ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 5. 

XXV. Of the education of children. XXVI. That it is folly to measure truth and error by our own capacity. 

CHAPTER XXV

OF THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN

TO MADAME DIANE DE FOIX, Comtesse de Gurson

I never yet saw that father, but let his son be never so decrepit ordeformed, would not, notwithstanding, own him: not, nevertheless, if hewere not totally besotted, and blinded with his paternal affection, thathe did not well enough discern his defects; but that with all defaults hewas still his. Just so, I see better than any other, that all I writehere are but the idle reveries of a man that has only nibbled upon theoutward crust of sciences in his nonage, and only retained a general andformless image of them; who has got a little snatch of everything andnothing of the whole, 'a la Francoise'. For I know, in general, thatthere is such a thing as physic, as jurisprudence: four parts inmathematics, and, roughly, what all these aim and point at; and, peradventure, I yet know farther, what sciences in general pretend unto, in order to the service of our life: but to dive farther than that, andto have cudgelled my brains in the study of Aristotle, the monarch of allmodern learning, or particularly addicted myself to any one science, I have never done it; neither is there any one art of which I am able todraw the first lineaments and dead colour; insomuch that there is not aboy of the lowest form in a school, that may not pretend to be wiser thanI, who am not able to examine him in his first lesson, which, if I am atany time forced upon, I am necessitated in my own defence, to ask him, unaptly enough, some universal questions, such as may serve to try hisnatural understanding; a lesson as strange and unknown to him, as his isto me. 

I never seriously settled myself to the reading any book of solidlearning but Plutarch and Seneca; and there, like the Danaides, Ieternally fill, and it as constantly runs out; something of which dropsupon this paper, but little or nothing stays with me. History is myparticular game as to matter of reading, or else poetry, for which I haveparticular kindness and esteem: for, as Cleanthes said, as the voice, forced through the narrow passage of a trumpet, comes out more forcibleand shrill: so, methinks, a sentence pressed within the harmony of versedarts out more briskly upon the understanding, and strikes my ear andapprehension with a smarter and more pleasing effect. As to the naturalparts I have, of which this is the essay, I find them to bow under theburden; my fancy and judgment do but grope in the dark, tripping andstumbling in the way; and when I have gone as far as I can, I am in nodegree satisfied; I discover still a new and greater extent of landbefore me, with a troubled and imperfect sight and wrapped up in clouds, that I am not able to penetrate. And taking upon me to writeindifferently of whatever comes into my head, and therein making use ofnothing but my own proper and natural means, if it befall me, asoft-times it does, accidentally to meet in any good author, the same headsand commonplaces upon which I have attempted to write (as I did but justnow in Plutarch's "Discourse of the Force of Imagination"), to see myselfso weak and so forlorn, so heavy and so flat, in comparison of thosebetter writers, I at once pity or despise myself. Yet do I please myselfwith this, that my opinions have often the honour and good fortune tojump with theirs, and that I go in the same path, though at a very greatdistance, and can say, "Ah, that is so. " I am farther satisfied to findthat I have a quality, which every one is not blessed withal, which is, to discern the vast difference between them and me; and notwithstandingall that, suffer my own inventions, low and feeble as they are, to run onin their career, without mending or plastering up the defects that thiscomparison has laid open to my own view. And, in plain truth, a man hadneed of a good strong back to keep pace with these people. Theindiscreet scribblers of our times, who, amongst their laboriousnothings, insert whole sections and pages out of ancient authors, with adesign, by that means, to illustrate their own writings, do quitecontrary; for this infinite dissimilitude of ornaments renders thecomplexion of their own compositions so sallow and deformed, that theylose much more than they get. 

The philosophers, Chrysippus and Epicurus, were in this of two quitecontrary humours: the first not only in his books mixed passages andsayings of other authors, but entire pieces, and, in one, the whole Medeaof Euripides; which gave Apollodorus occasion to say, that should a manpick out of his writings all that was none of his, he would leave himnothing but blank paper: whereas the latter, quite on the contrary, inthree hundred volumes that he left behind him, has not so much as onequotation. --[Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Chyysippus, vii. 181, andEpicurus, x. 26. ]

I happened the other day upon this piece of fortune; I was reading aFrench book, where after I had a long time run dreaming over a great manywords, so dull, so insipid, so void of all wit or common sense, thatindeed they were only French words: after a long and tedious travel, Icame at last to meet with a piece that was lofty, rich, and elevated tothe very clouds; of which, had I found either the declivity easy or theascent gradual, there had been some excuse; but it was so perpendiculara precipice, and so wholly cut off from the rest of the work, that by thefirst six words, I found myself flying into the other world, and thencediscovered the vale whence I came so deep and low, that I have never hadsince the heart to descend into it any more. If I should set out one ofmy discourses with such rich spoils as these, it would but too evidentlymanifest the imperfection of my own writing. To reprehend the fault inothers that I am guilty of myself, appears to me no more unreasonable, than to condemn, as I often do, those of others in myself: they are to beeverywhere reproved, and ought to have no sanctuary allowed them. I knowvery well how audaciously I myself, at every turn, attempt to equalmyself to my thefts, and to make my style go hand in hand with them, notwithout a temerarious hope of deceiving the eyes of my reader fromdiscerning the difference; but withal it is as much by the benefit of myapplication, that I hope to do it, as by that of my invention or anyforce of my own. Besides, I do not offer to contend with the whole bodyof these champions, nor hand to hand with anyone of them: 'tis only byflights and little light attempts that I engage them; I do not grapplewith them, but try their strength only, and never engage so far as I makea show to do. If I could hold them in play, I were a brave fellow; for Inever attack them; but where they are most sinewy and strong. To cover aman's self (as I have seen some do) with another man's armour, so as notto discover so much as his fingers' ends; to carry on a design (as it isnot hard for a man that has anything of a scholar in him, in an ordinarysubject to do) under old inventions patched up here and there with hisown trumpery, and then to endeavour to conceal the theft, and to make itpass for his own, is first injustice and meanness of spirit in those whodo it, who having nothing in them of their own fit to procure them areputation, endeavour to do it by attempting to impose things upon theworld in their own name, which they have no manner of title to; and next, a ridiculous folly to content themselves with acquiring the ignorantapprobation of the vulgar by such a pitiful cheat, at the price at thesame time of degrading themselves in the eyes of men of understanding, who turn up their noses at all this borrowed incrustation, yet whosepraise alone is worth the having. For my own part, there is nothing Iwould not sooner do than that, neither have I said so much of others, butto get a better opportunity to explain myself. Nor in this do I glanceat the composers of centos, who declare themselves for such; of whichsort of writers I have in my time known many very ingenious, andparticularly one under the name of Capilupus, besides the ancients. These are really men of wit, and that make it appear they are so, both bythat and other ways of writing; as for example, Lipsius, in that learnedand laborious contexture of his Politics. 

But, be it how it will, and how inconsiderable soever these ineptitudesmay be, I will say I never intended to conceal them, no more than my oldbald grizzled likeness before them, where the painter has presented younot with a perfect face, but with mine. For these are my own particularopinions and fancies, and I deliver them as only what I myself believe, and not for what is to be believed by others. I have no other end inthis writing, but only to discover myself, who, also shall, peradventure, be another thing to-morrow, if I chance to meet any new instruction tochange me. I have no authority to be believed, neither do I desire it, being too conscious of my own inerudition to be able to instruct others. 

Some one, then, having seen the preceding chapter, the other day told meat my house, that I should a little farther have extended my discourse onthe education of children. --["Which, how fit I am to do, let my friendsflatter me if they please, I have in the meantime no such opinion of myown talent, as to promise myself any very good success from myendeavour. " This passage would appear to be an interpolation by Cotton. At all events, I do not find it in the original editions before me, or inCoste. ]--

Now, madam, if I had any sufficiency in this subject, I could notpossibly better employ it, than to present my best instructions to thelittle man that threatens you shortly with a happy birth (for you are toogenerous to begin otherwise than with a male); for, having had so great ahand in the treaty of your marriage, I have a certain particular rightand interest in the greatness and prosperity of the issue that shallspring from it; beside that, your having had the best of my services solong in possession, sufficiently obliges me to desire the honour andadvantage of all wherein you shall be concerned. But, in truth, all Iunderstand as to that particular is only this, that the greatest and mostimportant difficulty of human science is the education of children. Foras in agriculture, the husbandry that is to precede planting, as alsoplanting itself, is certain, plain, and well known; but after that whichis planted comes to life, there is a great deal more to be done, more artto be used, more care to be taken, and much more difficulty to cultivateand bring it to perfection so it is with men; it is no hard matter to getchildren; but after they are born, then begins the trouble, solicitude, and care rightly to train, principle, and bring them up. The symptoms oftheir inclinations in that tender age are so obscure, and the promises souncertain and fallacious, that it is very hard to establish any solidjudgment or conjecture upon them. Look at Cimon, for example, andThemistocles, and a thousand others, who very much deceived theexpectation men had of them. Cubs of bears and puppies readily discovertheir natural inclination; but men, so soon as ever they are grownup, applying themselves to certain habits, engaging themselves in certainopinions, and conforming themselves to particular laws and customs, easily alter, or at least disguise, their true and real disposition; andyet it is hard to force the propension of nature. Whence it comes topass, that for not having chosen the right course, we often take verygreat pains, and consume a good part of our time in training up childrento things, for which, by their natural constitution, they are totallyunfit. In this difficulty, nevertheless, I am clearly of opinion, thatthey ought to be elemented in the best and most advantageous studies, without taking too much notice of, or being too superstitious in thoselight prognostics they give of themselves in their tender years, and towhich Plato, in his Republic, gives, methinks, too much authority. 

Madam, science is a very great ornament, and a thing of marvellous use, especially in persons raised to that degree of fortune in which you are. And, in truth, in persons of mean and low condition, it cannot performits true and genuine office, being naturally more prompt to assist in theconduct of war, in the government of peoples, in negotiating the leaguesand friendships of princes and foreign nations, than in forming asyllogism in logic, in pleading a process in law, or in prescribing adose of pills in physic. Wherefore, madam, believing you will not omitthis so necessary feature in the education of your children, who yourselfhave tasted its sweetness, and are of a learned extraction (for we yethave the writings of the ancient Counts of Foix, from whom my lord, yourhusband, and yourself, are both of you descended, and Monsieur deCandale, your uncle, every day obliges the world with others, which willextend the knowledge of this quality in your family for so manysucceeding ages), I will, upon this occasion, presume to acquaint yourladyship with one particular fancy of my own, contrary to the commonmethod, which is all I am able to contribute to your service in thisaffair. 

The charge of the tutor you shall provide for your son, upon the choiceof whom depends the whole success of his education, has several othergreat and considerable parts and duties required in so important a trust, besides that of which I am about to speak: these, however, I shall notmention, as being unable to add anything of moment to the common rules:and in this, wherein I take upon me to advise, he may follow it so faronly as it shall appear advisable. 

For a, boy of quality then, who pretends to letters not upon the accountof profit (for so mean an object is unworthy of the grace and favourof the Muses, and moreover, in it a man directs his service to anddepends upon others), nor so much for outward ornament, as for his ownproper and peculiar use, and to furnish and enrich himself within, havingrather a desire to come out an accomplished cavalier than a mere scholaror learned man; for such a one, I say, I would, also, have his friendssolicitous to find him out a tutor, who has rather a well-made than awell-filled head;--["'Tete bien faite', an expression created byMontaigne, and which has remained a part of our language. "--Servan. ]--seeking, indeed, both the one and the other, but rather of the two toprefer manners and judgment to mere learning, and that this man shouldexercise his charge after a new method. 

'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupil'sears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business of thepupil is only to repeat what the others have said: now I would have atutor to correct this error, and, that at the very first, he shouldaccording to the capacity he has to deal with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste things, and of himself to discernand choose them, sometimes opening the way to him, and sometimes leavinghim to open it for himself; that is, I would not have him alone to inventand speak, but that he should also hear his pupil speak in turn. Socrates, and since him Arcesilaus, made first their scholars speak, andthen they spoke to them--[Diogenes Laertius, iv. 36. ]

 "Obest plerumque iis, qui discere volunt, auctoritas eorum, qui docent. "

 ["The authority of those who teach, is very often an impediment to those who desire to learn. "--Cicero, De Natura Deor. , i. 5. ]

It is good to make him, like a young horse, trot before him, that he mayjudge of his going, and how much he is to abate of his own speed, toaccommodate himself to the vigour and capacity of the other. For want ofwhich due proportion we spoil all; which also to know how to adjust, andto keep within an exact and due measure, is one of the hardest things Iknow, and 'tis the effect of a high and well-tempered soul, to know howto condescend to such puerile motions and to govern and direct them. I walk firmer and more secure up hill than down. 

Such as, according to our common way of teaching, undertake, with one andthe same lesson, and the same measure of direction, to instruct severalboys of differing and unequal capacities, are infinitely mistaken; and'tis no wonder, if in a whole multitude of scholars, there are not foundabove two or three who bring away any good account of their time anddiscipline. Let the master not only examine him about the grammaticalconstruction of the bare words of his lesson, but about the sense and lethim judge of the profit he has made, not by the testimony of his memory, but by that of his life. Let him make him put what he has learned into ahundred several forms, and accommodate it to so many several subjects, tosee if he yet rightly comprehends it, and has made it his own, takinginstruction of his progress by the pedagogic institutions of Plato. 'Tisa sign of crudity and indigestion to disgorge what we eat in the samecondition it was swallowed; the stomach has not performed its officeunless it have altered the form and condition of what was committed to itto concoct. Our minds work only upon trust, when bound and compelled tofollow the appetite of another's fancy, enslaved and captivated under theauthority of another's instruction; we have been so subjected to thetrammel, that we have no free, nor natural pace of our own; our ownvigour and liberty are extinct and gone:

 "Nunquam tutelae suae fiunt. "

 ["They are ever in wardship. "--Seneca, Ep. , 33. ]

I was privately carried at Pisa to see a very honest man, but so great anAristotelian, that his most usual thesis was: "That the touchstone andsquare of all solid imagination, and of all truth, was an absoluteconformity to Aristotle's doctrine; and that all besides was nothing butinanity and chimera; for that he had seen all, and said all. " A position, that for having been a little too injuriously and broadly interpreted, brought him once and long kept him in great danger of the Inquisition atRome. 

Let him make him examine and thoroughly sift everything he reads, andlodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon trust. Aristotle's principles will then be no more principles to him, than thoseof Epicurus and the Stoics: let this diversity of opinions be propoundedto, and laid before him; he will himself choose, if he be able; if not, he will remain in doubt. 

 "Che non men the saver, dubbiar m' aggrata. "

 ["I love to doubt, as well as to know. "--Dante, Inferno, xi. 93]

for, if he embrace the opinions of Xenophon and Plato, by his own reason, they will no more be theirs, but become his own. Who follows another, follows nothing, finds nothing, nay, is inquisitive after nothing. 

 "Non sumus sub rege; sibi quisque se vindicet. "

 ["We are under no king; let each vindicate himself. " --Seneca, Ep. , 33]

Let him, at least, know that he knows. It will be necessary that heimbibe their knowledge, not that he be corrupted with their precepts;and no matter if he forget where he had his learning, provided he knowhow to apply it to his own use. Truth and reason are common to everyone, and are no more his who spake them first, than his who speaks themafter: 'tis no more according to Plato, than according to me, since bothhe and I equally see and understand them. Bees cull their several sweetsfrom this flower and that blossom, here and there where they find them, but themselves afterwards make the honey, which is all and purely theirown, and no more thyme and marjoram: so the several fragments he borrowsfrom others, he will transform and shuffle together to compile a workthat shall be absolutely his own; that is to say, his judgment:his instruction, labour and study, tend to nothing else but to form that. He is not obliged to discover whence he got the materials that haveassisted him, but only to produce what he has himself done with them. Men that live upon pillage and borrowing, expose their purchases andbuildings to every one's view: but do not proclaim how they came by themoney. We do not see the fees and perquisites of a gentleman of the longrobe; but we see the alliances wherewith he fortifies himself and hisfamily, and the titles and honours he has obtained for him and his. Noman divulges his revenue; or, at least, which way it comes in but everyone publishes his acquisitions. The advantages of our study are tobecome better and more wise. 'Tis, says Epicharmus, the understandingthat sees and hears, 'tis the understanding that improves everything, that orders everything, and that acts, rules, and reigns: all otherfaculties are blind, and deaf, and without soul. And certainly we renderit timorous and servile, in not allowing it the liberty and privilege todo anything of itself. Whoever asked his pupil what he thought ofgrammar and rhetoric, or of such and such a sentence of Cicero? Ourmasters stick them, full feathered, in our memories, and there establishthem like oracles, of which the letters and syllables are of thesubstance of the thing. To know by rote, is no knowledge, and signifiesno more but only to retain what one has intrusted to our memory. Thatwhich a man rightly knows and understands, he is the free disposer of athis own full liberty, without any regard to the author from whence he hadit, or fumbling over the leaves of his book. A mere bookish learning isa poor, paltry learning; it may serve for ornament, but there is yet nofoundation for any superstructure to be built upon it, according to theopinion of Plato, who says, that constancy, faith, and sincerity, are thetrue philosophy, and the other sciences, that are directed to other ends;mere adulterate paint. I could wish that Paluel or Pompey, those twonoted dancers of my time, could have taught us to cut capers, by onlyseeing them do it, without stirring from our places, as these men pretendto inform the understanding without ever setting it to work, or that wecould learn to ride, handle a pike, touch a lute, or sing without thetrouble of practice, as these attempt to make us judge and speak well, without exercising us in judging or speaking. Now in this initiation ofour studies in their progress, whatsoever presents itself before us isbook sufficient; a roguish trick of a page, a sottish mistake of aservant, a jest at the table, are so many new subjects. 

And for this reason, conversation with men is of very great use andtravel into foreign countries; not to bring back (as most of our youngmonsieurs do) an account only of how many paces Santa Rotonda--[ThePantheon of Agrippa. ]--is in circuit; or of the richness of SignoraLivia's petticoats; or, as some others, how much Nero's face, in a statuein such an old ruin, is longer and broader than that made for him on somemedal; but to be able chiefly to give an account of the humours, manners, customs, and laws of those nations where he has been, and that we maywhet and sharpen our wits by rubbing them against those of others. Iwould that a boy should be sent abroad very young, and first, so as tokill two birds with one stone, into those neighbouring nations whoselanguage is most differing from our own, and to which, if it be notformed betimes, the tongue will grow too stiff to bend. 

And also 'tis the general opinion of all, that a child should not bebrought up in his mother's lap. Mothers are too tender, and theirnatural affection is apt to make the most discreet of them all sooverfond, that they can neither find in their hearts to give them duecorrection for the faults they may commit, nor suffer them to be inuredto hardships and hazards, as they ought to be. They will not endure tosee them return all dust and sweat from their exercise, to drink colddrink when they are hot, nor see them mount an unruly horse, nor take afoil in hand against a rude fencer, or so much as to discharge a carbine. And yet there is no remedy; whoever will breed a boy to be good foranything when he comes to be a man, must by no means spare him whenyoung, and must very often transgress the rules of physic:

 "Vitamque sub dio, et trepidis agat In rebus. "

 ["Let him live in open air, and ever in movement about something. " --Horace, Od. Ii. , 3, 5. ]

It is not enough to fortify his soul; you are also to make his sinewsstrong; for the soul will be oppressed if not assisted by the members, and would have too hard a task to discharge two offices alone. I knowvery well to my cost, how much mine groans under the burden, from beingaccommodated with a body so tender and indisposed, as eternally leans andpresses upon her; and often in my reading perceive that our masters, intheir writings, make examples pass for magnanimity and fortitude of mind, which really are rather toughness of skin and hardness of bones; for Ihave seen men, women, and children, naturally born of so hard andinsensible a constitution of body, that a sound cudgelling has been lessto them than a flirt with a finger would have been to me, and that wouldneither cry out, wince, nor shrink, for a good swinging beating; and whenwrestlers counterfeit the philosophers in patience, 'tis rather strengthof nerves than stoutness of heart. Now to be inured to undergo labour, is to be accustomed to endure pain:

 "Labor callum obducit dolori. "

 ["Labour hardens us against pain. "--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , ii. 15. ]

A boy is to be broken in to the toil and roughness of exercise, so as tobe trained up to the pain and suffering of dislocations, cholics, cauteries, and even imprisonment and the rack itself; for he may come bymisfortune to be reduced to the worst of these, which (as this worldgoes) is sometimes inflicted on the good as well as the bad. As forproof, in our present civil war whoever draws his sword against the laws, threatens the honestest men with the whip and the halter. 

And, moreover, by living at home, the authority of this governor, whichought to be sovereign over the boy he has received into his charge, isoften checked and hindered by the presence of parents; to which may alsobe added, that the respect the whole family pay him, as their master'sson, and the knowledge he has of the estate and greatness he is heir to, are, in my opinion, no small inconveniences in these tender years. 

And yet, even in this conversing with men I spoke of but now, I haveobserved this vice, that instead of gathering observations from others, we make it our whole business to lay ourselves open to them, and are moreconcerned how to expose and set out our own commodities, than how toincrease our stock by acquiring new. Silence, therefore, and modesty arevery advantageous qualities in conversation. One should, therefore, train up this boy to be sparing and an husband of his knowledge when hehas acquired it; and to forbear taking exceptions at or reproving everyidle saying or ridiculous story that is said or told in his presence; forit is a very unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything that is notagreeable to our own palate. Let him be satisfied with correctinghimself, and not seem to condemn everything in another he would not dohimself, nor dispute it as against common customs. 

 "Licet sapere sine pompa, sine invidia. "

 ["Let us be wise without ostentation, without envy. " --Seneca, Ep. , 103. ]

Let him avoid these vain and uncivil images of authority, this childishambition of coveting to appear better bred and more accomplished, than hereally will, by such carriage, discover himself to be. And, as ifopportunities of interrupting and reprehending were not to be omitted, todesire thence to derive the reputation of something more than ordinary. For as it becomes none but great poets to make use of the poeticallicence, so it is intolerable for any but men of great and illustrioussouls to assume privilege above the authority of custom:

 "Si quid Socrates ant Aristippus contra morem et consuetudinem fecerunt, idem sibi ne arbitretur licere: magnis enim illi et divinis bonis hanc licentiam assequebantur. "

 ["If Socrates and Aristippus have committed any act against manners and custom, let him not think that he is allowed to do the same; for it was by great and divine benefits that they obtained this privilege. "--Cicero, De Offic. , i. 41. ]

Let him be instructed not to engage in discourse or dispute but with achampion worthy of him, and, even there, not to make use of all thelittle subtleties that may seem pat for his purpose, but only sucharguments as may best serve him. Let him be taught to be curious in theelection and choice of his reasons, to abominate impertinence, andconsequently, to affect brevity; but, above all, let him be lessoned toacquiesce and submit to truth so soon as ever he shall discover it, whether in his opponent's argument, or upon better consideration of hisown; for he shall never be preferred to the chair for a mere clatter ofwords and syllogisms, and is no further engaged to any argument whatever, than as he shall in his own judgment approve it: nor yet is arguing atrade, where the liberty of recantation and getting off upon betterthoughts, are to be sold for ready money:

 "Neque, ut omnia, qux praescripta et imperata sint, defendat, necessitate ulla cogitur. "

 ["Neither is their any necessity upon him, that he should defend all things that are prescribed and enjoined him. " --Cicero, Acad. , ii. 3. ]

If his governor be of my humour, he will form his will to be a very goodand loyal subject to his prince, very affectionate to his person, andvery stout in his quarrel; but withal he will cool in him the desire ofhaving any other tie to his service than public duty. Besides severalother inconveniences that are inconsistent with the liberty every honestman ought to have, a man's judgment, being bribed and prepossessed bythese particular obligations, is either blinded and less free to exerciseits function, or is blemished with ingratitude and indiscretion. A manthat is purely a courtier, can neither have power nor will to speak orthink otherwise than favourably and well of a master, who, amongst somany millions of other subjects, has picked out him with his own hand tonourish and advance; this favour, and the profit flowing from it, mustneeds, and not without some show of reason, corrupt his freedom anddazzle him; and we commonly see these people speak in another kind ofphrase than is ordinarily spoken by others of the same nation, thoughwhat they say in that courtly language is not much to be believed. 

Let his conscience and virtue be eminently manifest in his speaking, andhave only reason for their guide. Make him understand, that toacknowledge the error he shall discover in his own argument, though onlyfound out by himself, is an effect of judgment and sincerity, which arethe principal things he is to seek after; that obstinacy and contentionare common qualities, most appearing in mean souls; that to revise andcorrect himself, to forsake an unjust argument in the height and heat ofdispute, are rare, great, and philosophical qualities. 

Let him be advised, being in company, to have his eye and ear in everycorner; for I find that the places of greatest honour are commonly seizedupon by men that have least in them, and that the greatest fortunes areseldom accompanied with the ablest parts. I have been present when, whilst they at the upper end of the chamber have been only commenting thebeauty of the arras, or the flavour of the wine, many things that havebeen very finely said at the lower end of the table have been lost andthrown away. Let him examine every man's talent; a peasant, abricklayer, a passenger: one may learn something from every one of thesein their several capacities, and something will be picked out of theirdiscourse whereof some use may be made at one time or another; nay, eventhe folly and impertinence of others will contribute to his instruction. By observing the graces and manners of all he sees, he will create tohimself an emulation of the good, and a contempt of the bad. 

Let an honest curiosity be suggested to his fancy of being inquisitiveafter everything; whatever there is singular and rare near the placewhere he is, let him go and see it; a fine house, a noble fountain, aneminent man, the place where a battle has been anciently fought, thepassages of Caesar and Charlemagne:

 "Qux tellus sit lenta gelu, quae putris ab aestu, Ventus in Italiam quis bene vela ferat. "

 ["What country is bound in frost, what land is friable with heat, what wind serves fairest for Italy. "--Propertius, iv. 3, 39. ]

Let him inquire into the manners, revenues, and alliances of princes, things in themselves very pleasant to learn, and very useful to know. 

In this conversing with men, I mean also, and principally, those who onlylive in the records of history; he shall, by reading those books, converse with the great and heroic souls of the best ages. 'Tis an idleand vain study to those who make it so by doing it after a negligentmanner, but to those who do it with care and observation, 'tis a study ofinestimable fruit and value; and the only study, as Plato reports, thatthe Lacedaemonians reserved to themselves. What profit shall he not reapas to the business of men, by reading the Lives of Plutarch? But, withal, let my governor remember to what end his instructions areprincipally directed, and that he do not so much imprint in his pupil'smemory the date of the ruin of Carthage, as the manners of Hannibal andScipio; nor so much where Marcellus died, as why it was unworthy of hisduty that he died there. Let him not teach him so much the narrativeparts of history as to judge them; the reading of them, in my opinion, is a thing that of all others we apply ourselves unto with the mostdiffering measure. I have read a hundred things in Livy that another hasnot, or not taken notice of at least; and Plutarch has read a hundredmore there than ever I could find, or than, peradventure, that authorever wrote; to some it is merely a grammar study, to others the veryanatomy of philosophy, by which the most abstruse parts of our humannature penetrate. There are in Plutarch many long discourses very worthyto be carefully read and observed, for he is, in my opinion, of allothers the greatest master in that kind of writing; but there are athousand others which he has only touched and glanced upon, where he onlypoints with his finger to direct us which way we may go if we will, andcontents himself sometimes with giving only one brisk hit in the nicestarticle of the question, whence we are to grope out the rest. As, forexample, where he says'--[In the Essay on False Shame. ]--that theinhabitants of Asia came to be vassals to one only, for not having beenable to pronounce one syllable, which is No. Which saying of his gaveperhaps matter and occasion to La Boetie to write his "VoluntaryServitude. " Only to see him pick out a light action in a man's life, ora mere word that does not seem to amount even to that, is itself a wholediscourse. 'Tis to our prejudice that men of understanding should soimmoderately affect brevity; no doubt their reputation is the better byit, but in the meantime we are the worse. Plutarch had rather we shouldapplaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather leave uswith an appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have alreadyread. He knew very well, that a man may say too much even upon the bestsubjects, and that Alexandridas justly reproached him who made very good. But too long speeches to the Ephori, when he said: "O stranger! thouspeakest the things thou shouldst speak, but not as thou shouldst speakthem. "--[Plutarch, Apothegms of the Lacedamonians. ]--Such as have leanand spare bodies stuff themselves out with clothes; so they who aredefective in matter endeavour to make amends with words. 

Human understanding is marvellously enlightened by daily conversationwith men, for we are, otherwise, compressed and heaped up in ourselves, and have our sight limited to the length of our own noses. One askingSocrates of what country he was, he did not make answer, of Athens, butof the world;--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , v. 37; Plutarch, On Exile, c. 4. ]--he whose imagination was fuller and wider, embraced the whole world forhis country, and extended his society and friendship to all mankind;not as we do, who look no further than our feet. When the vines of myvillage are nipped with the frost, my parish priest presently concludes, that the indignation of God has gone out against all the human race, andthat the cannibals have already got the pip. Who is it that, seeing thehavoc of these civil wars of ours, does not cry out, that the machine ofthe world is near dissolution, and that the day of judgment is at hand;without considering, that many worse things have been seen, and that inthe meantime, people are very merry in a thousand other parts of theearth for all this? For my part, considering the licence and impunitythat always attend such commotions, I wonder they are so moderate, andthat there is no more mischief done. To him who feels the hailstonespatter about his ears, the whole hemisphere appears to be in storm andtempest; like the ridiculous Savoyard, who said very gravely, that ifthat simple king of France could have managed his fortune as he shouldhave done, he might in time have come to have been steward of thehousehold to the duke his master: the fellow could not, in his shallowimagination, conceive that there could be anything greater than a Duke ofSavoy. And, in truth, we are all of us, insensibly, in this error, anerror of a very great weight and very pernicious consequence. Butwhoever shall represent to his fancy, as in a picture, that great imageof our mother nature, in her full majesty and lustre, whoever in her faceshall read so general and so constant a variety, whoever shall observehimself in that figure, and not himself but a whole kingdom, no biggerthan the least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole, that man alone is able to value things according to their true estimateand grandeur. 

This great world which some do yet multiply as several species under onegenus, is the mirror wherein we are to behold ourselves, to be able toknow ourselves as we ought to do in the true bias. In short, I wouldhave this to be the book my young gentleman should study with the mostattention. So many humours, so many sects, so many judgments, opinions, laws, and customs, teach us to judge aright of our own, and inform ourunderstanding to discover its imperfection and natural infirmity, whichis no trivial speculation. So many mutations of states and kingdoms, andso many turns and revolutions of public fortune, will make us wise enoughto make no great wonder of our own. So many great names, so many famousvictories and conquests drowned and swallowed in oblivion, render ourhopes ridiculous of eternising our names by the taking of half-a-score oflight horse, or a henroost, which only derives its memory from its ruin. The pride and arrogance of so many foreign pomps, the inflated majesty ofso many courts and grandeurs, accustom and fortify our sight withoutclosing our eyes to behold the lustre of our own; so many trillions ofmen, buried before us, encourage us not to fear to go seek such goodcompany in the other world: and so of the rest Pythagoras was want tosay, --[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , v. 3. ]--that our life resembles the greatand populous assembly of the Olympic games, wherein some exercise thebody, that they may carry away the glory of the prize: others bringmerchandise to sell for profit: there are also some (and those none ofthe worst sort) who pursue no other advantage than only to look on, andconsider how and why everything is done, and to be spectators of thelives of other men, thereby the better to judge of and regulate theirown. 

To examples may fitly be applied all the profitable discourses ofphilosophy, to which all human actions, as to their best rule, ought tobe especially directed: a scholar shall be taught to know--

 "Quid fas optare: quid asper Utile nummus habet: patrix carisque propinquis Quantum elargiri deceat: quern te Deus esse Jussit, et humana qua parte locatus es in re; Quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur. "

 ["Learn what it is right to wish; what is the true use of coined money; how much it becomes us to give in liberality to our country and our dear relations; whom and what the Deity commanded thee to be; and in what part of the human system thou art placed; what we are ant to what purpose engendered. "--Persius, iii. 69]

what it is to know, and what to be ignorant; what ought to be the end anddesign of study; what valour, temperance, and justice are; the differencebetwixt ambition and avarice, servitude and subjection, licence andliberty; by what token a man may know true and solid contentment; how fardeath, affliction, and disgrace are to be apprehended;

 "Et quo quemque modo fugiatque feratque laborem. "

 ["And how you may shun or sustain every hardship. " --Virgil, AEneid, iii. 459. ]

by what secret springs we move, and the reason of our various agitationsand irresolutions: for, methinks the first doctrine with which one shouldseason his understanding, ought to be that which regulates his mannersand his sense; that teaches him to know himself, and how both well to digand well to live. Amongst the liberal sciences, let us begin with thatwhich makes us free; not that they do not all serve in some measure tothe instruction and use of life, as all other things in some sort alsodo; but let us make choice of that which directly and professedly servesto that end. If we are once able to restrain the offices of human lifewithin their just and natural limits, we shall find that most of thesciences in use are of no great use to us, and even in those that are, that there are many very unnecessary cavities and dilatations which wehad better let alone, and, following Socrates' direction, limit thecourse of our studies to those things only where is a true and realutility:

 "Sapere aude; Incipe; Qui recte vivendi prorogat horam, Rusticus exspectat, dum defluat amnis; at ille Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis oevum. "

 ["Dare to be wise; begin! he who defers the hour of living well is like the clown, waiting till the river shall have flowed out: but the river still flows, and will run on, with constant course, to ages without end. "--Horace, Ep. , i. 2. ]

'Tis a great foolery to teach our children:

 "Quid moveant Pisces, animosaque signa Leonis, Lotus et Hesperia quid Capricornus aqua, "

 ["What influence Pisces have, or the sign of angry Leo, or Capricorn, washed by the Hesperian wave. "--Propertius, iv. I, 89. ]

the knowledge of the stars and the motion of the eighth sphere beforetheir own:

 ["What care I about the Pleiades or the stars of Taurus?" --Anacreon, Ode, xvii. 10. ]

Anaximenes writing to Pythagoras, "To what purpose, " said he, "should Itrouble myself in searching out the secrets of the stars, having death orslavery continually before my eyes?" for the kings of Persia were at thattime preparing to invade his country. Every one ought to say thus, "Being assaulted, as I am by ambition, avarice, temerity, superstition, and having within so many other enemies of life, shall I go ponder overthe world's changes?"

After having taught him what will make him more wise and good, you maythen entertain him with the elements of logic, physics, geometry, rhetoric, and the science which he shall then himself most incline to, his judgment being beforehand formed and fit to choose, he will quicklymake his own. The way of instructing him ought to be sometimes bydiscourse, and sometimes by reading; sometimes his governor shall put theauthor himself, which he shall think most proper for him, into his hands, and sometimes only the marrow and substance of it; and if himself be notconversant enough in books to turn to all the fine discourses the bookscontain for his purpose, there may some man of learning be joined to him, that upon every occasion shall supply him with what he stands in need of, to furnish it to his pupil. And who can doubt but that this way ofteaching is much more easy and natural than that of Gaza, --[TheodoreGaza, rector of the Academy of Ferrara. ]--in which the precepts are sointricate, and so harsh, and the words so vain, lean; and insignificant, that there is no hold to be taken of them, nothing that quickens andelevates the wit and fancy, whereas here the mind has what to feed uponand to digest. This fruit, therefore, is not only without comparison, much more fair and beautiful; but will also be much more early ripe. 

'Tis a thousand pities that matters should be at such a pass in this ageof ours, that philosophy, even with men of understanding, should be, looked upon as a vain and fantastic name, a thing of no use, no value, either in opinion or effect, of which I think those ergotisms and pettysophistries, by prepossessing the avenues to it, are the cause. Andpeople are much to blame to represent it to children for a thing of sodifficult access, and with such a frowning, grim, and formidable aspect. Who is it that has disguised it thus, with this false, pale, and ghostlycountenance? There is nothing more airy, more gay, more frolic, and Ihad like to have said, more wanton. She preaches nothing but feastingand jollity; a melancholic anxious look shows that she does not inhabitthere. Demetrius the grammarian finding in the temple of Delphos a knotof philosophers set chatting together, said to them, --[Plutarch, Treatiseon Oracles which have ceased]--"Either I am much deceived, or by yourcheerful and pleasant countenances, you are engaged in no, very deepdiscourse. " To which one of them, Heracleon the Megarean, replied:"Tis for such as are puzzled about inquiring whether the future tense ofthe verb ------ is spelt with a double A, or that hunt after thederivation of the comparatives ----- and -----, and the superlatives ----and ------, to knit their brows whilst discoursing of their science: butas to philosophical discourses, they always divert and cheer up thosethat entertain them, and never deject them or make them sad. "

 "Deprendas animi tormenta latentis in aegro Corpore; deprendas et gaudia; sumit utrumque Inde habitum facies. "

 ["You may discern the torments of mind lurking in a sick body; you may discern its joys: either expression the face assumes from the mind. "--Juvenal, ix. 18]

The soul that lodges philosophy, ought to be of such a constitution ofhealth, as to render the body in like manner healthful too; she ought tomake her tranquillity and satisfaction shine so as to appear without, andher contentment ought to fashion the outward behaviour to her own mould, and consequently to fortify it with a graceful confidence, an active andjoyous carriage, and a serene and contented countenance. The mostmanifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is likethat of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene. 'Tis Baroco and Baralipton--[Two terms of the ancient scholasticlogic. ]--that render their disciples so dirty and ill-favoured, and notshe; they do not so much as know her but by hearsay. What! It is shethat calms and appeases the storms and tempests of the soul, and whoteaches famine and fevers to laugh and sing; and that, not by certainimaginary epicycles, but by natural and manifest reasons. She has virtuefor her end, which is not, as the schoolmen say, situate upon the summitof a perpendicular, rugged, inaccessible precipice: such as haveapproached her find her, quite on the contrary, to be seated in a fair, fruitful, and flourishing plain, whence she easily discovers all thingsbelow; to which place any one may, however, arrive, if he know but theway, through shady, green, and sweetly-flourishing avenues, by apleasant, easy, and smooth descent, like that of the celestial vault. 'Tis for not having frequented this supreme, this beautiful, triumphant, and amiable, this equally delicious and courageous virtue, this soprofessed and implacable enemy to anxiety, sorrow, fear, and constraint, who, having nature for her guide, has fortune and pleasure for hercompanions, that they have gone, according to their own weak imagination, and created this ridiculous, this sorrowful, querulous, despiteful, threatening, terrible image of it to themselves and others, and placed itupon a rock apart, amongst thorns and brambles, and made of it ahobgoblin to affright people. 

But the governor that I would have, that is such a one as knows it to behis duty to possess his pupil with as much or more affection thanreverence to virtue, will be able to inform him, that the poets haveevermore accommodated themselves to the public humour, and make himsensible, that the gods have planted more toil and sweat in the avenuesof the cabinets of Venus than in those of Minerva. And when he shallonce find him begin to apprehend, and shall represent to him a Bradamanteor an Angelica--[Heroines of Ariosto. ]--for a mistress, a natural, active, generous, and not a viragoish, but a manly beauty, in comparisonof a soft, delicate, artificial simpering, and affected form; the one inthe habit of a heroic youth, wearing a glittering helmet, the othertricked up in curls and ribbons like a wanton minx; he will then lookupon his own affection as brave and masculine, when he shall choose quitecontrary to that effeminate shepherd of Phrygia. 

Such a tutor will make a pupil digest this new lesson, that the heightand value of true virtue consists in the facility, utility, and pleasureof its exercise; so far from difficulty, that boys, as well as men, andthe innocent as well as the subtle, may make it their own; it is byorder, and not by force, that it is to be acquired. Socrates, her firstminion, is so averse to all manner of violence, as totally to throw itaside, to slip into the more natural facility of her own progress; 'tisthe nursing mother of all human pleasures, who in rendering them just, renders them also pure and permanent; in moderating them, keeps them inbreath and appetite; in interdicting those which she herself refuses, whets our desire to those that she allows; and, like a kind and liberalmother, abundantly allows all that nature requires, even to satiety, ifnot to lassitude: unless we mean to say that the regimen which stops thetoper before he has drunk himself drunk, the glutton before he has eatento a surfeit, and the lecher before he has got the pox, is an enemy topleasure. If the ordinary fortune fail, she does without it, and formsanother, wholly her own, not so fickle and unsteady as the other. Shecan be rich, be potent and wise, and knows how to lie upon soft perfumedbeds: she loves life, beauty, glory, and health; but her proper andpeculiar office is to know how to regulate the use of all these goodthings, and how to lose them without concern: an office much more noblethan troublesome, and without which the whole course of life isunnatural, turbulent, and deformed, and there it is indeed, that men mayjustly represent those monsters upon rocks and precipices. 

If this pupil shall happen to be of so contrary a disposition, that hehad rather hear a tale of a tub than the true narrative of some nobleexpedition or some wise and learned discourse; who at the beat of drum, that excites the youthful ardour of his companions, leaves that to followanother that calls to a morris or the bears; who would not wish, and findit more delightful and more excellent, to return all dust and sweatvictorious from a battle, than from tennis or from a ball, with the prizeof those exercises; I see no other remedy, but that he be bound prenticein some good town to learn to make minced pies, though he were the son ofa duke; according to Plato's precept, that children are to be placed outand disposed of, not according to the wealth, qualities, or condition ofthe father, but according to the faculties and the capacity of their ownsouls. 

Since philosophy is that which instructs us to live, and that infancy hasthere its lessons as well as other ages, why is it not communicated tochildren betimes?

 "Udum et molle lutum est; nunc, nunc properandus, et acri Fingendus sine fine rota. "

 ["The clay is moist and soft: now, now make haste, and form the pitcher on the rapid wheel. "--Persius, iii. 23. ]

They begin to teach us to live when we have almost done living. A hundred students have got the pox before they have come to readAristotle's lecture on temperance. Cicero said, that though he shouldlive two men's ages, he should never find leisure to study the lyricpoets; and I find these sophisters yet more deplorably unprofitable. The boy we would breed has a great deal less time to spare; he owes butthe first fifteen or sixteen years of his life to education; theremainder is due to action. Let us, therefore, employ that short time innecessary instruction. Away with the thorny subtleties of dialectics;they are abuses, things by which our lives can never be amended: take theplain philosophical discourses, learn how rightly to choose, and thenrightly to apply them; they are more easy to be understood than one ofBoccaccio's novels; a child from nurse is much more capable of them, thanof learning to read or to write. Philosophy has discourses proper forchildhood, as well as for the decrepit age of men. 

I am of Plutarch's mind, that Aristotle did not so much trouble his greatdisciple with the knack of forming syllogisms, or with the elements ofgeometry; as with infusing into him good precepts concerning valour, prowess, magnanimity, temperance, and the contempt of fear; and with thisammunition, sent him, whilst yet a boy, with no more than thirty thousandfoot, four thousand horse, and but forty-two thousand crowns, tosubjugate the empire of the whole earth. For the other acts andsciences, he says, Alexander highly indeed commended their excellence andcharm, and had them in very great honour and esteem, but not ravishedwith them to that degree as to be tempted to affect the practice of themIn his own person:

 "Petite hinc, juvenesque senesque, Finem ammo certum, miserisque viatica canis. "

 ["Young men and old men, derive hence a certain end to the mind, and stores for miserable grey hairs. "--Persius, v. 64. ]

Epicurus, in the beginning of his letter to Meniceus, --[DiogenesLaertius, x. 122. ]--says, "That neither the youngest should refuse tophilosophise, nor the oldest grow weary of it. " Who does otherwise, seems tacitly to imply, that either the time of living happily isnot yet come, or that it is already past. And yet, a for all that, Iwould not have this pupil of ours imprisoned and made a slave to hisbook; nor would I have him given up to the morosity and melancholichumour of a sour ill-natured pedant. 

I would not have his spirit cowed and subdued, by applying him to therack, and tormenting him, as some do, fourteen or fifteen hours a day, and so make a pack-horse of him. Neither should I think it good, when, by reason of a solitary and melancholic complexion, he is discovered tobe overmuch addicted to his book, to nourish that humour in him; for thatrenders him unfit for civil conversation, and diverts him from betteremployments. And how many have I seen in my time totally brutified by animmoderate thirst after knowledge? Carneades was so besotted with it, that he would not find time so much as to comb his head or to pare hisnails. Neither would I have his generous manners spoiled and corruptedby the incivility and barbarism of those of another. The French wisdomwas anciently turned into proverb: "Early, but of no continuance. " And, in truth, we yet see, that nothing can be more ingenious and pleasingthan the children of France; but they ordinarily deceive the hope andexpectation that have been conceived of them; and grown up to be men, have nothing extraordinary or worth taking notice of: I have heard men ofgood understanding say, these colleges of ours to which we send our youngpeople (and of which we have but too many) make them such animals as theyare. --[Hobbes said that if he Had been at college as long as other peoplehe should have been as great a blockhead as they. W. C. H. ] [And Baconbefore Hobbe's time had discussed the "futility" of university teaching. D. W. ]

But to our little monsieur, a closet, a garden, the table, his bed, solitude, and company, morning and evening, all hours shall be the same, and all places to him a study; for philosophy, who, as the formatrix ofjudgment and manners, shall be his principal lesson, has that privilegeto have a hand in everything. The orator Isocrates, being at a feastentreated to speak of his art, all the company were satisfied with andcommended his answer: "It is not now a time, " said he, "to do what I cando; and that which it is now time to do, I cannot do. "--[Plutarch, Symp. , i. I. ]--For to make orations and rhetorical disputes in a companymet together to laugh and make good cheer, had been very unreasonable andimproper, and as much might have been said of all the other sciences. But as to what concerns philosophy, that part of it at least that treatsof man, and of his offices and duties, it has been the common opinion ofall wise men, that, out of respect to the sweetness of her conversation, she is ever to be admitted in all sports and entertainments. And Plato, having invited her to his feast, we see after how gentle and obliging amanner, accommodated both to time and place, she entertained the company, though in a discourse of the highest and most important nature:

 "Aeque pauperibus prodest, locupletibus aeque; Et, neglecta, aeque pueris senibusque nocebit. "

 ["It profits poor and rich alike, but, neglected, equally hurts old and young. "--Horace, Ep. , i. 25. ]

By this method of instruction, my young pupil will be much more andbetter employed than his fellows of the college are. But as the steps wetake in walking to and fro in a gallery, though three times as many, donot tire a man so much as those we employ in a formal journey, so ourlesson, as it were accidentally occurring, without any set obligation oftime or place, and falling naturally into every action, will insensiblyinsinuate itself. By which means our very exercises and recreations, running, wrestling, music, dancing, hunting, riding, and fencing, willprove to be a good part of our study. I would have his outward fashionand mien, and the disposition of his limbs, formed at the same time withhis mind. 'Tis not a soul, 'tis not a body that we are training up, buta man, and we ought not to divide him. And, as Plato says, we are not tofashion one without the other, but make them draw together like twohorses harnessed to a coach. By which saying of his, does he not seem toallow more time for, and to take more care of exercises for the body, andto hold that the mind, in a good proportion, does her business at thesame time too?

As to the rest, this method of education ought to be carried on with asevere sweetness, quite contrary to the practice of our pedants, who, instead of tempting and alluring children to letters by apt and gentleways, do in truth present nothing before them but rods and ferules, horror and cruelty. Away with this violence! away with this compulsion!than which, I certainly believe nothing more dulls and degenerates awell-descended nature. If you would have him apprehend shame andchastisement, do not harden him to them: inure him to heat and cold, towind and sun, and to dangers that he ought to despise; wean him from alleffeminacy and delicacy in clothes and lodging, eating and drinking;accustom him to everything, that he may not be a Sir Paris, a carpet-knight, but a sinewy, hardy, and vigorous young man. I haveever from a child to the age wherein I now am, been of this opinion, andam still constant to it. But amongst other things, the strictgovernment of most of our colleges has evermore displeased me;peradventure, they might have erred less perniciously on the indulgentside. 'Tis a real house of correction of imprisoned youth. They aremade debauched by being punished before they are so. Do but come inwhen they are about their lesson, and you shall hear nothing but theoutcries of boys under execution, with the thundering noise of theirpedagogues drunk with fury. A very pretty way this, to tempt thesetender and timorous souls to love their book, with a furiouscountenance, and a rod in hand! A cursed and pernicious way ofproceeding! Besides what Quintilian has very well observed, that thisimperious authority is often attended by very dangerous consequences, and particularly our way of chastising. How much more decent would itbe to see their classes strewed with green leaves and fine flowers, thanwith the bloody stumps of birch and willows? Were it left to myordering. I should paint the school with the pictures of joy andgladness; Flora and the Graces, as the philosopher Speusippus did his. Where their profit is, let them there have their pleasure too. Suchviands as are proper and wholesome for children, should be sweetenedwith sugar, and such as are dangerous to them, embittered with gall. 'Tis marvellous to see how solicitous Plato is in his Laws concerningthe gaiety and diversion of the youth of his city, and how much andoften he enlarges upon the races, sports, songs, leaps, and dances: ofwhich, he says, that antiquity has given the ordering and patronageparticularly to the gods themselves, to Apollo, Minerva, and the Muses. He insists long upon, and is very particular in, giving innumerableprecepts for exercises; but as to the lettered sciences, says verylittle, and only seems particularly to recommend poetry upon the accountof music. 

All singularity in our manners and conditions is to be avoided, asinconsistent with civil society. Who would not be astonished at sostrange a constitution as that of Demophoon, steward to Alexander theGreat, who sweated in the shade and shivered in the sun? I have seenthose who have run from the smell of a mellow apple with greaterprecipitation than from a harquebuss-shot; others afraid of a mouse;others vomit at the sight of cream; others ready to swoon at the makingof a feather bed; Germanicus could neither endure the sight nor thecrowing of a cock. I will not deny, but that there may, peradventure, be some occult cause and natural aversion in these cases; but, in myopinion, a man might conquer it, if he took it in time. Precept has inthis wrought so effectually upon me, though not without some pains on mypart, I confess, that beer excepted, my appetite accommodates itselfindifferently to all sorts of diet. Young bodies are supple; one should, therefore, in that age bend and ply them to all fashions and customs: andprovided a man can contain the appetite and the will within their duelimits, let a young man, in God's name, be rendered fit for all nationsand all companies, even to debauchery and excess, if need be; that is, where he shall do it out of complacency to the customs of the place. Let him be able to do everything, but love to do nothing but what isgood. The philosophers themselves do not justify Callisthenes forforfeiting the favour of his master Alexander the Great, by refusing topledge him a cup of wine. Let him laugh, play, wench with his prince:nay, I would have him, even in his debauches, too hard for the rest ofthe company, and to excel his companions in ability and vigour, and thathe may not give over doing it, either through defect of power orknowledge how to do it, but for want of will. 

 "Multum interest, utrum peccare ali quis nolit, an nesciat. "

 ["There is a vast difference betwixt forbearing to sin, and not knowing how to sin. "--Seneca, Ep. , 90]

I thought I passed a compliment upon a lord, as free from those excessesas any man in France, by asking him before a great deal of very goodcompany, how many times in his life he had been drunk in Germany, in thetime of his being there about his Majesty's affairs; which he also tookas it was intended, and made answer, "Three times"; and withal told usthe whole story of his debauches. I know some who, for want of thisfaculty, have found a great inconvenience in negotiating with thatnation. I have often with great admiration reflected upon the wonderfulconstitution of Alcibiades, who so easily could transform himself to sovarious fashions without any prejudice to his health; one while outdoingthe Persian pomp and luxury, and another, the Lacedaemonian austerity andfrugality; as reformed in Sparta, as voluptuous in Ionia:

 "Omnis Aristippum decuit color, et status, et res. "

 ["Every complexion of life, and station, and circumstance became Aristippus. "--Horace, Ep. , xvii. 23. ]

I would have my pupil to be such an one, "Quem duplici panno patentia velat, Mirabor, vitae via si conversa decebit, Personamque feret non inconcinnus utramque. "

 ["I should admire him who with patience bearing a patched garment, bears well a changed fortune, acting both parts equally well. " --Horace Ep. , xvii. 25. ]

These are my lessons, and he who puts them in practice shall reap moreadvantage than he who has had them read to him only, and so only knowsthem. If you see him, you hear him; if you hear him, you see him. Godforbid, says one in Plato, that to philosophise were only to read a greatmany books, and to learn the arts. 

 "Hanc amplissimam omnium artium bene vivendi disciplinam, vita magis quam literis, persequuti sunt. "

 ["They have proceeded to this discipline of living well, which of all arts is the greatest, by their lives, rather than by their reading. "--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , iv. 3. ]

Leo, prince of the Phliasians, asking Heraclides Ponticus--[It was notHeraclides of Pontus who made this answer, but Pythagoras. ]--of what artor science he made profession: "I know, " said he, "neither art norscience, but I am a philosopher. " One reproaching Diogenes that, beingignorant, he should pretend to philosophy; "I therefore, " answered he, "pretend to it with so much the more reason. " Hegesias entreated that hewould read a certain book to him: "You are pleasant, " said he; "youchoose those figs that are true and natural, and not those that arepainted; why do you not also choose exercises which are naturally true, rather than those written?"

The lad will not so much get his lesson by heart as he will practise it:he will repeat it in his actions. We shall discover if there be prudencein his exercises, if there be sincerity and justice in his deportment, ifthere be grace and judgment in his speaking; if there be constancy in hissickness; if there be modesty in his mirth, temperance in his pleasures, order in his domestic economy, indifference in palate, whether what heeats or drinks be flesh or fish, wine or water:

 "Qui disciplinam suam non ostentationem scientiae, sed legem vitae putet: quique obtemperet ipse sibi, et decretis pareat. "

 ["Who considers his own discipline, not as a vain ostentation of science, but as a law and rule of life; and who obeys his own decrees, and the laws he has prescribed for himself. " --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , ii. 4. ]

The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine. Zeuxidamus, to one who asked him, why the Lacedaemonians did not commit theirconstitutions of chivalry to writing, and deliver them to their young mento read, made answer, that it was because they would inure them toaction, and not amuse them with words. With such a one, after fifteen orsixteen years' study, compare one of our college Latinists, who hasthrown away so much time in nothing but learning to speak. The world isnothing but babble; and I hardly ever yet saw that man who did not ratherprate too much, than speak too little. And yet half of our age isembezzled this way: we are kept four or five years to learn words only, and to tack them together into clauses; as many more to form them into along discourse, divided into four or five parts; and other five years, atleast, to learn succinctly to mix and interweave them after a subtle andintricate manner let us leave all this to those who make a profession ofit. 

Going one day to Orleans, I met in that plain on this side Clery, twopedants who were travelling towards Bordeaux, about fifty paces distantfrom one another; and, a good way further behind them, I discovered atroop of horse, with a gentleman at the head of them, who was the lateMonsieur le Comte de la Rochefoucauld. One of my people inquired of theforemost of these masters of arts, who that gentleman was that came afterhim; he, having not seen the train that followed after, and thinking hiscompanion was meant, pleasantly answered, "He is not a gentleman; he is agrammarian; and I am a logician. " Now we who, quite contrary, do nothere pretend to breed a grammarian or a logician, but a gentleman, let usleave them to abuse their leisure; our business lies elsewhere. Let butour pupil be well furnished with things, words will follow but too fast;he will pull them after him if they do not voluntarily follow. I haveobserved some to make excuses, that they cannot express themselves, andpretend to have their fancies full of a great many very fine things, which yet, for want of eloquence, they cannot utter; 'tis a mere shift, and nothing else. Will you know what I think of it? I think they arenothing but shadows of some imperfect images and conceptions that theyknow not what to make of within, nor consequently bring out; they do notyet themselves understand what they would be at, and if you but observehow they haggle and stammer upon the point of parturition, you will soonconclude, that their labour is not to delivery, but about conception, andthat they are but licking their formless embryo. For my part, I hold, and Socrates commands it, that whoever has in his mind a sprightly andclear imagination, he will express it well enough in one kind of tongueor another, and, if he be dumb, by signs--

 "Verbaque praevisam rem non invita sequentur;"

 ["Once a thing is conceived in the mind, the words to express it soon present themselves. " ("The words will not reluctantly follow the thing preconceived. ")--Horace, De Arte Poetica. V. 311]

And as another as poetically says in his prose:

 "Quum res animum occupavere, verbs ambiunt, "

 ["When things are once in the mind, the words offer themselves readily. " ("When things have taken possession of the mind, the words trip. ")--Seneca, Controvers. , iii. Proem. ]

and this other. 

 "Ipsae res verbs rapiunt. "

 ["The things themselves force the words to express them. " --Cicero, De Finib. , iii. 5. ]

He knows nothing of ablative, conjunctive, substantive, or grammar, nomore than his lackey, or a fishwife of the Petit Pont; and yet these willgive you a bellyful of talk, if you will hear them, and peradventureshall trip as little in their language as the best masters of art inFrance. He knows no rhetoric, nor how in a preface to bribe thebenevolence of the courteous reader; neither does he care to know it. Indeed all this fine decoration of painting is easily effaced by thelustre of a simple and blunt truth; these fine flourishes serve only toamuse the vulgar, of themselves incapable of more solid and nutritivediet, as Aper very evidently demonstrates in Tacitus. The ambassadorsof Samos, prepared with a long and elegant oration, came to Cleomenes, king of Sparta, to incite him to a war against the tyrant Polycrates;who, after he had heard their harangue with great gravity and patience, gave them this answer: "As to the exordium, I remember it not, norconsequently the middle of your speech; and for what concerns yourconclusion, I will not do what you desire:"--[Plutarch, Apothegms of theLacedaemonians. ]--a very pretty answer this, methinks, and a pack oflearned orators most sweetly gravelled. And what did the other man say?The Athenians were to choose one of two architects for a very greatbuilding they had designed; of these, the first, a pert affected fellow, offered his service in a long premeditated discourse upon the subject ofthe work in hand, and by his oratory inclined the voices of the people inhis favour; but the other in three words: "O Athenians, what this mansays, I will do. "--[Plutarch, Instructions to Statesmen, c. 4. ]--When Cicero was in the height and heat of an eloquent harangue, many werestruck with admiration; but Cato only laughed, saying, "We have apleasant (mirth-making) consul. " Let it go before, or come after, a goodsentence or a thing well said, is always in season; if it neither suitwell with what went before, nor has much coherence with what followsafter, it is good in itself. I am none of those who think that goodrhyme makes a good poem. Let him make short long, and long short if hewill, 'tis no great matter; if there be invention, and that the wit andjudgment have well performed their offices, I will say, here's a goodpoet, but an ill rhymer. 

 "Emunctae naris, durus componere versus. "

 ["Of delicate humour, but of rugged versification. " --Horace, Sat, iv. 8. ]

Let a man, says Horace, divest his work of all method and measure, "Tempora certa modosque, et, quod prius ordine verbum est, Posterius facias, praeponens ultima primis Invenias etiam disjecti membra poetae. "

 ["Take away certain rhythms and measures, and make the word which was first in order come later, putting that which should be last first, you will still find the scattered remains of the poet. " --Horace, Sat. , i. 4, 58. ]

he will never the more lose himself for that; the very pieces will befine by themselves. Menander's answer had this meaning, who beingreproved by a friend, the time drawing on at which he had promised acomedy, that he had not yet fallen in hand with it; "It is made, andready, " said he, "all but the verses. "--[Plutarch, Whether the Atheniansmore excelled in Arms or in Letters. ]--Having contrived the subject, anddisposed the scenes in his fancy, he took little care for the rest. Since Ronsard and Du Bellay have given reputation to our French poesy, every little dabbler, for aught I see, swells his words as high, andmakes his cadences very near as harmonious as they:

 "Plus sonat, quam valet. "

 ["More sound than sense"--Seneca, Ep. , 40. ]

For the vulgar, there were never so many poetasters as now; but thoughthey find it no hard matter to imitate their rhyme, they yet fallinfinitely short of imitating the rich descriptions of the one, and thedelicate invention of the other of these masters. 

But what will become of our young gentleman, if he be attacked with thesophistic subtlety of some syllogism? "A Westfalia ham makes a mandrink; drink quenches thirst: ergo a Westfalia ham quenches thirst. "Why, let him laugh at it; it will be more discretion to do so, than to goabout to answer it; or let him borrow this pleasant evasion fromAristippus: "Why should I trouble myself to untie that, which bound asit is, gives me so much trouble?"--[Diogenes Laertius, ii. 70. ]--One offering at this dialectic juggling against Cleanthes, Chrysippustook him short, saying, "Reserve these baubles to play with children, and do not by such fooleries divert the serious thoughts of a man ofyears. " If these ridiculous subtleties, "Contorta et aculeata sophismata, "

as Cicero calls them, are designed to possess him with an untruth, theyare dangerous; but if they signify no more than only to make him laugh, I do not see why a man need to be fortified against them. There are someso ridiculous, as to go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word:

 "Aut qui non verba rebus aptant, sed res extrinsecus arcessunt, quibus verba conveniant. "

 ["Who do not fit words to the subject, but seek out for things quite from the purpose to fit the words. "--Quintilian, viii. 3. ]

And as another says, "Qui, alicujus verbi decore placentis, vocentur ad id, quod non proposuerant scribere. "

 ["Who by their fondness of some fine sounding word, are tempted to something they had no intention to treat of. "--Seneca, Ep. , 59. ]

I for my part rather bring in a fine sentence by head and shoulders tofit my purpose, than divert my designs to hunt after a sentence. On thecontrary, words are to serve, and to follow a man's purpose; and letGascon come in play where French will not do. I would have things soexcelling, and so wholly possessing the imagination of him that hears, that he should have something else to do, than to think of words. Theway of speaking that I love, is natural and plain, the same in writing asin speaking, and a sinewy and muscular way of expressing a man's self, short and pithy, not so elegant and artificial as prompt and vehement;

 "Haec demum sapiet dictio, qux feriet;"

 ["That has most weight and wisdom which pierces the ear. " ("That utterance indeed will have a taste which shall strike the ear. ") --Epitaph on Lucan, in Fabricius, Biblioth. Lat. , ii. 10. ]

rather hard than wearisome; free from affectation; irregular, incontinuous, and bold; where every piece makes up an entire body; notlike a pedant, a preacher, or a pleader, but rather a soldier-like style, as Suetonius calls that of Julius Caesar; and yet I see no reason why heshould call it so. I have ever been ready to imitate the negligent garb, which is yet observable amongst the young men of our time, to wear mycloak on one shoulder, my cap on one side, a stocking in disorder, whichseems to express a kind of haughty disdain of these exotic ornaments, anda contempt of the artificial; but I find this negligence of much betteruse in the form of speaking. All affectation, particularly in the Frenchgaiety and freedom, is ungraceful in a courtier, and in a monarchy everygentleman ought to be fashioned according to the court model; for whichreason, an easy and natural negligence does well. I no more like a webwhere the knots and seams are to be seen, than a fine figure, sodelicate, that a man may tell all the bones and veins:

 "Quae veritati operam dat oratio, incomposita sit et simplex. "

 ["Let the language that is dedicated to truth be plain and unaffected. --Seneca, Ep. 40. ]

 "Quis accurat loquitur, nisi qui vult putide loqui?"

 ["For who studies to speak accurately, that does not at the same time wish to perplex his auditory?"--Idem, Ep. , 75. ]

That eloquence prejudices the subject it would advance, that whollyattracts us to itself. And as in our outward habit, 'tis a ridiculouseffeminacy to distinguish ourselves by a particular and unusual garb orfashion; so in language, to study new phrases, and to affect words thatare not of current use, proceeds from a puerile and scholastic ambition. May I be bound to speak no other language than what is spoken in themarket-places of Paris! Aristophanes the grammarian was quite out, whenhe reprehended Epicurus for his plain way of delivering himself, and thedesign of his oratory, which was only perspicuity of speech. The imitation of words, by its own facility, immediately disperses itselfthrough a whole people; but the imitation of inventing and fitly applyingthose words is of a slower progress. The generality of readers, forhaving found a like robe, very mistakingly imagine they have the samebody and inside too, whereas force and sinews are never to be borrowed;the gloss, and outward ornament, that is, words and elocution, may. Mostof those I converse with, speak the same language I here write; butwhether they think the same thoughts I cannot say. The Athenians, saysPlato, study fulness and elegancy of speaking; the Lacedaemonians affectbrevity, and those of Crete to aim more at the fecundity of conceptionthan the fertility of speech; and these are the best. Zeno used to saythat he had two sorts of disciples, one that he called cy-----ous, curious to learn things, and these were his favourites; the other, aoy---ous, that cared for nothing but words. Not that fine speaking isnot a very good and commendable quality; but not so excellent and sonecessary as some would make it; and I am scandalised that our whole lifeshould be spent in nothing else. I would first understand my ownlanguage, and that of my neighbours, with whom most of my business andconversation lies. 

No doubt but Greek and Latin are very great ornaments, and of very greatuse, but we buy them too dear. I will here discover one way, which hasbeen experimented in my own person, by which they are to be had bettercheap, and such may make use of it as will. My late father having madethe most precise inquiry that any man could possibly make amongst men ofthe greatest learning and judgment, of an exact method of education, wasby them cautioned of this inconvenience then in use, and made to believe, that the tedious time we applied to the learning of the tongues of themwho had them for nothing, was the sole cause we could not arrive to thegrandeur of soul and perfection of knowledge, of the ancient Greeks andRomans. I do not, however, believe that to be the only cause. So it is, that the expedient my father found out for this was, that in my infancy, and before I began to speak, he committed me to the care of a German, whosince died a famous physician in France, totally ignorant of ourlanguage, and very fluent and a great critic in Latin. This man, whom hehad fetched out of his own country, and whom he entertained with a greatsalary for this only one end, had me continually with him; he had withhim also joined two others, of inferior learning, to attend me, and torelieve him; these spoke to me in no other language but Latin. As to therest of his household, it was an inviolable rule, that neither himself, nor my mother, nor valet, nor chambermaid, should speak anything in mycompany, but such Latin words as each one had learned to gabble with me. --[These passages are, the basis of a small volume by the Abbe Mangin:"Education de Montaigne; ou, L'Art d'enseigner le Latin a l'instar desmeres latines. "]--It is not to be imagined how great an advantage thisproved to the whole family; my father and my mother by this means learnedLatin enough to understand it perfectly well, and to speak it to such adegree as was sufficient for any necessary use; as also those of theservants did who were most frequently with me. In short, we Latined itat such a rate, that it overflowed to all the neighbouring villages, where there yet remain, that have established themselves by custom, several Latin appellations of artisans and their tools. As for whatconcerns myself, I was above six years of age before I understood eitherFrench or Perigordin, any more than Arabic; and without art, book, grammar, or precept, whipping, or the expense of a tear, I had, by thattime, learned to speak as pure Latin as my master himself, for I had nomeans of mixing it up with any other. If, for example, they were to giveme a theme after the college fashion, they gave it to others in French;but to me they were to give it in bad Latin, to turn it into that whichwas good. And Nicolas Grouchy, who wrote a book De Comitiis Romanorum;Guillaume Guerente, who wrote a comment upon Aristotle: George Buchanan, that great Scottish poet: and Marc Antoine Muret (whom both France andItaly have acknowledged for the best orator of his time), my domestictutors, have all of them often told me that I had in my infancy thatlanguage so very fluent and ready, that they were afraid to enter intodiscourse with me. And particularly Buchanan, whom I since saw attendingthe late Mareschal de Brissac, then told me, that he was about to write atreatise of education, the example of which he intended to take frommine; for he was then tutor to that Comte de Brissac who afterward provedso valiant and so brave a gentleman. 

As to Greek, of which I have but a mere smattering, my father alsodesigned to have it taught me by a device, but a new one, and by way ofsport; tossing our declensions to and fro, after the manner of those who, by certain games of tables, learn geometry and arithmetic. For he, amongst other rules, had been advised to make me relish science and dutyby an unforced will, and of my own voluntary motion, and to educate mysoul in all liberty and delight, without any severity or constraint;which he was an observer of to such a degree, even of superstition, if Imay say so, that some being of opinion that it troubles and disturbs thebrains of children suddenly to wake them in the morning, and to snatchthem violently--and over-hastily from sleep (wherein they are much moreprofoundly involved than we), he caused me to be wakened by the sound ofsome musical instrument, and was never unprovided of a musician for thatpurpose. By this example you may judge of the rest, this alone beingsufficient to recommend both the prudence and the affection of so good afather, who is not to be blamed if he did not reap fruits answerable toso exquisite a culture. Of this, two things were the cause: first, asterile and improper soil; for, though I was of a strong and healthfulconstitution, and of a disposition tolerably sweet and tractable, yet Iwas, withal, so heavy, idle, and indisposed, that they could not rouse mefrom my sloth, not even to get me out to play. What I saw, I saw clearlyenough, and under this heavy complexion nourished a bold imagination andopinions above my age. I had a slow wit that would go no faster than itwas led; a tardy understanding, a languishing invention, and above all, incredible defect of memory; so that, it is no wonder, if from all thesenothing considerable could be extracted. Secondly, like those who, impatient of along and steady cure, submit to all sorts of prescriptionsand recipes, the good man being extremely timorous of any way failing ina thing he had so wholly set his heart upon, suffered himself at last tobe overruled by the common opinions, which always follow their leader asa flight of cranes, and complying with the method of the time, having nomore those persons he had brought out of Italy, and who had given him thefirst model of education, about him, he sent me at six years of age tothe College of Guienne, at that time the best and most flourishing inFrance. And there it was not possible to add anything to the care he hadto provide me the most able tutors, with all other circumstances ofeducation, reserving also several particular rules contrary to thecollege practice; but so it was, that with all these precautions, it wasa college still. My Latin immediately grew corrupt, of which also bydiscontinuance I have since lost all manner of use; so that this new wayof education served me to no other end, than only at my first coming toprefer me to the first forms; for at thirteen years old, that I came outof the college, I had run through my whole course (as they call it), and, in truth, without any manner of advantage, that I can honestly brag of, in all this time. 

The first taste which I had for books came to me from the pleasure inreading the fables of Ovid's Metamorphoses; for, being about seven oreight years old, I gave up all other diversions to read them, both byreason that this was my own natural language, the easiest book that I wasacquainted with, and for the subject, the most accommodated to thecapacity of my age: for as for the Lancelot of the Lake, the Amadis ofGaul, the Huon of Bordeaux, and such farragos, by which children are mostdelighted with, I had never so much as heard their names, no more than Iyet know what they contain; so exact was the discipline wherein I wasbrought up. But this was enough to make me neglect the other lessonsthat were prescribed me; and here it was infinitely to my advantage, to have to do with an understanding tutor, who very well knew discreetlyto connive at this and other truantries of the same nature; for by thismeans I ran through Virgil's AEneid, and then Terence, and then Plautus, and then some Italian comedies, allured by the sweetness of the subject;whereas had he been so foolish as to have taken me off this diversion, I do really believe, I had brought away nothing from the college but ahatred of books, as almost all our young gentlemen do. But he carriedhimself very discreetly in that business, seeming to take no notice, andallowing me only such time as I could steal from my other regularstudies, which whetted my appetite to devour those books. For the chiefthings my father expected from their endeavours to whom he had deliveredme for education, were affability and good-humour; and, to say the truth, my manners had no other vice but sloth and want of metal. The fear wasnot that I should do ill, but that I should do nothing; nobodyprognosticated that I should be wicked, but only useless; they foresawidleness, but no malice; and I find it falls out accordingly:The complaints I hear of myself are these: "He is idle, cold in theoffices of friendship and relation, and in those of the public, tooparticular, too disdainful. " But the most injurious do not say, "Why hashe taken such a thing? Why has he not paid such an one?" but, "Why doeshe part with nothing? Why does he not give?" And I should take it for afavour that men would expect from me no greater effects of supererogationthan these. But they are unjust to exact from me what I do not owe, farmore rigorously than they require from others that which they do owe. In condemning me to it, they efface the gratification of the action, anddeprive me of the gratitude that would be my due for it; whereas theactive well-doing ought to be of so much the greater value from my hands, by how much I have never been passive that way at all. I can the morefreely dispose of my fortune the more it is mine, and of myself the moreI am my own. Nevertheless, if I were good at setting out my own actions, I could, peradventure, very well repel these reproaches, and could givesome to understand, that they are not so much offended, that I do notenough, as that I am able to do a great deal more than I do. 

Yet for all this heavy disposition of mine, my mind, when retired intoitself, was not altogether without strong movements, solid and clearjudgments about those objects it could comprehend, and could also, without any helps, digest them; but, amongst other things, I do reallybelieve, it had been totally impossible to have made it to submit byviolence and force. Shall I here acquaint you with one faculty of myyouth? I had great assurance of countenance, and flexibility of voiceand gesture, in applying myself to any part I undertook to act: forbefore--

 "Alter ab undecimo tum me vix ceperat annus, "

 ["I had just entered my twelfth year. "--Virgil, Bucol. , 39. ]

I played the chief parts in the Latin tragedies of Buchanan, Guerente, and Muret, that were presented in our College of Guienne with greatdignity: now Andreas Goveanus, our principal, as in all other parts ofhis charge, was, without comparison, the best of that employment inFrance; and I was looked upon as one of the best actors. 'Tis anexercise that I do not disapprove in young people of condition; and Ihave since seen our princes, after the example of some of the ancients, in person handsomely and commendably perform these exercises; it was evenallowed to persons of quality to make a profession of it in Greece. 

 "Aristoni tragico actori rem aperit: huic et genus et fortuna honesta erant: nec ars, quia nihil tale apud Graecos pudori est, ea deformabat. "

 ["He imparted this matter to Aristo the tragedian; a man of good family and fortune, which neither of them receive any blemish by that profession; nothing of this kind being reputed a disparagement in Greece. "--Livy, xxiv. 24. ]

Nay, I have always taxed those with impertinence who condemn theseentertainments, and with injustice those who refuse to admit suchcomedians as are worth seeing into our good towns, and grudge the peoplethat public diversion. Well-governed corporations take care to assembletheir citizens, not only to the solemn duties of devotion, but also tosports and spectacles. They find society and friendship augmented by it;and besides, can there possibly be allowed a more orderly and regulardiversion than what is performed m the sight of every one, and very oftenin the presence of the supreme magistrate himself? And I, for my part, should think it reasonable, that the prince should sometimes gratify hispeople at his own expense, out of paternal goodness and affection; andthat in populous cities there should be theatres erected for suchentertainments, if but to divert them from worse and private actions. 

To return to my subject, there is nothing like alluring the appetite andaffections; otherwise you make nothing but so many asses laden withbooks; by dint of the lash, you give them their pocketful of learning tokeep; whereas, to do well you should not only lodge it with them, butmake them espouse it. 

CHAPTER XXVI

THAT IT IS FOLLY TO MEASURE TRUTH AND ERROR BY OUR OWN CAPACITY

'Tis not, perhaps, without reason, that we attribute facility of beliefand easiness of persuasion to simplicity and ignorance: for I fancy Ihave heard belief compared to the impression of a seal upon the soul, which by how much softer and of less resistance it is, is the more easyto be impressed upon. 

 "Ut necesse est, lancem in Libra, ponderibus impositis, deprimi, sic animum perspicuis cedere. "

 ["As the scale of the balance must give way to the weight that presses it down, so the mind yields to demonstration. " --Cicero, Acad. , ii. 12. ]

By how much the soul is more empty and without counterpoise, with so muchgreater facility it yields under the weight of the first persuasion. Andthis is the reason that children, the common people, women, and sickfolks, are most apt to be led by the ears. But then, on the other hand, 'tis a foolish presumption to slight and condemn all things for falsethat do not appear to us probable; which is the ordinary vice of such asfancy themselves wiser than their neighbours. I was myself once one ofthose; and if I heard talk of dead folks walking, of prophecies, enchantments, witchcrafts, or any other story I had no mind to believe:

 "Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas, Nocturnos lemures, portentaque Thessala, "

 ["Dreams, magic terrors, marvels, sorceries, Thessalian prodigies. " --Horace. Ep. Ii. 3, 208. ]

I presently pitied the poor people that were abused by these follies. Whereas I now find, that I myself was to be pitied as much, at least, as they; not that experience has taught me anything to alter my formeropinions, though my curiosity has endeavoured that way; but reason hasinstructed me, that thus resolutely to condemn anything for false andimpossible, is arrogantly and impiously to circumscribe and limit thewill of God, and the power of our mother nature, within the bounds of myown capacity, than which no folly can be greater. If we give the namesof monster and miracle to everything our reason cannot comprehend, howmany are continually presented before our eyes? Let us but considerthrough what clouds, and as it were groping in the dark, our teacherslead us to the knowledge of most of the things about us; assuredly weshall find that it is rather custom than knowledge that takes away theirstrangeness--

 "Jam nemo, fessus saturusque videndi, Suspicere in coeli dignatur lucida templa;"

 ["Weary of the sight, now no one deigns to look up to heaven's lucid temples. "--Lucretius, ii. 1037. The text has 'statiate videnai']

and that if those things were now newly presented to us, we should thinkthem as incredible, if not more, than any others. 

 "Si nunc primum mortalibus adsint Ex improviso, si sint objecta repente, Nil magis his rebus poterat mirabile dici, Aute minus ante quod auderent fore credere gentes. "

 [Lucretius, ii. 1032. The sense of the passage is in the preceding sentence. ]

He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be thesea; and the greatest things that have fallen within our knowledge, weconclude the extremes that nature makes of the kind. 

 "Scilicet et fluvius qui non est maximus, ei'st Qui non ante aliquem majorem vidit; et ingens Arbor, homoque videtur, et omnia de genere omni Maxima quae vidit quisque, haec ingentia fingit. "

 ["A little river seems to him, who has never seen a larger river, a mighty stream; and so with other things--a tree, a man--anything appears greatest to him that never knew a greater. "--Idem, vi. 674. ]

 "Consuetudine oculorum assuescunt animi, neque admirantur, neque requirunt rationes earum rerum, quas semper vident. "

 ["Things grow familiar to men's minds by being often seen; so that they neither admire nor are they inquisitive about things they daily see. "--Cicero, De Natura Deor. , lib. Ii. 38. ]

The novelty, rather than the greatness of things, tempts us to inquireinto their causes. We are to judge with more reverence, and with greateracknowledgment of our own ignorance and infirmity, of the infinite powerof nature. How many unlikely things are there testified by people worthyof faith, which, if we cannot persuade ourselves absolutely to believe, we ought at least to leave them in suspense; for, to condemn them asimpossible, is by a temerarious presumption to pretend to know the utmostbounds of possibility. Did we rightly understand the difference betwixtthe impossible and the unusual, and betwixt that which is contrary to theorder and course of nature and contrary to the common opinion of men, innot believing rashly, and on the other hand, in not being tooincredulous, we should observe the rule of 'Ne quid nimis' enjoined byChilo. 

When we find in Froissart, that the Comte de Foix knew in Bearn thedefeat of John, king of Castile, at Jubera the next day after ithappened, and the means by which he tells us he came to do so, we may beallowed to be a little merry at it, as also at what our annals report, that Pope Honorius, the same day that King Philip Augustus died atMantes, performed his public obsequies at Rome, and commanded the likethroughout Italy, the testimony of these authors not being, perhaps, ofauthority enough to restrain us. But what if Plutarch, besides severalexamples that he produces out of antiquity, tells us, he knows of certainknowledge, that in the time of Domitian, the news of the battle lost byAntony in Germany was published at Rome, many days' journey from thence, and dispersed throughout the whole world, the same day it was fought;and if Caesar was of opinion, that it has often happened, that the reporthas preceded the incident, shall we not say, that these simple peoplehave suffered themselves to be deceived with the vulgar, for not havingbeen so clear-sighted as we? Is there anything more delicate, moreclear, more sprightly; than Pliny's judgment, when he is pleased to setit to work? Anything more remote from vanity? Setting aside hislearning, of which I make less account, in which of these excellences doany of us excel him? And yet there is scarce a young schoolboy that doesnot convict him of untruth, and that pretends not to instruct him in theprogress of the works of nature. When we read in Bouchet the miracles ofSt. Hilary's relics, away with them: his authority is not sufficient todeprive us of the liberty of contradicting him; but generally and offhandto condemn all suchlike stories, seems to me a singular impudence. Thatgreat St. Augustin' testifies to have seen a blind child recover sightupon the relics of St. Gervasius and St. Protasius at Milan; a woman atCarthage cured of a cancer, by the sign of the cross made upon her by awoman newly baptized; Hesperius, a familiar friend of his, to have drivenaway the spirits that haunted his house, with a little earth of thesepulchre of our Lord; which earth, being also transported thence intothe church, a paralytic to have there been suddenly cured by it; a womanin a procession, having touched St. Stephen's shrine with a nosegay, andrubbing her eyes with it, to have recovered her sight, lost many yearsbefore; with several other miracles of which he professes himself to havebeen an eyewitness: of what shall we excuse him and the two holy bishops, Aurelius and Maximinus, both of whom he attests to the truth of thesethings? Shall it be of ignorance, simplicity, and facility; or of maliceand imposture? Is any man now living so impudent as to think himselfcomparable to them in virtue, piety, learning, judgment, or any kind ofperfection?

 "Qui, ut rationem nullam afferrent, ipsa auctoritate me frangerent. "

 ["Who, though they should adduce no reason, would convince me with their authority alone. "--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes, i. 21. ]

'Tis a presumption of great danger and consequence, besides the absurdtemerity it draws after it, to contemn what we do not comprehend. Forafter, according to your fine understanding, you have established thelimits of truth and error, and that, afterwards, there appears anecessity upon you of believing stranger things than those you havecontradicted, you are already obliged to quit your limits. Now, thatwhich seems to me so much to disorder our consciences in the commotionswe are now in concerning religion, is the Catholics dispensing so muchwith their belief. They fancy they appear moderate, and wise, when theygrant to their opponents some of the articles in question; but, besidesthat they do not discern what advantage it is to those with whom wecontend, to begin to give ground and to retire, and how much thisanimates our enemy to follow his blow: these articles which they selectas things indifferent, are sometimes of very great importance. We areeither wholly and absolutely to submit ourselves to the authority of ourecclesiastical polity, or totally throw off all obedience to it: 'tis notfor us to determine what and how much obedience we owe to it. And this Ican say, as having myself made trial of it, that having formerly takenthe liberty of my own swing and fancy, and omitted or neglected certainrules of the discipline of our Church, which seemed to me vain andstrange coming afterwards to discourse of it with learned men, I havefound those same things to be built upon very good and solid ground andstrong foundation; and that nothing but stupidity and ignorance makes usreceive them with less reverence than the rest. Why do we not considerwhat contradictions we find in our own judgments; how many things wereyesterday articles of our faith, that to-day appear no other than fables?Glory and curiosity are the scourges of the soul; the last prompts us tothrust our noses into everything, the other forbids us to leave anythingdoubtful and undecided. 

 ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 A child should not be brought up in his mother's lap Acquiesce and submit to truth Affect words that are not of current use Anything appears greatest to him that never knew a greater Appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have Applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge Attribute facility of belief to simplicity and ignorance Away with this violence! away with this compulsion! Bears well a changed fortune, acting both parts equally well Belief compared to the impression of a seal upon the soul cloak on one shoulder, my cap on one side, a stocking disordered College: a real house of correction of imprisoned youth Disgorge what we eat in the same condition it was swallowed Education ought to be carried on with a severe sweetness Eloquence prejudices the subject it would advance Fear was not that I should do ill, but that I should do nothing Glory and curiosity are the scourges of the soul Hobbes said that if he had been at college as long as others-- Inquisitive after everything Insert whole sections and pages out of ancient authors It is no hard matter to get children Learn what it is right to wish Least touch or prick of a pencil in comparison of the whole Let him be satisfied with correcting himself Let him examine every man's talent Light prognostics they give of themselves in their tender years Living well, which of all arts is the greatest Lodge nothing in his fancy upon simple authority and upon trust Man may say too much even upon the best subjects Miracle: everything our reason cannot comprehend Morosity and melancholic humour of a sour ill-natured pedant Mothers are too tender Negligent garb, which is yet observable amongst the young men Nobody prognosticated that I should be wicked, but only useless Not having been able to pronounce one syllable, which is No! O Athenians, what this man says, I will do Obstinacy and contention are common qualities Occasion to La Boetie to write his "Voluntary Servitude" Philosophy has discourses proper for childhood Philosophy is that which instructs us to live Philosophy looked upon as a vain and fantastic name Preface to bribe the benevolence of the courteous reader Reading those books, converse with the great and heroic souls Silence, therefore, and modesty are very advantageous qualities So many trillions of men, buried before us Sparing and an husband of his knowledge The conduct of our lives is the true mirror of our doctrine The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness Their labour is not to delivery, but about conception There is nothing like alluring the appetite and affections They begin to teach us to live when we have almost done living Things grow familiar to men's minds by being often seen To condemn them as impossible, is by a temerarious presumption To contemn what we do not comprehend To go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word To know by rote, is no knowledge Tongue will grow too stiff to bend Totally brutified by an immoderate thirst after knowledge Unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything Unjust to exact from me what I do not owe Where their profit is, let them there have their pleasure too Who by their fondness of some fine sounding word