three repasts to the custody
of my memory, which fortune rendered sovereignly sweet to me, upon several
occasions in my more flourishing age; my present state excludes me; for
every one, according to the good temper of body and mind wherein he then
finds himself, furnishes for his own share a particular grace and savour.
I, who but crawl upon the earth, hate this inhuman wisdom, that will have
us despise and hate all culture of the body; I look upon it as an equal
injustice to loath natural pleasures as to be too much in love with them.
Xerxes was a blockhead, who, environed with all human delights, proposed a
reward to him who could find out others; but he is not much less so who
cuts off any of those pleasures that nature has provided for him. A man
should neither pursue nor avoid them, but receive them. I receive them, I
confess, a little too warmly and kindly, and easily suffer myself to
follow my natural propensions. We have no need to exaggerate their
inanity; they themselves will make us sufficiently sensible of it, thanks
to our sick wet-blanket mind, that puts us out of taste with them as with
itself; it treats both itself and all it receives, one while better, and
another worse, according to its insatiable, vagabond, and versatile
essence:
"Sincerum est nisi vas, quodcunque infundis, acescit."
["Unless the vessel be clean, it will sour whatever
you put into it."—Horace, Ep., i. 2, 54.]
I, who boast that I so curiously and particularly embrace the conveniences
of life, find them, when I most nearly consider them, very little more
than wind. But what? We are all wind throughout; and, moreover, the wind
itself, more discreet than we, loves to bluster and shift from corner to
corner, and contents itself with its proper offices without desiring
stability and solidity-qualities not its own.
The pure pleasures, as well as the pure displeasures, of the imagination,
say some, are the greatest, as was expressed by the balance of Critolaiis.
'Tis no wonder; it makes them to its own liking, and cuts them out of the
whole cloth; of this I every day see notable examples, and, peradventure,
to be desired. But I, who am of a mixed and heavy condition, cannot snap
so soon at this one simple object, but that I negligently suffer myself to
be carried away with the present pleasures of the, general human law,
intellectually sensible, and sensibly intellectual. The Cyrenaic
philosophers will have it that as corporal pains, so corporal pleasures
are more powerful, both as double and as more just. There are some, as
Aristotle says, who out of a savage kind of stupidity dislike them; and I
know others who out of ambition do the same. Why do they not, moreover,
forswear breathing? why do they not live of their own? why not refuse
light, because it is gratuitous, and costs them neither invention nor
exertion? Let Mars, Pallas, or Mercury afford them their light by which to
see, instead of Venus, Ceres, and Bacchus. These boastful humours may
counterfeit some content, for what will not fancy do? But as to wisdom,
there is no touch of it. Will they not seek the quadrature of the circle,
even when on their wives? I hate that we should be enjoined to have our
minds in the clouds, when our bodies are at table; I would not have the
mind nailed there, nor wallow there; I would have it take place there and
sit, but not lie down. Aristippus maintained nothing but the body, as if
we had no soul; Zeno comprehended only the soul, as if we had no body:
both of them faultily. Pythagoras, they say, followed a philosophy that
was all contemplation, Socrates one that was all conduct and action; Plato
found a mean betwixt the two; but they only say this for the sake of
talking. The true temperament is found in Socrates; and, Plato is much
more Socratic than Pythagoric, and it becomes him better. When I dance, I
dance; when I sleep, I sleep. Nay, when I walk alone in a beautiful
orchard, if my thoughts are some part of the time taken up with external
occurrences, I some part of the time call them back again to my walk, to
the orchard, to the sweetness of that solitude, and to myself.
Nature has mother-like observed this, that the actions she has enjoined us
for our necessity should be also pleasurable to us; and she invites us to
them, not only by reason, but also by appetite, and 'tis injustice to
infringe her laws. When I see alike Caesar and Alexander, in the midst of
his greatest business, so fully enjoy human and corporal pleasures, I do
not say that he relaxed his mind: I say that he strengthened it, by vigour
of courage subjecting those violent employments and laborious thoughts to
the ordinary usage of life: wise, had he believed the last was his
ordinary, the first his extraordinary, vocation. We are great fools. "He
has passed his life in idleness," say we: "I have done nothing to-day."
What? have you not lived? that is not only the fundamental, but the most
illustrious, of your occupations. "Had I been put to the management of
great affairs, I should have made it seen what I could do." "Have you
known how to meditate and manage your life? you have performed the
greatest work of all." In order to shew and develop herself, nature needs
only fortune; she equally manifests herself in all stages, and behind a
curtain as well as without one. Have you known how to regulate your
conduct, you have done a great deal more than he who has composed books.
Have you known how to take repose, you have done more than he who has
taken empires and cities.
The glorious masterpiece of man is to live to purpose; all other things:
to reign, to lay up treasure, to build, are but little appendices and
props. I take pleasure in seeing a general of an army, at the foot of a
breach he is presently to assault, give himself up entire and free at
dinner, to talk and be merry with his friends. And Brutus, when heaven and
earth were conspired against him and the Roman liberty, stealing some hour
of the night from his rounds to read and scan Polybius in all security.
'Tis for little souls, buried under the weight of affairs, not from them
to know how clearly to disengage themselves, not to know how to lay them
aside and take them up again:
"O fortes, pejoraque passi
Mecum saepe viri! nunc vino pellite curas
Cras ingens iterabimus aequor."
["O brave spirits, who have often suffered sorrow with me, drink
cares away; tomorrow we will embark once more on the vast sea."
—Horace, Od., i. 7, 30.]
Whether it be in jest or earnest, that the theological and Sorbonnical
wine, and their feasts, are turned into a proverb, I find it reasonable
they should dine so much more commodiously and pleasantly, as they have
profitably and seriously employed the morning in the exercise of their
schools. The conscience of having well spent the other hours, is the just
and savoury sauce of the dinner-table. The sages lived after that manner;
and that inimitable emulation to virtue, which astonishes us both in the
one and the other Cato, that humour of theirs, so severe as even to be
importunate, gently submits itself and yields to the laws of the human
condition, of Venus and Bacchus; according to the precepts of their sect,
that require the perfect sage to be as expert and intelligent in the use
of natural pleasures as in all other duties of life:
"Cui cor sapiat, ei et sapiat palatus."
Relaxation and facility, methinks, wonderfully honour and best become a
strong and generous soul. Epaminondas did not think that to take part, and
that heartily, in songs and sports and dances with the young men of his
city, were things that in any way derogated from the honour of his
glorious victories and the perfect purity of manners that was in him. And
amongst so many admirable actions of Scipio the grandfather, a person
worthy to be reputed of a heavenly extraction, there is nothing that gives
him a greater grace than to see him carelessly and childishly trifling at
gathering and selecting cockle shells, and playing at quoits,
[This game, as the "Dictionnaire de Trevoux" describes it, is one
wherein two persons contend which of them shall soonest pick up some
object.]
amusing and tickling himself in representing by writing in comedies the
meanest and most popular actions of men. And his head full of that
wonderful enterprise of Hannibal and Africa, visiting the schools in
Sicily, and attending philosophical lectures, to the extent of arming the
blind envy of his enemies at Rome. Nor is there anything more remarkable
in Socrates than that, old as he was, he found time to make himself taught
dancing and playing upon instruments, and thought it time well spent. This
same man was seen in an ecstasy, standing upon his feet a whole day and a
night together, in the presence of all the Grecian army, surprised and
absorbed by some profound thought. He was the first, amongst so many
valiant men of the army, to run to the relief of Alcibiades, oppressed
with the enemy, to shield him with his own body, and disengage him from
the crowd by absolute force of arms. It was he who, in the Delian battle,
raised and saved Xenophon when fallen from his horse; and who, amongst all
the people of Athens, enraged as he was at so unworthy a spectacle, first
presented himself to rescue Theramenes, whom the thirty tyrants were
leading to execution by their satellites, and desisted not from his bold
enterprise but at the remonstrance of Theramenes himself, though he was
only followed by two more in all. He was seen, when courted by a beauty
with whom he was in love, to maintain at need a severe abstinence. He was
seen ever to go to the wars, and walk upon ice, with bare feet; to wear
the same robe, winter and summer; to surpass all his companions in
patience of bearing hardships, and to eat no more at a feast than at his
own private dinner. He was seen, for seven-and-twenty years together, to
endure hunger, poverty, the indocility of his children, and the nails of
his wife, with the same countenance. And, in the end, calumny, tyranny,
imprisonment, fetters, and poison. But was this man obliged to drink full
bumpers by any rule of civility? he was also the man of the whole army
with whom the advantage in drinking, remained. And he never refused to
play at noisettes, nor to ride the hobby-horse with children, and it
became him well; for all actions, says philosophy, equally become and
equally honour a wise man. We have enough wherewithal to do it, and we
ought never to be weary of presenting the image of this great man in all
the patterns and forms of perfection. There are very few examples of life,
full and pure; and we wrong our teaching every day, to propose to
ourselves those that are weak and imperfect, scarce good for any one
service, and rather pull us back; corrupters rather than correctors of
manners. The people deceive themselves; a man goes much more easily indeed
by the ends, where the extremity serves for a bound, a stop, and guide,
than by the middle way, large and open; and according to art, more than
according to nature: but withal much less nobly and commendably.
Greatness of soul consists not so much in mounting and in pressing
forward, as in knowing how to govern and circumscribe itself; it takes
everything for great, that is enough, and demonstrates itself in
preferring moderate to eminent things. There is nothing so fine and
legitimate as well and duly to play the man; nor science so arduous as
well and naturally to know how to live this life; and of all the
infirmities we have, 'tis the most barbarous to despise our being.
Whoever has a mind to isolate his spirit, when the body is ill at ease, to
preserve it from the contagion, let him by all means do it if he can: but
otherwise let him on the contrary favour and assist it, and not refuse to
participate of its natural pleasures with a conjugal complacency, bringing
to it, if it be the wiser, moderation, lest by indiscretion they should
get confounded with displeasure. Intemperance is the pest of pleasure; and
temperance is not its scourge, but rather its seasoning. Euxodus, who
therein established the sovereign good, and his companions, who set so
high a value upon it, tasted it in its most charming sweetness, by the
means of temperance, which in them was singular and exemplary.
I enjoin my soul to look upon pain and pleasure with an eye equally
regulated:
"Eodem enim vitio est effusio animi in laetitia
quo in dolore contractio,"
["For from the same imperfection arises the expansion of the
mind in pleasure and its contraction in sorrow."
—Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 31.]
and equally firm; but the one gaily and the other severely, and so far as
it is able, to be careful to extinguish the one as to extend the other.
The judging rightly of good brings along with it the judging soundly of
evil: pain has something of the inevitable in its tender beginnings, and
pleasure something of the evitable in its excessive end. Plato couples
them together, and wills that it should be equally the office of fortitude
to fight against pain, and against the immoderate and charming
blandishments of pleasure: they are two fountains, from which whoever
draws, when and as much as he needs, whether city, man, or beast, is very
fortunate. The first is to be taken medicinally and upon necessity, and
more scantily; the other for thirst, but not to, drunkenness. Pain,
pleasure, love and hatred are the first things that a child is sensible
of: if, when reason comes, they apply it to themselves, that is virtue.
I have a special vocabulary of my own; I "pass away time," when it is ill
and uneasy, but when 'tis good I do not pass it away: "I taste it over
again and adhere to it"; one must run over the ill and settle upon the
good. This ordinary phrase of pastime, and passing away the time,
represents the usage of those wise sort of people who think they cannot do
better with their lives than to let them run out and slide away, pass them
over, and baulk them, and, as much as they can, ignore them and shun them
as a thing of troublesome and contemptible quality: but I know it to be
another kind of thing, and find it both valuable and commodious, even in
its latest decay, wherein I now enjoy it; and nature has delivered it into
our hands in such and so favourable circumstances that we have only
ourselves to blame if it be troublesome to us, or escapes us unprofitably:
"Stulti vita ingrata est, trepida est, tota in futurum fertur."
["The life of a fool is thankless, timorous, and wholly bent upon
the future."—Seneca, Ep:, 15.]
Nevertheless I compose myself to lose mine without regret; but withal as a
thing that is perishable by its condition, not that it molests or annoys
me. Nor does it properly well become any not to be displeased when they
die, excepting such as are pleased to live. There is good husbandry in
enjoying it: I enjoy it double to what others do; for the measure of its
fruition depends upon our more or less application to it. Chiefly that I
perceive mine to be so short in time, I desire to extend it in weight; I
will stop the promptitude of its flight by the promptitude of my grasp;
and by the vigour of using it compensate the speed of its running away. In
proportion as the possession of life is more short, I must make it so much
deeper and fuller.
Others feel the pleasure of content and prosperity; I feel it too, as well
as they, but not as it passes and slips by; one should study, taste, and
ruminate upon it to render condign thanks to Him who grants it to us. They
enjoy the other pleasures as they do that of sleep, without knowing it. To
the end that even sleep itself should not so stupidly escape from me, I
have formerly caused myself to be disturbed in my sleep, so that I might
the better and more sensibly relish and taste it. I ponder with myself of
content; I do not skim over, but sound it; and I bend my reason, now grown
perverse and peevish, to entertain it. Do I find myself in any calm
composedness? is there any pleasure that tickles me? I do not suffer it to
dally with my senses only; I associate my soul to it too: not there to
engage itself, but therein to take delight; not there to lose itself, but
to be present there; and I employ it, on its part, to view itself in this
prosperous state, to weigh and appreciate its happiness and to amplify it.
It reckons how much it stands indebted to God that its conscience and the
intestine passions are in repose; that it has the body in its natural
disposition, orderly and competently enjoying the soft and soothing
functions by which He, of His grace is pleased to compensate the
sufferings wherewith His justice at His good pleasure chastises us. It
reflects how great a benefit it is to be so protected, that which way
soever it turns its eye the heavens are calm around it. No desire, no
fear, no doubt, troubles the air; no difficulty, past, present, or to,
come, that its imagination may not pass over without offence. This
consideration takes great lustre from the comparison of different
conditions. So it is that I present to my thought, in a thousand aspects,
those whom fortune or their own error carries away and torments. And,
again, those who, more like to me, so negligently and incuriously receive
their good fortune. Those are folks who spend their time indeed; they pass
over the present and that which they possess, to wait on hope, and for
shadows and vain images which fancy puts before them:
"Morte obita quales fama est volitare figuras,
Aut quae sopitos deludunt somnia sensus:"
["Such forms as those which after death are reputed to hover about,
or dreams which delude the senses in sleep."—AEneid, x. 641.]
which hasten and prolong their flight, according as they are pursued. The
fruit and end of their pursuit is to pursue; as Alexander said, that the
end of his labour was to labour:
"Nil actum credens, cum quid superesset agendum."
["Thinking nothing done, if anything remained to be done.
—"Lucan, ii. 657.]
For my part then, I love life and cultivate it, such as it has pleased God
to bestow it upon us. I do not desire it should be without the necessity
of eating and drinking; and I should think it a not less excusable failing
to wish it had been twice as long;
"Sapiens divitiarum naturalium quaesitor acerrimus:"
["A wise man is the keenest seeker for natural riches."
—Seneca, Ep., 119.]
nor that we should support ourselves by putting only a little of that drug
into our mouths, by which Epimenides took away his appetite and kept
himself alive; nor that we should stupidly beget children with our fingers
or heels, but rather; with reverence be it spoken, that we might
voluptuously beget them with our fingers and heels; nor that the body
should be without desire and without titillation. These are ungrateful and
wicked complaints. I accept kindly, and with gratitude, what nature has
done for me; am well pleased with it, and proud of it. A man does wrong to
that great and omnipotent giver to refuse, annul, or disfigure his gift:
all goodness himself, he has made everything good:
"Omnia quae secundum naturam sunt, aestimatione digna sunt."
["All things that are according to nature are worthy of esteem."
—Cicero, De Fin., iii. 6.]
Of philosophical opinions, I preferably embrace those that are most solid,
that is to say, the most human and most our own: my discourse is, suitable
to my manners, low and humble: philosophy plays the child, to my thinking,
when it puts itself upon its Ergos to preach to us that 'tis a barbarous
alliance to marry the divine with the earthly, the reasonable with the
unreasonable, the severe with the indulgent, the honest with the
dishonest. That pleasure is a brutish quality, unworthy to be tasted by a
wise man; that the sole pleasure he extracts from the enjoyment of a fair
young wife is a pleasure of his conscience to perform an action according
to order, as to put on his boots for a profitable journey. Oh, that its
followers had no more right, nor nerves, nor vigour in getting their
wives' maidenheads than in its lesson.
This is not what Socrates says, who is its master and ours: he values, as
he ought, bodily pleasure; but he prefers that of the mind as having more
force, constancy, facility, variety, and dignity. This, according to him,
goes by no means alone—he is not so fantastic—but only it goes
first; temperance with him is the moderatrix, not the adversary of
pleasure. Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than
prudent and just.
"Intrandum est in rerum naturam, et penitus,
quid ea postulet, pervidendum."
["A man must search into the nature of things, and fully examine
what she requires."—Cicero, De Fin., V. 16.]
I hunt after her foot throughout: we have confounded it with artificial
traces; and that academic and peripatetic good, which is "to live
according to it," becomes on this account hard to limit and explain; and
that of the Stoics, neighbour to it, which is "to consent to nature." Is
it not an error to esteem any actions less worthy, because they are
necessary? And yet they will not take it out of my head, that it is not a
very convenient marriage of pleasure with necessity, with which, says an
ancient, the gods always conspire. To what end do we dismember by divorce
a building united by so close and brotherly a correspondence? Let us, on
the contrary, confirm it by mutual offices; let the mind rouse and quicken
the heaviness of the body, and the body stay and fix the levity of the
soul:
"Qui, velut summum bonum, laudat animac naturam, et, tanquam malum,
naturam carnis accusat, profectd et animam carnatiter appetit, et
carnem carnaliter fugit; quoniam id vanitate sentit humans, non
veritate divina."
["He who commends the nature of the soul as the supreme good, and
condemns the nature of the flesh as evil, at once both carnally
desires the soul, and carnally flies the flesh, because he feels
thus from human vanity, not from divine truth."
—St. Augustin, De Civit. Dei, xiv. 5.]
In this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care;
we stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission to
man, to conduct man according to his condition; 'tis express, plain, and
the very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictly
prescribed it to us. Authority has power only to work in regard to matters
of common judgment, and is of more weight in a foreign language; therefore
let us again charge at it in this place:
"Stultitiae proprium quis non dixerit, ignave et contumaciter
facere, quae facienda sunt; et alio corpus impellere, alio animum;
distrahique inter diversissimos motus?"
["Who will not say, that it is the property of folly, slothfully and
contumaciously to perform what is to be done, and to bend the body
one way and the mind another, and to be distracted betwixt wholly
different motions?"—Seneca, Ep., 74.]
To make this apparent, ask any one, some day, to tell you what whimsies
and imaginations he put into his pate, upon the account of which he
diverted his thoughts from a good meal, and regrets the time he spends in
eating; you will find there is nothing so insipid in all the dishes at
your table as this wise meditation of his (for the most part we had better
sleep than wake to the purpose we wake); and that his discourses and
notions are not worth the worst mess there. Though they were the ecstasies
of Archimedes himself, what then? I do not here speak of, nor mix with the
rabble of us ordinary men, and the vanity of the thoughts and desires that
divert us, those venerable souls, elevated by the ardour of devotion and
religion, to a constant and conscientious meditation of divine things,
who, by the energy of vivid and vehement hope, prepossessing the use of
the eternal nourishment, the final aim and last step of Christian desires,
the sole constant, and incorruptible pleasure, disdain to apply themselves
to our necessitous, fluid, and ambiguous conveniences, and easily resign
to the body the care and use of sensual and temporal pasture; 'tis a
privileged study. Between ourselves, I have ever observed supercelestial
opinions and subterranean manners to be of singular accord.
AEsop, that great man, saw his master piss as he walked: "What then," said
he, "must we drop as we run?" Let us manage our time; there yet remains a
great deal idle and ill employed. The mind has not willingly other hours
enough wherein to do its business, without disassociating itself from the
body, in that little space it must have for its necessity. They would put
themselves out of themselves, and escape from being men. It is folly;
instead of transforming themselves into angels, they transform themselves
into beasts; instead of elevating, they lay themselves lower. These
transcendental humours affright me, like high and inaccessible places; and
nothing is hard for me to digest in the life of Socrates but his ecstasies
and communication with demons; nothing so human in Plato as that for which
they say he was called divine; and of our sciences, those seem to be the
most terrestrial and low that are highest mounted; and I find nothing so
humble and mortal in the life of Alexander as his fancies about his
immortalisation. Philotas pleasantly quipped him in his answer; he
congratulated him by letter concerning the oracle of Jupiter Ammon, which
had placed him amongst the gods: "Upon thy account I am glad of it, but
the men are to be pitied who are to live with a man, and to obey him, who
exceeds and is not contented with the measure of a man:"
"Diis to minorem quod geris, imperas."
["Because thou carriest thyself lower than the gods, thou rulest."
—Horace, Od., iii. 6, 5.]
The pretty inscription wherewith the Athenians honoured the entry of
Pompey into their city is conformable to my sense: "By so much thou art a
god, as thou confessest thee a man." 'Tis an absolute and, as it were, a
divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being. We
seek other conditions, by reason we do not understand the use of our own;
and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside. 'Tis to
much purpose to go upon stilts, for, when upon stilts, we must yet walk
with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in the world,
we are but seated upon our breech. The fairest lives, in my opinion, are
those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common and human model
without miracle, without extravagance. Old age stands a little in need of
a more gentle treatment. Let us recommend that to God, the protector of
health and wisdom, but let it be gay and sociable:
"Frui paratis et valido mihi
Latoe, dones, et precor, integra
Cum mente; nec turpem senectam
Degere, nec Cithara carentem."
["Grant it to me, Apollo, that I may enjoy my possessions in good
health; let me be sound in mind; let me not lead a dishonourable
old age, nor want the cittern."—Horace, Od., i. 31, 17.]
Or:
["Grant it to me, Apollo, that I may enjoy what I have in good
health; let me be sound in body and mind; let me live in honour when
old, nor let music be wanting."]
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