ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

BOOK THE FIRST

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 2. 

I. That Men by Various Ways Arrive at the Same End. II. Of Sorrow. III. That our affections carry themselves beyond us. IV. That the soul discharges her passions upon false objects, where the true are wanting. V. Whether the governor of a place besieged ought himself to go out to parley. VI. That the hour of parley is dangerous. VII. That the intention is judge of our actions. VIII. Of idleness. IX. Of liars. X. Of quick or slow speech. XI. Of prognostications. XII. Of constancy. 

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 anyway 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 movethem to commiseration and pity; and yet bravery, constancy, andresolution, however quite contrary means, have sometimes served toproduce the same effect. --[Florio's version begins thus: "The mostvsuall waie to appease those minds wee have offended, when revenge liesin their hands, and that we stand at their mercie, is by submission tomove them to commiseration and pity: Nevertheless, courage, constancie, and resolution (means altogether opposite) have sometimes wrought thesame effect. "--] [The spelling is Florio's D. W. ]

Edward, Prince of Wales [Edward, the Black Prince. D. W. ] (the same whoso long governed our Guienne, a personage whose condition and fortunehave in them a great deal of the most notable and most considerable partsof grandeur), having been highly incensed by the Limousins, and takingtheir city by assault, was not, either by the cries of the people, or theprayers and tears of the women and children, abandoned to slaughter andprostrate at his feet for mercy, to be stayed from prosecuting hisrevenge; till, penetrating further into the town, he at last took noticeof three French gentlemen, --[These were Jean de Villemure, Hugh de laRoche, and Roger de Beaufort. --Froissart, i. C. 289. {The city wasLimoges. D. W. }]--who with incredible bravery alone sustained the powerof his victorious army. Then it was that consideration and respect untoso remarkable a valour first stopped the torrent of his fury, and thathis clemency, beginning with these three cavaliers, was afterwardsextended to all the remaining inhabitants of the city. 

Scanderbeg, Prince of Epirus, pursuing one of his soldiers with purposeto kill him, the soldier, having in vain tried by all the ways ofhumility and supplication to appease him, resolved, as his last refuge, to face about and await him sword in hand: which behaviour of his gave asudden stop to his captain's fury, who, for seeing him assume so notablea resolution, received him into grace; an example, however, that mightsuffer another interpretation with such as have not read of theprodigious force and valour of that prince. 

The Emperor Conrad III. Having besieged Guelph, Duke of Bavaria, --[In1140, in Weinsberg, Upper Bavaria. ]--would not be prevailed upon, whatmean and unmanly satisfactions soever were tendered to him, to condescendto milder conditions than that the ladies and gentlewomen only who werein 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. Whereuponthey, out of magnanimity of heart, presently contrived to carry out, upontheir shoulders, their husbands and children, and the duke himself;a sight at which the emperor was so pleased, that, ravished with thegenerosity of the action, he wept for joy, and immediately extinguishingin his heart the mortal and capital hatred he had conceived against thisduke, 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 workupon 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 myanger to compassion than to esteem. And yet pity is reputed a viceamongst the Stoics, who will that we succour the afflicted, but not thatwe should be so affected with their sufferings as to suffer with them. I conceived these examples not ill suited to the question in hand, andthe rather because therein we observe these great souls assaulted andtried by these two several ways, to resist the one without relenting, andto be shook and subjected by the other. It may be true that to suffer aman's heart to be totally subdued by compassion may be imputed tofacility, effeminacy, and over-tenderness; whence it comes to pass thatthe weaker natures, as of women, children, and the common sort of people, are the most subject to it but after having resisted and disdained thepower of groans and tears, to yield to the sole reverence of the sacredimage of Valour, this can be no other than the effect of a strong andinflexible soul enamoured of and honouring masculine and obstinatecourage. Nevertheless, astonishment and admiration may, in less generousminds, beget a like effect: witness the people of Thebes, who, having puttwo of their generals upon trial for their lives for having continued inarms beyond the precise term of their commission, very hardly pardonedPelopidas, who, bowing under the weight of so dangerous an accusation, made no manner of defence for himself, nor produced other arguments thanprayers and supplications; whereas, on the contrary, Epaminondas, fallingto recount magniloquently the exploits he had performed in their service, and, after a haughty and arrogant manner reproaching them withingratitude and injustice, they had not the heart to proceed any furtherin his trial, but broke up the court and departed, the whole assemblyhighly commending the high courage of this personage. --[Plutarch, Howfar a Man may praise Himself, c. 5. ]

Dionysius the elder, after having, by a tedious siege and throughexceeding great difficulties, taken the city of Reggio, and in it thegovernor Phyton, a very gallant man, who had made so obstinate a defence, was resolved to make him a tragical example of his revenge: in orderwhereunto he first told him, "That he had the day before caused his sonand all his kindred to be drowned. " To which Phyton returned no otheranswer but this: "That they were then by one day happier than he. " Afterwhich, causing him to be stripped, and delivering him into the hands ofthe tormentors, he was by them not only dragged through the streets ofthe town, and most ignominiously and cruelly whipped, but moreovervilified with most bitter and contumelious language: yet still hemaintained his courage entire all the way, with a strong voice andundaunted countenance proclaiming the honourable and glorious cause ofhis death; namely, for that he would not deliver up his country into thehands of a tyrant; at the same time denouncing against him a speedychastisement from the offended gods. At which Dionysius, reading in hissoldiers' looks, that instead of being incensed at the haughty languageof this conquered enemy, to the contempt of their captain and histriumph, they were not only struck with admiration of so rare a virtue, but moreover inclined to mutiny, and were even ready to rescue theprisoner 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, thoughfuriously incensed against it, upon the single account of the virtue andmagnanimity of one citizen, Zeno, --[Plutarch calls him Stheno, and alsoSthemnus and Sthenis]--who took the fault of the public wholly uponhimself; neither entreated other favour, but alone to undergo thepunishment for all: and yet Sylla's host, having in the city of Perugia--[Plutarch says Preneste, a town of Latium. ]--manifested the samevirtue, obtained nothing by it, either for himself or hisfellow-citizens. 

And, directly contrary to my first examples, the bravest of all men, andwho 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 thissiege he had most marvellous manifest proof, alone, forsaken by all hissoldiers, his armour hacked and hewed to pieces, covered all over withblood and wounds, and yet still fighting in the crowd of a number ofMacedonians, who were laying on him on all sides, he said to him, nettledat so dear-bought a victory (for, in addition to the other damage, he hadtwo 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 canbe inflicted on a captive. " To which menace the other returning no otheranswer, but only a fierce and disdainful look; "What, " says Alexander, observing his haughty and obstinate silence, "is he too stiff to bend aknee! Is he too proud to utter one suppliant word! Truly, I willconquer this silence; and if I cannot force a word from his mouth, Iwill, at least, extract a groan from his heart. " And thereuponconverting his anger into fury, presently commanded his heels to be boredthrough, causing him, alive, to be dragged, mangled, and dismembered at acart's tail. --[Quintus Curtius, iv. 6. This act of cruelty has beendoubted, notwithstanding the statement of Curtius. ]--Was it that theheight of courage was so natural and familiar to this conqueror, thatbecause he could not admire, he respected it the less? Or was it that heconceived valour to be a virtue so peculiar to himself, that his pridecould not, without envy, endure it in another? Or was it that thenatural impetuosity of his fury was incapable of opposition? Certainly, had it been capable of moderation, it is to be believed that in the sackand desolation of Thebes, to see so many valiant men, lost and totallydestitute of any further defence, cruelly massacred before his eyes, would have appeased it: where there were above six thousand put to thesword, 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 toprovoke the victorious enemy to help them to an honourable end. Not onewas seen who, however weakened with wounds, did not in his last gasp yetendeavour 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 valourcreate no pity, and the length of one day was not enough to satiate thethirst of the conqueror's revenge, but the slaughter continued to thelast drop of blood that was capable of being shed, and stopped not tillit met with none but unarmed persons, old men, women, and children, ofthem 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 likeit in myself nor admire it in others, and yet generally the world, as asettled thing, is pleased to grace it with a particular esteem, clothingtherewith wisdom, virtue, and conscience. Foolish and sordid guise!--["No man is more free from this passion than I, for I neither love norregard it: albeit the world hath undertaken, as it were upon covenant, tograce 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; andas being cowardly, mean, and base, it is by the Stoics expressly andparticularly forbidden to their sages. 

But the story--[Herodotus, iii. 14. ]--says that Psammenitus, King ofEgypt, 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 soconcerned as to break out into tears and lamentations, yet he himselfremained unmoved, without uttering a word, his eyes fixed upon theground; and seeing, moreover, his son immediately after led to execution, still maintained the same countenance; till spying at last one of hisdomestic and familiar friends dragged away amongst the captives, he fellto tearing his hair and beating his breast, with all the otherextravagances of extreme sorrow. 

A story that may very fitly be coupled with another of the same kind, ofrecent date, of a prince of our own nation, who being at Trent, andhaving news there brought him of the death of his elder brother, abrother on whom depended the whole support and honour of his house, andsoon after of that of a younger brother, the second hope of his family, and having withstood these two assaults with an exemplary resolution; oneof his servants happening a few days after to die, he suffered hisconstancy to be overcome by this last accident; and, parting with hiscourage, so abandoned himself to sorrow and mourning, that some thencewere forward to conclude that he was only touched to the quick by thislast stroke of fortune; but, in truth, it was, that being before brimfulof grief, the least addition overflowed the bounds of all patience. Which, I think, might also be said of the former example, did not thestory proceed to tell us that Cambyses asking Psammenitus, "Why, notbeing moved at the calamity of his son and daughter, he should with sogreat impatience bear the misfortune of his friend?" "It is, " answeredhe, "because only this last affliction was to be manifested by tears, thetwo first far exceeding all manner of expression. "

And, peradventure, something like this might be working in the fancy ofthe ancient painter, --[Cicero, De Orator. , c. 22 ; Pliny, xxxv. 10. ]--who having, in the sacrifice of Iphigenia, to represent the sorrow of theassistants proportionably to the several degrees of interest every onehad in the death of this fair innocent virgin, and having, in the otherfigures, laid out the utmost power of his art, when he came to that ofher father, he drew him with a veil over his face, meaning thereby thatno 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 arock--

 "Diriguisse malis, "

 ["Petrified with her misfortunes. "--Ovid, Met. , vi. 304. ]

thereby to express that melancholic, dumb, and deaf stupefaction, whichbenumbs all our faculties, when oppressed with accidents greater than weare able to bear. And, indeed, the violence and impression of anexcessive grief must of necessity astonish the soul, and wholly depriveher 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 thesoul, beginning to vent itself in tears and lamentations, seems to freeand disengage itself from the sudden oppression, and to have obtainedsome 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 onefor his singular gallant behaviour in a certain encounter; and, unknown, highly commended, and lamented, being left dead upon the place: but bynone so much as by Raisciac, a German lord, who was infinitely enamouredof so rare a valour. The body being brought off, and the count, with thecommon curiosity coming to view it, the armour was no sooner taken offbut he immediately knew him to be his own son, a thing that added asecond blow to the compassion of all the beholders; only he, withoututtering a word, or turning away his eyes from the woeful object, stoodfixedly contemplating the body of his son, till the vehemency of sorrowhaving overcome his vital spirits, made him sink down stone-dead to theground. 

 "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 acondition to pour out our complaints or our amorous persuasions, the soulbeing at that time over-burdened, and labouring with profound thoughts;and the body dejected and languishing with desire; and thence it is thatsometimes proceed those accidental impotencies that so unseasonablysurprise the lover, and that frigidity which by the force of animmoderate 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 arebut 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 sonsafe returned from the defeat of Cannae; and of Sophocles and ofDionysius the Tyrant, --[Pliny, vii. 53. Diodorus Siculus, however (xv. C. 20), tells us that Dionysius "was so overjoyed at the news that hemade a great sacrifice upon it to the gods, prepared sumptuous feasts, towhich he invited all his friends, and therein drank so excessively thatit threw him into a very bad distemper. "]--who died of joy; and ofThalna, who died in Corsica, reading news of the honours the Roman Senatehad decreed in his favour, we have, moreover, one in our time, of PopeLeo X. , who upon news of the taking of Milan, a thing he had so ardentlydesired, was rapt with so sudden an excess of joy that he immediatelyfell into a fever and died. --[Guicciardini, Storia d'Italia, vol. Xiv. ]--And for a more notable testimony of the imbecility of humannature, it is recorded by the ancients--[Pliny, 'ut supra']--thatDiodorus the dialectician died upon the spot, out of an extreme passionof shame, for not having been able in his own school, and in the presenceof a great auditory, to disengage himself from a nice argument that waspropounded to him. I, for my part, am very little subject to theseviolent 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, andadvise us to make our benefit of those which are present, and to set upour rest upon them, as having no grasp upon that which is to come, evenless than that which we have upon what is past, have hit upon the mostuniversal of human errors, if that may be called an error to which natureherself has disposed us, in order to the continuation of her own work, prepossessing us, amongst several others, with this deceivingimagination, as being more jealous of our action than afraid of ourknowledge. 

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 thethought 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 othergenerally, comprehend our whole duty, and do each of them in like mannerinvolve the other; for who will do his own work aright will find that hisfirst 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 workfor his own, but will love and improve himself above all other things, will refuse superfluous employments, and reject all unprofitable thoughtsand propositions. As folly, on the one side, though it should enjoy allit 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 fromall foresight and care of the future. 

Amongst those laws that relate to the dead, I look upon that to be verysound by which the actions of princes are to be examined after theirdecease. --[Diodorus Siculus, i. 6. ]-- They are equals with, if notmasters of the laws, and, therefore, what justice could not inflict upontheir persons, 'tis but reason should be executed upon their reputationsand the estates of their successors--things that we often value abovelife itself. 'Tis a custom of singular advantage to those countrieswhere it is in use, and by all good princes to be desired, who havereason to take it ill, that the memories of the wicked should be usedwith the same reverence and respect with their own. We owe subjectionand obedience to all our kings, whether good or bad, alike, for that hasrespect unto their office; but as to esteem and affection, these are onlydue to their virtue. Let us grant to political government to endure themwith patience, however unworthy; to conceal their vices; and to assistthem with our recommendation in their indifferent actions, whilst theirauthority stands in need of our support. But, the relation of prince andsubject being once at an end, there is no reason we should deny theexpression of our real opinions to our own liberty and common justice, and especially to interdict to good subjects the glory of havingreverently and faithfully served a prince, whose imperfections were tothem so well known; this were to deprive posterity of a useful example. And such as, out of respect to some private obligation, unjustly espouseand vindicate the memory of a faulty prince, do private right at theexpense of public justice. Livy does very truly say, --[xxxv. 48. ]--"That the language of men bred up in courts is always full of vainostentation and false testimony, every one indifferently magnifying hisown master, and stretching his commendation to the utmost extent ofvirtue and sovereign grandeur. " Some may condemn the freedom of thosetwo soldiers who so roundly answered Nero to his beard; the one beingasked 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, anincendiary, 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 testimoniesthat 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 andabominable deportment, who, of a sound judgment, can reprove them?

I am scandalised, that in so sacred a government as that of theLacedaemonians there should be mixed so hypocritical a ceremony at theinterment of their kings; where all their confederates and neighbours, and all sorts and degrees of men and women, as well as their slaves, cutand slashed their foreheads in token of sorrow, repeating in their criesand lamentations that that king (let him have been as wicked as thedevil) was the best that ever they had;--[Herodotus, vi. 68. ]--by thismeans attributing to his quality the praise that only belongs to merit, and that of right is due to supreme desert, though lodged in the lowestand 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 isdead: "whether, then, he who has lived and died according to his heart'sdesire, if he have left an ill repute behind him, and that his posteritybe miserable, can be said to be happy?" Whilst we have life and motion, we convey ourselves by fancy and preoccupation, whither and to what weplease; but once out of being, we have no more any manner ofcommunication with that which is, and it had therefore been better saidby 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, nearunto Puy, in Auvergne, the besieged were afterwards, upon surrender, enjoined to lay down the keys of the place upon the corpse of the deadgeneral. Bartolommeo d'Alviano, the Venetian General, happening to diein the service of the Republic in Brescia, and his corpse being to becarried through the territory of Verona, an enemy's country, most of thearmy were inclined to demand safe-conduct from the Veronese; but TheodoroTrivulzio opposed the motion, rather choosing to make his way by force ofarms, and to run the hazard of a battle, saying it was by no means fitthat he who in his life was never afraid of his enemies should seem toapprehend them when he was dead. In truth, in affairs of the samenature, by the Greek laws, he who made suit to an enemy for a body togive it burial renounced his victory, and had no more right to erect atrophy, and he to whom such suit was made was reputed victor. By thismeans it was that Nicias lost the advantage he had visibly obtained overthe Corinthians, and that Agesilaus, on the contrary, assured that whichhe 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 inall ages not only to extend the concern of ourselves beyond this life, but, moreover, to fancy that the favour of Heaven does not only veryoften accompany us to the grave, but has also, even after life, a concernfor our ashes. Of which there are so many ancient examples (to saynothing of those of our own observation), that it is not necessary Ishould longer insist upon it. Edward I. , King of England, having in thelong wars betwixt him and Robert, King of Scotland, had experience of howgreat importance his own immediate presence was to the success of hisaffairs, having ever been victorious in whatever he undertook in his ownperson, when he came to die, bound his son in a solemn oath that, so soonas he should be dead he should boil his body till the flesh parted fromthe bones, and bury the flesh, reserving the bones to carry continuallywith him in his army, so often as he should be obliged to go against theScots, as if destiny had inevitably attached victory, even to hisremains. John Zisca, the same who, to vindication of Wicliffe'sheresies, troubled the Bohemian state, left order that they should flayhim after his death, and of his skin make a drum to carry in the waragainst his enemies, fancying it would contribute to the continuation ofthe successes he had always obtained in the wars against them. In likemanner certain of the Indians, in their battles with the Spaniards, carried with them the bones of one of their captains, in consideration ofthe victories they had formerly obtained under his conduct. And otherpeople of the same New World carry about with them, in their wars, therelics of valiant men who have died in battle, to incite their courageand advance their fortune. Of which examples the first reserve nothingfor the tomb but the reputation they have acquired by their formerachievements, but these attribute to them a certain present and activepower. 

The proceeding of Captain Bayard is of a better composition, who findinghimself wounded to death with an harquebuss shot, and being importuned toretire out of the fight, made answer that he would not begin at the lastgasp to turn his back to the enemy, and accordingly still fought on, tillfeeling himself too faint and no longer able to sit on his horse, hecommanded his steward to set him down at the foot of a tree, but so thathe might die with his face towards the enemy, which he did. 

I must yet add another example, equally remarkable for the presentconsideration with any of the former. The Emperor Maximilian, great-grandfather to the now King Philip, --[Philip II. Of Spain. ]--was aprince endowed throughout with great and extraordinary qualities, andamongst the rest with a singular beauty of person, but had withal ahumour very contrary to that of other princes, who for the despatch oftheir most important affairs convert their close-stool into a chair ofState, which was, that he would never permit any of his bedchamber, howfamiliar soever, to see him in that posture, and would steal aside tomake water as religiously as a virgin, shy to discover to his physicianor 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 necessityor pleasure, I scarcely ever communicate to the sight of any either thoseparts or actions that custom orders us to conceal, wherein I suffer moreconstraint than I conceive is very well becoming a man, especially of myprofession. But he nourished this modest humour to such a degree ofsuperstition as to give express orders in his last will that they shouldput him on drawers so soon as he should be dead; to which, methinks, hewould have done well to have added that he should be blindfolded, too, that put them on. The charge that Cyrus left with his children, thatneither they, nor any other, should either see or touch his body afterthe soul was departed from it, --[Xenophon, Cyropedia, viii. 7. ]--Iattribute to some superstitious devotion of his; for both his historianand himself, amongst their great qualities, marked the whole course oftheir 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 greatquality of a relation of mine, and one who had given a very good accountof 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 anextraordinary solicitude about ordering the honour and ceremony of hisfuneral, pressing all the men of condition who came to see him to engagetheir word to attend him to his grave: importuning this very prince, whocame to visit him at his last gasp, with a most earnest supplication thathe would order his family to be there, and presenting before him severalreasons and examples to prove that it was a respect due to a man of hiscondition; and seemed to die content, having obtained this promise, andappointed the method and order of his funeral parade. I have seldomheard of so persistent a vanity. 

Another, though contrary curiosity (of which singularity, also, I do notwant domestic example), seems to be somewhat akin to this, that a manshall cudgel his brains at the last moments of his life to contrive hisobsequies to so particular and unusual a parsimony as of one servant witha lantern, I see this humour commended, and the appointment of Marcus. Emilius Lepidus, who forbade his heirs to bestow upon his hearse even thecommon ceremonies in use upon such occasions. Is it yet temperance andfrugality to avoid expense and pleasure of which the use and knowledgeare imperceptible to us? See, here, an easy and cheap reformation. Ifinstruction were at all necessary in this case, I should be of opinionthat in this, as in all other actions of life, each person shouldregulate the matter according to his fortune; and the philosopher Lyconprudently ordered his friends to dispose of his body where they shouldthink most fit, and as to his funeral, to order it neither toosuperfluous nor too mean. For my part, I should wholly refer theordering of this ceremony to custom, and shall, when the time comes, accordingly leave it to their discretion to whose lot it shall fall to dome that last office. "Totus hic locus est contemnendus in nobis, nonnegligendus in nostris;"--["The place of our sepulture is to be contemnedby us, but not to be neglected by our friends. "--Cicero, Tusc. I. 45. ]--and it was a holy saying of a saint, "Curatio funeris, conditiosepultura: pompa exequiarum, magis sunt vivorum solatia, quam subsidiamortuorum. "--["The care of death, the place of sepulture, the pomps ofobsequies, are rather consolations to the living than succours to thedead. " August. De Civit. Dei, i. 12. ]--Which made Socrates answerCrito, 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 thisaffair, I should be most tempted, as the greatest satisfaction of thiskind, to imitate those who in their lifetime entertain themselves withthe ceremony and honours of their own obsequies beforehand, and arepleased with beholding their own dead countenance in marble. Happy arethey who can gratify their senses by insensibility, and live by theirdeath!"

I am ready to conceive an implacable hatred against all populardomination, though I think it the most natural and equitable of all, sooft 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 forthemselves, put to death their brave captains newly returned triumphantfrom a naval victory they had obtained over the Lacedaemonians near theArginusian Isles, the most bloody and obstinate engagement that ever theGreeks fought at sea; because (after the victory) they followed up theblow 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 isyet rendered more odious by the behaviour of Diomedon, who, being one ofthe condemned, and a man of most eminent virtue, political and military, after having heard the sentence, advancing to speak, no audience tillthen having been allowed, instead of laying before them his own cause, or the impiety of so cruel a sentence, only expressed a solicitude forhis judges' preservation, beseeching the gods to convert this sentence totheir good, and praying that, for neglecting to fulfil the vows which heand his companions had made (with which he also acquainted them) inacknowledgment of so glorious a success, they might not draw down theindignation of the gods upon them; and so without more words wentcourageously 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 hisvictory, one of very great importance to their affairs, in order not toincur the danger of this example, and so that he should not lose a fewbodies of his dead friends that were floating in the sea, gaveopportunity to a world of living enemies to sail away in safety, whoafterwards 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 anoccult relation to life; wine changes its flavour and complexion incellars, according to the changes and seasons of the vine from whence itcame; and the flesh of--venison alters its condition in thepowdering-tub, and its taste according to the laws of the livingflesh of its kind, as it is said. 

CHAPTER IV

THAT THE SOUL EXPENDS ITS PASSIONS UPON FALSE OBJECTS, WHERE THE TRUE AREWANTING

A gentleman of my country, marvellously tormented with the gout, beingimportuned by his physicians totally to abstain from all manner of saltmeats, was wont pleasantly to reply, that in the extremity of his fits hemust needs have something to quarrel with, and that railing at andcursing, one while the Bologna sausages, and another the dried tonguesand the hams, was some mitigation to his pain. But, in good earnest, asthe arm when it is advanced to strike, if it miss the blow, and goes bythe 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 somebound 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 itsviolence upon itself, if not supplied with something to oppose it, andtherefore 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 falseand frivolous. And we see that the soul, in its passions, inclinesrather 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 stoneor weapon that has hurt them, and with their teeth a even execute revengeupon 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? whatis it that we do not lay the fault to, right or wrong, that we may havesomething 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 withsomething else. Livy, speaking of the Roman army in Spain, says that forthe 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 theking, who by handsful pulled his hair off his head for sorrow, "Does thisman think that baldness is a remedy for grief?"--[Cicero, Tusc. Quest. , iii. 26. ]--Who has not seen peevish gamesters chew and swallow thecards, and swallow the dice, in revenge for the loss of their money?Xerxes whipped the sea, and wrote a challenge to Mount Athos; Cyrusemployed a whole army several days at work, to revenge himself of theriver Gyndas, for the fright it had put him into in passing over it; andCaligula demolished a very beautiful palace for the pleasure his motherhad 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 ourneighbouring kings--[Probably Alfonso XI. Of Castile]--having receiveda blow from the hand of God, swore he would be revenged, and in order toit, made proclamation that for ten years to come no one should pray toHim, or so much as mention Him throughout his dominions, or, so far ashis authority went, believe in Him; by which they meant to paint not somuch the folly as the vainglory of the nation of which this tale wastold. They are vices that always go together, but in truth such actionsas these have in them still more of presumption than want of wit. Augustus Caesar, having been tossed with a tempest at sea, fell todefying 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 wasafterwards when, having lost a battle under Quintilius Varus in Germany, in rage and despair he went running his head against the wall, cryingout, "O Varus! give me back my legions!" for these exceed all folly, forasmuch as impiety is joined therewith, invading God Himself, or atleast Fortune, as if she had ears that were subject to our batteries;like the Thracians, who when it thunders or lightens, fall to shootingagainst heaven with Titanian vengeance, as if by flights of arrows theyintended to bring God to reason. Though the ancient poet in Plutarchtells 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 HIMSELFTO GO OUT TO PARLEY

Quintus Marcius, the Roman legate in the war against Perseus, King ofMacedon, to gain time wherein to reinforce his army, set on foot someovertures of accommodation, with which the king being lulled asleep, concluded a truce for some days, by this means giving his enemyopportunity and leisure to recruit his forces, which was afterwards theoccasion of the king's final ruin. Yet the elder senators, mindful oftheir forefathers' manners, condemned this proceeding as degeneratingfrom their ancient practice, which, they said, was to fight by valour, and not by artifice, surprises, and night-encounters; neither bypretended flight nor unexpected rallies to overcome their enemies; nevermaking war till having first proclaimed it, and very often assigned boththe hour and place of battle. Out of this generous principle it was thatthey delivered up to Pyrrhus his treacherous physician, and to theEtrurians their disloyal schoolmaster. This was, indeed, a proceduretruly Roman, and nothing allied to the Grecian subtlety, nor to the Puniccunning, where it was reputed a victory of less glory to overcome byforce than by fraud. Deceit may serve for a need, but he only confesseshimself overcome who knows he is neither subdued by policy normisadventure, 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, thatthis 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 inwar, not reputing it a victory unless where the courage of the enemy wasfairly subdued:

"Eam vir sanctus et sapiens sciet veram esse victoriam, quae, salva fideet integra dignitate, parabitur. "--["An honest and prudent man willacknowledge that only to be a true victory which shall be obtained savinghis 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 callbarbarians, they have a custom never to commence war, till it be firstproclaimed; adding withal an ample declaration of what means they have todo it with, with what and how many men, what ammunitions, and what, bothoffensive and defensive, arms; but also, that being done, if theirenemies do not yield and come to an agreement, they conceive it lawful toemploy without reproach in their wars any means which may help them toconquer. 

The ancient Florentines were so far from seeking to obtain any advantageover their enemies by surprise, that they always gave them a month'swarning before they drew their army into the field, by the continualtolling 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 musteke it out with a bit from that of a fox"; the most usual occasions ofsurprise are derived from this practice, and we hold that there are nomoments wherein a chief ought to be more circumspect, and to have his eyeso much at watch, as those of parleys and treaties of accommodation; andit is, therefore, become a general rule amongst the martial men of theselatter 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 theSeigneurs de Montmord and de l'Assigni, defending Mousson against theCount of Nassau, were so highly censured. But yet, as to this, it wouldbe 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'Escutapproached to parley, who stepped so little away from his fort, that adisorder happening in the interim of parley, not only Monsieur de l'Escutand his party who were advanced with him, found themselves by much theweaker, insomuch that Alessandro Trivulcio was there slain, but hehimself follow the Count, and, relying upon his honour, to secure himselffrom the danger of the shot within the walls of the town. 

Eumenes, being shut up in the city of Nora by Antigonus, and by himimportuned to come out to speak with him, as he sent him word it was fithe should to a greater man than himself, and one who had now an advantageover him, returned this noble answer. "Tell him, " said he, "that I shallnever think any man greater than myself whilst I have my sword in myhand, " and would not consent to come out to him till first, according tohis own demand, Antigonus had delivered him his own nephew Ptolomeus inhostage. 

And yet some have done very well in going out in person to parley, on theword of the assailant: witness Henry de Vaux, a cavalier of Champagne, who being besieged by the English in the Castle of Commercy, andBartholomew de Brunes, who commanded at the Leaguer, having so sapped thegreatest part of the castle without, that nothing remained but settingfire to the props to bury the besieged under the ruins, he requested thesaid Henry to come out to speak with him for his own good, which he didwith three more in company; and, his ruin being made apparent to him, heconceived himself singularly obliged to his enemy, to whose discretion heand his garrison surrendered themselves; and fire being presently appliedto the mine, the props no sooner began to fail, but the castle wasimmediately blown up from its foundations, no one stone being left uponanother. 

I could, and do, with great facility, rely upon the faith of another; butI should very unwillingly do it in such a case, as it should thereby bejudged that it was rather an effect of my despair and want of couragethan voluntarily and out of confidence and security in the faith of himwith whom I had to do. 

CHAPTER VI

THAT THE HOUR OF PARLEY DANGEROUS

I saw, notwithstanding, lately at Mussidan, a place not far from myhouse, that those who were driven out thence by our army, and others oftheir party, highly complained of treachery, for that during a treaty ofaccommodation, and in the very interim that their deputies were treating, they were surprised and cut to pieces: a thing that, peradventure, inanother age, might have had some colour of foul play; but, as I have justsaid, the practice of arms in these days is quite another thing, andthere is now no confidence in an enemy excusable till the treaty isfinally sealed; and even then the conqueror has enough to do to keep hisword: so hazardous a thing it is to entrust the observation of the faitha man has engaged to a town that surrenders upon easy and favourableconditions, to the licence of a victorious army, and to give the soldierfree entrance into it in the heat of blood. 

Lucius AEmilius Regillus, the Roman praetor, having lost his time inattempting to take the city of Phocaea by force, by reason of thesingular 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 ofhostility, of which he gave them all assurance; but having, for thegreater pomp, brought his whole army in with him, it was no more in hispower, with all the endeavour he could use, to restrain his people: sothat, avarice and revenge trampling under foot both his authority and allmilitary discipline, he there saw a considerable part of the city sackedand ruined before his face. 

Cleomenes was wont to say, "that what mischief soever a man could do hisenemy in time of war was above justice, and nothing accountable to it inthe sight of gods and men. " And so, having concluded a truce with thoseof Argos for seven days, the third night after he fell upon them whenthey were all buried in sleep, and put them to the sword, alleging thatthere had no nights been mentioned in the truce; but the gods punishedthis subtle perfidy. 

In a time of parley also; and while the citizens were relying upon theirsafety warrant, the city of Casilinum was taken by surprise, and thateven in the age of the justest captains and the most perfect Romanmilitary discipline; for it is not said that it is not lawful for us, intime 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 reasonableeven to the prejudice of reason. And therefore here the rule fails, "Neminem id agere ut ex alte rius praedetur inscitia. "--["No one shouldpreys upon another's folly. "--Cicero, De Offic. , iii. 17. ]--But I amastonished at the great liberty allowed by Xenophon in such cases, andthat both by precept and by the example of several exploits of hiscomplete emperor; an author of very great authority, I confess, in thoseaffairs, as being in his own person both a great captain and aphilosopher of the first form of Socrates' disciples; and yet I cannotconsent to such a measure of licence as he dispenses in all things andplaces. 

Monsieur d'Aubigny, besieging Capua, and after having directed a furiousbattery against it, Signor Fabricio Colonna, governor of the town, havingfrom a bastion begun to parley, and his soldiers in the meantime being alittle more remiss in their guard, our people entered the place atunawares, 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 toparley with the Constable, at his return found his place taken. But, that we might not scape scot-free, the Marquess of Pescara having laidsiege to Genoa, where Duke Ottaviano Fregosa commanded under ourprotection, and the articles betwixt them being so far advanced that itwas looked upon as a done thing, and upon the point to be concluded, theSpaniards in the meantime having slipped in, made use of this treacheryas an absolute victory. And since, at Ligny, in Barrois, where the Countde Brienne commanded, the emperor having in his own person beleagueredthat place, and Bertheville, the said Count's lieutenant, going out toparley, 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 alsoconcur; for he was used to say that those who run a race ought to employall the force they have in what they are about, and to run as fast asthey can; but that it is by no means fair in them to lay any hand upontheir adversary to stop him, nor to set a leg before him to throw himdown. And yet more generous was the answer of that great Alexander toPolypercon who was persuading him to take the advantage of the night'sobscurity to fall upon Darius. "By no means, " said be; "it is not forsuch a man as I am to steal a victory, 'Malo me fortunae poeniteat, quamvictoria pudeat. '"--["I had rather complain of ill-fortune than beashamed 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 knowsome who have taken it in another sense. Henry VII. , King of England, articled with Don Philip, son to Maximilian the emperor, or (to place himmore honourably) father to the Emperor Charles V. , that the said Philipshould deliver up the Duke of Suffolk of the White Rose, his enemy, whowas fled into the Low Countries, into his hands; which Philip accordinglydid, but upon condition, nevertheless, that Henry should attempt nothingagainst the life of the said Duke; but coming to die, the king in hislast will commanded his son to put him to death immediately after hisdecease. And lately, in the tragedy that the Duke of Alva presented tous in the persons of the Counts Horn and Egmont at Brussels, --[Decapitated 4th June 1568]--there were very remarkable passages, andone amongst the rest, that Count Egmont (upon the security of whose wordand faith Count Horn had come and surrendered himself to the Duke ofAlva) earnestly entreated that he might first mount the scaffold, to theend that death might disengage him from the obligation he had passed tothe other. In which case, methinks, death did not acquit the former ofhis promise, and that the second was discharged from it without dying. We cannot be bound beyond what we are able to perform, by reason thateffect and performance are not at all in our power, and that, indeed, weare masters of nothing but the will, in which, by necessity, all therules and whole duty of mankind are founded and established: thereforeCount Egmont, conceiving his soul and will indebted to his promise, although he had not the power to make it good, had doubtless beenabsolved of his duty, even though he had outlived the other; but the Kingof England wilfully and premeditately breaking his faith, was no more tobe excused for deferring the execution of his infidelity till after hisdeath than the mason in Herodotus, who having inviolably, during the timeof his life, kept the secret of the treasure of the King of Egypt, hismaster, at his death discovered it to his children. --[Herod. , ii. 121. ]

I have taken notice of several in my time, who, convicted by theirconsciences of unjustly detaining the goods of another, have endeavouredto make amends by their will, and after their decease; but they had asgood do nothing, as either in taking so much time in so pressing anaffair, or in going about to remedy a wrong with so littledissatisfaction or injury to themselves. They owe, over and above, something of their own; and by how much their payment is more strict andincommodious to themselves, by so much is their restitution more justmeritorious. Penitency requires penalty; but they yet do worse thanthese, who reserve the animosity against their neighbour to the lastgasp, having concealed it during their life; wherein they manifest littleregard of their own honour, irritating the party offended in theirmemory; and less to their the power, even out of to make their malice diewith them, but extending the life of their hatred even beyond their own. Unjust judges, who defer judgment to a time wherein they can have noknowledge of the cause! For my part, I shall take care, if I can, thatmy 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 grownrich and fertile by rest, to abound with and spend their virtue in theproduct of innumerable sorts of weeds and wild herbs that areunprofitable, and that to make them perform their true office, we are tocultivate and prepare them for such seeds as are proper for our service;and as we see women that, without knowledge of man, do sometimes ofthemselves bring forth inanimate and formless lumps of flesh, but that tocause a natural and perfect generation they are to be husbanded withanother kind of seed: even so it is with minds, which if not applied tosome certain study that may fix and restrain them, run into a thousandextravagances, eternally roving here and there in the vague expanse ofthe 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 notlight 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 aspossibly I could, to avoid all manner of concern in affairs, and to spendin privacy and repose the little remainder of time I have to live, Ifancied I could not more oblige my mind than to suffer it at full leisureto 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 horsemanwould put him to, and creates me so many chimaeras and fantasticmonsters, one upon another, without order or design, that, the better atleisure to contemplate their strangeness and absurdity, I have begun tocommit 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 frommemory as myself, for I have scarcely any at all, and do not think thatthe world has another so marvellously treacherous as mine. My otherfaculties are all sufficiently ordinary and mean; but in this I thinkmyself very rare and singular, and deserving to be thought famous. Besides the natural inconvenience I suffer by it (for, certes, thenecessary use of memory considered, Plato had reason when he called it agreat and powerful goddess), in my country, when they would say a man hasno sense, they say, such an one has no memory; and when I complain of thedefect of mine, they do not believe me, and reprove me, as though Iaccused myself for a fool: not discerning the difference betwixt memoryand understanding, which is to make matters still worse for me. But theydo 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 greatwrong in this, that they make the same words which accuse my infirmity, represent me for an ungrateful person; they bring my affections intoquestion upon the account of my memory, and from a natural imperfection, make out a defect of conscience. "He has forgot, " says one, "thisrequest, or that promise; he no more remembers his friends; he has forgotto 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 myfriend has given me in charge, I never do it. And it should be enough, methinks, that I feel the misery and inconvenience of it, withoutbranding me with malice, a vice so contrary to my humour. 

However, I derive these comforts from my infirmity: first, that it is anevil from which principally I have found reason to correct a worse, thatwould easily enough have grown upon me, namely, ambition; the defectbeing intolerable in those who take upon them public affairs. That, likeexamples in the progress of nature demonstrate to us, she has fortifiedme in my other faculties proportionably as she has left me unfurnished inthis; I should otherwise have been apt implicitly to have reposed my mindand judgment upon the bare report of other men, without ever setting themto work upon their own force, had the inventions and opinions of othersbeen ever been present with me by the benefit of memory. That by thismeans I am not so talkative, for the magazine of the memory is everbetter furnished with matter than that of the invention. Had mine beenfaithful to me, I had ere this deafened all my friends with my babble, the subjects themselves arousing and stirring up the little faculty Ihave 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 ofthings, begin their narrative so far back, and crowd it with so manyimpertinent circumstances, that though the story be good in itself, theymake a shift to spoil it; and if otherwise, you are either to curse thestrength of their memory or the weakness of their judgment: and it is ahard thing to close up a discourse, and to cut it short, when you haveonce started; there is nothing wherein the force of a horse is so muchseen as in a round and sudden stop. I see even those who are pertinentenough, who would, but cannot stop short in their career; for whilst theyare seeking out a handsome period to conclude with, they go on at random, straggling about upon impertinent trivialities, as men staggering uponweak 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 Ihave known stories from the mouth of a man of very great quality, otherwise very pleasant in themselves, become very wearisome by beingrepeated a hundred times over and over again to the same people. 

Secondly, that, by this means, I the less remember the injuries I havereceived; 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 ofAthens, so oft as he sat down to dinner, ordered one of his pages threetimes to repeat in his ear, "Sir, remember the Athenians";--[Herod. , v. 105. ]--and then, again, the places which I revisit, and the books I readover again, still smile upon me with a fresh novelty. 

It is not without good reason said "that he who has not a good memoryshould never take upon him the trade of lying. " I know very well thatthe grammarians--[Nigidius, Aulus Gellius, xi. Ii; Nonius, v. 80. ]--distinguish betwixt an untruth and a lie, and say that to tell an untruthis to tell a thing that is false, but that we ourselves believe to betrue; and that the definition of the word to lie in Latin, from which ourFrench is taken, is to tell a thing which we know in our conscience to beuntrue; 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 soalter and disguise a true story that it ends in a lie. When theydisguise 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 possessionof the memory, and being there lodged impressed by the medium ofknowledge and science, it will be difficult that it should not representitself to the imagination, and shoulder out falsehood, which cannot therehave so sure and settled footing as the other; and the circumstances ofthe first true knowledge evermore running in their minds, will be apt tomake them forget those that are illegitimate, and only, forged by theirown fancy. In what they, wholly invent, forasmuch as there is nocontrary impression to jostle their invention there seems to be lessdanger of tripping; and yet even this by reason it is a vain body andwithout any hold, is very apt to escape the memory, if it be not wellassured. Of which I had very pleasant experience, at the expense of suchas profess only to form and accommodate their speech to the affair theyhave 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 faithand conscience being subject to several changes, their language must varyaccordingly: whence it happens that of the same thing they tell one manthat 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 ofnecessity very often ridiculously trap themselves; for what memory can besufficient to retain so many different shapes as they have forged uponone and the same subject? I have known many in my time very ambitious ofthe repute of this fine wit; but they do not see that if they have thereputation of it, the effect can no longer be. 

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor haveother tie upon one another, but by our word. If we did but discover thehorror and gravity of it, we should pursue it with fire and sword, andmore justly than other crimes. I see that parents commonly, and withindiscretion enough, correct their children for little innocent faults, and torment them for wanton tricks, that have neither impression norconsequence; whereas, in my opinion, lying only, and, which is ofsomething a lower form, obstinacy, are the faults which are to beseverely whipped out of them, both in their infancy and in theirprogress, otherwise they grow up and increase with them; and after atongue has once got the knack of lying, 'tis not to be imagined howimpossible 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 thentake for certain the contrary to what the liar says: but the reverse oftruth has a hundred thousand forms, and a field indefinite, without boundor 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 sogreat horror, that I am not sure I could prevail with my conscience tosecure myself from the most manifest and extreme danger by an impudentand solemn lie. An ancient father says "that a dog we know is bettercompany 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 FrancescoTaverna, ambassador of Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, a man very famousfor his science in talking in those days. This gentleman had been sentto excuse his master to his Majesty about a thing of very greatconsequence, which was this: the King, still to maintain someintelligence with Italy, out of which he had lately been driven, andparticularly with the duchy of Milan, had thought it convenient to have agentleman on his behalf to be with that Duke: an ambassador in effect, but in outward appearance a private person who pretended to reside thereupon his own particular affairs; for the Duke, much more depending uponthe Emperor, especially at a time when he was in a treaty of marriagewith his niece, daughter to the King of Denmark, who is now dowager ofLorraine, could not manifest any practice and conference with us withouthis great interest. For this commission one Merveille, a Milanesegentleman, and an equerry to the King, being thought very fit, wasaccordingly despatched thither with private credentials, and instructionsas ambassador, and with other letters of recommendation to the Duke abouthis own private concerns, the better to mask and colour the business; andwas so long in that court, that the Emperor at last had some inkling ofhis real employment there; which was the occasion of what followed after, as we suppose; which was, that under pretence of some murder, his trialwas in two days despatched, and his head in the night struck off inprison. Messire Francesco being come, and prepared with a longcounterfeit history of the affair (for the King had applied himself toall the princes of Christendom, as well as to the Duke himself, to demandsatisfaction), had his audience at the morning council; where, after hehad for the support of his cause laid open several plausiblejustifications of the fact, that his master had never looked upon thisMerveille for other than a private gentleman and his own subject, who wasthere only in order to his own business, neither had he ever lived underany other aspect; absolutely disowning that he had ever heard he was oneof the King's household or that his Majesty so much as knew him, so farwas he from taking him for an ambassador: the King, in his turn, pressinghim with several objections and demands, and challenging him on allsides, tripped him up at last by asking, why, then, the execution wasperformed by night, and as it were by stealth? At which the poorconfounded ambassador, the more handsomely to disengage himself, madeanswer, that the Duke would have been very loth, out of respect to hisMajesty, that such an execution should have been performed by day. Anyone may guess if he was not well rated when he came home, for having sogrossly tripped in the presence of a prince of so delicate a nostril asKing Francis. 

Pope Julius II. Having sent an ambassador to the King of England toanimate him against King Francis, the ambassador having had his audience, and the King, before he would give an answer, insisting upon thedifficulties he should find in setting on foot so great a preparation aswould be necessary to attack so potent a King, and urging some reasons tothat effect, the ambassador very unseasonably replied that he had alsohimself considered the same difficulties, and had represented them to thePope. From which saying of his, so directly opposite to the thingpropounded and the business he came about, which was immediately toincite him to war, the King of England first derived the argument (whichhe 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, hisestate at his return home was confiscated, and he himself very narrowlyescaped 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 andpromptness, and that which we call a present wit so easy, that they areever ready upon all occasions, and never to be surprised; and others moreheavy and slow, never venture to utter anything but what they have longpremeditated, and taken great care and pains to fit and prepare. 

Now, as we teach young ladies those sports and exercises which are mostproper to set out the grace and beauty of those parts wherein theirchiefest ornament and perfection lie, so it should be in these twoadvantages of eloquence, to which the lawyers and preachers of our ageseem principally to pretend. If I were worthy to advise, the slowspeaker, methinks, should be more proper for the pulpit, and the otherfor the bar: and that because the employment of the first does naturallyallow him all the leisure he can desire to prepare himself, and besides, his career is performed in an even and unintermitted line, without stopor interruption; whereas the pleader's business and interest compels himto enter the lists upon all occasions, and the unexpected objections andreplies 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 atMarseilles, it happened, quite contrary, that Monsieur Poyet, a man bredup 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 havebrought it ready made along with him from Paris; the very day it was tohave been pronounced, the Pope, fearing something might be said thatmight give offence to the other princes' ambassadors who were thereattending on him, sent to acquaint the King with the argument which heconceived most suiting to the time and place, but, by chance, quiteanother thing to that Monsieur de Poyet had taken so much pains about: sothat the fine speech he had prepared was of no use, and he was upon theinstant to contrive another; which finding himself unable to do, Cardinaldu 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 andsudden, and that of judgment to have it more deliberate and more slow. But he who remains totally silent, for want of leisure to prepare himselfto speak well, and he also whom leisure does noways benefit to betterspeaking, are equally unhappy. 

'Tis said of Severus Cassius that he spoke best extempore, that he stoodmore obliged to fortune than to his own diligence; that it was anadvantage to him to be interrupted in speaking, and that his adversarieswere afraid to nettle him, lest his anger should redouble his eloquence. I know, experimentally, the disposition of nature so impatient of tediousand elaborate premeditation, that if it do not go frankly and gaily towork, it can perform nothing to purpose. We say of some compositionsthat they stink of oil and of the lamp, by reason of a certain roughharshness that laborious handling imprints upon those where it has beenemployed. But besides this, the solicitude of doing well, and a certainstriving and contending of a mind too far strained and overbent upon itsundertaking, breaks and hinders itself like water, that by force of itsown pressing violence and abundance, cannot find a ready issue throughthe 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 bedisordered and stimulated with such passions as the fury of Cassius (forsuch a motion would be too violent and rude); it would not be jostled, but solicited; it would be roused and heated by unexpected, sudden, andaccidental occasions. If it be left to itself, it flags and languishes;agitation only gives it grace and vigour. I am always worst in my ownpossession, and when wholly at my own disposition: accident has moretitle to anything that comes from me than I; occasion, company, and eventhe very rising and falling of my own voice, extract more from my fancythan 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 bepreferred, where neither is worth anything. This, also, befalls me, thatI do not find myself where I seek myself, and I light upon things more bychance than by any inquisition of my own judgment. I perhaps sometimeshit 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 thesefine compliments; every one talks thus of himself according to histalent. But when I come to speak, I am already so lost that I know notwhat I was about to say, and in such cases a stranger often finds it outbefore me. If I should make erasure so often as this inconveniencebefalls 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 shouldstick at. 

CHAPTER XI

OF PROGNOSTICATIONS

For what concerns oracles, it is certain that a good while before thecoming of Jesus Christ they had begun to lose their credit; for we seethat Cicero troubled to find out the cause of their decay, and he hasthese 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 atsacrifices (to which purpose Plato does, in part, attribute the naturalconstitution of the intestines of the beasts themselves), thescraping 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 oftheir public and private enterprises, our religion has totally abolishedthem. And although there yet remain amongst us some practices ofdivination from the stars, from spirits, from the shapes and complexionsof men, from dreams and the like (a notable example of the wild curiosityof our nature to grasp at and anticipate future things, as if we had notenough 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 somuch more remarkable the example of Francesco, Marquis of Saluzzo, whobeing lieutenant to King Francis I. In his ultramontane army, infinitelyfavoured and esteemed in our court, and obliged to the king's bounty forthe marquisate itself, which had been forfeited by his brother; and as tothe rest, having no manner of provocation given him to do it, and evenhis own affection opposing any such disloyalty, suffered himself to be soterrified, as it was confidently reported, with the fine prognostics thatwere spread abroad everywhere in favour of the Emperor Charles V. , and toour disadvantage (especially in Italy, where these foolish prophecieswere so far believed, that at Rome great sums of money were ventured outupon return of greater, when the prognostics came to pass, so certainthey made themselves of our ruin), that, having often bewailed, to thoseof his acquaintance who were most intimate with him, the mischiefs thathe saw would inevitably fall upon the Crown of France and the friends hehad in that court, he revolted and turned to the other side; to his ownmisfortune, nevertheless, what constellation soever governed at thattime. But he carried himself in this affair like a man agitated bydivers passions; for having both towns and forces in his hands, theenemy's army under Antonio de Leyva close by him, and we not at allsuspecting his design, it had been in his power to have done more than hedid; for we lost no men by this infidelity of his, nor any town, butFossano 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 itsbeginning thus: A labourer striking deep with his cutter into the earth, saw the demigod Tages ascend, with an infantine aspect, but endued with amature and senile wisdom. Upon the rumour of which, all the people ranto see the sight, by whom his words and science, containing theprinciples and means to attain to this art, were recorded, and kept formany ages. --[Cicero, De Devina, ii. 23]--A birth suitable to itsprogress; I, for my part, should sooner regulate my affairs by the chanceof a die than by such idle and vain dreams. And, indeed, in allrepublics, a good share of the government has ever been referred tochance. Plato, in the civil regimen that he models according to his ownfancy, leaves to it the decision of several things of very greatimportance, and will, amongst other things, that marriages should beappointed by lot; attributing so great importance to this accidentalchoice as to ordain that the children begotten in such wedlock be broughtup in the country, and those begotten in any other be thrust out asspurious and base; yet so, that if any of those exiles, notwithstanding, should, peradventure, in growing up give any good hope of himself, hemight be recalled, as, also, that such as had been retained, should beexiled, in case they gave little expectation of themselves in their earlygrowth. 

I see some who are mightily given to study and comment upon theiralmanacs, and produce them to us as an authority when anything has fallenout pat; and, for that matter, it is hardly possible but that thesealleged authorities sometimes stumble upon a truth amongst an infinitenumber 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. Therewould be more certainty in it if there were a rule and a truth of alwayslying. Besides, nobody records their flimflams and false prognostics, forasmuch as they are infinite and common; but if they chop upon onetruth, that carries a mighty report, as being rare, incredible, andprodigious. So Diogenes, surnamed the Atheist, answered him inSamothrace, who, showing him in the temple the several offerings andstories 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 yousay to so many persons preserved from death by their especial favour?""Why, I say, " answered he, "that their pictures are not here who werecast away, who are by much the greater number. "--[Cicero, De NaturaDeor. , i. 37. ]

Cicero observes that of all the philosophers who have acknowledged adeity, Xenophanes the Colophonian only has endeavoured to eradicate allmanner of divination--[Cicero, De Divin. , i. 3. ]--; which makes it theless a wonder if we have now and then seen some of our princes, sometimesto their own cost, rely too much upon these vanities. I had givenanything with my own eyes to see those two great marvels, the book ofJoachim the Calabrian abbot, which foretold all the future Popes, theirnames and qualities; and that of the Emperor Leo, which prophesied allthe emperors and patriarchs of Greece. This I have been an eyewitnessof, that in public confusions, men astonished at their fortune, haveabandoned their own reason, superstitiously to seek out in the stars theancient causes and menaces of the present mishaps, and in my time havebeen so strangely successful in it, as to make me believe that this beingan amusement of sharp and volatile wits, those who have been versed inthis knack of unfolding and untying riddles, are capable, in any sort ofwriting, to find out what they desire. But above all, that which givesthem the greatest room to play in, is the obscure, ambiguous, andfantastic gibberish of the prophetic canting, where their authors delivernothing of clear sense, but shroud all in riddle, to the end thatposterity may interpret and apply it according to its own fancy. 

Socrates demon might, perhaps, be no other but a certain impulsion of thewill, which obtruded itself upon him without the advice or consent of hisjudgment; and in a soul so enlightened as his was, and so prepared by acontinual exercise of wisdom-and virtue, 'tis to be supposed thoseinclinations of his, though sudden and undigested, were very importantand worthy to be followed. Every one finds in himself some image of suchagitations, of a prompt, vehement, and fortuitous opinion; and I may wellallow them some authority, who attribute so little to our prudence, andwho also myself have had some, weak in reason, but violent in persuasionand dissuasion, which were most frequent with Socrates, --[Plato, in hisaccount of Theages the Pythagorean]--by which I have suffered myself tobe carried away so fortunately, and so much to my own advantage, thatthey might have been judged to have had something in them of a divineinspiration. 

CHAPTER XII

OF CONSTANCY

The law of resolution and constancy does not imply that we ought not, asmuch as in us lies, to decline and secure ourselves from the mischiefsand inconveniences that threaten us; nor, consequently, that we shall notfear lest they should surprise us: on the contrary, all decent and honestways 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 arenot possibly to be avoided. So that there is no supple motion of body, nor any movement in the handling of arms, how irregular or ungracefulsoever, that we need condemn, if they serve to protect us from the blowthat is made against us. 

Several very warlike nations have made use of a retreating and flying wayof fight as a thing of singular advantage, and, by so doing, have madetheir backs more dangerous to their enemies than their faces. Of whichkind of fighting the Turks still retain something in their practice ofarms; and Socrates, in Plato, laughs at Laches, who had defined fortitudeto be a standing firm in the ranks against the enemy. "What!" says he, "would it, then, be a reputed cowardice to overcome them by givingground?" urging, at the same time, the authority of Homer, who commendsin AEneas the science of flight. And whereas Laches, considering betterof it, admits the practice as to the Scythians, and, in general, allcavalry whatever, he again attacks him with the example of theLacedaemonian foot--a nation of all other the most obstinate inmaintaining their ground--who, in the battle of Plataea, not being ableto break into the Persian phalanx, bethought themselves to disperse andretire, that by the enemy supposing they fled, they might break anddisunite that vast body of men in the pursuit, and by that stratagemobtained the victory. 

As for the Scythians, 'tis said of them, that when Darius went hisexpedition to subdue them, he sent, by a herald, highly to reproach theirking, that he always retired before him and declined a battle; to whichIdanthyrses, --[Herod. , iv. 127. ]--for that was his name, returnedanswer, that it was not for fear of him, or of any man living, that hedid 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 fearthe enemy should make any advantage of but that if he had such a stomachto fight, let him but come to view their ancient places of sepulture, andthere he should have his fill. 

Nevertheless, as to cannon-shot, when a body of men are drawn up in theface of a train of artillery, as the occasion of war often requires, itis unhandsome to quit their post to avoid the danger, forasmuch as byreason of its violence and swiftness we account it inevitable; and many aone, by ducking, stepping aside, and such other motions of fear, hasbeen, at all events, sufficiently laughed at by his companions. And yet, in the expedition that the Emperor Charles V. Made against us intoProvence, the Marquis de Guast going to reconnoitre the city of Arles, and advancing out of the cover of a windmill, under favour of which hehad made his approach, was perceived by the Seigneurs de Bonneval and theSeneschal of Agenois, who were walking upon the 'theatre aux ayenes'; whohaving shown him to the Sieur de Villiers, commissary of the artillery, he pointed a culverin so admirably well, and levelled it so exactly rightagainst him, that had not the Marquis, seeing fire given to it, slippedaside, it was certainly concluded the shot had taken him full in thebody. And, in like manner, some years before, Lorenzo de' Medici, Dukeof Urbino, and father to the queen-mother--[Catherine de' Medici, motherof Henry III. ]--laying siege to Mondolfo, a place in the territories ofthe Vicariat in Italy, seeing the cannoneer give fire to a piece thatpointed directly against him, it was well for him that he ducked, forotherwise the shot, that only razed the top of his head, had doubtlesshit him full in the breast. To say truth, I do not think that theseevasions are performed upon the account of judgment; for how can any manliving judge of high or low aim on so sudden an occasion? And it is muchmore easy to believe that fortune favoured their apprehension, and thatit might be as well at another time to make them face the danger, as toseek to avoid it. For my own part, I confess I cannot forbear startingwhen the rattle of a harquebuse thunders in my ears on a sudden, and in aplace 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 beproof against the first visions and fantasies that surprise him; but, asto a natural subjection, consent that he should tremble at the terriblenoise of thunder, or the sudden clatter of some falling ruin, and beaffrighted even to paleness and convulsion; and so in other passions, provided his judgment remain sound and entire, and that the seat of hisreason suffer no concussion nor alteration, and that he yield no consentto his fright and discomposure. To him who is not a philosopher, afright is the same thing in the first part of it, but quite another thingin the second; for the impression of passions does not remainsuperficially in him, but penetrates farther, even to the very seat ofreason, infecting and corrupting it, so that he judges according to hisfear, and conforms his behaviour to it. In this verse you may see thetrue 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 perturbationsof mind, but he moderates them. 

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 Almanacs Being dead they were then by one day happier than he Books I read over again, still smile upon me with fresh novelty Death discharges us of all our obligations Difference betwixt memory and understanding Do thine own work, and know thyself Effect and performance are not at all in our power Fantastic gibberish of the prophetic canting Folly of gaping after future things Good to be certain and finite, and evil, infinite and uncertain He who lives everywhere, lives nowhere If they chop upon one truth, that carries a mighty report Impotencies that so unseasonably surprise the lover Let it be permitted to the timid to hope Light griefs can speak: deep sorrows are dumb Look, you who think the gods have no care of human things Nature of judgment to have it more deliberate and more slow Nature of wit is to have its operation prompt and sudden Nor have other tie upon one another, but by our word Old men who retain the memory of things past Pity is reputed a vice amongst the Stoics Rather complain of ill-fortune than be ashamed of victory Reverse of truth has a hundred thousand forms Say of some compositions that they stink of oil and of the lamp Solon, that none can be said to be happy until he is dead Strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment Stumble upon a truth amongst an infinite number of lies Suffer those inconveniences which are not possibly to be avoided Superstitiously to seek out in the stars the ancient causes Their pictures are not here who were cast away Things I say are better than those I write We are masters of nothing but the will We cannot be bound beyond what we are able to perform Where the lion's skin is too short