ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 4. 

XXII. Of custom, and that we should not easily change a law receivedXXIII. Various events from the same counsel. XXIV. Of pedantry. 

CHAPTER XXII

OF CUSTOM, AND THAT WE SHOULD NOT EASILY CHANGE A LAW RECEIVED

He seems to me to have had a right and true apprehension of the power ofcustom, who first invented the story of a country-woman who, havingaccustomed herself to play with and carry a young calf in her arms, anddaily continuing to do so as it grew up, obtained this by custom, that, when grown to be a great ox, she was still able to bear it. For, intruth, custom is a violent and treacherous schoolmistress. She, bylittle and little, slily and unperceived, slips in the foot of herauthority, but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with thebenefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious andtyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or thepower so much as to lift up our eyes. We see her, at every turn, forcingand violating the rules of nature:

 "Usus efficacissimus rerum omnium magister. "

 ["Custom is the best master of all things. " --Pliny, Nat. Hist. , xxvi. 2. ]

I refer to her Plato's cave in his Republic, and the physicians, who sooften submit the reasons of their art to her authority; as the story ofthat king, who by custom brought his stomach to that pass, as to live bypoison, and the maid that Albertus reports to have lived upon spiders. In that new world of the Indies, there were found great nations, and invery differing climates, who were of the same diet, made provision ofthem, and fed them for their tables; as also, they did grasshoppers, mice, lizards, and bats; and in a time of scarcity of such delicacies, atoad was sold for six crowns, all which they cook, and dish up withseveral sauces. There were also others found, to whom our diet, and theflesh we eat, were venomous and mortal:

 "Consuetudinis magna vis est: pernoctant venatores in nive: in montibus uri se patiuntur: pugiles, caestibus contusi, ne ingemiscunt quidem. "

 ["The power of custom is very great: huntsmen will lie out all night in the snow, or suffer themselves to be burned up by the sun on the mountains; boxers, hurt by the caestus, never utter a groan. "--Cicero, Tusc. , ii. 17]

These strange examples will not appear so strange if we consider what wehave ordinary experience of, how much custom stupefies our senses. Weneed not go to what is reported of the people about the cataracts of theNile; and what philosophers believe of the music of the spheres, that thebodies of those circles being solid and smooth, and coming to touch andrub upon one another, cannot fail of creating a marvellous harmony, thechanges and cadences of which cause the revolutions and dances of thestars; but that the hearing sense of all creatures here below, beinguniversally, like that of the Egyptians, deafened, and stupefied with thecontinual noise, cannot, how great soever, perceive it--[This passage istaken from Cicero, "Dream of Scipio"; see his De Republica, vi. II. TheEgyptians were said to be stunned by the noise of the Cataracts. ]--Smiths, millers, pewterers, forgemen, and armourers could never be ableto live in the perpetual noise of their own trades, did it strike theirears with the same violence that it does ours. 

My perfumed doublet gratifies my own scent at first; but after I haveworn it three days together, 'tis only pleasing to the bystanders. Thisis yet more strange, that custom, notwithstanding long intermissions andintervals, should yet have the power to unite and establish the effect ofits impressions upon our senses, as is manifest in such as live near untosteeples and the frequent noise of the bells. I myself lie at home in atower, where every morning and evening a very great bell rings out theAve Maria: the noise shakes my very tower, and at first seemedinsupportable to me; but I am so used to it, that I hear it without anymanner of offence, and often without awaking at it. 

Plato--[Diogenes Laertius, iii. 38. But he whom Plato censured was nota boy playing at nuts, but a man throwing dice. ]--reprehending a boy forplaying at nuts, "Thou reprovest me, " says the boy, "for a very littlething. " "Custom, " replied Plato, "is no little thing. " I find that ourgreatest vices derive their first propensity from our most tenderinfancy, and that our principal education depends upon the nurse. Mothers are mightily pleased to see a child writhe off the neck of achicken, or to please itself with hurting a dog or a cat; and such wisefathers there are in the world, who look upon it as a notable mark of amartial spirit, when they hear a son miscall, or see him domineer over apoor peasant, or a lackey, that dares not reply, nor turn again; and agreat sign of wit, when they see him cheat and overreach his playfellowby some malicious treachery and deceit. Yet these are the true seeds androots of cruelty, tyranny, and treason; they bud and put out there, andafterwards shoot up vigorously, and grow to prodigious bulk, cultivatedby custom. And it is a very dangerous mistake to excuse these vileinclinations upon the tenderness of their age, and the triviality of thesubject: first, it is nature that speaks, whose declaration is then moresincere, and inward thoughts more undisguised, as it is more weak andyoung; secondly, the deformity of cozenage does not consist nor dependupon the difference betwixt crowns and pins; but I rather hold it morejust to conclude thus: why should he not cozen in crowns since he does itin pins, than as they do, who say they only play for pins, they would notdo it if it were for money? Children should carefully be instructed toabhor vices for their own contexture; and the natural deformity of thosevices ought so to be represented to them, that they may not only avoidthem in their actions, but especially so to abominate them in theirhearts, that the very thought should be hateful to them, with what masksoever they may be disguised. 

I know very well, for what concerns myself, that from having been broughtup in my childhood to a plain and straightforward way of dealing, andfrom having had an aversion to all manner of juggling and foul play in mychildish sports and recreations (and, indeed, it is to be noted, that theplays of children are not performed in play, but are to be judged in themas their most serious actions), there is no game so small wherein from myown bosom naturally, and without study or endeavour, I have not anextreme aversion from deceit. I shuffle and cut and make as much clatterwith the cards, and keep as strict account for farthings, as it were fordouble pistoles; when winning or losing against my wife and daughter, 'tis indifferent to me, as when I play in good earnest with others, forround sums. At all times, and in all places, my own eyes are sufficientto look to my fingers; I am not so narrowly watched by any other, neitheris there any I have more respect to. 

I saw the other day, at my own house, a little fellow, a native ofNantes, born without arms, who has so well taught his feet to perform theservices his hands should have done him, that truly these have halfforgotten their natural office; and, indeed, the fellow calls them hishands; with them he cuts anything, charges and discharges a pistol, threads a needle, sews, writes, puts off his hat, combs his head, playsat cards and dice, and all this with as much dexterity as any other coulddo who had more, and more proper limbs to assist him. The money I gavehim--for he gains his living by shewing these feats--he took in his foot, as we do in our hand. I have seen another who, being yet a boy, flourished a two-handed sword, and, if I may so say, handled a halberdwith the mere motions of his neck and shoulders for want of hands; tossedthem into the air, and caught them again, darted a dagger, and cracked awhip as well as any coachman in France. 

But the effects of custom are much more manifest in the strangeimpressions she imprints in our minds, where she meets with lessresistance. What has she not the power to impose upon our judgments andbeliefs? Is there any so fantastic opinion (omitting the grossimpostures of religions, with which we see so many great nations, and somany understanding men, so strangely besotted; for this being beyond thereach of human reason, any error is more excusable in such as are notendued, through the divine bounty, with an extraordinary illuminationfrom above), but, of other opinions, are there any so extravagant, thatshe has not planted and established for laws in those parts of the worldupon which she has been pleased to exercise her power? And thereforethat ancient exclamation was exceeding just:

 "Non pudet physicum, id est speculatorem venatoremque naturae, ab animis consuetudine imbutis petere testimonium veritatis?"

 ["Is it not a shame for a natural philosopher, that is, for an observer and hunter of nature, to seek testimony of the truth from minds prepossessed by custom?"--Cicero, De Natura Deor. , i. 30. ]

I do believe, that no so absurd or ridiculous fancy can enter into humanimagination, that does not meet with some example of public practice, andthat, consequently, our reason does not ground and back up. There arepeople, amongst whom it is the fashion to turn their backs upon him theysalute, and never look upon the man they intend to honour. There is aplace, where, whenever the king spits, the greatest ladies of his courtput out their hands to receive it; and another nation, where the mosteminent persons about him stoop to take up his ordure in a linen cloth. Let us here steal room to insert a story. 

A French gentleman was always wont to blow his nose with his fingers (athing very much against our fashion), and he justifying himself for sodoing, and he was a man famous for pleasant repartees, he asked me, whatprivilege this filthy excrement had, that we must carry about us a finehandkerchief to receive it, and, which was more, afterwards to lap itcarefully up, and carry it all day about in our pockets, which, he said, could not but be much more nauseous and offensive, than to see it thrownaway, as we did all other evacuations. I found that what he said was notaltogether without reason, and by being frequently in his company, thatslovenly action of his was at last grown familiar to me; whichnevertheless we make a face at, when we hear it reported of anothercountry. Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of nature, and not according to the essence of nature the continually beingaccustomed to anything, blinds the eye of our judgment. Barbarians areno more a wonder to us, than we are to them; nor with any more reason, asevery one would confess, if after having travelled over those remoteexamples, men could settle themselves to reflect upon, and rightly toconfer them, with their own. Human reason is a tincture almost equallyinfused into all our opinions and manners, of what form soever they are;infinite in matter, infinite in diversity. But I return to my subject. 

There are peoples, where, his wife and children excepted, no one speaksto the king but through a tube. In one and the same nation, the virginsdiscover those parts that modesty should persuade them to hide, and themarried women carefully cover and conceal them. To which, this custom, in another place, has some relation, where chastity, but in marriage, isof no esteem, for unmarried women may prostitute themselves to as many asthey please, and being got with child, may lawfully take physic, in thesight of every one, to destroy their fruit. And, in another place, if atradesman marry, all of the same condition, who are invited to thewedding, lie with the bride before him; and the greater number of themthere is, the greater is her honour, and the opinion of her ability andstrength: if an officer marry, 'tis the same, the same with a labourer, or one of mean condition; but then it belongs to the lord of the place toperform that office; and yet a severe loyalty during marriage isafterward strictly enjoined. There are places where brothels of youngmen are kept for the pleasure of women; where the wives go to war as wellas the husbands, and not only share in the dangers of battle, but, moreover, in the honours of command. Others, where they wear rings notonly through their noses, lips, cheeks, and on their toes, but alsoweighty gimmals of gold thrust through their paps and buttocks; where, ineating, they wipe their fingers upon their thighs, genitories, and thesoles of their feet: where children are excluded, and brothers andnephews only inherit; and elsewhere, nephews only, saving in thesuccession of the prince: where, for the regulation of community in goodsand estates, observed in the country, certain sovereign magistrates havecommitted to them the universal charge and overseeing of the agriculture, and distribution of the fruits, according to the necessity of every onewhere they lament the death of children, and feast at the decease of oldmen: where they lie ten or twelve in a bed, men and their wives together:where women, whose husbands come to violent ends, may marry again, andothers not: where the condition of women is looked upon with suchcontempt, that they kill all the native females, and buy wives of theirneighbours to supply their use; where husbands may repudiate their wives, without showing any cause, but wives cannot part from their husbands, forwhat cause soever; where husbands may sell their wives in case ofsterility; where they boil the bodies of their dead, and afterward poundthem to a pulp, which they mix with their wine, and drink it; where themost coveted sepulture is to be eaten by dogs, and elsewhere by birds;where they believe the souls of the blessed live in all manner ofliberty, in delightful fields, furnished with all sorts of delicacies, and that it is these souls, repeating the words we utter, which we callEcho; where they fight in the water, and shoot their arrows with the mostmortal aim, swimming; where, for a sign of subjection, they lift up theirshoulders, and hang down their heads; where they put off their shoes whenthey enter the king's palace; where the eunuchs, who take charge of thesacred women, have, moreover, their lips and noses cut off, that they maynot be loved; where the priests put out their own eyes, to be betteracquainted with their demons, and the better to receive their oracles;where every one makes to himself a deity of what he likes best; thehunter of a lion or a fox, the fisher of some fish; idols of every humanaction or passion; in which place, the sun, the moon, and the earth arethe 'principal deities, and the form of taking an oath is, to touch theearth, looking up to heaven; where both flesh and fish is eaten raw;where the greatest oath they take is, to swear by the name of some deadperson of reputation, laying their hand upon his tomb; where thenewyear's gift the king sends every year to the princes, his vassals, isfire, which being brought, all the old fire is put out, and theneighbouring people are bound to fetch of the new, every one forthemselves, upon pain of high treason; where, when the king, to betakehimself wholly to devotion, retires from his administration (which oftenfalls out), his next successor is obliged to do the same, and the rightof the kingdom devolves to the third in succession: where they vary theform of government, according to the seeming necessity of affairs: deposethe king when they think good, substituting certain elders to govern inhis stead, and sometimes transferring it into the hands of thecommonality: where men and women are both circumcised and also baptized:where the soldier, who in one or several engagements, has been sofortunate as to present seven of the enemies' heads to the king, is madenoble: where they live in that rare and unsociable opinion of themortality of the soul: where the women are delivered without pain orfear: where the women wear copper leggings upon both legs, and if a lousebite them, are bound in magnanimity to bite them again, and dare notmarry, till first they have made their king a tender of their virginity, if he please to accept it: where the ordinary way of salutation is byputting a finger down to the earth, and then pointing it up towardheaven: where men carry burdens upon their heads, and women on theirshoulders; where the women make water standing, and the men squatting:where they send their blood in token of friendship, and offer incense tothe men they would honour, like gods: where, not only to the fourth, butin any other remote degree, kindred are not permitted to marry: where thechildren are four years at nurse, and often twelve; in which place, also, it is accounted mortal to give the child suck the first day after it isborn: where the correction of the male children is peculiarly designed tothe fathers, and to the mothers of the girls; the punishment being tohang them by the heels in the smoke: where they circumcise the women:where they eat all sorts of herbs, without other scruple than of thebadness of the smell: where all things are open the finest houses, furnished in the richest manner, without doors, windows, trunks, orchests to lock, a thief being there punished double what they are inother places: where they crack lice with their teeth like monkeys, andabhor to see them killed with one's nails: where in all their lives theyneither cut their hair nor pare their nails; and, in another place, parethose of the right hand only, letting the left grow for ornament andbravery: where they suffer the hair on the right side to grow as long asit will, and shave the other; and in the neighbouring provinces, some lettheir hair grow long before, and some behind, shaving close the rest:where parents let out their children, and husbands their wives, to theirguests to hire: where a man may get his own mother with child, andfathers make use of their own daughters or sons, without scandal: where, at their solemn feasts, they interchangeably lend their children to oneanother, without any consideration of nearness of blood. In one place, men feed upon human flesh; in another, 'tis reputed a pious office for aman to kill his father at a certain age; elsewhere, the fathers disposeof their children, whilst yet in their mothers' wombs, some to bepreserved and carefully brought up, and others to be abandoned or madeaway. Elsewhere the old husbands lend their wives to young men; and inanother place they are in common without offence; in one placeparticularly, the women take it for a mark of honour to have as many gayfringed tassels at the bottom of their garment, as they have lain withseveral men. Moreover, has not custom made a republic of womenseparately by themselves? has it not put arms into their hands, and madethem raise armies and fight battles? And does she not, by her ownprecept, instruct the most ignorant vulgar, and make them perfect inthings which all the philosophy in the world could never beat into theheads of the wisest men? For we know entire nations, where death was notonly despised, but entertained with the greatest triumph; where childrenof seven years old suffered themselves to be whipped to death, withoutchanging countenance; where riches were in such contempt, that themeanest citizen would not have deigned to stoop to take up a purse ofcrowns. And we know regions, very fruitful in all manner of provisions, where, notwithstanding, the most ordinary diet, and that they are mostpleased with, is only bread, cresses, and water. Did not custom, moreover, work that miracle in Chios that, in seven hundred years, it wasnever known that ever maid or wife committed any act to the prejudice ofher honour?

To conclude; there is nothing, in my opinion, that she does not, or maynot do; and therefore, with very good reason it is that Pindar calls herthe ruler of the world. He that was seen to beat his father, andreproved for so doing, made answer, that it was the custom of theirfamily; that, in like manner, his father had beaten his grandfather, hisgrandfather his great-grandfather, "And this, " says he, pointing to hisson, "when he comes to my age, shall beat me. " And the father, whom theson dragged and hauled along the streets, commanded him to stop at acertain door, for he himself, he said, had dragged his father no farther, that being the utmost limit of the hereditary outrage the sons used topractise upon the fathers in their family. It is as much by custom asinfirmity, says Aristotle, that women tear their hair, bite their nails, and eat coals and earth, and more by custom than nature that men abusethemselves with one another. 

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom; every one, having an inward veneration for theopinions and manners approved and received amongst his own people, cannot, without very great reluctance, depart from them, nor applyhimself to them without applause. In times past, when those of Cretewould curse any one, they prayed the gods to engage him in some illcustom. But the principal effect of its power is, so to seize andensnare us, that it is hardly in us to disengage ourselves from itsgripe, or so to come to ourselves, as to consider of and to weigh thethings it enjoins. To say the truth, by reason that we suck it in withour milk, and that the face of the world presents itself in this postureto our first sight, it seems as if we were born upon condition to followon this track; and the common fancies that we find in repute everywhereabout us, and infused into our minds with the seed of our fathers, appearto be the most universal and genuine; from whence it comes to pass, thatwhatever is off the hinges of custom, is believed to be also off thehinges of reason; how unreasonably for the most part, God knows. 

If, as we who study ourselves have learned to do, every one who hears agood sentence, would immediately consider how it does in any way touchhis own private concern, every one would find, that it was not so much agood saying, as a severe lash to the ordinary stupidity of his ownjudgment: but men receive the precepts and admonitions of truth, asdirected to the common sort, and never to themselves; and instead ofapplying them to their own manners, do only very ignorantly andunprofitably commit them to memory. But let us return to the empire ofcustom. 

Such people as have been bred up to liberty, and subject to no otherdominion but the authority of their own will, look upon all other form ofgovernment as monstrous and contrary to nature. Those who are inured tomonarchy do the same; and what opportunity soever fortune presents themwith to change, even then, when with the greatest difficulties they havedisengaged themselves from one master, that was troublesome and grievousto them, they presently run, with the same difficulties, to createanother; being unable to take into hatred subjection itself. 

'Tis by the mediation of custom, that every one is content with the placewhere he is planted by nature; and the Highlanders of Scotland no morepant after Touraine; than the Scythians after Thessaly. Darius askingcertain Greeks what they would take to assume the custom of the Indians, of eating the dead bodies of their fathers (for that was their use, believing they could not give them a better nor more noble sepulture thanto bury them in their own bodies), they made answer, that nothing in theworld should hire them to do it; but having also tried to persuade theIndians to leave their custom, and, after the Greek manner, to burn thebodies of their fathers, they conceived a still greater horror at themotion. --[Herodotus, iii. 38. ]--Every one does the same, for use veilsfrom us the true aspect of things. 

 "Nil adeo magnum, nec tam mirabile quidquam Principio, quod non minuant mirarier omnes Paullatim. "

 ["There is nothing at first so grand, so admirable, which by degrees people do not regard with less admiration. "--Lucretius, ii. 1027]

Taking upon me once to justify something in use amongst us, and that wasreceived with absolute authority for a great many leagues round about us, and not content, as men commonly do, to establish it only by force of lawand example, but inquiring still further into its origin, I found thefoundation so weak, that I who made it my business to confirm others, wasvery near being dissatisfied myself. 'Tis by this receipt that Plato--[Laws, viii. 6. ]--undertakes to cure the unnatural and preposterousloves of his time, as one which he esteems of sovereign virtue, namely, that the public opinion condemns them; that the poets, and all othersorts of writers, relate horrible stories of them; a recipe, by virtue ofwhich the most beautiful daughters no more allure their fathers' lust;nor brothers, of the finest shape and fashion, their sisters' desire; thevery fables of Thyestes, OEdipus, and Macareus, having with the harmonyof their song, infused this wholesome opinion and belief into the tenderbrains of children. Chastity is, in truth, a great and shining virtue, and of which the utility is sufficiently known; but to treat of it, andto set it off in its true value, according to nature, is as hard as 'tiseasy to do so according to custom, laws, and precepts. The fundamentaland universal reasons are of very obscure and difficult research, and ourmasters either lightly pass them over, or not daring so much as to touchthem, precipitate themselves into the liberty and protection of custom, there puffing themselves out and triumphing to their heart's content:such as will not suffer themselves to be withdrawn from this originalsource, do yet commit a greater error, and subject themselves to wildopinions; witness Chrysippus, --[Sextus Empiricus, Pyyrhon. Hypotyp. , i. 14. ]--who, in so many of his writings, has strewed the little account hemade of incestuous conjunctions, committed with how near relationssoever. 

Whoever would disengage himself from this violent prejudice of custom, would find several things received with absolute and undoubting opinion, that have no other support than the hoary head and rivelled face ofancient usage. But the mask taken off, and things being referred to thedecision of truth and reason, he will find his judgment as it werealtogether overthrown, and yet restored to a much more sure estate. Forexample, I shall ask him, what can be more strange than to see a peopleobliged to obey laws they never understood; bound in all their domesticaffairs, as marriages, donations, wills, sales, and purchases, to rulesthey cannot possibly know, being neither written nor published in theirown language, and of which they are of necessity to purchase both theinterpretation and the use? Not according to the ingenious opinion ofIsocrates, --[Discourse to Nicocles. ]--who counselled his king to makethe traffics and negotiations of his subjects, free, frank, and of profitto them, and their quarrels and disputes burdensome, and laden with heavyimpositions and penalties; but, by a prodigious opinion, to make sale ofreason itself, and to give to laws a course of merchandise. I thinkmyself obliged to fortune that, as our historians report, it was a Gascongentleman, a countryman of mine, who first opposed Charlemagne, when heattempted to impose upon us Latin and imperial laws. 

What can be more savage, than to see a nation where, by lawful custom, the office of a judge is bought and sold, where judgments are paid forwith ready money, and where justice may legitimately be denied to himthat has not wherewithal to pay; a merchandise in so great repute, as ina government to create a fourth estate of wrangling lawyers, to add tothe three ancient ones of the church, nobility, and people; which fourthestate, having the laws in their own hands, and sovereign power overmen's lives and fortunes, makes another body separate from nobility:whence it comes to pass, that there are double laws, those of honour andthose of justice, in many things altogether opposite one to another; thenobles as rigorously condemning a lie taken, as the other do a lierevenged: by the law of arms, he shall be degraded from all nobility andhonour who puts up with an affront; and by the civil law, he whovindicates his reputation by revenge incurs a capital punishment: he whoapplies himself to the law for reparation of an offence done to hishonour, disgraces himself; and he who does not, is censured and punishedby the law. Yet of these two so different things, both of them referringto one head, the one has the charge of peace, the other of war; thosehave the profit, these the honour; those the wisdom, these the virtue;those the word, these the action; those justice, these valour; thosereason, these force; those the long robe, these the short;--dividedbetwixt them. 

For what concerns indifferent things, as clothes, who is there seeking tobring them back to their true use, which is the body's service andconvenience, and upon which their original grace and fitness depend; forthe most fantastic, in my opinion, that can be imagined, I will instanceamongst others, our flat caps, that long tail of velvet that hangs downfrom our women's heads, with its party-coloured trappings; and that vainand futile model of a member we cannot in modesty so much as name, which, nevertheless, we make show and parade of in public. Theseconsiderations, notwithstanding, will not prevail upon any understandingman to decline the common mode; but, on the contrary, methinks, allsingular and particular fashions are rather marks of folly and vainaffectation than of sound reason, and that a wise man, within, ought towithdraw and retire his soul from the crowd, and there keep it at libertyand in power to judge freely of things; but as to externals, absolutelyto follow and conform himself to the fashion of the time. Public societyhas nothing to do with our thoughts, but the rest, as our actions, ourlabours, our fortunes, and our lives, we are to lend and abandon them toits service and to the common opinion, as did that good and greatSocrates who refused to preserve his life by a disobedience to themagistrate, though a very wicked and unjust one for it is the rule ofrules, the general law of laws, that every one observe those of the placewherein he lives. 

 ["It is good to obey the laws of one's country. " --Excerpta ex Trag. Gyaecis, Grotio interp. , 1626, p. 937. ]

And now to another point. It is a very great doubt, whether any somanifest benefit can accrue from the alteration of a law received, let itbe what it will, as there is danger and inconvenience in altering it;forasmuch as government is a structure composed of divers parts andmembers joined and united together, with so strict connection, that it isimpossible to stir so much as one brick or stone, but the whole body willbe sensible of it. The legislator of the Thurians--[Charondas; Diod. Sic. , xii. 24. ]--ordained, that whosoever would go about either toabolish an old law, or to establish a new, should present himself with ahalter about his neck to the people, to the end, that if the innovationhe would introduce should not be approved by every one, he mightimmediately be hanged; and he of the Lacedaemonians employed his life toobtain from his citizens a faithful promise that none of his laws shouldbe violated. --[Lycurgus; Plutarch, in Vita, c. 22. ]--The Ephoros who sorudely cut the two strings that Phrynis had added to music never stood toexamine whether that addition made better harmony, or that by its meansthe instrument was more full and complete; it was enough for him tocondemn the invention, that it was a novelty, and an alteration of theold fashion. Which also is the meaning of the old rusty sword carriedbefore the magistracy of Marseilles. 

For my own part, I have a great aversion from a novelty, what face orwhat pretence soever it may carry along with it, and have reason, havingbeen an eyewitness of the great evils it has produced. For those whichfor so many years have lain so heavy upon us, it is not whollyaccountable; but one may say, with colour enough, that it hasaccidentally produced and begotten the mischiefs and ruin that have sincehappened, both without and against it; it, principally, we are to accusefor these disorders:

 "Heu! patior telis vulnera facta meis. "

 ["Alas! The wounds were made by my own weapons. " --Ovid, Ep. Phyll. Demophoonti, vers. 48. ]

They who give the first shock to a state, are almost naturally the firstoverwhelmed in its ruin the fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyedby him who was the first motor; he beats and disturbs the water foranother's net. The unity and contexture of this monarchy, of this grandedifice, having been ripped and torn in her old age, by this thing calledinnovation, has since laid open a rent, and given sufficient admittanceto such injuries: the royal majesty with greater difficulty declines fromthe summit to the middle, then it falls and tumbles headlong from themiddle to the bottom. But if the inventors do the greater mischief, theimitators are more vicious to follow examples of which they have felt andpunished both the horror and the offence. And if there can be any degreeof honour in ill-doing, these last must yield to the others the glory ofcontriving, and the courage of making the first attempt. All sorts ofnew disorders easily draw, from this primitive and ever-flowing fountain, examples and precedents to trouble and discompose our government: we readin our very laws, made for the remedy of this first evil, the beginningand pretences of all sorts of wicked enterprises; and that befalls us, which Thucydides said of the civil wars of his time, that, in favour ofpublic vices, they gave them new and more plausible names for theirexcuse, sweetening and disguising their true titles; which must be done, forsooth, to reform our conscience and belief:

 "Honesta oratio est;"

 ["Fine words truly. "--Ter. And. , i. I, 114. ]

but the best pretence for innovation is of very dangerous consequence:

 "Aden nihil motum ex antiquo probabile est. "

 ["We are ever wrong in changing ancient ways. "--Livy, xxxiv. 54]

And freely to speak my thoughts, it argues a strange self-love and greatpresumption to be so fond of one's own opinions, that a public peace mustbe overthrown to establish them, and to introduce so many inevitablemischiefs, and so dreadful a corruption of manners, as a civil war andthe mutations of state consequent to it, always bring in their train, andto introduce them, in a thing of so high concern, into the bowels ofone's own country. Can there be worse husbandry than to set up so manycertain and knowing vices against errors that are only contested anddisputable? And are there any worse sorts of vices than those committedagainst a man's own conscience, and the natural light of his own reason?The Senate, upon the dispute betwixt it and the people about theadministration of their religion, was bold enough to return this evasionfor current pay:

 "Ad deos id magis, quam ad se, pertinere: ipsos visuros, ne sacra sua polluantur;"

 ["Those things belong to the gods to determine than to them; let the gods, therefore, take care that their sacred mysteries were not profaned. "--Livy, x. 6. ]

according to what the oracle answered to those of Delphos who, fearing tobe invaded by the Persians in the Median war, inquired of Apollo, howthey should dispose of the holy treasure of his temple; whether theyshould hide, or remove it to some other place? He returned them answer, that they should stir nothing from thence, and only take care ofthemselves, for he was sufficient to look to what belonged to him. --[Herodotus, viii. 36. ]. --

The Christian religion has all the marks of the utmost utility andjustice: but none more manifest than the severe injunction it laysindifferently upon all to yield absolute obedience to the civilmagistrate, and to maintain and defend the laws. Of which, what awonderful example has the divine wisdom left us, that, to establish thesalvation of mankind, and to conduct His glorious victory over death andsin, would do it after no other way, but at the mercy of our ordinaryforms of justice subjecting the progress and issue of so high and sosalutiferous an effect, to the blindness and injustice of our customsand observances; sacrificing the innocent blood of so many of His elect, and so long a loss of so many years, to the maturing of this inestimablefruit? There is a vast difference betwixt the case of one who followsthe forms and laws of his country, and of another who will undertake toregulate and change them; of whom the first pleads simplicity, obedience, and example for his excuse, who, whatever he shall do, it cannot beimputed to malice; 'tis at the worst but misfortune:

 "Quis est enim, quem non moveat clarissimis monumentis testata consignataque antiquitas?"

 ["For who is there that antiquity, attested and confirmed by the fairest monuments, cannot move?"--Cicero, De Divin. , i. 40. ]

besides what Isocrates says, that defect is nearer allied to moderationthan excess: the other is a much more ruffling gamester; for whosoevershall take upon him to choose and alter, usurps the authority of judging, and should look well about him, and make it his business to discernclearly the defect of what he would abolish, and the virtue of what he isabout to introduce. 

This so vulgar consideration is that which settled me in my station, andkept even my most extravagant and ungoverned youth under the rein, so asnot to burden my shoulders with so great a weight, as to render myselfresponsible for a science of that importance, and in this to dare, whatin my better and more mature judgment, I durst not do in the most easyand indifferent things I had been instructed in, and wherein the temerityof judging is of no consequence at all; it seeming to me very unjust togo about to subject public and established customs and institutions, tothe weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy (forprivate reason has but a private jurisdiction), and to attempt that uponthe divine, which no government will endure a man should do, upon thecivil laws; with which, though human reason has much more commerce thanwith the other, yet are they sovereignly judged by their own properjudges, and the extreme sufficiency serves only to expound and set forththe law and custom received, and neither to wrest it, nor to introduceanything, of innovation. If, sometimes, the divine providence has gonebeyond the rules to which it has necessarily bound and obliged us men, it is not to give us any dispensation to do the same; those aremasterstrokes of the divine hand, which we are not to imitate, but toadmire, and extraordinary examples, marks of express and particularpurposes, of the nature of miracles, presented before us formanifestations of its almightiness, equally above both our rules andforce, which it would be folly and impiety to attempt to represent andimitate; and that we ought not to follow, but to contemplate with thegreatest reverence: acts of His personage, and not for us. Cotta veryopportunely declares:

 "Quum de religione agitur, Ti. Coruncanium, P. Scipionem, P. Scaevolam, pontifices maximos, non Zenonem, aut Cleanthem, aut Chrysippum, sequor. "

 ["When matter of religion is in question, I follow the high priests T. Coruncanius, P. Scipio, P. Scaevola, and not Zeno, Cleanthes, or Chrysippus. "--Cicero, De Natura Deor. , iii. 2. ]

God knows, in the present quarrel of our civil war, where there are ahundred articles to dash out and to put in, great and very considerable, how many there are who can truly boast, they have exactly and perfectlyweighed and understood the grounds and reasons of the one and the otherparty; 'tis a number, if they make any number, that would be able to giveus very little disturbance. But what becomes of all the rest, under whatensigns do they march, in what quarter do they lie? Theirs have the sameeffect with other weak and ill-applied medicines; they have only set thehumours they would purge more violently in work, stirred and exasperatedby the conflict, and left them still behind. The potion was too weak topurge, but strong enough to weaken us; so that it does not work, but wekeep it still in our bodies, and reap nothing from the operation butintestine gripes and dolours. 

So it is, nevertheless, that Fortune still reserving her authority indefiance of whatever we are able to do or say, sometimes presents us witha necessity so urgent, that 'tis requisite the laws should a little yieldand give way; and when one opposes the increase of an innovation thatthus intrudes itself by violence, to keep a man's self in so doing, inall places and in all things within bounds and rules against those whohave the power, and to whom all things are lawful that may in any wayserve to advance their design, who have no other law nor rule but whatserves best to their own purpose, 'tis a dangerous obligation and anintolerable inequality:

 "Aditum nocendi perfido praestat fides, "

 ["Putting faith in a treacherous person, opens the door to harm. "--Seneca, OEdip. , act iii. , verse 686. ]

forasmuch as the ordinary discipline of a healthful state does notprovide against these extraordinary accidents; it presupposes a body thatsupports itself in its principal members and offices, and a commonconsent to its obedience and observation. A legitimate proceeding iscold, heavy, and constrained, and not fit to make head against aheadstrong and unbridled proceeding. 'Tis known to be to this day castin the dish of those two great men, Octavius and Cato, in the two civilwars of Sylla and Caesar, that they would rather suffer their country toundergo the last extremities, than relieve their fellow-citizens at theexpense of its laws, or be guilty of any innovation; for in truth, inthese last necessities, where there is no other remedy, it would, peradventure, be more discreetly done, to stoop and yield a little toreceive the blow, than, by opposing without possibility of doing good, to give occasion to violence to trample all under foot; and better tomake the laws do what they can, when they cannot do what they would. After this manner did he--[Agesilaus. ]--who suspended them forfour-and-twenty hours, and he who, for once shifted a day in thecalendar, and that other--[Alexander the Great. ]--who of the month ofJune made a second of May. The Lacedaemonians themselves, who were soreligious observers of the laws of their country, being straitened byone of their own edicts, by which it was expressly forbidden to choosethe same man twice to be admiral; and on the other side, their affairsnecessarily requiring, that Lysander should again take upon him thatcommand, they made one Aratus admiral; 'tis true, but withal, Lysanderwent general of the navy; and, by the same subtlety, one of theirambassadors being sent to the Athenians to obtain the revocation of somedecree, and Pericles remonstrating to him, that it was forbidden to takeaway the tablet wherein a law had once been engrossed, he advised him toturn it only, that being not forbidden; and Plutarch commendsPhilopoemen, that being born to command, he knew how to do it, not onlyaccording to the laws, but also to overrule even the laws themselves, when the public necessity so required. 

CHAPTER XXIII

VARIOUS EVENTS FROM THE SAME COUNSEL

Jacques Amiot, grand almoner of France, one day related to me this story, much to the honour of a prince of ours (and ours he was upon several verygood accounts, though originally of foreign extraction), --[The Duc deGuise, surnamed Le Balafre. ]--that in the time of our first commotions, at the siege of Rouen, --[In 1562]--this prince, having been advertisedby the queen-mother of a conspiracy against his life, and in her lettersparticular notice being given him of the person who was to execute thebusiness (who was a gentleman of Anjou or of Maine, and who to thiseffect ordinarily frequented this prince's house), discovered not asyllable of this intelligence to any one whatever; but going the next dayto the St. Catherine's Mount, --[An eminence outside Rouen overlooking theSeine. D. W. ]--from which our battery played against the town (for itwas during the time of the siege), and having in company with him thesaid lord almoner, and another bishop, he saw this gentleman, who hadbeen denoted to him, and presently sent for him; to whom, being comebefore him, seeing him already pale and trembling with the conscience ofhis guilt, he thus said, "Monsieur, " such an one, "you guess what I haveto say to you; your countenance discovers it; 'tis in vain to disguiseyour practice, for I am so well informed of your business, that it willbut make worse for you, to go about to conceal or deny it: you know verywell such and such passages" (which were the most secret circumstances ofhis conspiracy), "and therefore be sure, as you tender your own life, to confess to me the whole truth of the design. " The poor man seeinghimself thus trapped and convicted (for the whole business had beendiscovered to the queen by one of the accomplices), was in such a taking, he knew not what to do; but, folding his hands, to beg and sue for mercy, he threw himself at his prince's feet, who taking him up, proceeded tosay, "Come, sir; tell me, have I at any time done you offence? or haveI, through private hatred or malice, offended any kinsman or friend ofyours? It is not above three weeks that I have known you; whatinducement, then, could move you to attempt my death?" To which thegentleman with a trembling voice replied, "That it was no particulargrudge he had to his person, but the general interest and concern of hisparty, and that he had been put upon it by some who had persuaded him itwould be a meritorious act, by any means, to extirpate so great and sopowerful an enemy of their religion. " "Well, " said the prince, "I willnow let you see, how much more charitable the religion is that Imaintain, than that which you profess: yours has counselled you to killme, without hearing me speak, and without ever having given you any causeof offence; and mine commands me to forgive you, convict as you are, byyour own confession, of a design to kill me without reason. --[Imitated byVoltaire. See Nodier, Questions, p. 165. ]--Get you gone; let me see youno more; and, if you are wise, choose henceforward honester men for yourcounsellors in your designs. "--[Dampmartin, La Fortune de la Coup, liv. Ii. , p. 139]

The Emperor Augustus, --[This story is taken from Seneca, De Clementia, i. 9. ]--being in Gaul, had certain information of a conspiracy L. Cinnawas contriving against him; he therefore resolved to make him an example;and, to that end, sent to summon his friends to meet the next morning incounsel. But the night between he passed in great unquietness of mind, considering that he was about to put to death a young man, of anillustrious family, and nephew to the great Pompey, and this made himbreak out into several passionate complainings. "What then, " said he, "is it possible that I am to live in perpetual anxiety and alarm, andsuffer my would-be assassin, meantime, to walk abroad at liberty? Shallhe go unpunished, after having conspired against my life, a life that Ihave hitherto defended in so many civil wars, in so many battles by landand by sea? And after having settled the universal peace of the wholeworld, shall this man be pardoned, who has conspired not only to murder, but to sacrifice me?"--for the conspiracy was to kill him at sacrifice. After which, remaining for some time silent, he began again, in loudertones, and exclaimed against himself, saying: "Why livest thou, if it befor the good of so many that thou shouldst die? must there be no end ofthy revenges and cruelties? Is thy life of so great value, that so manymischiefs must be done to preserve it?" His wife Livia, seeing him inthis perplexity: "Will you take a woman's counsel?" said she. "Do asthe physicians do, who, when the ordinary recipes will do no good, maketrial of the contrary. By severity you have hitherto prevailed nothing;Lepidus has followed Salvidienus; Murena, Lepidus; Caepio, Murena;Egnatius, Caepio. Begin now, and try how sweetness and clemency willsucceed. Cinna is convict; forgive him, he will never henceforth havethe heart to hurt thee, and it will be an act to thy glory. " Augustuswas well pleased that he had met with an advocate of his own humour;wherefore, having thanked his wife, and, in the morning, countermandedhis friends he had before summoned to council, he commanded Cinna allalone to be brought to him; who being accordingly come, and a chair byhis appointment set him, having ordered all the rest out of the room, hespake to him after this manner: "In the first place, Cinna, I demand ofthee patient audience; do not interrupt me in what I am about to say, andI will afterwards give thee time and leisure to answer. Thou knowest, Cinna, --[This passage, borrowed from Seneca, has been paraphrased inverse by Corneille. See Nodier, Questions de la Literature llgale, 1828, pp. 7, 160. The monologue of Augustus in this chapter is also fromSeneca. Ibid. , 164. ]--that having taken thee prisoner in the enemy'scamp, and thou an enemy, not only so become, but born so, I gave thee thylife, restored to thee all thy goods, and, finally, put thee in so good aposture, by my bounty, of living well and at thy ease, that thevictorious envied the conquered. The sacerdotal office which thou madestsuit to me for, I conferred upon thee, after having denied it to others, whose fathers have ever borne arms in my service. After so manyobligations, thou hast undertaken to kill me. " At which Cinna crying outthat he was very far from entertaining any so wicked a thought: "Thoudost not keep thy promise, Cinna, " continued Augustus, "that thou wouldstnot interrupt me. Yes, thou hast undertaken to murder me in such aplace, on such a day, in such and such company, and in such a manner. "At which words, seeing Cinna astounded and silent, not upon the accountof his promise so to be, but interdict with the weight of his conscience:"Why, " proceeded Augustus, "to what end wouldst thou do it? Is it to beemperor? Believe me, the Republic is in very ill condition, if I am theonly man betwixt thee and the empire. Thou art not able so much as todefend thy own house, and but t'other day was baffled in a suit, by theopposed interest of a mere manumitted slave. What, hast thou neithermeans nor power in any other thing, but only to undertake Caesar? I quitthe throne, if there be no other than I to obstruct thy hopes. Canstthou believe that Paulus, that Fabius, that the Cossii and the Servilii, and so many noble Romans, not only so in title, but who by their virtuehonour their nobility, would suffer or endure thee?" After this, and agreat deal more that he said to him (for he was two long hours inspeaking), "Now go, Cinna, go thy way: I give thee that life as traitorand parricide, which I before gave thee in the quality of an enemy. Letfriendship from this time forward begin betwixt us, and let us showwhether I have given, or thou hast received thy life with the betterfaith"; and so departed from him. Some time after, he preferred him tothe consular dignity, complaining that he had not the confidence todemand it; had him ever after for his very great friend, and was, atlast, made by him sole heir to all his estate. Now, from the time ofthis accident which befell Augustus in the fortieth year of his age, henever had any conspiracy or attempt against him, and so reaped the duereward of this his so generous clemency. But it did not so happen withour prince, his moderation and mercy not so securing him, but that heafterwards fell into the toils of the like treason, --[The Duc de Guisewas assassinated in 1563 by Poltrot. ]--so vain and futile a thing ishuman prudence; throughout all our projects, counsels and precautions, Fortune will still be mistress of events. 

We repute physicians fortunate when they hit upon a lucky cure, as ifthere was no other art but theirs that could not stand upon its own legs, and whose foundations are too weak to support itself upon its own basis;as if no other art stood in need of Fortune's hand to help it. For mypart, I think of physic as much good or ill as any one would have me:for, thanks be to God, we have no traffic together. I am of a quitecontrary humour to other men, for I always despise it; but when I amsick, instead of recanting, or entering into composition with it, Ibegin, moreover, to hate and fear it, telling them who importune me totake physic, that at all events they must give me time to recover mystrength and health, that I may be the better able to support andencounter the violence and danger of their potions. I let nature work, supposing her to be sufficiently armed with teeth and claws to defendherself from the assaults of infirmity, and to uphold that contexture, the dissolution of which she flies and abhors. I am afraid, lest, instead of assisting her when close grappled and struggling with disease, I should assist her adversary, and burden her still more with work to do. 

Now, I say, that not in physic only, but in other more certain arts, fortune has a very great part. 

The poetic raptures, the flights of fancy, that ravish and transport theauthor out of himself, why should we not attribute them to his goodfortune, since he himself confesses that they exceed his sufficiency andforce, and acknowledges them to proceed from something else than himself, and that he has them no more in his power than the orators say they havethose extraordinary motions and agitations that sometimes push thembeyond their design. It is the same in painting, where touches shallsometimes slip from the hand of the painter, so surpassing both hisconception and his art, as to beget his own admiration and astonishment. But Fortune does yet more evidently manifest the share she has in allthings of this kind, by the graces and elegances we find in them, notonly beyond the intention, but even without the knowledge of the workman:a competent reader often discovers in other men's writings otherperfections than the author himself either intended or perceived, aricher sense and more quaint expression. 

As to military enterprises, every one sees how great a hand Fortune hasin them. Even in our counsels and deliberations there must, certainly, be something of chance and good-luck mixed with human prudence; for allthat our wisdom can do alone is no great matter; the more piercing, quick, and apprehensive it is, the weaker it finds itself, and is by somuch more apt to mistrust itself. I am of Sylla's opinion;--["Who freedhis great deeds from envy by ever attributing them to his good fortune, and finally by surnaming himself Faustus, the Lucky. "--Plutarch, How far aMan may praise Himself, c. 9. ]--and when I closely examine the mostglorious exploits of war, I perceive, methinks, that those who carry themon make use of counsel and debate only for custom's sake, and leave thebest part of the enterprise to Fortune, and relying upon her aid, transgress, at every turn, the bounds of military conduct and the rulesof war. There happen, sometimes, fortuitous alacrities and strangefuries in their deliberations, that for the most part prompt them tofollow the worst grounded counsels, and swell their courage beyond thelimits of reason. Whence it happened that several of the great captainsof old, to justify those rash resolutions, have been fain to tell theirsoldiers that they were invited to such attempts by some inspiration, some sign and prognostic. 

Wherefore, in this doubt and uncertainty, that the shortsightedness ofhuman wisdom to see and choose the best (by reason of the difficultiesthat the various accidents and circumstances of things bring along withthem) perplexes us withal, the surest way, in my opinion, did no otherconsideration invite us to it, is to pitch upon that wherein is thegreatest appearance of honesty and justice; and not, being certain of theshortest, to keep the straightest and most direct way; as in the twoexamples I have just given, there is no question but it was more nobleand generous in him who had received the offence, to pardon it, than todo otherwise. If the former--[The Duc de Guise. ]--miscarried in it, heis not, nevertheless, to be blamed for his good intention; neither doesany one know if he had proceeded otherwise, whether by that means he hadavoided the end his destiny had appointed for him; and he had, moreover, lost the glory of so humane an act. 

You will read in history, of many who have been in such apprehension, that the most part have taken the course to meet and anticipateconspiracies against them by punishment and revenge; but I find very fewwho have reaped any advantage by this proceeding; witness so many Romanemperors. Whoever finds himself in this danger, ought not to expect mucheither from his vigilance or power; for how hard a thing is it for a manto secure himself from an enemy, who lies concealed under the countenanceof the most assiduous friend we have, and to discover and know the willsand inward thoughts of those who are in our personal service. 'Tis tomuch purpose to have a guard of foreigners about one, and to be alwaysfenced about with a pale of armed men; whosoever despises his own life, is always master of that of another man. --[Seneca, Ep. , 4. ]--Andmoreover, this continual suspicion, that makes a prince jealous of allthe world, must of necessity be a strange torment to him. Therefore itwas, that Dion, being advertised that Callippus watched all opportunitiesto take away his life, had never the heart to inquire more particularlyinto it, saying, that he had rather die than live in that misery, that hemust continually stand upon his guard, not only against his enemies, buthis friends also;--[Plutarch, Apothegms. ]--which Alexander much morevividly and more roundly manifested in effect, when, having notice by aletter from Parmenio, that Philip, his most beloved physician, was byDarius' money corrupted to poison him, at the same time he gave theletter to Philip to read, drank off the potion he had brought him. Wasnot this to express a resolution, that if his friends had a mind todespatch him out of the world, he was willing to give them opportunity todo it? This prince is, indeed, the sovereign pattern of hazardousactions; but I do not know whether there be another passage in his lifewherein there is so much firm courage as in this, nor so illustrious animage of the beauty and greatness of his mind. 

Those who preach to princes so circumspect and vigilant a jealousy anddistrust, under colour of security, preach to them ruin and dishonour:nothing noble can be performed without danger. I know a person, naturally of a very great daring and enterprising courage, whose goodfortune is continually marred by such persuasions, that he keep himselfclose surrounded by his friends, that he must not hearken to anyreconciliation with his ancient enemies, that he must stand aloof, andnot trust his person in hands stronger than his own, what promises oroffers soever they may make him, or what advantages soever he may seebefore him. And I know another, who has unexpectedly advanced hisfortunes by following a clear contrary advice. 

Courage, the reputation and glory of which men seek with so greedy anappetite, presents itself, when need requires, as magnificently incuerpo, as in full armour; in a closet, as in a camp; with arms pendant, as with arms raised. 

This over-circumspect and wary prudence is a mortal enemy to all high andgenerous exploits. Scipio, to sound Syphax's intention, leaving hisarmy, abandoning Spain, not yet secure nor well settled in his newconquest, could pass over into Africa in two small ships, to commithimself, in an enemy's country, to the power of a barbarian king, to afaith untried and unknown, without obligation, without hostage, under thesole security of the grandeur of his own courage, his good fortune, andthe promise of his high hopes. --[ Livy, xxviii. 17. ]

 "Habita fides ipsam plerumque fidem obligat. "

 ["Trust often obliges fidelity. "--Livy, xxii. 22. ]

In a life of ambition and glory, it is necessary to hold a stiff reinupon suspicion: fear and distrust invite and draw on offence. The mostmistrustful of our kings--[ Louis XI. ]--established his affairsprincipally by voluntarily committing his life and liberty into hisenemies' hands, by that action manifesting that he had absoluteconfidence in them, to the end they might repose as great an assurance inhim. Caesar only opposed the authority of his countenance and thehaughty sharpness of his rebukes to his mutinous legions in arms againsthim:

 "Stetit aggere fulti Cespitis, intrepidus vultu: meruitque timeri, Nil metuens. "

 ["He stood on a mound, his countenance intrepid, and merited to be feared, he fearing nothing. "--Lucan, v. 316. ]

But it is true, withal, that this undaunted assurance is not to berepresented in its simple and entire form, but by such whom theapprehension of death, and the worst that can happen, does not terrifyand affright; for to represent a pretended resolution with a pale anddoubtful countenance and trembling limbs, for the service of an importantreconciliation, will effect nothing to purpose. 'Tis an excellent way togain the heart and will of another, to submit and intrust one's self tohim, provided it appear to be freely done, and without the constraint ofnecessity, and in such a condition, that a man manifestly does it out ofa pure and entire confidence in the party, at least, with a countenanceclear from any cloud of suspicion. I saw, when I was a boy, a gentleman, who was governor of a great city, upon occasion of a popular commotionand fury, not knowing what other course to take, go out of a place ofvery great strength and security, and commit himself to the mercy of theseditious rabble, in hopes by that means to appease the tumult before itgrew to a more formidable head; but it was ill for him that he did so, for he was there miserably slain. But I am not, nevertheless, ofopinion, that he committed so great an error in going out, as mencommonly reproach his memory withal, as he did in choosing a gentle andsubmissive way for the effecting his purpose, and in endeavouring toquiet this storm, rather by obeying than commanding, and by entreatyrather than remonstrance; and I am inclined to believe, that a graciousseverity, with a soldierlike way of commanding, full of security andconfidence, suitable to the quality of his person, and the dignity of hiscommand, would have succeeded better with him; at least, he had perishedwith greater decency and, reputation. There is nothing so little to beexpected or hoped for from this many-headed monster, in its fury, ashumanity and good nature; it is much more capable of reverence and fear. I should also reproach him, that having taken a resolution (in myjudgment rather brave than rash) to expose himself, weak and naked, inthis tempestuous sea of enraged madmen, he ought to have stuck to histext, and not for an instant to have abandoned the high part he hadundertaken; whereas, coming to discover his danger nearer hand, and hisnose happening to bleed, he again changed that demiss and fawningcountenance he had at first put on, into another of fear and amazement, filling his voice with entreaties and his eyes with tears, and, endeavouring so to withdraw and secure his person, that carriage moreinflamed their fury, and soon brought the effects of it upon him. 

It was upon a time intended that there should be a general muster ofseveral troops in arms (and that is the most proper occasion of secretrevenges, and there is no place where they can be executed with greatersafety), and there were public and manifest appearances, that there wasno safe coming for some, whose principal and necessary office it was toreview them. Whereupon a consultation was held, and several counselswere proposed, as in a case that was very nice and of great difficulty;and moreover of grave consequence. Mine, amongst the rest, was, thatthey should by all means avoid giving any sign of suspicion, but that theofficers who were most in danger should boldly go, and with cheerful anderect countenances ride boldly and confidently through the ranks, andthat instead of sparing fire (which the counsels of the major part tendedto) they should entreat the captains to command the soldiers to giveround and full volleys in honour of the spectators, and not to sparetheir powder. This was accordingly done, and served so good use, as toplease and gratify the suspected troops, and thenceforward to beget amutual and wholesome confidence and intelligence amongst them. 

I look upon Julius Caesar's way of winning men to him as the best andfinest that can be put in practice. First, he tried by clemency to makehimself beloved even by his very enemies, contenting himself, in detectedconspiracies, only publicly to declare, that he was pre-acquainted withthem; which being done, he took a noble resolution to await withoutsolicitude or fear, whatever might be the event, wholly resigning himselfto the protection of the gods and fortune: for, questionless, in thisstate he was at the time when he was killed. 

A stranger having publicly said, that he could teach Dionysius, thetyrant of Syracuse, an infallible way to find out and discover all theconspiracies his subjects could contrive against him, if he would givehim a good sum of money for his pains, Dionysius hearing of it, causedthe man to be brought to him, that he might learn an art so necessary tohis preservation. The man made answer, that all the art he knew, was, that he should give him a talent, and afterwards boast that he hadobtained a singular secret from him. Dionysius liked the invention, andaccordingly caused six hundred crowns to be counted out to him. --[Plutarch, Apothegms. ]--It was not likely he should give so great asum to a person unknown, but upon the account of some extraordinarydiscovery, and the belief of this served to keep his enemies in awe. Princes, however, do wisely to publish the informations they receive ofall the practices against their lives, to possess men with an opinionthey have so good intelligence that nothing can be plotted against them, but they have present notice of it. The Duke of Athens did a great manyfoolish things in the establishment of his new tyranny over Florence:but this especially was most notable, that having received the firstintimation of the conspiracies the people were hatching against him, fromMatteo di Morozzo, one of the conspirators, he presently put him todeath, to suppress that rumour, that it might not be thought any of thecity disliked his government. 

I remember I have formerly read a story--[In Appian's Civil Wars, bookiv.. ]--of some Roman of great quality who, flying the tyranny of theTriumvirate, had a thousand times by the subtlety of as many inventionsescaped from falling into the hands of those that pursued him. Ithappened one day that a troop of horse, which was sent out to take him, passed close by a brake where he was squat, and missed very narrowly ofspying him: but he considering, at this point, the pains and difficultieswherein he had so long continued to evade the strict and incessantsearches that were every day made for him, the little pleasure he couldhope for in such a kind of life, and how much better it was for him todie once for all, than to be perpetually at this pass, he started fromhis seat, called them back, showed them his form, --[as of a squattinghare. ]--and voluntarily delivered himself up to their cruelty, by thatmeans to free both himself and them from further trouble. To invite aman's enemies to come and cut his throat, seems a resolution a littleextravagant and odd; and yet I think he did better to take that course, than to live in continual feverish fear of an accident for which therewas no cure. But seeing all the remedies a man can apply to such adisease, are full of unquietness and uncertainty, 'tis better with amanly courage to prepare one's self for the worst that can happen, and toextract some consolation from this, that we are not certain the thing wefear will ever come to pass. 

CHAPTER XXIV

OF PEDANTRY

I was often, when a boy, wonderfully concerned to see, in the Italianfarces, a pedant always brought in for the fool of the play, and that thetitle of Magister was in no greater reverence amongst us: for beingdelivered up to their tuition, what could I do less than be jealous oftheir honour and reputation? I sought indeed to excuse them by thenatural incompatibility betwixt the vulgar sort and men of a finerthread, both in judgment and knowledge, forasmuch as they go a quitecontrary way to one another: but in this, the thing I most stumbled atwas, that the finest gentlemen were those who most despised them; witnessour famous poet Du Bellay--

 "Mais je hay par sur tout un scavoir pedantesque. "

 ["Of all things I hate pedantic learning. "--Du Bellay]

And 'twas so in former times; for Plutarch says that Greek and Scholarwere terms of reproach and contempt amongst the Romans. But since, withthe better experience of age, I find they had very great reason so to do, and that--

 "Magis magnos clericos non sunt magis magnos sapientes. "

 ["The greatest clerks are not the wisest men. " A proverb given in Rabelais' Gargantua, i. 39. ]

But whence it should come to pass, that a mind enriched with theknowledge of so many things should not become more quick and sprightly, and that a gross and vulgar understanding should lodge within it, withoutcorrecting and improving itself, all the discourses and judgments of thegreatest minds the world ever had, I am yet to seek. To admit so manyforeign conceptions, so great, and so high fancies, it is necessary (as ayoung lady, one of the greatest princesses of the kingdom, said to meonce, speaking of a certain person) that a man's own brain must becrowded and squeezed together into a less compass, to make room for theothers; I should be apt to conclude, that as plants are suffocated anddrowned with too much nourishment, and lamps with too much oil, so withtoo much study and matter is the active part of the understanding which, being embarrassed, and confounded with a great diversity of things, losesthe force and power to disengage itself, and by the pressure of thisweight, is bowed, subjected, and doubled up. But it is quite otherwise;for our soul stretches and dilates itself proportionably as it fills; andin the examples of elder times, we see, quite contrary, men very properfor public business, great captains, and great statesmen very learnedwithal. 

And, as to the philosophers, a sort of men remote from all publicaffairs, they have been sometimes also despised by the comic liberty oftheir times; their opinions and manners making them appear, to men ofanother sort, ridiculous. Would you make them judges of a lawsuit, ofthe actions of men? they are ready to take it upon them, and straightbegin to examine if there be life, if there be motion, if man be anyother than an ox;--["If Montaigne has copied all this from Plato'sTheatetes, p. 127, F. As it is plain by all which he has addedimmediately after, that he has taken it from that dialogue, he hasgrossly mistaken Plato's sentiment, who says here no more than this, thatthe philosopher is so ignorant of what his neighbour does, that he scarceknows whether he is a man, or some other animal:--Coste. "]--what it is todo and to suffer? what animals law and justice are? Do they speak ofthe magistrates, or to him, 'tis with a rude, irreverent, and indecentliberty. Do they hear their prince, or a king commended? they make nomore of him, than of a shepherd, goatherd, or neatherd: a lazy Coridon, occupied in milking and shearing his herds and flocks, but more rudelyand harshly than the herd or shepherd himself. Do you repute any man thegreater for being lord of two thousand acres of land? they laugh at sucha pitiful pittance, as laying claim themselves to the whole world fortheir possession. Do you boast of your nobility, as being descended fromseven rich successive ancestors? they look upon you with an eye ofcontempt, as men who have not a right idea of the universal image ofnature, and that do not consider how many predecessors every one of ushas had, rich, poor, kings, slaves, Greeks, and barbarians; and thoughyou were the fiftieth descendant from Hercules, they look upon it as agreat vanity, so highly to value this, which is only a gift of fortune. And 'twas so the vulgar sort contemned them, as men ignorant of the mostelementary and ordinary things; as presumptuous and insolent. 

But this Platonic picture is far different from that these pedants arepresented by. Those were envied for raising themselves above the commonsort, for despising the ordinary actions and offices of life, for havingassumed a particular and inimitable way of living, and for using acertain method of high-flight and obsolete language, quite different fromthe ordinary way of speaking: but these are contemned as being as muchbelow the usual form, as incapable of public employment, as leading alife and conforming themselves to the mean and vile manners of thevulgar:

 "Odi ignava opera, philosopha sententia. "

 ["I hate men who jabber about philosophy, but do nothing. " --Pacuvius, ap Gellium, xiii. 8. ]

For what concerns the philosophers, as I have said, if they were inscience, they were yet much greater in action. And, as it is said of thegeometrician of Syracuse, --[Archimedes. ]--who having been disturbed fromhis contemplation, to put some of his skill in practice for the defenceof his country, that he suddenly set on foot dreadful and prodigiousengines, that wrought effects beyond all human expectation; himself, notwithstanding, disdaining all his handiwork, and thinking in this hehad played the mere mechanic, and violated the dignity of his art, ofwhich these performances of his he accounted but trivial experiments andplaythings so they, whenever they have been put upon the proof of action, have been seen to fly to so high a pitch, as made it very well appear, their souls were marvellously elevated, and enriched by the knowledge ofthings. But some of them, seeing the reins of government in the hands ofincapable men, have avoided all management of political affairs; and hewho demanded of Crates, how long it was necessary to philosophise, received this answer: "Till our armies are no more commanded by fools. "--[Diogenes Laertius, vi. 92. ]--Heraclitus resigned the royalty to hisbrother; and, to the Ephesians, who reproached him that he spent his timein playing with children before the temple: "Is it not better, " said he, "to do so, than to sit at the helm of affairs in your company?" Othershaving their imagination advanced above the world and fortune, havelooked upon the tribunals of justice, and even the thrones of kings, aspaltry and contemptible; insomuch, that Empedocles refused the royaltythat the Agrigentines offered to him. Thales, once inveighing indiscourse against the pains and care men put themselves to to becomerich, was answered by one in the company, that he did like the fox, whofound fault with what he could not obtain. Whereupon, he had a mind, forthe jest's sake, to show them to the contrary; and having, for thisoccasion, made a muster of all his wits, wholly to employ them in theservice of profit and gain, he set a traffic on foot, which in one yearbrought him in so great riches, that the most experienced in that tradecould hardly in their whole lives, with all their industry, have raked somuch together. --[Diogenes Laertius, Life of Thales, i. 26; Cicero, DeDivin. , i. 49. ]--That which Aristotle reports of some who called bothhim and Anaxagoras, and others of their profession, wise but not prudent, in not applying their study to more profitable things--though I do notwell digest this verbal distinction--that will not, however, serve toexcuse my pedants, for to see the low and necessitous fortune wherewiththey are content, we have rather reason to pronounce that they areneither wise nor prudent. 

But letting this first reason alone, I think it better to say, that thisevil proceeds from their applying themselves the wrong way to the studyof the sciences; and that, after the manner we are instructed, it is nowonder if neither the scholars nor the masters become, though morelearned, ever the wiser, or more able. In plain truth, the cares andexpense our parents are at in our education, point at nothing, but tofurnish our heads with knowledge; but not a word of judgment and virtue. Cry out, of one that passes by, to the people: "O, what a learned man!"and of another, "O, what a good man!"--[Translated from Seneca, Ep. , 88. ]--they will not fail to turn their eyes, and address their respectto the former. There should then be a third crier, "O, the blockheads!"Men are apt presently to inquire, does such a one understand Greek orLatin? Is he a poet? or does he write in prose? But whether he begrown better or more discreet, which are qualities of principal concern, these are never thought of. We should rather examine, who is betterlearned, than who is more learned. 

We only labour to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and theunderstanding unfurnished and void. Like birds who fly abroad to foragefor grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young; so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there, out of books, and hold it at the tongue's end, only to spit it out anddistribute it abroad. And here I cannot but smile to think how I havepaid myself in showing the foppery of this kind of learning, who myselfam so manifest an example; for, do I not the same thing throughout almostthis whole composition? I go here and there, culling out of severalbooks the sentences that best please me, not to keep them (for I have nomemory to retain them in), but to transplant them into this; where, tosay the truth, they are no more mine than in their first places. We are, I conceive, knowing only in present knowledge, and not at all in what ispast, or more than is that which is to come. But the worst on't is, their scholars and pupils are no better nourished by this kind ofinspiration; and it makes no deeper impression upon them, but passes fromhand to hand, only to make a show to be tolerable company, and to tellpretty stories, like a counterfeit coin in counters, of no other use orvalue, but to reckon with, or to set up at cards:

 "Apud alios loqui didicerunt non ipsi secum. "

 ["They have learned to speak from others, not from themselves. " --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes, v. 36. ]

 "Non est loquendum, sed gubernandum. "

 ["Speaking is not so necessary as governing. "--Seneca, Ep. , 108. ]

Nature, to shew that there is nothing barbarous where she has the soleconduct, oftentimes, in nations where art has the least to do, causesproductions of wit, such as may rival the greatest effect of artwhatever. In relation to what I am now speaking of, the Gascon proverb, derived from a cornpipe, is very quaint and subtle:

 "Bouha prou bouha, mas a remuda lous dits quem. "

 ["You may blow till your eyes start out; but if once you offer to stir your fingers, it is all over. "]

We can say, Cicero says thus; these were the manners of Plato; these arethe very words of Aristotle: but what do we say ourselves? What do wejudge? A parrot would say as much as that. 

And this puts me in mind of that rich gentleman of Rome, --[CalvisiusSabinus. Seneca, Ep. , 27. ]--who had been solicitous, with very greatexpense, to procure men that were excellent in all sorts of science, whomhe had always attending his person, to the end, that when amongst hisfriends any occasion fell out of speaking of any subject whatsoever, theymight supply his place, and be ready to prompt him, one with a sentenceof Seneca, another with a verse of Homer, and so forth, every oneaccording to his talent; and he fancied this knowledge to be his own, because it was in the heads of those who lived upon his bounty; as theyalso do, whose learning consists in having noble libraries. I know one, who, when I question him what he knows, he presently calls for a book toshew me, and dares not venture to tell me so much, as that he has pilesin his posteriors, till first he has consulted his dictionary, what pilesand what posteriors are. 

We take other men's knowledge and opinions upon trust; which is an idleand superficial learning. We must make it our own. We are in this verylike him, who having need of fire, went to a neighbour's house to fetchit, and finding a very good one there, sat down to warm himself withoutremembering to carry any with him home. --[Plutarch, How a Man shouldListen. ]--What good does it do us to have the stomach full of meat, ifit do not digest, if it be not incorporated with us, if it does notnourish and support us? Can we imagine that Lucullus, whom letters, without any manner of experience, made so great a captain, learned to beso after this perfunctory manner?--[Cicero, Acad. , ii. I. ]--We sufferourselves to lean and rely so strongly upon the arm of another, that wedestroy our own strength and vigour. Would I fortify myself against thefear of death, it must be at the expense of Seneca: would I extractconsolation for myself or my friend, I borrow it from Cicero. I mighthave found it in myself, had I been trained to make use of my own reason. I do not like this relative and mendicant understanding; for though wecould become learned by other men's learning, a man can never be wise butby his own wisdom:

 ["I hate the wise man, who in his own concern is not wise. " --Euripides, ap. Cicero, Ep. Fam. , xiii. 15. ]

Whence Ennius:

 "Nequidquam sapere sapientem, qui ipse sibi prodesse non quiret. "

 ["That wise man knows nothing, who cannot profit himself by his wisdom. "--Cicero, De Offic. , iii. 15. ]

 "Si cupidus, si Vanus, et Euganea quantumvis mollior agna. "

 ["If he be grasping, or a boaster, and something softer than an Euganean lamb. "--Juvenal, Sat. , viii. 14. ]

 "Non enim paranda nobis solum, sed fruenda sapientia est. "

 ["For wisdom is not only to be acquired, but to be utilised. " --Cicero, De Finib. , i. I. ]

Dionysius--[It was not Dionysius, but Diogenes the cynic. DiogenesLaertius, vi. 27. ]--laughed at the grammarians, who set themselves toinquire into the miseries of Ulysses, and were ignorant of their own;at musicians, who were so exact in tuning their instruments, and nevertuned their manners; at orators, who made it a study to declare what isjustice, but never took care to do it. If the mind be not betterdisposed, if the judgment be no better settled, I had much rather myscholar had spent his time at tennis, for, at least, his body would bythat means be in better exercise and breath. Do but observe him when hecomes back from school, after fifteen or sixteen years that he has beenthere; there is nothing so unfit for employment; all you shall find hehas got, is, that his Latin and Greek have only made him a greatercoxcomb than when he went from home. He should bring back his soulreplete with good literature, and he brings it only swelled and puffed upwith vain and empty shreds and patches of learning; and has reallynothing more in him than he had before. --[Plato's Dialogues: Protagoras. ]

These pedants of ours, as Plato says of the Sophists, theircousin-germans, are, of all men, they who most pretend to be useful tomankind, and who alone, of all men, not only do not better and improvethat which is committed to them, as a carpenter or a mason would do, butmake them much worse, and make us pay them for making them worse, toboot. If the rule which Protagoras proposed to his pupils were followed--either that they should give him his own demand, or make affidavit uponoath in the temple how much they valued the profit they had receivedunder his tuition, and satisfy him accordingly--my pedagogues would findthemselves sorely gravelled, if they were to be judged by the affidavitsof my experience. My Perigordin patois very pleasantly calls thesepretenders to learning, 'lettre-ferits', as a man should say, letter-marked--men on whom letters have been stamped by the blow of amallet. And, in truth, for the most part, they appear to be deprived evenof common sense; for you see the husbandman and the cobbler go simply andfairly about their business, speaking only of what they know andunderstand; whereas these fellows, to make parade and to get opinion, mustering this ridiculous knowledge of theirs, that floats on thesuperficies of the brain, are perpetually perplexing, and entanglingthemselves in their own nonsense. They speak fine words sometimes, 'tistrue, but let somebody that is wiser apply them. They are wonderfullywell acquainted with Galen, but not at all with the disease of thepatient; they have already deafened you with a long ribble-row of laws, but understand nothing of the case in hand; they have the theory of allthings, let who will put it in practice. 

I have sat by, when a friend of mine, in my own house, for sport-sake, has with one of these fellows counterfeited a jargon of Galimatias, patched up of phrases without head or tail, saving that he interlardedhere and there some terms that had relation to their dispute, and heldthe coxcomb in play a whole afternoon together, who all the while thoughthe had answered pertinently and learnedly to all his objections; and yetthis was a man of letters, and reputation, and a fine gentleman of thelong robe:

 "Vos, O patricius sanguis, quos vivere par est Occipiti caeco, posticae occurrite sannae. "

 ["O you, of patrician blood, to whom it is permitted to live with(out) eyes in the back of your head, beware of grimaces at you from behind. "--Persius, Sat. , i. 61. ]

Whosoever shall narrowly pry into and thoroughly sift this sort ofpeople, wherewith the world is so pestered, will, as I have done, find, that for the most part, they neither understand others, nor themselves;and that their memories are full enough, but the judgment totally voidand empty; some excepted, whose own nature has of itself formed them intobetter fashion. As I have observed, for example, in Adrian Turnebus, whohaving never made other profession than that of mere learning only, andin that, in my opinion, he was the greatest man that has been thesethousand years, had nothing at all in him of the pedant, but the wearingof his gown, and a little exterior fashion, that could not be civilisedto courtier ways, which in themselves are nothing. I hate our people, who can worse endure an ill-contrived robe than an ill-contrived mind, and take their measure by the leg a man makes, by his behaviour, and somuch as the very fashion of his boots, what kind of man he is. Forwithin there was not a more polished soul upon earth. I have oftenpurposely put him upon arguments quite wide of his profession, wherein Ifound he had so clear an insight, so quick an apprehension, so solid ajudgment, that a man would have thought he had never practised any otherthing but arms, and been all his life employed in affairs of State. These are great and vigorous natures, "Queis arte benigna Et meliore luto finxit praecordia Titan. "

 ["Whom benign Titan (Prometheus) has framed of better clay. " --Juvenal, xiv. 34. ]

that can keep themselves upright in despite of a pedantic education. Butit is not enough that our education does not spoil us; it must, moreover, alter us for the better. 

Some of our Parliaments, when they are to admit officers, examine onlytheir learning; to which some of the others also add the trial ofunderstanding, by asking their judgment of some case in law; of these thelatter, methinks, proceed with the better method; for although both arenecessary, and that it is very requisite they should be defective inneither, yet, in truth, knowledge is not so absolutely necessary asjudgment; the last may make shift without the other, but the other neverwithout this. For as the Greek verse says--

 ["To what use serves learning, if understanding be away. " --Apud Stobaeus, tit. Iii. , p. 37 (1609). ]

Would to God that, for the good of our judicature, these societies wereas well furnished with understanding and conscience as they are withknowledge. 

 "Non vita, sed scolae discimus. "

 ["We do not study for life, but only for the school. " --Seneca, Ep. , 106. ]

We are not to tie learning to the soul, but to work and incorporate themtogether: not to tincture it only, but to give it a thorough and perfectdye; which, if it will not take colour, and meliorate its imperfectstate, it were without question better to let it alone. 'Tis a dangerousweapon, that will hinder and wound its master, if put into an awkward andunskilful hand:

 "Ut fuerit melius non didicisse. "

 ["So that it were better not to have learned. " --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , ii. 4. ]

And this, peradventure, is the reason why neither we nor theology requiremuch learning in women; and that Francis, Duke of Brittany, son of John V. , one talking with him about his marriage with Isabella the daughter ofScotland, and adding that she was homely bred, and without any manner oflearning, made answer, that he liked her the better, and that a woman waswise enough, if she could distinguish her husband's shirt from hisdoublet. So that it is no so great wonder, as they make of it, that ourancestors had letters in no greater esteem, and that even to this daythey are but rarely met with in the principal councils of princes; and ifthe end and design of acquiring riches, which is the only thing wepropose to ourselves, by the means of law, physic, pedantry, and evendivinity itself, did not uphold and keep them in credit, you would, withdoubt, see them in as pitiful a condition as ever. And what loss wouldthis be, if they neither instruct us to think well nor to do well?

 "Postquam docti prodierunt, boni desunt. "

 [Seneca, Ep. , 95. "Since the 'savans' have made their appearance among us, the good people have become eclipsed. " --Rousseau, Discours sur les Lettres. ]

All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science ofgoodness. 

But the reason I glanced upon but now, may it not also hence proceed, that, our studies in France having almost no other aim but profit, exceptas to those who, by nature born to offices and employments rather ofglory than gain, addict themselves to letters, if at all, only for soshort a time (being taken from their studies before they can come to haveany taste of them, to a profession that has nothing to do with books), there ordinarily remain no others to apply themselves wholly to learning, but people of mean condition, who in that only seek the means to live;and by such people, whose souls are, both by nature and by domesticeducation and example, of the basest alloy the fruits of knowledge areimmaturely gathered and ill digested, and delivered to their recipientsquite another thing. For it is not for knowledge to enlighten a soulthat is dark of itself, nor to make a blind man see. Her business is notto find a man's eyes, but to guide, govern, and direct them, provided hehave sound feet and straight legs to go upon. Knowledge is an excellentdrug, but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruptionand decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep. Such a one may have a sight clear enough who looks asquint, andconsequently sees what is good, but does not follow it, and seesknowledge, but makes no use of it. Plato's principal institution in hisRepublic is to fit his citizens with employments suitable to theirnature. Nature can do all, and does all. Cripples are very unfit forexercises of the body, and lame souls for exercises of the mind. Degenerate and vulgar souls are unworthy of philosophy. If we see ashoemaker with his shoes out at the toes, we say, 'tis no wonder; for, commonly, none go worse shod than they. In like manner, experience oftenpresents us a physician worse physicked, a divine less reformed, and(constantly) a scholar of less sufficiency, than other people. 

Old Aristo of Chios had reason to say that philosophers did theirauditors harm, forasmuch as most of the souls of those that heard themwere not capable of deriving benefit from instruction, which, if notapplied to good, would certainly be applied to ill:

 ["They proceeded effeminate debauchees from the school of Aristippus, cynics from that of Zeno. " --Cicero, De Natura Deor. , iii. , 31. ]

In that excellent institution that Xenophon attributes to the Persians, we find that they taught their children virtue, as other nations doletters. Plato tells us that the eldest son in their royal successionwas thus brought up; after his birth he was delivered, not to women, butto eunuchs of the greatest authority about their kings for their virtue, whose charge it was to keep his body healthful and in good plight; andafter he came to seven years of age, to teach him to ride and to goa-hunting. When he arrived at fourteen he was transferred into the handsof four, the wisest, the most just, the most temperate, and most valiantof the nation; of whom the first was to instruct him in religion, thesecond to be always upright and sincere, the third to conquer hisappetites and desires, and the fourth to despise all danger. 

It is a thing worthy of very great consideration, that in that excellent, and, in truth, for its perfection, prodigious form of civil regimen setdown by Lycurgus, though so solicitous of the education of children, as a thing of the greatest concern, and even in the very seat of theMuses, he should make so little mention of learning; as if that generousyouth, disdaining all other subjection but that of virtue, ought to besupplied, instead of tutors to read to them arts and sciences, with suchmasters as should only instruct them in valour, prudence, and justice;an example that Plato has followed in his laws. The manner of theirdiscipline was to propound to them questions in judgment upon men andtheir actions; and if they commended or condemned this or that person orfact, they were to give a reason for so doing; by which means they atonce sharpened their understanding, and learned what was right. Astyages, in Xenophon, asks Cyrus to give an account of his last lesson;and thus it was, "A great boy in our school, having a little shortcassock, by force took a longer from another that was not so tall as he, and gave him his own in exchange: whereupon I, being appointed judge ofthe controversy, gave judgment, that I thought it best each should keepthe coat he had, for that they both of them were better fitted with thatof one another than with their own: upon which my master told me, I haddone ill, in that I had only considered the fitness of the garments, whereas I ought to have considered the justice of the thing, whichrequired that no one should have anything forcibly taken from him that ishis own. " And Cyrus adds that he was whipped for his pains, as we are inour villages for forgetting the first aorist of------. 

 [Cotton's version of this story commences differently, and includes a passage which is not in any of the editions of the original before me:

 "Mandane, in Xenophon, asking Cyrus how he would do to learn justice, and the other virtues amongst the Medes, having left all his masters behind him in Persia? He made answer, that he had learned those things long since; that his master had often made him a judge of the differences amongst his schoolfellows, and had one day whipped him for giving a wrong sentence. "--W. C. H. ]

My pedant must make me a very learned oration, 'in genere demonstrativo', before he can persuade me that his school is like unto that. They knewhow to go the readiest way to work; and seeing that science, when mostrightly applied and best understood, can do no more but teach usprudence, moral honesty, and resolution, they thought fit, at first hand, to initiate their children with the knowledge of effects, and to instructthem, not by hearsay and rote, but by the experiment of action, in livelyforming and moulding them; not only by words and precepts, but chiefly byworks and examples; to the end it might not be a knowledge in the mindonly, but its complexion and habit: not an acquisition, but a naturalpossession. One asking to this purpose, Agesilaus, what he thought mostproper for boys to learn? "What they ought to do when they come to bemen, " said he. --[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedamonians. Rousseauadopts the expression in his Diswuys sur tes Lettres. ]--It is no wonder, if such an institution produced so admirable effects. 

They used to go, it is said, to the other cities of Greece, to inquireout rhetoricians, painters, and musicians; but to Lacedaemon forlegislators, magistrates, and generals of armies; at Athens they learnedto speak well: here to do well; there to disengage themselves from asophistical argument, and to unravel the imposture of captioussyllogisms; here to evade the baits and allurements of pleasure, and witha noble courage and resolution to conquer the menaces of fortune anddeath; those cudgelled their brains about words, these made it theirbusiness to inquire into things; there was an eternal babble of thetongue, here a continual exercise of the soul. And therefore it isnothing strange if, when Antipater demanded of them fifty children forhostages, they made answer, quite contrary to what we should do, thatthey would rather give him twice as many full-grown men, so much did theyvalue the loss of their country's education. When Agesilaus courtedXenophon to send his children to Sparta to be bred, "it is not, " said he, "there to learn logic or rhetoric, but to be instructed in the noblest ofall sciences, namely, the science to obey and to command. "--[Plutarch, Life of Agesilaus, c. 7. ]

It is very pleasant to see Socrates, after his manner, rallying Hippias, --[Plato's Dialogues: Hippias Major. ]--who recounts to him what a worldof money he has got, especially in certain little villages of Sicily, byteaching school, and that he made never a penny at Sparta: "What asottish and stupid people, " said Socrates, "are they, without sense orunderstanding, that make no account either of grammar or poetry, and onlybusy themselves in studying the genealogies and successions of theirkings, the foundations, rises, and declensions of states, and such talesof a tub!" After which, having made Hippias from one step to anotheracknowledge the excellency of their form of public administration, andthe felicity and virtue of their private life, he leaves him to guess atthe conclusion he makes of the inutilities of his pedantic arts. 

Examples have demonstrated to us that in military affairs, and all othersof the like active nature, the study of sciences more softens anduntempers the courages of men than it in any way fortifies and excitesthem. The most potent empire that at this day appears to be in the wholeworld is that of the Turks, a people equally inured to the estimation ofarms and the contempt of letters. I find Rome was more valiant beforeshe grew so learned. The most warlike nations at this time in being arethe most rude and ignorant: the Scythians, the Parthians, Tamerlane, serve for sufficient proof of this. When the Goths overran Greece, theonly thing that preserved all the libraries from the fire was, that someone possessed them with an opinion that they were to leave this kind offurniture entire to the enemy, as being most proper to divert them fromthe exercise of arms, and to fix them to a lazy and sedentary life. When our King Charles VIII. , almost without striking a blow, saw himselfpossessed of the kingdom of Naples and a considerable part of Tuscany, the nobles about him attributed this unexpected facility of conquest tothis, that the princes and nobles of Italy, more studied to renderthemselves ingenious and learned, than vigorous and warlike. 

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 A parrot would say as much as that Agesilaus, what he thought most proper for boys to learn? But it is not enough that our education does not spoil us Conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature Culling out of several books the sentences that best please me "Custom, " replied Plato, "is no little thing" Education Examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned Fear and distrust invite and draw on offence Fortune will still be mistress of events Fox, who found fault with what he could not obtain Fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed Gave them new and more plausible names for their excuse Give me time to recover my strength and health Great presumption to be so fond of one's own opinions Gross impostures of religions Hoary head and rivelled face of ancient usage Hold a stiff rein upon suspicion I have a great aversion from a novelty Knowledge is not so absolutely necessary as judgment Laws do what they can, when they cannot do what they would Man can never be wise but by his own wisdom Memories are full enough, but the judgment totally void Miracles appear to be so, according to our ignorance of nature Nothing noble can be performed without danger Only set the humours they would purge more violently in work Ought not to expect much either from his vigilance or power Ought to withdraw and retire his soul from the crowd Over-circumspect and wary prudence is a mortal enemy Physic Physician worse physicked Plays of children are not performed in play Present himself with a halter about his neck to the people Rome was more valiant before she grew so learned Study to declare what is justice, but never took care to do it. Testimony of the truth from minds prepossessed by custom? They neither instruct us to think well nor to do well Think of physic as much good or ill as any one would have me Use veils from us the true aspect of things Victorious envied the conquered We only labour to stuff the memory We take other men's knowledge and opinions upon trust Weakness and instability of a private and particular fancy What they ought to do when they come to be men Whosoever despises his own life, is always master Worse endure an ill-contrived robe than an ill-contrived mind