ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 9. 

I. Of the inconstancy of our actions. II. Of drunkenness. III. A custom of the Isle of Cea. IV. To-morrow's a new day. V. Of conscience. VI. Use makes perfect. 

ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE

BOOK THE SECOND

CHAPTER I

OF THE INCONSTANCY OF OUR ACTIONS

Such as make it their business to oversee human actions, do not findthemselves in anything so much perplexed as to reconcile them and bringthem into the world's eye with the same lustre and reputation; for theycommonly so strangely contradict one another that it seems impossiblethey should proceed from one and the same person. We find the youngerMarius one while a son of Mars and another a son of Venus. Pope BonifaceVIII. Entered, it is said, into his Papacy like a fox, behaved himself init like a lion, and died like a dog; and who could believe it to be thesame Nero, the perfect image of all cruelty, who, having the sentence ofa condemned man brought to him to sign, as was the custom, cried out, "O that I had never been taught to write!" so much it went to his heartto condemn a man to death. All story is full of such examples, and everyman is able to produce so many to himself, or out of his own practice orobservation, that I sometimes wonder to see men of understanding givethemselves the trouble of sorting these pieces, considering thatirresolution appears to me to be the most common and manifest vice of ournature witness the famous verse of the player Publius:

 "Malum consilium est, quod mutari non potest. "

 ["'Tis evil counsel that will admit no change. " --Pub. Mim. , ex Aul. Gell. , xvii. 14. ]

There seems some reason in forming a judgment of a man from the mostusual methods of his life; but, considering the natural instability ofour manners and opinions, I have often thought even the best authors alittle out in so obstinately endeavouring to make of us any constant andsolid contexture; they choose a general air of a man, and according tothat interpret all his actions, of which, if they cannot bend some to auniformity with the rest, they are presently imputed to dissimulation. Augustus has escaped them, for there was in him so apparent, sudden, andcontinual variety of actions all the whole course of his life, that hehas slipped away clear and undecided from the most daring critics. I canmore hardly believe a man's constancy than any other virtue, and believenothing sooner than the contrary. He that would judge of a man in detailand distinctly, bit by bit, would oftener be able to speak the truth. Itis a hard matter, from all antiquity, to pick out a dozen men who haveformed their lives to one certain and constant course, which is theprincipal design of wisdom; for to comprise it all in one word, says oneof the ancients, and to contract all the rules of human life into one, "it is to will, and not to will, always one and the same thing: I willnot vouchsafe, " says he, "to add, provided the will be just, for if it benot just, it is impossible it should be always one. " I have indeedformerly learned that vice is nothing but irregularity, and want ofmeasure, and therefore 'tis impossible to fix constancy to it. 'Tis asaying of. Demosthenes, "that the beginning oh all virtue isconsultation and deliberation; the end and perfection, constancy. " If wewould resolve on any certain course by reason, we should pitch upon thebest, but nobody has thought on't:

 "Quod petit, spernit; repetit, quod nuper omisit; AEstuat, et vitae disconvenit ordine toto. "

 ["That which he sought he despises; what he lately lost, he seeks again. He fluctuates, and is inconsistent in the whole order of life. "--Horace, Ep. , i. I, 98. ]

Our ordinary practice is to follow the inclinations of our appetite, beit to the left or right, upwards or downwards, according as we are waftedby the breath of occasion. We never meditate what we would have till theinstant we have a mind to have it; and change like that little creaturewhich receives its colour from what it is laid upon. What we but justnow proposed to ourselves we immediately alter, and presently returnagain to it; 'tis nothing but shifting and inconsistency:

 "Ducimur, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum. "

 ["We are turned about like the top with the thong of others. " --Idem, Sat. , ii. 7, 82. ]

We do not go, we are driven; like things that float, now leisurely, thenwith violence, according to the gentleness or rapidity of the current:

 "Nonne videmus, Quid sibi quisque velit, nescire, et quaerere semper Commutare locum, quasi onus deponere possit?"

 ["Do we not see them, uncertain what they want, and always asking for something new, as if they could get rid of the burthen. " --Lucretius, iii. 1070. ]

Every day a new whimsy, and our humours keep motion with the time. 

 "Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse Juppiter auctificas lustravit lumine terras. "

 ["Such are the minds of men, that they change as the light with which father Jupiter himself has illumined the increasing earth. " --Cicero, Frag. Poet, lib. X. ]

We fluctuate betwixt various inclinations; we will nothing freely, nothing absolutely, nothing constantly. In any one who had prescribedand established determinate laws and rules in his head for his ownconduct, we should perceive an equality of manners, an order and aninfallible relation of one thing or action to another, shine through hiswhole life; Empedocles observed this discrepancy in the Agrigentines, that they gave themselves up to delights, as if every day was their last, and built as if they had been to live for ever. The judgment would notbe hard to make, as is very evident in the younger Cato; he who thereinhas found one step, it will lead him to all the rest; 'tis a harmony ofvery according sounds, that cannot jar. But with us 't is quitecontrary; every particular action requires a particular judgment. Thesurest way to steer, in my opinion, would be to take our measures fromthe nearest allied circumstances, without engaging in a longerinquisition, or without concluding any other consequence. I was told, during the civil disorders of our poor kingdom, that a maid, hard by theplace where I then was, had thrown herself out of a window to avoid beingforced by a common soldier who was quartered in the house; she was notkilled by the fall, and therefore, repeating her attempt would have cuther own throat, had she not been prevented; but having, nevertheless, wounded herself to some show of danger, she voluntarily confessed thatthe soldier had not as yet importuned her otherwise; than by courtship, earnest solicitation, and presents; but that she was afraid that in theend he would have proceeded to violence, all which she delivered withsuch a countenance and accent, and withal embrued in her own blood, thehighest testimony of her virtue, that she appeared another Lucretia; andyet I have since been very well assured that both before and after shewas not so difficult a piece. And, according to my host's tale inAriosto, be as handsome a man and as worthy a gentleman as you will, donot conclude too much upon your mistress's inviolable chastity for havingbeen repulsed; you do not know but she may have a better stomach to yourmuleteer. 

Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favourand esteem for his valour, gave his physicians strict charge to cure himof a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished, and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work thanbefore, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him: "Yourself, sir, "replied the other, "by having eased me of the pains that made me weary ofmy life. " Lucullus's soldier having been rifled by the enemy, performedupon them in revenge a brave exploit, by which having made himself againer, Lucullus, who had conceived a good opinion of him from thataction, went about to engage him in some enterprise of very great danger, with all the plausible persuasions and promises he could think of;

 "Verbis, quae timido quoque possent addere mentem"

 ["Words which might add courage to any timid man. " --Horace, Ep. , ii. 2, 1, 2. ]

"Pray employ, " answered he, "some miserable plundered soldier in thataffair":

 "Quantumvis rusticus, ibit, Ibit eo, quo vis, qui zonam perdidit, inquit;"

 ["Some poor fellow, who has lost his purse, will go whither you wish, said he. "--Horace, Ep. , ii. 2, 39. ]

and flatly refused to go. When we read that Mahomet having furiouslyrated Chasan, Bassa of the Janissaries, because he had seen theHungarians break into his squadrons, and himself behave very ill in thebusiness, and that Chasan, instead of any other answer, rushed furiouslyalone, scimitar in hand, into the first body of the enemy, where he waspresently cut to pieces, we are not to look upon that action, peradventure, so much as vindication as a turn of mind, not so muchnatural valour as a sudden despite. The man you saw yesterday soadventurous and brave, you must not think it strange to see him as greata poltroon the next: anger, necessity, company, wine, or the sound of thetrumpet had roused his spirits; this is no valour formed and establishedby reason, but accidentally created by such circumstances, and thereforeit is no wonder if by contrary circumstances it appear quite anotherthing. 

These supple variations and contradictions so manifest in us, have givenoccasion to some to believe that man has two souls; other two distinctpowers that always accompany and incline us, the one towards good and theother towards ill, according to their own nature and propension; soabrupt a variety not being imaginable to flow from one and the samesource. 

For my part, the puff of every accident not only carries me along with itaccording to its own proclivity, but moreover I discompose and troublemyself by the instability of my own posture; and whoever will looknarrowly into his own bosom, will hardly find himself twice in the samecondition. I give to my soul sometimes one face and sometimes another, according to the side I turn her to. If I speak variously of myself, itis because I consider myself variously; all the contrarieties are thereto be found in one corner or another; after one fashion or another:bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; prating, silent; laborious, delicate;ingenious, heavy; melancholic, pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant;liberal, covetous, and prodigal: I find all this in myself, more or less, according as I turn myself about; and whoever will sift himself to thebottom, will find in himself, and even in his own judgment, thisvolubility and discordance. I have nothing to say of myself entirely, simply, and solidly without mixture and confusion. 'Distinguo' is themost universal member of my logic. Though I always intend to speak wellof good things, and rather to interpret such things as fall out in thebest sense than otherwise, yet such is the strangeness of our condition, that we are often pushed on to do well even by vice itself, if well-doingwere not judged by the intention only. One gallant action, therefore, ought not to conclude a man valiant; if a man were brave indeed, he wouldbe always so, and upon all occasions. If it were a habit of valour andnot a sally, it would render a man equally resolute in all accidents; thesame alone as in company; the same in lists as in a battle: for, let themsay what they will, there is not one valour for the pavement and anotherfor the field; he would bear a sickness in his bed as bravely as a woundin the field, and no more fear death in his own house than at an assault. We should not then see the same man charge into a breach with a braveassurance, and afterwards torment himself like a woman for the loss of atrial at law or the death of a child; when, being an infamous coward, heis firm in the necessities of poverty; when he shrinks at the sight of abarber's razor, and rushes fearless upon the swords of the enemy, theaction is commendable, not the man. 

Many of the Greeks, says Cicero, --[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , ii. 27. ]--cannot endure the sight of an enemy, and yet are courageous in sickness;the Cimbrians and Celtiberians quite contrary;

 "Nihil enim potest esse aequabile, quod non a certa ratione proficiscatur. "

 ["Nothing can be regular that does not proceed from a fixed ground of reason. "--Idem, ibid. , c. 26. ]

No valour can be more extreme in its kind than that of Alexander: but itis of but one kind, nor full enough throughout, nor universal. Incomparable as it is, it has yet some blemishes; of which his being sooften at his wits' end upon every light suspicion of his captainsconspiring against his life, and the carrying himself in that inquisitionwith so much vehemence and indiscreet injustice, and with a fear thatsubverted his natural reason, is one pregnant instance. Thesuperstition, also, with which he was so much tainted, carries along withit some image of pusillanimity; and the excess of his penitence for themurder of Clytus is also a testimony of the unevenness of his courage. All we perform is no other than a cento, as a man may say, of severalpieces, and we would acquire honour by a false title. Virtue cannot befollowed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to someother purpose, she presently pulls it away again. 'Tis a vivid andstrong tincture which, when the soul has once thoroughly imbibed it, willnot out but with the piece. And, therefore, to make a right judgment ofa man, we are long and very observingly to follow his trace: if constancydoes not there stand firm upon her own proper base, "Cui vivendi via considerata atque provisa est, "

 ["If the way of his life is thoroughly considered and traced out. " --Cicero, Paradox, v. 1. ]

if the variety of occurrences makes him alter his pace (his path, I mean, for the pace may be faster or slower) let him go; such an one runs beforethe wind, "Avau le dent, " as the motto of our Talebot has it. 

'Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great adominion over us, since it is by chance we live. It is not possible forany one who has not designed his life for some certain end, it isimpossible for any one to arrange the pieces, who has not the whole formalready contrived in his imagination. Of what use are colours to himthat knows not what he is to paint? No one lays down a certain designfor his life, and we only deliberate thereof by pieces. The archer oughtfirst to know at what he is to aim, and then accommodate his arm, bow, string, shaft, and motion to it; our counsels deviate and wander, becausenot levelled to any determinate end. No wind serves him who addresseshis voyage to no certain, port. I cannot acquiesce in the judgment givenby one in the behalf of Sophocles, who concluded him capable of themanagement of domestic affairs, against the accusation of his son, fromhaving read one of his tragedies. 

Neither do I allow of the conjecture of the Parians, sent to regulate theMilesians sufficient for such a consequence as they from thence derivedcoming to visit the island, they took notice of such grounds as were besthusbanded, and such country-houses as were best governed; and havingtaken the names of the owners, when they had assembled the citizens, theyappointed these farmers for new governors and magistrates; concludingthat they, who had been so provident in their own private concerns, wouldbe so of the public too. We are all lumps, and of so various and informa contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, andthere is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us andothers:

 "Magnam rem puta, unum hominem agere. "

 ["Esteem it a great thing always to act as one and the same man. "--Seneca, Ep. , 150. ]

Since ambition can teach man valour, temperance, and liberality, and evenjustice too; seeing that avarice can inspire the courage of a shop-boy, bred and nursed up in obscurity and ease, with the assurance to exposehimself so far from the fireside to the mercy of the waves and angryNeptune in a frail boat; that she further teaches discretion andprudence; and that even Venus can inflate boys under the discipline ofthe rod with boldness and resolution, and infuse masculine courage intothe heart of tender virgins in their mothers' arms:

 "Hac duce, custodes furtim transgressa jacentes, Ad juvenem tenebris sola puella venit:"

 ["She leading, the maiden, furtively passing by the recumbent guards, goes alone in the darkness to the youth. " --Tibullus, ii. 2, 75. ]

'tis not all the understanding has to do, simply to judge us by ouroutward actions; it must penetrate the very soul, and there discover bywhat springs the motion is guided. But that being a high and hazardousundertaking, I could wish that fewer would attempt it. 

CHAPTER II

OF DRUNKENNESS

The world is nothing but variety and disemblance, vices are all alike, asthey are vices, and peradventure the Stoics understand them so; butalthough they are equally vices, yet they are not all equal vices; and hewho has transgressed the ordinary bounds a hundred paces:

 "Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum, "

 ["Beyond or within which the right cannot exist. " --Horace, Sat. , i, 1, 107. ]

should not be in a worse condition than he that has advanced but ten, isnot to be believed; or that sacrilege is not worse than stealing acabbage:

 "Nec vincet ratio hoc, tantumdem ut peccet, idemque, Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti, Et qui nocturnus divum sacra legerit. "

There is in this as great diversity as in anything whatever. Theconfounding of the order and measure of sins is dangerous: murderers, traitors, and tyrants get too much by it, and it is not reasonable theyshould flatter their consciences, because another man is idle, lascivious, or not assiduous at his devotion. Every one overrates theoffence of his companions, but extenuates his own. Our very instructorsthemselves rank them sometimes, in my opinion, very ill. As Socratessaid that the principal office of wisdom was to distinguish good fromevil, we, the best of whom are vicious, ought also to say the same of thescience of distinguishing betwixt vice and vice, without which, and thatvery exactly performed, the virtuous and the wicked will remainconfounded and unrecognised. 

Now, amongst the rest, drunkenness seems to me to be a gross and brutishvice. The soul has greater part in the rest, and there are some vicesthat have something, if a man may so say, of generous in them; there arevices wherein there is a mixture of knowledge, diligence, valour, prudence, dexterity, and address; this one is totally corporeal andearthly. And the rudest nation this day in Europe is that alone where itis in fashion. Other vices discompose the understanding: this totallyoverthrows it and renders the body stupid:

 "Cum vini vis penetravit . . . Consequitur gravitas membrorum, praepediuntur Crura vacillanti, tardescit lingua, madet mens, Nant oculi; clamor, singultus, jurgia, gliscunt. "

 ["When the power of wine has penetrated us, a heaviness of the limbs follows, the legs of the tottering person are impeded; the tongue grows torpid, the mind is dimmed, the eyes swim; noise, hiccup, and quarrels arise. --"Lucretius, i. 3, 475. ]

The worst state of man is that wherein he loses the knowledge andgovernment of himself. And 'tis said amongst other things upon thissubject, that, as the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the topwhatever it has in the bottom, so wine, in those who have drunk beyondmeasure, vents the most inward secrets:

 "Tu sapientum Curas et arcanum jocoso Consilium retegis Lyaeo. "

 ["Thou disclosest to the merry Lyacus the cares and secret counsel of the wise. "--Horace, Od. , xxi. 1, 114. ]

 [Lyacus, a name given to Bacchus. ]

Josephus tells us that by giving an ambassador the enemy had sent to himhis full dose of liquor, he wormed out his secrets. And yet, Augustus, committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, whoconquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more thanTiberias did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels, though weknow they were both so given to drink that they have often been fain tocarry both the one and the other drunk out of the Senate:

 "Hesterno inflatum venas ut semper, Lyaeo. "

 ["Their veins full, as usual, of yesterday's wine. " --Virgil, Egl. , vi. 15. ]

And the design of killing Caesar was as safely communicated to Cimber, though he would often be drunk, as to Cassius, who drank nothing butwater. 

 [As to which Cassius pleasantly said: "What, shall I bear a tyrant, I who cannot bear wine?"]

We see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know their post, rememberthe word, and keep to their ranks:

 "Nec facilis victoria de madidis, et Blaesis, atque mero titubantibus. "

 ["Nor is a victory easily obtained over men so drunk, they can scarce speak or stand. "--Juvenal, Sat. , xv. 47. ]

I could not have believed there had been so profound, senseless, and deada degree of drunkenness had I not read in history that Attalus having, to put a notable affront upon him, invited to supper the same Pausanias, who upon the very same occasion afterwards killed Philip of Macedon, a king who by his excellent qualities gave sufficient testimony of hiseducation in the house and company of Epaminondas, made him drink to sucha pitch that he could after abandon his beauty, as of a hedge strumpet, to the muleteers and servants of the basest office in the house. And Ihave been further told by a lady whom I highly honour and esteem, thatnear Bordeaux and about Castres where she lives, a country woman, awidow of chaste repute, perceiving in herself the first symptoms ofbreeding, innocently told her neighbours that if she had a husband sheshould think herself with child; but the causes of suspicion every daymore and more increasing, and at last growing up to a manifest proof, thepoor woman was reduced to the necessity of causing it to be proclaimed inher parish church, that whoever had done that deed and would franklyconfess it, she did not only promise to forgive, but moreover to marryhim, if he liked the motion; whereupon a young fellow that served her inthe quality of a labourer, encouraged by this proclamation, declared thathe had one holiday found her, having taken too much of the bottle, sofast asleep by the chimney and in so indecent a posture, that he couldconveniently do his business without waking her; and they yet livetogether man and wife. 

It is true that antiquity has not much decried this vice; the writingseven of several philosophers speak very tenderly of it, and even amongstthe Stoics there are some who advise folks to give themselves sometimesthe liberty to drink, nay, to drunkenness, to refresh the soul:

 "Hoc quoque virtutum quondam certamine, magnum Socratem palmam promeruisse ferunt. "

 ["In this trial of power formerly they relate that the great Socrates deserved the palm. "--Cornet. Gallus, Ep. , i. 47. ]

That censor and reprover of others, Cato, was reproached that he was ahard drinker:

 "Narratur et prisci Catonis Saepe mero caluisse virtus. "

 ["And of old Cato it is said, that his courage was often warmed with wine. "--Horace, Od. , xxi. 3, 11. --Cato the Elder. ]

Cyrus, that so renowned king, amongst the other qualities by which heclaimed to be preferred before his brother Artaxerxes, urged thisexcellence, that he could drink a great deal more than he. And in thebest governed nations this trial of skill in drinking is very much inuse. I have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say thatlest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were notamiss once a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lestthey should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that thePersians used to consult about their most important affairs after beingwell warmed with wine. 

My taste and constitution are greater enemies to this vice than mydiscourse; for besides that I easily submit my belief to the authority ofancient opinions, I look upon it indeed as an unmanly and stupid vice, but less malicious and hurtful than the others, which, almost all, moredirectly jostle public society. And if we cannot please ourselves but itmust cost us something, as they hold, I find this vice costs a man'sconscience less than the others, besides that it is of no difficultpreparation, nor hard to be found, a consideration not altogether to bedespised. A man well advanced both in dignity and age, amongst threeprincipal commodities that he said remained to him of life, reckoned tome this for one, and where would a man more justly find it than amongstthe natural conveniences? But he did not take it right, for delicacy andthe curious choice of wines is therein to be avoided. If you found yourpleasure upon drinking of the best, you condemn yourself to the penanceof drinking of the worst. Your taste must be more indifferent and free;so delicate a palate is not required to make a good toper. The Germansdrink almost indifferently of all wines with delight; their business isto pour down and not to taste; and it's so much the better for them:their pleasure is so much the more plentiful and nearer at hand. 

Secondly, to drink, after the French fashion, but at two meals, and thenvery moderately, is to be too sparing of the favours of the god. Thereis more time and constancy required than so. The ancients spent wholenights in this exercise, and ofttimes added the day following to eke itout, and therefore we are to take greater liberty and stick closer to ourwork. I have seen a great lord of my time, a man of high enterprise andfamous success, that without setting himself to't, and after his ordinaryrate of drinking at meals, drank not much less than five quarts of wine, and at his going away appeared but too wise and discreet, to thedetriment of our affairs. The pleasure we hold in esteem for the courseof our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it;we should, like shopboys and labourers, refuse no occasion nor omit anyopportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds. Methinks weevery day abridge and curtail the use of wine, and that the afterbreakfasts, dinner snatches, and collations I used to see in my father'shouse, when I was a boy, were more usual and frequent then than now. 

Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no: but it may be we aremore addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercisesthat thwart and hinder one another in their vigour. Lechery weakens ourstomach on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruceand amorous for the exercise of love. 

'Tis wonderful what strange stories I have heard my father tell of thechastity of that age wherein he lived. It was for him to say it, beingboth by art and nature cut out and finished for the service of ladies. He spoke well and little: ever mixing his language with some illustrationout of authors most in use, especially in Spanish, and among the Spanishhe whom they called Marcus Aurelius--[ Guevara's Golden Book of MarcusAurelius Antoninus. ]--was ordinarily in his mouth. His behaviour wasgently grave, humble, and very modest; he was very solicitous of neatnessand propriety both in his person and clothes, whether on horseback orafoot, he was monstrously punctual in his word; and of a conscience andreligion generally tending rather towards superstition than otherwise. For a man of little stature, very strong, well proportioned, and wellknit; of a pleasing countenance inclining to brown, and very adroit inall noble exercises. I have yet in the house to be seen canes pouredfull of lead, with which they say he exercised his arms for throwing thebar or the stone, or in fencing; and shoes with leaden soles to make himlighter for running or leaping. Of his vaulting he has left littlemiracles behind him: I have seen him when past three score laugh at ourexercises, and throw himself in his furred gown into the saddle, make thetour of a table upon his thumbs and scarce ever mount the stairs into hischamber without taking three or four steps at a time. But as to what Iwas speaking of before; he said there was scarce one woman of quality ofill fame in the whole province: he would tell of strange confidences, andsome of them his own, with virtuous women, free from any manner ofsuspicion of ill, and for his own part solemnly swore he was a virgin athis marriage; and yet it was after a long practice of arms beyond themountains, of which wars he left us a journal under his own hand, whereinhe has given a precise account from point to point of all passages, bothrelating to the public and to himself. And he was, moreover, married ata well advanced maturity, in the year 1528, the three-and-thirtieth yearof his age, upon his way home from Italy. But let us return to ourbottles. 

The incommodities of old age, that stand in need of some refreshment andsupport, might with reason beget in me a desire of this faculty, it beingas it were the last pleasure the course of years deprives us of. Thenatural heat, say the good-fellows, first seats itself in the feet: thatconcerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middle region, where it makesa long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures ofhuman life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end, like a vapour that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, whereit makes its final residence, and concludes the progress. I do not, nevertheless, understand how a man can extend the pleasure of drinkingbeyond thirst, and forge in his imagination an appetite artificial andagainst nature; my stomach would not proceed so far; it has enough to doto deal with what it takes in for its necessity. My constitution is notto care for drink but as following eating and washing down my meat, andfor that reason my last draught is always the greatest. And seeing thatin old age we have our palate furred with phlegms or depraved by someother ill constitution, the wine tastes better to us as the pores arecleaner washed and laid more open. At least, I seldom taste the firstglass well. Anacharsis wondered that the Greeks drank in greater glassestowards the end of a meal than at the beginning; which was, I suppose, for the same reason the Germans do the same, who then begin the battle ofdrink. 

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunktill forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, andto mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, thatgood deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men theiryouth; who mollifies the passions of the soul, as iron is softened byfire; and in his Lazes allows such merry meetings, provided they have adiscreet chief to govern and keep them in order, as good and of greatutility; drunkenness being, he says, a true and certain trial of everyone's nature, and, withal, fit to inspire old men with mettle to divertthemselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they darenot attempt when sober. He, moreover, says that wine is able to supplythe soul with temperance and the body with health. Nevertheless, theserestrictions, in part borrowed from the Carthaginians, please him: thatmen forbear excesses in the expeditions of war; that every judge andmagistrate abstain from it when about the administrations of his place orthe consultations of the public affairs; that the day is not to beemployed with it, that being a time due to other occupations, nor thenight on which a man intends to get children. 

'Tis said that the philosopher Stilpo, when oppressed with age, purposelyhastened his end by drinking pure wine. The same thing, but not designedby him, despatched also the philosopher Arcesilaus. 

But 'tis an old and pleasant question, whether the soul of a wise man canbe overcome by the strength of wine?

 "Si munitae adhibet vim sapientiae. "

To what vanity does the good opinion we have of ourselves push us? Themost regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do tokeep itself upright, and from being overthrown by its own weakness. There is not one of a thousand that is right and settled so much as oneminute in a whole life, and that may not very well doubt, whetheraccording to her natural condition she ever can be; but to join constancyto it is her utmost perfection; I mean when nothing should jostle anddiscompose her, which a thousand accidents may do. 'Tis to much purposethat the great poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy, when, behold! he goes mad with a love philtre. Is it to be imaginedthat an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well as a porter? Some menhave forgotten their own names by the violence of a disease; and a slightwound has turned the judgment of others topsy-turvy. Let him be as wiseas he will, after all he is but a man; and than that what is there morefrail, more miserable, or more nothing? Wisdom does not force ournatural dispositions, "Sudores itaque, et pallorem exsistere toto Corpore, et infringi linguam, vocemque aboriri, Caligare oculos, sonere aures, succidere artus, Demque concidere, ex animi terrore, videmus. "

 ["Sweat and paleness come over the whole body, the tongue is rendered powerless, the voice dies away, the eyes are darkened, there is ringing in the ears, the limbs sink under us by the influence of fear. "--Lucretius, iii. 155. ]

he must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him; he musttremble upon the margin of a precipice, like a child; nature havingreserved these light marks of her authority, not to be forced by ourreason and the stoic virtue, to teach man his mortality and our weakness;he turns pale with fear, red with shame, and groans with the cholic, ifnot with desperate outcry, at least with hoarse and broken voice:

 "Humani a se nihil alienum putet. "

 ["Let him not think himself exempt from that which is incidental to men in general. "--Terence, Heauton, i. 1, 25. ]

The poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit theirgreatest heroes of tears:

 "Sic fatur lacrymans, classique immittit habenas. "

 ["Thus he speaks, weeping, and then sets sail with his fleet. " --Aeneid, vi. I. ]

'Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, fortotally to suppress them is not in him to do. Even our great Plutarch, that excellent and perfect judge of human actions, when he sees Brutusand Torquatus kill their children, begins to doubt whether virtue couldproceed so far, and to question whether these persons had not rather beenstimulated by some other passion. --[Plutarch, Life of Publicola, c. 3. ]--All actions exceeding the ordinary bounds are liable to sinisterinterpretation, for as much as our liking no more holds with what isabove than with what is below it. 

Let us leave that other sect, that sets up an express profession ofscornful superiority--[The Stoics. ]--: but when even in that sect, reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these rhodomontades ofMetrodorus:

 "Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi: omnesque aditus tuos interclusi ut ad me aspirare non posses;"

 ["Fortune, I have got the better of thee, and have made all the avenues so sure thou canst not come at me. " --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , v. 9. ]

when Anaxarchus, by command of Nicocreon the tyrant of Cyprus, was putinto a stone mortar, and laid upon with mauls of iron, ceases not to say, "Strike, batter, break; 'tis not Anaxarchus, 'tis but his sheath that youpound and bray so"; when we hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant fromthe middle of the flame, "This side is roasted enough, fall to and eat, it is enough done; fall to work with the other;" when we hear the childin Josephus' torn piece-meal with pincers, defying Antiochus, and cryingout with a constant and assured voice: "Tyrant, thou losest thy labour, I am still at ease; where is the pain, where are the torments with whichthou didst so threaten me? Is this all thou canst do? My constancytorments thee more than thy cruelty does me. O pitiful coward, thoufaintest, and I grow stronger; make me complain, make me bend, make meyield if thou canst; encourage thy guards, cheer up thy executioners;see, see they faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew, spurthem up"; truly, a man must confess that there is some phrenzy, somefury, how holy soever, that at that time possesses those souls. When wecome to these Stoical sallies: "I had rather be mad than voluptuous, " asaying of Antisthenes. When Sextius tells us, "he had rather be fetteredwith affliction than pleasure": when Epicurus takes upon him to play withhis gout, and, refusing health and ease, defies all torments, anddespising the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covetsand calls out for others sharper, more violent, and more worthy of him;

 "Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votis Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem:"

 ["And instead of timid beasts, wishes the foaming boar or tawny lion would come from the mountain. "--AEneid, iv. 158. ]

who but must conclude that these are wild sallies pushed on by a couragethat has broken loose from its place? Our soul cannot from her own seatreach so high; 'tis necessary she must leave it, raise herself up, and, taking the bridle in her teeth, transport her man so far that he shallafterwards himself be astonished at what he has done; as, in war, theheat of battle impels generous soldiers to perform things of so infinitedanger, as afterwards, recollecting them, they themselves are the firstto wonder at; as it also fares with the poets, who are often rapt withadmiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find thetrack through which they performed so fine a Career; which also is inthem called fury and rapture. And as Plato says, 'tis to no purpose fora sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy: so Aristotle says, thatno excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness; and he has reasonto call all transports, how commendable soever, that surpass our ownjudgment and understanding, madness; forasmuch as wisdom is a regulargovernment of the soul, which is carried on with measure and proportion, and for which she is to herself responsible. Plato argues thus, that thefaculty of prophesying is so far above us, that we must be out ofourselves when we meddle with it, and our prudence must either beobstructed by sleep or sickness, or lifted from her place by somecelestial rapture. 

CHAPTER III

A CUSTOM OF THE ISLE OF CEA

 [Cos. Cea is the form of the name given by Pliny]

If to philosophise be, as 'tis defined, to doubt, much more to write atrandom and play the fool, as I do, ought to be reputed doubting, for itis for novices and freshmen to inquire and to dispute, and for thechairman to moderate and determine. 

My moderator is the authority of the divine will, that governs us withoutcontradiction, and that is seated above these human and vaincontestations. 

Philip having forcibly entered into Peloponnesus, and some one saying toDamidas that the Lacedaemonians were likely very much to suffer if theydid not in time reconcile themselves to his favour: "Why, you pitifulfellow, " replied he, "what can they suffer who do not fear to die?" Itbeing also asked of Agis, which way a man might live free? "Why, " saidhe, "by despising death. " These, and a thousand other sayings to thesame purpose, distinctly sound of something more than the patientattending the stroke of death when it shall come; for there are severalaccidents in life far worse to suffer than death itself. Witness theLacedaemonian boy taken by Antigonus, and sold for a slave, who being byhis master commanded to some base employment: "Thou shalt see, " says theboy, "whom thou hast bought; it would be a shame for me to serve, beingso near the reach of liberty, " and having so said, threw himself from thetop of the house. Antipater severely threatening the Lacedaemonians, that he might the better incline them to acquiesce in a certain demand ofhis: "If thou threatenest us with more than death, " replied they, "weshall the more willingly die"; and to Philip, having written them wordthat he would frustrate all their enterprises: "What, wilt thou alsohinder us from dying?" This is the meaning of the sentence, "That thewise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can; and that themost obliging present Nature has made us, and which takes from us allcolour of complaint of our condition, is to have delivered into our owncustody the keys of life; she has only ordered, one door into life, but ahundred thousand ways out. We may be straitened for earth to live upon, but earth sufficient to die upon can never be wanting, as Boiocalusanswered the Romans. "--[Tacitus, Annal. , xiii. 56. ]--Why dost thoucomplain of this world? it detains thee not; thy own cowardice is thecause, if thou livest in pain. There needs no more to die but to will todie:

 "Ubique mors est; optime hoc cavit deus. Eripere vitam nemo non homini potest; At nemo mortem; mille ad hanc aditus patent. "

 ["Death is everywhere: heaven has well provided for that. Any one may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death. To death there are a thousand avenues. "--Seneca, Theb:, i, I, 151. ]

Neither is it a recipe for one disease only; death is the infallible cureof all; 'tis a most assured port that is never to be feared, and veryoften to be sought. It comes all to one, whether a man give himself hisend, or stays to receive it by some other means; whether he pays beforehis day, or stay till his day of payment come; from whencesoever itcomes, it is still his; in what part soever the thread breaks, there'sthe end of the clue. The most voluntary death is the finest. Lifedepends upon the pleasure of others; death upon our own. We ought not toaccommodate ourselves to our own humour in anything so much as in this. Reputation is not concerned in such an enterprise; 'tis folly to beconcerned by any such apprehension. Living is slavery if the liberty ofdying be wanting. The ordinary method of cure is carried on at theexpense of life; they torment us with caustics, incisions, andamputations of limbs; they interdict aliment and exhaust our blood; onestep farther and we are cured indeed and effectually. Why is not thejugular vein as much at our disposal as the median vein? For a desperatedisease a desperate cure. Servius the grammarian, being tormented withthe gout, could think of no better remedy than to apply poison to hislegs, to deprive them of their sense; let them be gouty at their will, sothey were insensible of pain. God gives us leave enough to go when He ispleased to reduce us to such a condition that to live is far worse thanto die. 'Tis weakness to truckle under infirmities, but it's madness tonourish them. The Stoics say, that it is living according to nature in awise man to, take his leave of life, even in the height of prosperity, if he do it opportunely; and in a fool to prolong it, though he bemiserable, provided he be not indigent of those things which they reputeto be according to nature. As I do not offend the law against thieveswhen I embezzle my own money and cut my own purse; nor that againstincendiaries when I burn my own wood; so am I not under the lash of thosemade against murderers for having deprived myself of my own life. Hegesias said, that as the condition of life did, so the condition ofdeath ought to depend upon our own choice. And Diogenes meeting thephilosopher Speusippus, so blown up with an inveterate dropsy that he wasfain to be carried in a litter, and by him saluted with the compliment, "I wish you good health. " "No health to thee, " replied the other, "who art content to live in such a condition. "

And in fact, not long after, Speusippus, weary of so languishing a stateof life, found a means to die. 

But this does not pass without admitting a dispute: for many are ofopinion that we cannot quit this garrison of the world without theexpress command of Him who has placed us in it; and that it appertains toGod who has placed us here, not for ourselves only but for His Glory andthe service of others, to dismiss us when it shall best please Him, andnot for us to depart without His licence: that we are not born forourselves only, but for our country also, the laws of which require anaccount from us upon the score of their own interest, and have an actionof manslaughter good against us; and if these fail to take cognisance ofthe fact, we are punished in the other world as deserters of our duty:

 "Proxima deinde tenent maesti loca, qui sibi letum Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi Proiecere animas. "

 ["Thence the sad ones occupy the next abodes, who, though free from guilt, were by their own hands slain, and, hating light, sought death. "--AEneid, vi. 434. ]

There is more constancy in suffering the chain we are tied to than inbreaking it, and more pregnant evidence of fortitude in Regulus than inCato; 'tis indiscretion and impatience that push us on to theseprecipices: no accidents can make true virtue turn her back; she seeksand requires evils, pains, and grief, as the things by which she isnourished and supported; the menaces of tyrants, racks, and torturesserve only to animate and rouse her:

 "Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido, Per damma, percmdes, ab ipso Ducit opes, animumque ferro. "

 ["As in Mount Algidus, the sturdy oak even from the axe itself derives new vigour and life. "--Horace, Od. , iv. 4, 57. ]

And as another says:

 "Non est, ut putas, virtus, pater, Timere vitam; sed malis ingentibus Obstare, nec se vertere, ac retro dare. "

 ["Father, 'tis no virtue to fear life, but to withstand great misfortunes, nor turn back from them. "--Seneca, Theb. , i. 190. ]

Or as this:

 "Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere mortem Fortius ille facit, qui miser esse potest. "

 ["It is easy in adversity to despise death; but he acts more bravely, who can live wretched. "--Martial, xi. 56, 15. ]

'Tis cowardice, not virtue, to lie squat in a furrow, under a tomb, toevade the blows of fortune; virtue never stops nor goes out of her path, for the greatest storm that blows:

 "Si fractus illabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruinae. "

 ["Should the world's axis crack, the ruins will but crush a fearless head. "--Horace, Od. , iii. 3, 7. ]

For the most part, the flying from other inconveniences brings us tothis; nay, endeavouring to evade death, we often run into its very mouth:

 "Hic, rogo, non furor est, ne moriare, mori?"

 ["Tell me, is it not madness, that one should die for fear of dying?"--Martial, ii. 80, 2. ]

like those who, from fear of a precipice, throw themselves headlong intoit;

 "Multos in summa pericula misfit Venturi timor ipse mali: fortissimus ille est, Qui promptus metuenda pati, si cominus instent, Et differre potest. "

 ["The fear of future ills often makes men run into extreme danger; he is truly brave who boldly dares withstand the mischiefs he apprehends, when they confront him and can be deferred. " --Lucan, vii. 104. ]

 "Usque adeo, mortis formidine, vitae Percipit humanos odium, lucisque videndae, Ut sibi consciscant moerenti pectore lethum Obliti fontem curarum hunc esse timorem. "

 ["Death to that degree so frightens some men, that causing them to hate both life and light, they kill themselves, miserably forgetting that this same fear is the fountain of their cares. " --Lucretius, iii. 79. ]

Plato, in his Laws, assigns an ignominious sepulture to him who hasdeprived his nearest and best friend, namely himself, of life and hisdestined course, being neither compelled so to do by public judgment, by any sad and inevitable accident of fortune, nor by any insupportabledisgrace, but merely pushed on by cowardice and the imbecility of atimorous soul. And the opinion that makes so little of life, isridiculous; for it is our being, 'tis all we have. Things of a noblerand more elevated being may, indeed, reproach ours; but it is againstnature for us to contemn and make little account of ourselves; 'tis adisease particular to man, and not discerned in any other creatures, tohate and despise itself. And it is a vanity of the same stamp to desireto be something else than what we are; the effect of such a desire doesnot at all touch us, forasmuch as it is contradicted and hindered initself. He that desires of a man to be made an angel, does nothing forhimself; he would be never the better for it; for, being no more, whoshall rejoice or be sensible of this benefit for him. 

 "Debet enim, misere cui forti, aegreque futurum est, Ipse quoque esse in eo turn tempore, cum male possit Accidere. "

 ["For he to whom misery and pain are to be in the future, must himself then exist, when these ills befall him. " --Idem, ibid. , 874. ]

Security, indolence, impassability, the privation of the evils of thislife, which we pretend to purchase at the price of dying, are of nomanner of advantage to us: that man evades war to very little purpose whocan have no fruition of peace; and as little to the purpose does he avoidtrouble who cannot enjoy repose. 

Amongst those of the first of these two opinions, there has been greatdebate, what occasions are sufficient to justify the meditation ofself-murder, which they call "A reasonable exit. "--[ Diogenes Laertius, Life of Zeno. ]--For though they say that men must often die for trivialcauses, seeing those that detain us in life are of no very great weight, yet there is to be some limit. There are fantastic and senseless humoursthat have prompted not only individual men, but whole nations to destroythemselves, of which I have elsewhere given some examples; and we furtherread of the Milesian virgins, that by a frantic compact they hangedthemselves one after another till the magistrate took order in it, enacting that the bodies of such as should be found so hanged should bedrawn by the same halter stark naked through the city. When Therykiontried to persuade Cleomenes to despatch himself, by reason of the illposture of his affairs, and, having missed a death of more honour in thebattle he had lost, to accept of this the second in honour to it, and notto give the conquerors leisure to make him undergo either an ignominiousdeath or an infamous life; Cleomenes, with a courage truly Stoic andLacedaemonian, rejected his counsel as unmanly and mean; "that, " said he, "is a remedy that can never be wanting, but which a man is never to makeuse of, whilst there is an inch of hope remaining": telling him, "thatit was sometimes constancy and valour to live; that he would that evenhis death should be of use to his country, and would make of it an act ofhonour and virtue. " Therykion, notwithstanding, thought himself in theright, and did his own business; and Cleomenes afterwards did the same, but not till he had first tried the utmost malevolence of fortune. Allthe inconveniences in the world are not considerable enough that a manshould die to evade them; and, besides, there being so many, so suddenand unexpected changes in human things, it is hard rightly to judge whenwe are at the end of our hope:

 "Sperat et in saeva victus gladiator arena, Sit licet infesto pollice turba minax. "

 ["The gladiator conquered in the lists hopes on, though the menacing spectators, turning their thumb, order him to die. " --Pentadius, De Spe, ap. Virgilii Catadecta. ]

All things, says an old adage, are to be hoped for by a man whilst helives; ay, but, replies Seneca, why should this rather be always runningin a man's head that fortune can do all things for the living man, thanthis, that fortune has no power over him that knows how to die?Josephus, when engaged in so near and apparent danger, a whole peoplebeing violently bent against him, that there was no visible means ofescape, nevertheless, being, as he himself says, in this extremitycounselled by one of his friends to despatch himself, it was well for himthat he yet maintained himself in hope, for fortune diverted the accidentbeyond all human expectation, so that he saw himself delivered withoutany manner of inconvenience. Whereas Brutus and Cassius, on thecontrary, threw away the remains of the Roman liberty, of which they werethe sole protectors, by the precipitation and temerity wherewith theykilled themselves before the due time and a just occasion. Monsieurd'Anguien, at the battle of Serisolles, twice attempted to run himselfthrough, despairing of the fortune of the day, which went indeed veryuntowardly on that side of the field where he was engaged, and by thatprecipitation was very near depriving himself of the enjoyment of sobrave a victory. I have seen a hundred hares escape out of the veryteeth of the greyhounds:

 "Aliquis carnifici suo superstes fuit. "

 ["Some have survived their executioners. "--Seneca, Ep. , 13. ]

 "Multa dies, variusque labor mutabilis nevi Rettulit in melius; multos alterna revisens Lusit, et in solido rursus fortuna locavit. "

 ["Length of days, and the various labour of changeful time, have brought things to a better state; fortune turning, shews a reverse face, and again restores men to prosperity. "--AEneid, xi. 425. ]

Piny says there are but three sorts of diseases, to escape which a manhas good title to destroy himself; the worst of which is the stone in thebladder, when the urine is suppressed. 

 ["In the quarto edition of these essays, in 1588, Pliny is said to mention two more, viz. , a pain in the stomach and a headache, which, he says (lib. Xxv. C. 9. ), were the only three distempers almost for which men killed themselves. "]

Seneca says those only which for a long time are discomposing thefunctions of the soul. And some there have been who, to avoid a worsedeath, have chosen one to their own liking. Democritus, general of theAEtolians, being brought prisoner to Rome, found means to make his escapeby night: but close pursued by his keepers, rather than suffer himself tobe retaken, he fell upon his own sword and died. Antinous and Theodotus, their city of Epirus being reduced by the Romans to the last extremity, gave the people counsel universally to kill themselves; but, thesepreferring to give themselves up to the enemy, the two chiefs went toseek the death they desired, rushing furiously upon the enemy, withintention to strike home but not to ward a blow. The Island of Gozzobeing taken some years ago by the Turks, a Sicilian, who had twobeautiful daughters marriageable, killed them both with his own hand, andtheir mother, running in to save them, to boot, which having done, sallying out of the house with a cross-bow and harquebus, with two shotshe killed two of the Turks nearest to his door, and drawing his sword, charged furiously in amongst the rest, where he was suddenly enclosed andcut to pieces, by that means delivering his family and himself fromslavery and dishonour. The Jewish women, after having circumcised theirchildren, threw them and themselves down a precipice to avoid the crueltyof Antigonus. I have been told of a person of condition in one of ourprisons, that his friends, being informed that he would certainly becondemned, to avoid the ignominy of such a death suborned a priest totell him that the only means of his deliverance was to recommend himselfto such a saint, under such and such vows, and to fast eight daystogether without taking any manner of nourishment, what weakness orfaintness soever he might find in himself during the time; he followedtheir advice, and by that means destroyed himself before he was aware, not dreaming of death or any danger in the experiment. Scriboniaadvising her nephew Libo to kill himself rather than await the stroke ofjustice, told him that it was to do other people's business to preservehis life to put it after into the hands of those who within three or fourdays would fetch him to execution, and that it was to serve his enemiesto keep his blood to gratify their malice. 

We read in the Bible that Nicanor, the persecutor of the law of God, having sent his soldiers to seize upon the good old man Razis, surnamedin honour of his virtue the father of the Jews: the good man, seeing noother remedy, his gates burned down, and the enemies ready to seize him, choosing rather to die nobly than to fall into the hands of his wickedadversaries and suffer himself to be cruelly butchered by them, contraryto the honour of his rank and quality, stabbed himself with his ownsword, but the blow, for haste, not having been given home, he ran andthrew himself from the top of a wall headlong among them, who separatingthemselves and making room, he pitched directly upon his head;notwithstanding which, feeling yet in himself some remains of life, herenewed his courage, and starting up upon his feet all bloody and woundedas he was, and making his way through the crowd to a precipitous rock, there, through one of his wounds, drew out his bowels, which, tearing andpulling to pieces with both his hands, he threw amongst his pursuers, allthe while attesting and invoking the Divine vengeance upon them for theircruelty and injustice. 

Of violences offered to the conscience, that against the chastity ofwoman is, in my opinion, most to be avoided, forasmuch as there is acertain pleasure naturally mixed with it, and for that reason the dissenttherein cannot be sufficiently perfect and entire, so that the violenceseems to be mixed with a little consent of the forced party. Theecclesiastical history has several examples of devout persons who haveembraced death to secure them from the outrages prepared by tyrantsagainst their religion and honour. Pelagia and Sophronia, bothcanonised, the first of these precipitated herself with her mother andsisters into the river to avoid being forced by some soldiers, and thelast also killed herself to avoid being ravished by the EmperorMaxentius. 

It may, peradventure, be an honour to us in future ages, that a learnedauthor of this present time, and a Parisian, takes a great deal of painsto persuade the ladies of our age rather to take any other course than toenter into the horrid meditation of such a despair. I am sorry he hadnever heard, that he might have inserted it amongst his other stories, the saying of a woman, which was told me at Toulouse, who had passedthrough the handling of some soldiers: "God be praised, " said she, "thatonce at least in my life I have had my fill without sin. " In truth, these cruelties are very unworthy the French good nature, and also, Godbe thanked, our air is very well purged of them since this good advice:'tis enough that they say "no" in doing it, according to the rule of thegood Marot. 

 "Un doulx nenny, avec un doulx sourire Est tant honneste. "--Marot. 

History is everywhere full of those who by a thousand ways have exchangeda painful and irksome life for death. Lucius Aruntius killed himself, tofly, he said, both the future and the past. Granius Silvanus and StatiusProximus, after having been pardoned by Nero, killed themselves; eitherdisdaining to live by the favour of so wicked a man, or that they mightnot be troubled, at some other time, to obtain a second pardon, considering the proclivity of his nature to suspect and creditaccusations against worthy men. Spargapises, son of Queen Tomyris, beinga prisoner of war to Cyrus, made use of the first favour Cyrus shewedhim, in commanding him to be unbound, to kill himself, having pretendedto no other benefit of liberty, but only to be revenged of himself forthe disgrace of being taken. Boges, governor in Eion for King Xerxes, being besieged by the Athenian army under the conduct of Cimon, refusedthe conditions offered, that he might safe return into Asia with all hiswealth, impatient to survive the loss of a place his master had given himto keep; wherefore, having defended the city to the last extremity, nothing being left to eat, he first threw all the gold and whatever elsethe enemy could make booty of into the river Strymon, and then causing agreat pile to be set on fire, and the throats of all the women, children, concubines, and servants to be cut, he threw their bodies into the fire, and at last leaped into it himself. 

Ninachetuen, an Indian lord, so soon as he heard the first whisper of thePortuguese Viceroy's determination to dispossess him, without anyapparent cause, of his command in Malacca, to transfer it to the King ofCampar, he took this resolution with himself: he caused a scaffold, morelong than broad, to be erected, supported by columns royally adorned withtapestry and strewed with flowers and abundance of perfumes; all whichbeing prepared, in a robe of cloth of gold, set full of jewels of greatvalue, he came out into the street, and mounted the steps to thescaffold, at one corner of which he had a pile lighted of aromatic wood. Everybody ran to see to what end these unusual preparations were made;when Ninachetuen, with a manly but displeased countenance, set forth howmuch he had obliged the Portuguese nation, and with how unspottedfidelity he had carried himself in his charge; that having so often, sword in hand, manifested in the behalf of others, that honour was muchmore dear to him than life, he was not to abandon the concern of it forhimself: that fortune denying him all means of opposing the affrontdesigned to be put upon him, his courage at least enjoined him to freehimself from the sense of it, and not to serve for a fable to the people, nor for a triumph to men less deserving than himself; which having saidhe leaped into the fire. 

Sextilia, wife of Scaurus, and Paxaea, wife of Labeo, to encourage theirhusbands to avoid the dangers that pressed upon them, wherein they had noother share than conjugal affection, voluntarily sacrificed their ownlives to serve them in this extreme necessity for company and example. What they did for their husbands, Cocceius Nerva did for his country, with less utility though with equal affection: this great lawyer, flourishing in health, riches, reputation, and favour with the Emperor, had no other cause to kill himself but the sole compassion of themiserable state of the Roman Republic. Nothing can be added to thebeauty of the death of the wife of Fulvius, a familiar favourite ofAugustus: Augustus having discovered that he had vented an importantsecret he had entrusted him withal, one morning that he came to make hiscourt, received him very coldly and looked frowningly upon him. Hereturned home, full of, despair, where he sorrowfully told his wife that, having fallen into this misfortune, he was resolved to kill himself: towhich she roundly replied, "'tis but reason you should, seeing thathaving so often experienced the incontinence of my tongue, you could nottake warning: but let me kill myself first, " and without any more sayingran herself through the body with a sword. Vibius Virrius, despairing ofthe safety of his city besieged by the Romans and of their mercy, in thelast deliberation of his city's senate, after many arguments conducing tothat end, concluded that the most noble means to escape fortune was bytheir own hands: telling them that the enemy would have them in honour, and Hannibal would be sensible how many faithful friends he hadabandoned; inviting those who approved of his advice to come to a goodsupper he had ready at home, where after they had eaten well, they woulddrink together of what he had prepared; a beverage, said he, that willdeliver our bodies from torments, our souls from insult, and our eyes andears from the sense of so many hateful mischiefs, as the conquered sufferfrom cruel and implacable conquerors. I have, said he, taken order forfit persons to throw our bodies into a funeral pile before my door sosoon as we are dead. Many enough approved this high resolution, but fewimitated it; seven-and-twenty senators followed him, who, after havingtried to drown the thought of this fatal determination in wine, ended thefeast with the mortal mess; and embracing one another, after they hadjointly deplored the misfortune of their country, some retired home totheir own houses, others stayed to be burned with Vibius in his funeralpyre; and were all of them so long in dying, the vapour of the winehaving prepossessed the veins, and by that means deferred the effect ofpoison, that some of them were within an hour of seeing the enemy insidethe walls of Capua, which was taken the next morning, and of undergoingthe miseries they had at so dear a rate endeavoured to avoid. JubelliusTaurea, another citizen of the same country, the Consul Fulvius returningfrom the shameful butchery he had made of two hundred and twenty-fivesenators, called him back fiercely by name, and having made him stop:"Give the word, " said he, "that somebody may dispatch me after themassacre of so many others, that thou mayest boast to have killed a muchmore valiant man than thyself. " Fulvius, disdaining him as a man out ofhis wits, and also having received letters from Rome censuring theinhumanity of his execution which tied his hands, Jubellius proceeded:"Since my country has been taken, my friends dead, and having with my ownhands slain my wife and children to rescue them from the desolation ofthis ruin, I am denied to die the death of my fellow-citizens, let meborrow from virtue vengeance on this hated life, " and therewithal drawinga short sword he carried concealed about him, he ran it through his ownbosom, falling down backward, and expiring at the consul's feet. 

Alexander, laying siege to a city of the Indies, those within, findingthemselves very hardly set, put on a vigorous resolution to deprive himof the pleasure of his victory, and accordingly burned themselves ingeneral, together with their city, in despite of his humanity: a new kindof war, where the enemies sought to save them, and they to destroythemselves, doing to make themselves sure of death, all that men do tosecure life. 

Astapa, a city of Spain, finding itself weak in walls and defence towithstand the Romans, the inhabitants made a heap of all their riches andfurniture in the public place; and, having ranged upon this heap all thewomen and children, and piled them round with wood and other combustiblematter to take sudden fire, and left fifty of their young men for theexecution of that whereon they had resolved, they made a desperate sally, where for want of power to overcome, they caused themselves to be everyman slain. The fifty, after having massacred every living soulthroughout the whole city, and put fire to this pile, threw themselveslastly into it, finishing their generous liberty, rather after aninsensible, than after a sorrowful and disgraceful manner, giving theenemy to understand, that if fortune had been so pleased, they had aswell the courage to snatch from them victory as they had to frustrate andrender it dreadful, and even mortal to those who, allured by thesplendour of the gold melting in this flame, having approached it, a great number were there suffocated and burned, being kept from retiringby the crowd that followed after. 

The Abydeans, being pressed by King Philip, put on the same resolution;but, not having time, they could not put it 'in effect. The king, whowas struck with horror at the rash precipitation of this execution (thetreasure and movables that they had condemned to the flames being firstseized), drawing off his soldiers, granted them three days' time to killthemselves in, that they might do it with more order and at greater ease:which time they filled with blood and slaughter beyond the utmost excessof all hostile cruelty, so that not so much as any one soul was leftalive that had power to destroy itself. There are infinite examples oflike popular resolutions which seem the more fierce and cruel inproportion as the effect is more universal, and yet are really less sothan when singly executed; what arguments and persuasion cannot do withindividual men, they can do with all, the ardour of society ravishingparticular judgments. 

The condemned who would live to be executed in the reign of Tiberius, forfeited their goods and were denied the rites of sepulture; those who, by killing themselves, anticipated it, were interred, and had liberty todispose of their estates by will. 

But men sometimes covet death out of hope of a greater good. "I desire, "says St. Paul, "to be with Christ, " and "who shall rid me of thesebands?" Cleombrotus of Ambracia, having read Plato's Pheedo, enteredinto so great a desire of the life to come that, without any otheroccasion, he threw himself into the sea. By which it appears howimproperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair, to which theeagerness of hope often inclines us, and, often, a calm and temperatedesire proceeding from a mature and deliberate judgment. Jacques duChastel, bishop of Soissons, in St. Louis's foreign expedition, seeingthe king and whole army upon the point of returning into France, leavingthe affairs of religion imperfect, took a resolution rather to go intoParadise; wherefore, having taken solemn leave of his friends, he chargedalone, in the sight of every one, into the enemy's army, where he waspresently cut to pieces. In a certain kingdom of the new discoveredworld, upon a day of solemn procession, when the idol they adore is drawnabout in public upon a chariot of marvellous greatness; besides that manyare then seen cutting off pieces of their flesh to offer to him, thereare a number of others who prostrate themselves upon the place, causingthemselves to be crushed and broken to pieces under the weighty wheels, to obtain the veneration of sanctity after death, which is accordinglypaid them. The death of the bishop, sword in hand, has more ofmagnanimity in it, and less of sentiment, the ardour of combat takingaway part of the latter. 

There are some governments who have taken upon them to regulate thejustice and opportunity of voluntary death. In former times there waskept in our city of Marseilles a poison prepared out of hemlock, at thepublic charge, for those who had a mind to hasten their end, havingfirst, before the six hundred, who were their senate, given account ofthe reasons and motives of their design, and it was not otherwise lawful, than by leave from the magistrate and upon just occasion to do violenceto themselves. --[Valerius Maximus, ii. 6, 7. ]--The same law was alsoin use in other places. 

Sextus Pompeius, in his expedition into Asia, touched at the isle of Ceain Negropont: it happened whilst he was there, as we have it from onethat was with him, that a woman of great quality, having given an accountto her citizens why she was resolved to put an end to her life, invitedPompeius to her death, to render it the more honourable, an invitationthat he accepted; and having long tried in vain by the power of hiseloquence, which was very great, and persuasion, to divert her from thatdesign, he acquiesced in the end in her own will. She had passed the ageof four score and ten in a very happy state, both of body and mind; beingthen laid upon her bed, better dressed than ordinary and leaning upon herelbow, "The gods, " said she, "O Sextus Pompeius, and rather those I leavethan those I go to seek, reward thee, for that thou hast not disdained tobe both the counsellor of my life and the witness of my death. For mypart, having always experienced the smiles of fortune, for fear lest thedesire of living too long may make me see a contrary face, I am going, bya happy end, to dismiss the remains of my soul, leaving behind twodaughters of my body and a legion of nephews"; which having said, withsome exhortations to her family to live in peace, she divided amongstthem her goods, and recommending her domestic gods to her eldestdaughter, she boldly took the bowl that contained the poison, and havingmade her vows and prayers to Mercury to conduct her to some happy abodein the other world, she roundly swallowed the mortal poison. This beingdone, she entertained the company with the progress of its operation, andhow the cold by degrees seized the several parts of her body one afteranother, till having in the end told them it began to seize upon herheart and bowels, she called her daughters to do the last office andclose her eyes. 

Pliny tells us of a certain Hyperborean nation where, by reason of thesweet temperature of the air, lives rarely ended but by the voluntarysurrender of the inhabitants, who, being weary of and satiated withliving, had the custom, at a very old age, after having made good cheer, to precipitate themselves into the sea from the top of a certain rock, assigned for that service. Pain and the fear of a worse death seem to methe most excusable incitements. 

CHAPTER IV

TO-MORROW'S A NEW DAY

I give, as it seems to me, with good reason the palm to Jacques Amyot ofall our French writers, not only for the simplicity and purity of hislanguage, wherein he excels all others, nor for his constancy in goingthrough so long a work, nor for the depth of his knowledge, having beenable so successfully to smooth and unravel so knotty and intricate anauthor (for let people tell me what they will, I understand nothing ofGreek; but I meet with sense so well united and maintained throughout hiswhole translation, that certainly he either knew the true fancy of theauthor, or having, by being long conversant with him, imprinted a vividand general idea of that of Plutarch in his soul, he has delivered usnothing that either derogates from or contradicts him), but above all, Iam the most taken with him for having made so discreet a choice of a bookso worthy and of so great utility wherewith to present his country. Weignorant fellows had been lost, had not this book raised us out of thedirt; by this favour of his we dare now speak and write; the ladies areable to read to schoolmasters; 'tis our breviary. If this good man beyet living, I would recommend to him Xenophon, to do as much by that;'tis a much more easy task than the other, and consequently more properfor his age. And, besides, though I know not how, methinks he doesbriskly--and clearly enough trip over steps another would have stumbledat, yet nevertheless his style seems to be more his own where he does notencounter those difficulties, and rolls away at his own ease. 

I was just now reading this passage where Plutarch says of himself, thatRusticus being present at a declamation of his at Rome, there received apacket from the emperor, and deferred to open it till all was done: forwhich, says he, all the company highly applauded the gravity of thisperson. 'Tis true, that being upon the subject of curiosity and of thateager passion for news, which makes us with so much indiscretion andimpatience leave all to entertain a newcomer, and without any manner ofrespect or outcry, tear open on a sudden, in what company soever, theletters that are delivered to us, he had reason to applaud the gravity ofRusticus upon this occasion; and might moreover have added to it thecommendation of his civility and courtesy, that would not interrupt thecurrent of his declamation. But I doubt whether any one can commend hisprudence; for receiving unexpected letters, and especially from anemperor, it might have fallen out that the deferring to read them mighthave been of great prejudice. The vice opposite to curiosity isnegligence, to which I naturally incline, and wherein I have seen somemen so extreme that one might have found letters sent them three or fourdays before, still sealed up in their pockets. 

I never open any letters directed to another; not only those intrustedwith me, but even such as fortune has guided to my hand; and am angrywith myself if my eyes unawares steal any contents of letters ofimportance he is reading when I stand near a great man. Never was manless inquisitive or less prying into other men's affairs than I. 

In our fathers' days, Monsieur de Boutieres had like to have lost Turinfrom having, while engaged in good company at supper, delayed to readinformation that was sent him of the treason plotted against that citywhere he commanded. And this very Plutarch has given me to understand, that Julius Caesar had preserved himself, if, going to the Senate the dayhe was assassinated by the conspirators, he had read a note which waspresented to him by, the way. He tells also the story of Archias, thetyrant of Thebes, that the night before the execution of the designPelopidas had plotted to kill him to restore his country to liberty, hehad a full account sent him in writing by another Archias, an Athenian, of the whole conspiracy, and that, this packet having been delivered tohim while he sat at supper, he deferred the opening of it, saying, whichafterwards turned to a proverb in Greece, "Business to-morrow. "

A wise man may, I think, out of respect to another, as not to disturb thecompany, as Rusticus did, or not to break off another affair ofimportance in hand, defer to read or hear any new thing that is broughthim; but for his own interest or particular pleasure, especially if he bea public minister, that he will not interrupt his dinner or break hissleep is inexcusable. And there was anciently at Rome, the consularplace, as they called it, which was the most honourable at the table, asbeing a place of most liberty, and of more convenient access to those whocame in to speak to the person seated there; by which it appears, thatbeing at meat, they did not totally abandon the concern of other affairsand incidents. But when all is said, it is very hard in human actions togive so exact a rule upon moral reasons, that fortune will not thereinmaintain her own right. 

CHAPTER V

OF CONSCIENCE

The Sieur de la Brousse, my brother, and I, travelling one day togetherduring the time of our civil wars, met a gentleman of good sort. He wasof the contrary party, though I did not know so much, for he pretendedotherwise: and the mischief on't is, that in this sort of war the cardsare so shuffled, your enemy not being distinguished from yourself by anyapparent mark either of language or habit, and being nourished under thesame law, air, and manners, it is very hard to avoid disorder andconfusion. This made me afraid myself of meeting any of our troops in aplace where I was not known, that I might not be in fear to tell my name, and peradventure of something worse; as it had befallen me before, where, by such a mistake, I lost both men and horses, and amongst others anItalian gentleman my page, whom I bred with the greatest care andaffection, was miserably slain, in whom a youth of great promise andexpectation was extinguished. But the gentleman my brother and I methad so desperate, half-dead a fear upon him at meeting with any horse, or passing by any of the towns that held for the King, that I at lastdiscovered it to be alarms of conscience. It seemed to the poor man asif through his visor and the crosses upon his cassock, one would havepenetrated into his bosom and read the most secret intentions of hisheart; so wonderful is the power of conscience. It makes us betray, accuse, and fight against ourselves, and for want of other witnesses, togive evidence against ourselves:

 "Occultum quatiens animo tortore flagellum. "

 ["The torturer of the soul brandishing a sharp scourge within. " --Juvenal, iii. 195. ]

This story is in every child's mouth: Bessus the Paeonian, beingreproached for wantonly pulling down a nest of young sparrows and killingthem, replied, that he had reason to do so, seeing that those littlebirds never ceased falsely to accuse him of the murder of his father. This parricide had till then been concealed and unknown, but therevenging fury of conscience caused it to be discovered by him himself, who was to suffer for it. Hesiod corrects the saying of Plato, thatpunishment closely follows sin, it being, as he says, born at the sametime with it. Whoever expects punishment already suffers it, and whoeverhas deserved it expects it. Wickedness contrives torments againstitself:

 "Malum consilium consultori pessimum. "

 ["Ill designs are worst to the contriver. " --Apud Aul. Gellium, iv. 5. ]

as the wasp stings and hurts another, but most of all itself, for itthere loses its sting and its use for ever, "Vitasque in vulnere ponunt. "

 ["And leave their own lives in the wound. " --Virgil, Geo. , iv. 238. ]

Cantharides have somewhere about them, by a contrariety of nature, acounterpoison against their poison. In like manner, at the same timethat men take delight in vice, there springs in the conscience adispleasure that afflicts us sleeping and waking with various tormentingimaginations:

 "Quippe ubi se multi, per somnia saepe loquentes, Aut morbo delirantes, protraxe ferantur, Et celata diu in medium peccata dedisse. "

 ["Surely where many, often talking in their sleep, or raving in disease, are said to have betrayed themselves, and to have given publicity to offences long concealed. "--Lucretius, v. 1157. ]

Apollodorus dreamed that he saw himself flayed by the Scythians andafterwards boiled in a cauldron, and that his heart muttered these words"I am the cause of all these mischiefs that have befallen thee. "Epicurus said that no hiding-hole could conceal the wicked, since theycould never assure themselves of being hid whilst their consciencediscovered them to themselves. 

 "Prima est haec ultio, quod se Judice nemo nocens absohitur. "

 ["Tis the first punishment of sin that no man absolves himself. " or: "This is the highest revenge, that by its judgment no offender is absolved. "--Juvenal, xiii. 2. ]

As an ill conscience fills us with fear, so a good one gives us greaterconfidence and assurance; and I can truly say that I have gone throughseveral hazards with a more steady pace in consideration of the secretknowledge I had of my own will and the innocence of my intentions:

 "Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit intra Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo. "

 ["As a man's conscience is, so within hope or fear prevails, suiting to his design. "--Ovid, Fast. , i. 485. ]

Of this are a thousand examples; but it will be enough to instance threeof one and the same person. Scipio, being one day accused before thepeople of Rome of some crimes of a very high nature, instead of excusinghimself or flattering his judges: "It will become you well, " said he, "to sit in judgment upon a head, by whose means you have the power tojudge all the world. " Another time, all the answer he gave to severalimpeachments brought against him by a tribune of the people, instead ofmaking his defence: "Let us go, citizens, " said he, "let us go renderthanks to the gods for the victory they gave me over the Carthaginians asthis day, " and advancing himself before towards the Temple, he hadpresently all the assembly and his very accuser himself following at hisheels. And Petilius, having been set on by Cato to demand an account ofthe money that had passed through his hands in the province of Antioch, Scipio being come into the senate to that purpose, produced a book fromunder his robe, wherein he told them was an exact account of his receiptsand disbursements; but being required to deliver it to the prothonotaryto be examined, he refused, saying, he would not do himself so great adisgrace; and in the presence of the whole senate tore the book with hisown hands to pieces. I do not believe that the most seared consciencecould have counterfeited so great an assurance. He had naturally toohigh a spirit and was accustomed to too high a fortune, says TitiusLivius, to know how to be criminal, and to lower himself to the meannessof defending his innocence. The putting men to the rack is a dangerousinvention, and seems to be rather a trial of patience than of truth. Both he who has the fortitude to endure it conceals the truth, and he whohas not: for why should pain sooner make me confess what really is, thanforce me to say what is not? And, on the contrary, if he who is notguilty of that whereof he is accused, has the courage to undergo thosetorments, why should not he who is guilty have the same, so fair a rewardas life being in his prospect? I believe the ground of this inventionproceeds from the consideration of the force of conscience: for, to theguilty, it seems to assist the rack to make him confess his fault and toshake his resolution; and, on the other side, that it fortifies theinnocent against the torture. But when all is done, 'tis, in plaintruth, a trial full of uncertainty and danger what would not a man say, what would not a man do, to avoid so intolerable torments?

 "Etiam innocentes cogit mentiri dolor. "

 ["Pain will make even the innocent lie. "--Publius Syrus, De Dolore. ]

Whence it comes to pass, that him whom the judge has racked that he maynot die innocent, he makes him die both innocent and racked. A thousandand a thousand have charged their own heads by false confessions, amongstwhom I place Philotas, considering the circumstances of the trialAlexander put upon him and the progress of his torture. But so it isthat some say it is the least evil human weakness could invent; veryinhumanly, notwithstanding, and to very little purpose, in my opinion. 

Many nations less barbarous in this than the Greeks and Romans who callthem so, repute it horrible and cruel to torment and pull a man to piecesfor a fault of which they are yet in doubt. How can he help yourignorance? Are not you unjust, that, not to kill him without cause, doworse than kill him? And that this is so, do but observe how often menprefer to die without reason than undergo this examination, more painfulthan execution itself; and that oft-times by its extremity anticipatesexecution, and perform it. I know not where I had this story, but itexactly matches the conscience of our justice in this particular. Acountry-woman, to a general of a very severe discipline, accused one ofhis soldiers that he had taken from her children the little soup meat shehad left to nourish them withal, the army having consumed all the rest;but of this proof there was none. The general, after having cautionedthe woman to take good heed to what she said, for that she would makeherself guilty of a false accusation if she told a lie, and shepersisting, he presently caused the soldier's belly to be ripped up toclear the truth of the fact, and the woman was found to be right. Aninstructive sentence. 

CHAPTER VI

USE MAKES PERFECT

'Tis not to be expected that argument and instruction, though we never sovoluntarily surrender our belief to what is read to us, should be offorce to lead us on so far as to action, if we do not, over and above, exercise and form the soul by experience to the course for which wedesign it; it will, otherwise, doubtless find itself at a loss when itcomes to the pinch of the business. This is the reason why those amongstthe philosophers who were ambitious to attain to a greater excellence, were not contented to await the severities of fortune in the retirementand repose of their own habitations, lest he should have surprised themraw and inexpert in the combat, but sallied out to meet her, andpurposely threw themselves into the proof of difficulties. Some of themabandoned riches to exercise themselves in a voluntary poverty; otherssought out labour and an austerity of life, to inure them to hardshipsand inconveniences; others have deprived themselves of their dearestmembers, as of sight, and of the instruments of generation, lest theirtoo delightful and effeminate service should soften and debauch thestability of their souls. 

But in dying, which is the greatest work we have to do, practice can giveus no assistance at all. A man may by custom fortify himself againstpain, shame, necessity, and such-like accidents, but as to death, we canexperiment it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it. There have, anciently, been men so excellent managers of their time thatthey have tried even in death itself to relish and taste it, and who havebent their utmost faculties of mind to discover what this passage is, butthey are none of them come back to tell us the news:

 "Nemo expergitus exstat, Frigida quern semel est vitai pausa sequuta. "

 ["No one wakes who has once fallen into the cold sleep of death. " --Lucretius, iii. 942]

Julius Canus, a noble Roman, of singular constancy and virtue, havingbeen condemned to die by that worthless fellow Caligula, besides manymarvellous testimonies that he gave of his resolution, as he was justgoing to receive the stroke of the executioner, was asked by aphilosopher, a friend of his: "Well, Canus, whereabout is your soul now?what is she doing? What are you thinking of?"--"I was thinking, " repliedthe other, "to keep myself ready, and the faculties of my mind fullsettled and fixed, to try if in this short and quick instant of death, Icould perceive the motion of the soul when she parts from the body, andwhether she has any sentiment at the separation, that I may after comeagain if I can, to acquaint my friends with it. " This man philosophisesnot unto death only, but in death itself. What a strange assurance wasthis, and what bravery of courage, to desire his death should be a lessonto him, and to have leisure to think of other things in so great anaffair:

 "Jus hoc animi morientis habebat. "

 ["This mighty power of mind he had dying. "-Lucan, viii. 636. ]

And yet I fancy, there is a certain way of making it familiar to us, andin some sort of making trial what it is. We may gain experience, if notentire and perfect, yet such, at least, as shall not be totally uselessto us, and that may render us more confident and more assured. If wecannot overtake it, we may approach it and view it, and if we do notadvance so far as the fort, we may at least discover and make ourselvesacquainted with the avenues. It is not without reason that we are taughtto consider sleep as a resemblance of death: with how great facility dowe pass from waking to sleeping, and with how little concern do we losethe knowledge of light and of ourselves. Peradventure, the faculty ofsleeping would seem useless and contrary to nature, since it deprives usof all action and sentiment, were it not that by it nature instructs usthat she has equally made us to die as to live; and in life presents tous the eternal state she reserves for us after it, to accustom us to itand to take from us the fear of it. But such as have by violent accidentfallen into a swoon, and in it have lost all sense, these, methinks, havebeen very near seeing the true and natural face of death; for as to themoment of the passage, it is not to be feared that it brings with it anypain or displeasure, forasmuch as we can have no feeling without leisure;our sufferings require time, which in death is so short, and soprecipitous, that it must necessarily be insensible. They are theapproaches that we are to fear, and these may fall within the limits ofexperience. 

Many things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect; I havepassed a good part of my life in a perfect and entire health; I say, notonly entire, but, moreover, sprightly and wanton. This state, so full ofverdure, jollity, and vigour, made the consideration of sickness soformidable to me, that when I came to experience it, I found the attacksfaint and easy in comparison with what I had apprehended. Of this I havedaily experience; if I am under the shelter of a warm room, in a stormyand tempestuous night, I wonder how people can live abroad, and amafflicted for those who are out in the fields: if I am there myself, I donot wish to be anywhere else. This one thing of being always shut up ina chamber I fancied insupportable: but I was presently inured to be soimprisoned a week, nay a month together, in a very weak, disordered, andsad condition; and I have found that, in the time of my health, I muchmore pitied the sick, than I think myself to be pitied when I am so, andthat the force of my imagination enhances near one-half of the essenceand reality of the thing. I hope that when I come to die I shall find itthe same, and that, after all, it is not worth the pains I take, so muchpreparation and so much assistance as I call in, to undergo the stroke. But, at all events, we cannot give ourselves too much advantage. 

In the time of our third or second troubles (I do not well rememberwhich), going one day abroad to take the air, about a league from my ownhouse, which is seated in the very centre of all the bustle and mischiefof the late civil wars in France; thinking myself in all security and sonear to my retreat that I stood in need of no better equipage, I hadtaken a horse that went very easy upon his pace, but was not very strong. Being upon my return home, a sudden occasion falling out to make use ofthis horse in a kind of service that he was not accustomed to, one of mytrain, a lusty, tall fellow, mounted upon a strong German horse, that hada very ill mouth, fresh and vigorous, to play the brave and set on aheadof his fellows, comes thundering full speed in the very track where Iwas, rushing like a Colossus upon the little man and the little horse, with such a career of strength and weight, that he turned us both overand over, topsy-turvy with our heels in the air: so that there lay thehorse overthrown and stunned with the fall, and I ten or twelve pacesfrom him stretched out at length, with my face all battered and broken, my sword which I had had in my hand, above ten paces beyond that, and mybelt broken all to pieces, without motion or sense any more than a stock. 'Twas the only swoon I was ever in till that hour in my life. Those whowere with me, after having used all the means they could to bring me tomyself, concluding me dead, took me up in their arms, and carried me withvery much difficulty home to my house, which was about half a Frenchleague from thence. On the way, having been for more than two hoursgiven over for a dead man, I began to move and to fetch my breath; for sogreat abundance of blood was fallen into my stomach, that nature had needto rouse her forces to discharge it. They then raised me upon my feet, where I threw off a whole bucket of clots of blood, as this I did alsoseveral times by the way. This gave me so much ease, that I began torecover a little life, but so leisurely and by so small advances, that myfirst sentiments were much nearer the approaches of death than life:

 "Perche, dubbiosa ancor del suo ritorno, Non s'assicura attonita la mente. "

 ["For the soul, doubtful as to its return, could not compose itself" --Tasso, Gierus. Lib. , xii. 74. ]

The remembrance of this accident, which is very well imprinted in mymemory, so naturally representing to me the image and idea of death, hasin some sort reconciled me to that untoward adventure. When I firstbegan to open my eyes, it was with so perplexed, so weak and dead asight, that I could yet distinguish nothing but only discern the light:

 "Come quel ch'or apre, or'chiude Gli occhi, mezzo tra'l sonno e l'esser desto. "

 ["As a man that now opens, now shuts his eyes, between sleep and waking. "--Tasso, Gierus. Lib. , viii. , 26. ]

As to the functions of the soul, they advanced with the same pace andmeasure with those of the body. I saw myself all bloody, my doubletbeing stained all over with the blood I had vomited. The first thoughtthat came into my mind was that I had a harquebuss shot in my head, andindeed, at the time there were a great many fired round about us. Methought my life but just hung upon my, lips: and I shut my eyes, tohelp, methought, to thrust it out, and took a pleasure in languishing andletting myself go. It was an imagination that only superficially floatedupon my soul, as tender and weak as all the rest, but really, not onlyexempt from anything displeasing, but mixed with that sweetness thatpeople feel when they glide into a slumber. 

I believe it is the very same condition those people are in, whom we seeswoon with weakness in the agony of death we pity them without cause, supposing them agitated with grievous dolours, or that their souls sufferunder painful thoughts. It has ever been my belief, contrary to theopinion of many, and particularly of La Boetie, that those whom we see sosubdued and stupefied at the approaches of their end, or oppressed withthe length of the disease, or by accident of an apoplexy or fallingsickness, "Vi morbi saepe coactus Ante oculos aliquis nostros, ut fulminis ictu, Concidit, et spumas agit; ingemit, et tremit artus; Desipit, extentat nervos, torquetur, anhelat, Inconstanter, et in jactando membra fatigat;"

 ["Often, compelled by the force of disease, some one as thunderstruck falls under our eyes, and foams, groans, and trembles, stretches, twists, breathes irregularly, and in paroxysms wears out his strength. "--Lucretius, iii. 485. ]

or hurt in the head, whom we hear to mutter, and by fits to uttergrievous groans; though we gather from these signs by which it seems asif they had some remains of consciousness, and that there are movementsof the body; I have always believed, I say, both the body and the soulbenumbed and asleep, "Vivit, et est vitae nescius ipse suae, "

 ["He lives, and does not know that he is alive. " --Ovid, Trist. , i. 3, 12. ]

and could not believe that in so great a stupefaction of the members andso great a defection of the senses, the soul could maintain any forcewithin to take cognisance of herself, and that, therefore, they had notormenting reflections to make them consider and be sensible of themisery of their condition, and consequently were not much to be pitied. 

I can, for my part, think of no state so insupportable and dreadful, asto have the soul vivid and afflicted, without means to declare itself; asone should say of such as are sent to execution with their tongues firstcut out (were it not that in this kind of dying, the most silent seems tome the most graceful, if accompanied with a grave and constantcountenance); or if those miserable prisoners, who fall into the hands ofthe base hangman soldiers of this age, by whom they are tormented withall sorts of inhuman usage to compel them to some excessive andimpossible ransom; kept, in the meantime, in such condition and place, where they have no means of expressing or signifying their thoughts andtheir misery. The poets have feigned some gods who favour thedeliverance of such as suffer under a languishing death:

 "Hunc ego Diti Sacrum jussa fero, teque isto corpore solvo. "

 ["I bidden offer this sacred thing to Pluto, and from that body dismiss thee. "--AEneid, iv. 782. ]

both the interrupted words, and the short and irregular answers one getsfrom them sometimes, by bawling and keeping a clutter about them; or themotions which seem to yield some consent to what we would have them do, are no testimony, nevertheless, that they live, an entire life at least. So it happens to us in the yawning of sleep, before it has fullypossessed us, to perceive, as in a dream, what is done about us, and tofollow the last things that are said with a perplexed and uncertainhearing which seems but to touch upon the borders of the soul; and tomake answers to the last words that have been spoken to us, which havemore in them of chance than sense. 

Now seeing I have in effect tried it, I have no doubt but I have hithertomade a right judgment; for first, being in a swoon, I laboured to ripopen the buttons of my doublet with my nails, for my sword was gone; andyet I felt nothing in my imagination that hurt me; for we have manymotions in us that do not proceed from our direction;

 "Semianimesque micant digiti, ferrumque retractant;"

 ["Half-dead fingers grope about, and grasp again the sword. " --AEneid, x. 396. ]

so falling people extend their arms before them by a natural impulse, which prompts our limbs to offices and motions without any commissionfrom our reason. 

 "Falciferos memorant currus abscindere membra . . . Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod Decidit abscissum; cum mens tamen atque hominis vis Mobilitate mali, non quit sentire dolorem. "

 ["They relate that scythe-bearing chariots mow off limbs, so that they quiver on the ground; and yet the mind of him from whom the limb is taken by the swiftness of the blow feels no pain. " --Lucretius, iii. 642. ]

My stomach was so oppressed with the coagulated blood, that my handsmoved to that part, of their own voluntary motion, as they frequently doto the part that itches, without being directed by our will. There areseveral animals, and even men, in whom one may perceive the muscles tostir and tremble after they are dead. Every one experimentally knowsthat there are some members which grow stiff and flag without his leave. Now, those passions which only touch the outward bark of us, cannot besaid to be ours: to make them so, there must be a concurrence of thewhole man; and the pains which are felt by the hand or the foot whilewe are sleeping, are none of ours. 

As I drew near my own house, where the alarm of my fall was already gotbefore me, and my family were come out to meet me, with the hubbub usualin such cases, not only did I make some little answer to some questionswhich were asked me; but they moreover tell me, that I was sufficientlycollected to order them to bring a horse to my wife whom on the road, I saw struggling and tiring herself which is hilly and rugged. Thisshould seem to proceed from a soul its functions; but it was nothing sowith me. I knew not what I said or did, and they were nothing but idlethoughts in the clouds, that were stirred up by the senses of the eyesand ears, and proceeded not from me. I knew not for all that, whence Icame or whither I went, neither was I capable to weigh and consider whatwas said to me: these were light effects, that the senses produced ofthemselves as of custom; what the soul contributed was in a dream, lightly touched, licked and bedewed by the soft impression of the senses. Notwithstanding, my condition was, in truth, very easy and quiet; I hadno affliction upon me, either for others or myself; it was an extremelanguor and weakness, without any manner of pain. I saw my own house, but knew it not. When they had put me to bed I found an inexpressiblesweetness in that repose; for I had been desperately tugged and lugged bythose poor people who had taken the pains to carry me upon their arms avery great and a very rough way, and had in so doing all quite tired outthemselves, twice or thrice one after another. They offered me severalremedies, but I would take none, certainly believing that I was mortallywounded in the head. And, in earnest, it had been a very happy death, for the weakness of my understanding deprived me of the faculty ofdiscerning, and that of my body of the sense of feeling; I was sufferingmyself to glide away so sweetly and after so soft and easy a manner, thatI scarce find any other action less troublesome than that was. But whenI came again to myself and to resume my faculties:

 "Ut tandem sensus convaluere mei, "

 ["When at length my lost senses again returned. " --Ovid, Trist. , i. 3, 14. ]

which was two or three hours after, I felt myself on a sudden involved interrible pain, having my limbs battered and ground with my fall, and was. So ill for two or three nights after, that I thought I was once moredying again, but a more painful death, having concluded myself as good asdead before, and to this hour am sensible of the bruises of that terribleshock. I will not here omit, that the last thing I could make them beatinto my head, was the memory of this accident, and I had it over and overagain repeated to me, whither I was going, from whence I came, and atwhat time of the day this mischance befell me, before I could comprehendit. As to the manner of my fall, that was concealed from me in favour tohim who had been the occasion, and other flim-flams were invented. But along time after, and the very next day that my memory began to return andto represent to me the state wherein I was, at the instant that Iperceived this horse coming full drive upon me (for I had seen him at myheels, and gave myself for gone, but this thought had been so sudden, that fear had had no leisure to introduce itself) it seemed to me like aflash of lightning that had pierced my soul, and that I came from theother world. 

This long story of so light an accident would appear vain enough, were itnot for the knowledge I have gained by it for my own use; for I do reallyfind, that to get acquainted with death, needs no more but nearly toapproach it. Every one, as Pliny says, is a good doctrine to himself, provided he be capable of discovering himself near at hand. Here, thisis not my doctrine, 'tis my study; and is not the lesson of another, butmy own; and if I communicate it, it ought not to be ill taken, for thatwhich is of use to me, may also, peradventure, be useful to another. Asto the rest, I spoil nothing, I make use of nothing but my own; and if Iplay the fool, 'tis at my own expense, and nobody else is concerned in't;for 'tis a folly that will die with me, and that no one is to inherit. We hear but of two or three of the ancients, who have beaten this path, and yet I cannot say if it was after this manner, knowing no more of thembut their names. No one since has followed the track: 'tis a ruggedroad, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain, as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricateinternal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimblemotions; 'tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws usfrom the common and most recommended employments of the world. 'Tis nowmany years since that my thoughts have had no other aim and level thanmyself, and that I have only pried into and studied myself: or, if Istudy any other thing, 'tis to apply it to or rather in myself. And yetI do not think it a fault, if, as others do by other much less profitablesciences, I communicate what I have learned in this, though I am not verywell pleased with my own progress. There is no description so difficult, nor doubtless of so great utility, as that of a man's self: and withal, aman must curl his hair and set out and adjust himself, to appear inpublic: now I am perpetually tricking myself out, for I am eternally uponmy own description. Custom has made all speaking of a man's selfvicious, and positively interdicts it, in hatred to the boasting thatseems inseparable from the testimony men give of themselves:

 "In vitium ducit culpae fuga. "

 ["The avoiding a mere fault often leads us into a greater. " Or: "The escape from a fault leads into a vice" --Horace, De Arte Poetics, verse 31. ]

Instead of blowing the child's nose, this is to take his nose offaltogether. I think the remedy worse than the disease. But, allowing itto be true that it must of necessity be presumption to entertain peoplewith discourses of one's self, I ought not, pursuing my general design, to forbear an action that publishes this infirmity of mine, nor concealthe fault which I not only practise but profess. Notwithstanding, tospeak my thought freely, I think that the custom of condemning wine, because some people will be drunk, is itself to be condemned; a mancannot abuse anything but what is good in itself; and I believe that thisrule has only regard to the popular vice. They are bits for calves, withwhich neither the saints whom we hear speak so highly of themselves, northe philosophers, nor the divines will be curbed; neither will I, who amas little the one as the other, If they do not write of it expressly, atall events, when the occasions arise, they don't hesitate to putthemselves on the public highway. Of what does Socrates treat morelargely than of himself? To what does he more direct and address thediscourses of his disciples, than to speak of themselves, not of thelesson in their book, but of the essence and motion of their souls? Weconfess ourselves religiously to God and our confessor; as ourneighbours, do to all the people. But some will answer that we therespeak nothing but accusation against ourselves; why then, we say all; forour very virtue itself is faulty and penetrable. My trade and art is tolive; he that forbids me to speak according to my own sense, experience, and practice, may as well enjoin an architect not to speak of buildingaccording to his own knowledge, but according to that of his neighbour;according to the knowledge of another, and not according to his own. Ifit be vainglory for a man to publish his own virtues, why does not Ciceroprefer the eloquence of Hortensius, and Hortensius that of Cicero?Peradventure they mean that I should give testimony of myself by worksand effects, not barely by words. I chiefly paint my thoughts, a subjectvoid of form and incapable of operative production; 'tis all that I cando to couch it in this airy body of the voice; the wisest and devoutestmen have lived in the greatest care to avoid all apparent effects. Effects would more speak of fortune than of me; they manifest their ownoffice and not mine, but uncertainly and by conjecture; patterns of someone particular virtue. I expose myself entire; 'tis a body where, at oneview, the veins, muscles, and tendons are apparent, every of them in itsproper place; here the effects of a cold; there of the heart beating, very dubiously. I do not write my own acts, but myself and my essence. 

I am of opinion that a man must be very cautious how he values himself, and equally conscientious to give a true report, be it better or worse, impartially. If I thought myself perfectly good and wise, I would rattleit out to some purpose. To speak less of one's self than what one reallyis is folly, not modesty; and to take that for current pay which is undera man's value is pusillanimity and cowardice, according to, Aristotle. No virtue assists itself with falsehood; truth is never matter of error. To speak more of one's self than is really true is not always merepresumption; 'tis, moreover, very often folly; to, be immeasurablypleased with what one is, and to fall into an indiscreet self-love, is inmy opinion the substance of this vice. The most sovereign remedy to cureit, is to do quite contrary to what these people direct who, inforbidding men to speak of themselves, consequently, at the same time, interdict thinking of themselves too. Pride dwells in the thought; thetongue can have but a very little share in it. 

They fancy that to think of one's self is to be delighted with one'sself; to frequent and converse with one's self, to be overindulgent; butthis excess springs only in those who take but a superficial view ofthemselves, and dedicate their main inspection to their affairs; who callit mere reverie and idleness to occupy one's self with one's self, andthe building one's self up a mere building of castles in the air; wholook upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger. If any one bein rapture with his own knowledge, looking only on those below him, lethim but turn his eye upward towards past ages, and his pride will beabated, when he shall there find so many thousand wits that trample himunder foot. If he enter into a flattering presumption of his personalvalour, let him but recollect the lives of Scipio, Epaminondas; so manyarmies, so many nations, that leave him so far behind them. Noparticular quality can make any man proud, that will at the same time putthe many other weak and imperfect ones he has in the other scale, and thenothingness of human condition to make up the weight. Because Socrateshad alone digested to purpose the precept of his god, "to know himself, "and by that study arrived at the perfection of setting himself at nought, he only was reputed worthy the title of a sage. Whosoever shall so knowhimself, let him boldly speak it out. 

 ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 Addresses his voyage to no certain, port All apprentices when we come to it (death) Any one may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death Business to-morrow Condemning wine, because some people will be drunk Conscience makes us betray, accuse, and fight against ourselves Curiosity and of that eager passion for news Delivered into our own custody the keys of life Drunkeness a true and certain trial of every one's nature I can more hardly believe a man's constancy than any virtue "I wish you good health. " "No health to thee, " replied the other If to philosophise be, as 'tis defined, to doubt Improperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair It's madness to nourish infirmity Let him be as wise as he will, after all he is but a man Living is slavery if the liberty of dying be wanting. Look upon themselves as a third person only, a stranger Lower himself to the meanness of defending his innocence Much difference betwixt us and ourselves No alcohol the night on which a man intends to get children No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness Not conclude too much upon your mistress's inviolable chastity One door into life, but a hundred thousand ways out Ordinary method of cure is carried on at the expense of life Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age Shame for me to serve, being so near the reach of liberty Speak less of one's self than what one really is is folly Taught to consider sleep as a resemblance of death The action is commendable, not the man The most voluntary death is the finest The vice opposite to curiosity is negligence Things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect Thy own cowardice is the cause, if thou livest in pain Tis evil counsel that will admit no change Torture: rather a trial of patience than of truth We do not go, we are driven What can they suffer who do not fear to die? Whoever expects punishment already suffers it Wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can