ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 11. 

XIII. Of judging of the death of another. XIV. That the mind hinders itself. XV. That our desires are augmented by difficulty. XVI. Of glory. XVII. Of presumption. 

CHAPTER XIII

OF JUDGING OF THE DEATH OF ANOTHER

When we judge of another's assurance in death, which, without doubt, isthe most remarkable action of human life, we are to take heed of onething, which is that men very hardly believe themselves to have arrivedto that period. Few men come to die in the opinion that it is theirlatest hour; and there is nothing wherein the flattery of hope moredeludes us; It never ceases to whisper in our ears, "Others have beenmuch sicker without dying; your condition is not so desperate as 'tisthought; and, at the worst, God has done other miracles. " Which happensby reason that we set too much value upon ourselves; it seems as if theuniversality of things were in some measure to suffer by our dissolution, and that it commiserates our condition, forasmuch as our disturbed sightrepresents things to itself erroneously, and that we are of opinion theystand in as much need of us as we do of them, like people at sea, to whommountains, fields, cities, heaven and earth are tossed at the same rateas they are:

 "Provehimur portu, terraeque urbesque recedunt:"

 ["We sail out of port, and cities and lands recede. " --AEneid, iii. 72. ]

Whoever saw old age that did not applaud the past and condemn the presenttime, laying the fault of his misery and discontent upon the world andthe manners of men?

 "Jamque caput quassans, grandis suspirat arator. Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis, Et crepat antiquum genus ut pietate repletum. "

 ["Now the old ploughman, shaking his head, sighs, and compares present times with past, often praises his parents' happiness, and talks of the old race as full of piety. "--Lucretius, ii. 1165. ]

We will make all things go along with us; whence it follows that weconsider our death as a very great thing, and that does not so easilypass, nor without the solemn consultation of the stars:

 "Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes dens, "

 ["All the gods to agitation about one man. " --Seneca, Suasor, i. 4. ]

and so much the more think it as we more value ourselves. "What, shallso much knowledge be lost, with so much damage to the world, without aparticular concern of the destinies? Does so rare and exemplary a soulcost no more the killing than one that is common and of no use to thepublic? This life, that protects so many others, upon which so manyother lives depend, that employs so vast a number of men in his service, that fills so many places, shall it drop off like one that hangs but byits own simple thread? None of us lays it enough to heart that he isbut one: thence proceeded those words of Caesar to his pilot, more tumidthan the sea that threatened him:

 "Italiam si coelo auctore recusas, Me pete: sola tibi causa est haec justa timoris, Vectorem non nosce tuum; perrumpe procellas, Tutela secure mea. "

 ["If you decline to sail to Italy under the God's protection, trust to mine; the only just cause you have to fear is, that you do not know your passenger; sail on, secure in my guardianship. " --Lucan, V. 579. ]

And these:

 "Credit jam digna pericula Caesar Fatis esse suis; tantusne evertere, dixit, Me superis labor est, parva quern puppe sedentem, Tam magno petiere mari;"

 ["Caesar now deemed these dangers worthy of his destiny: 'What!' said he, 'is it for the gods so great a task to overthrow me, that they must be fain to assail me with great seas in a poor little bark. '"--Lucan, v. 653. ]

and that idle fancy of the public, that the sun bore on his face mourningfor his death a whole year:

 "Ille etiam extincto miseratus Caesare Romam, Cum caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit:"

 ["Caesar being dead, the sun in mourning clouds, pitying Rome, clothed himself. "--Virgil, Georg. , i. 466. ]

and a thousand of the like, wherewith the world suffers itself to be soeasily imposed upon, believing that our interests affect the heavens, andthat their infinity is concerned at our ordinary actions:

 "Non tanta caelo societas nobiscum est, ut nostro fato mortalis sit ille quoque siderum fulgor. "

 ["There is no such alliance betwixt us and heaven, that the brightness of the stars should be made also mortal by our death. " --Pliny, Nat. Hist. , ii. 8. ]

Now, to judge of constancy and resolution in a man who does not yetbelieve himself to be certainly in danger, though he really is, is notreason; and 'tis not enough that he die in this posture, unless hepurposely put himself into it for this effect. It commonly falls out inmost men that they set a good face upon the matter and speak with greatindifference, to acquire reputation, which they hope afterwards, living, to enjoy. Of all whom I have seen die, fortune has disposed theircountenances and no design of theirs; and even of those who in ancienttimes have made away with themselves, there is much to be consideredwhether it were a sudden or a lingering death. That cruel Roman Emperorwould say of his prisoners, that he would make them feel death, and ifany one killed himself in prison, "That fellow has made an escape fromme"; he would prolong death and make it felt by torments:

 "Vidimus et toto quamvis in corpore caeso Nil anima lethale datum, moremque nefandae, Durum saevitix, pereuntis parcere morti. "

 ["We have seen in tortured bodies, amongst the wounds, none that have been mortal, inhuman mode of dire cruelty, that means to kill, but will not let men die. "--Lucan, iv. I. 78. ]

In plain truth, it is no such great matter for a man in health and in atemperate state of mind to resolve to kill himself; it is very easy toplay the villain before one comes to the point, insomuch thatHeliogabalus, the most effeminate man in the world, amongst his lowestsensualities, could forecast to make himself die delicately, when heshould be forced thereto; and that his death might not give the lie tothe rest of his life, had purposely built a sumptuous tower, the frontand base of which were covered with planks enriched with gold andprecious stones, thence to precipitate himself; and also caused cordstwisted with gold and crimson silk to be made, wherewith to stranglehimself; and a sword with the blade of gold to be hammered out to fallupon; and kept poison in vessels of emerald and topaz wherewith to poisonhimself according as he should like to choose one of these ways of dying:

 "Impiger. . . Ad letum et fortis virtute coacta. "

 ["Resolute and brave in the face of death by a forced courage. --"Lucan, iv. 798. ]

Yet in respect of this person, the effeminacy of his preparations makesit more likely that he would have thought better on't, had he been put tothe test. But in those who with greater resolution have determined todespatch themselves, we must examine whether it were with one blow whichtook away the leisure of feeling the effect for it is to be questionedwhether, perceiving life, by little and little, to steal away thesentiment of the body mixing itself with that of the soul, and the meansof repenting being offered, whether, I say, constancy and obstinacy in sodangerous an intention would have been found. 

In the civil wars of Caesar, Lucius Domitius, being taken in the Abruzzi, and thereupon poisoning himself, afterwards repented. It has happened inour time that a certain person, being resolved to die and not having gonedeep enough at the first thrust, the sensibility of the flesh opposinghis arm, gave himself two or three wounds more, but could never prevailupon himself to thrust home. Whilst Plautius Silvanus was upon histrial, Urgulania, his grandmother, sent him a poniard with which, notbeing able to kill himself, he made his servants cut his veins. Albucillain Tiberius time having, to kill himself, struck with too muchtenderness, gave his adversaries opportunity to imprison and put him todeath their own way. ' And that great leader, Demosthenes, after his routin Sicily, did the same; and C. Fimbria, having struck himself tooweakly, entreated his servant to despatch him. On the contrary, Ostorius, who could not make use of his own arm, disdained to employ thatof his servant to any other use but only to hold the poniard straight andfirm; and bringing his throat to it, thrust himself through. 'Tis, intruth, a morsel that is to be swallowed without chewing, unless a man bethoroughly resolved; and yet Adrian the emperor made his physician markand encircle on his pap the mortal place wherein he was to stab to whomhe had given orders to kill him. For this reason it was that Caesar, being asked what death he thought to be the most desired, made answer, "The least premeditated and the shortest. "--[Tacitus, Annals, xvi. 15]--If Caesar dared to say it, it is no cowardice in me to believe it. "A short death, " says Pliny, "is the sovereign good hap of human life. "People do not much care to recognise it. No one can say that he isresolute for death who fears to deal with it and cannot undergo it withhis eyes open: they whom we see in criminal punishments run to theirdeath and hasten and press their execution, do it not out of resolution, but because they will not give them selves leisure to consider it; itdoes not trouble them to be dead, but to die:

 "Emodi nolo, sed me esse mortem nihil astigmia:"

 ["I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead. " --Epicharmus, apud Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , i. 8. ]

'tis a degree of constancy to which I have experimented, that I canarrive, like those who plunge into dangers, as into the sea, with theireyes shut. 

There is nothing, in my opinion, more illustrious in the life ofSocrates, than that he had thirty whole days wherein to ruminate upon thesentence of his death, to have digested it all that time with a mostassured hope, without care, and without alteration, and with a series ofwords and actions rather careless and indifferent than any way stirred ordiscomposed by the weight of such a thought. 

That Pomponius Atticus, to whom Cicero writes so often, being sick, caused Agrippa, his son-in-law, and two or three more of his friends, tobe called to him, and told them, that having found all means practisedupon him for his recovery to be in vain, and that all he did to prolonghis life also prolonged and augmented his pain, he was resolved to put anend both to the one and the other, desiring them to approve of hisdetermination, or at least not to lose their labour in endeavouring todissuade him. Now, having chosen to destroy himself by abstinence, hisdisease was thereby cured: the remedy that he had made use of to killhimself restored him to health. His physicians and friends, rejoicing atso happy an event, and coming to congratulate him, found themselves verymuch deceived, it being impossible for them to make him alter hispurpose, he telling them, that as he must one day die, and was now so faron his way, he would save himself the labour of beginning another time. This man, having surveyed death at leisure, was not only not discouragedat its approach, but eagerly sought it; for being content that he hadengaged in the combat, he made it a point of bravery to see the end; 'tisfar beyond not fearing death to taste and relish it. 

The story of the philosopher Cleanthes is very like this: he had his gumsswollen and rotten; his physicians advised him to great abstinence:having fasted two days, he was so much better that they pronounced himcured, and permitted him to return to his ordinary course of diet; he, onthe contrary, already tasting some sweetness in this faintness of his, would not be persuaded to go back, but resolved to proceed, and to finishwhat he had so far advanced. 

Tullius Marcellinus, a young man of Rome, having a mind to anticipate thehour of his destiny, to be rid of a disease that was more trouble to himthan he was willing to endure, though his physicians assured him of acertain, though not sudden, cure, called a council of his friends todeliberate about it; of whom some, says Seneca, gave him the counsel thatout of unmanliness they would have taken themselves; others, out offlattery, such as they thought he would best like; but a Stoic said thisto him: "Do not concern thyself, Marcellinus, as if thou didst deliberateof a thing of importance; 'tis no great matter to live; thy servants andbeasts live; but it is a great thing to die handsomely, wisely, andfirmly. Do but think how long thou hast done the same things, eat, drink, and sleep, drink, sleep, and eat: we incessantly wheel in the samecircle. Not only ill and insupportable accidents, but even the satietyof living, inclines a man to desire to die. " Marcellinus did not standin need of a man to advise, but of a man to assist him; his servants wereafraid to meddle in the business, but this philosopher gave them to understand that domestics are suspected even when it is in doubt whether thedeath of the master were voluntary or no; otherwise, that it would be ofas ill example to hinder him as to kill him, forasmuch as:

 "Invitum qui servat, idem facit occidenti. "

 ["He who makes a man live against his will, 'tis as cruel as to kill him. "--Horat. , De Arte Poet. , 467]

He then told Marcellinus that it would not be unbecoming, as what is lefton the tables when we have eaten is given to the attendants, so, lifebeing ended, to distribute something to those who have been our servants. Now Marcellinus was of a free and liberal spirit; he, therefore, divideda certain sum of money amongst his servants, and consoled them. As tothe rest, he had no need of steel nor of blood: he resolved to go out ofthis life and not to run out of it; not to escape from death, but toessay it. And to give himself leisure to deal with it, having forsakenall manner of nourishment, the third day following, after having causedhimself to be sprinkled with warm water, he fainted by degrees, and notwithout some kind of pleasure, as he himself declared. 

In fact, such as have been acquainted with these faintings, proceedingfrom weakness, say that they are therein sensible of no manner of pain, but rather feel a kind of delight, as in the passage to sleep and best. These are studied and digested deaths. 

But to the end that Cato only may furnish out the whole example ofvirtue, it seems as if his good with which the leisure to confront andstruggle with death, reinforcing his destiny had put his ill one into thehand he gave himself the blow, seeing he had courage in the danger, instead of letting it go less. And if I had had to represent him in hissupreme station, I should have done it in the posture of tearing out hisbloody bowels, rather than with his sword in his hand, as did thestatuaries of his time, for this second murder was much more furious thanthe first. 

CHAPTER XIV

THAT OUR MIND HINDERS ITSELF

'Tis a pleasant imagination to fancy a mind exactly balanced betwixt twoequal desires: for, doubtless, it can never pitch upon either, forasmuchas the choice and application would manifest an inequality of esteem;and were we set betwixt the bottle and the ham, with an equal appetite todrink and eat, there would doubtless be no remedy, but we must die ofthirst and hunger. To provide against this inconvenience, the Stoics, when they are asked whence the election in the soul of two indifferentthings proceeds, and that makes us, out of a great number of crowns, rather take one than another, they being all alike, and there being noreason to incline us to such a preference, make answer, that thismovement of the soul is extraordinary and irregular, entering into usby a foreign, accidental, and fortuitous impulse. It might rather, methinks, he said, that nothing presents itself to us wherein there isnot some difference, how little soever; and that, either by the sight ortouch, there is always some choice that, though it be imperceptibly, tempts and attracts us; so, whoever shall presuppose a packthread equallystrong throughout, it is utterly impossible it should break; for, wherewill you have the breaking to begin? and that it should break altogetheris not in nature. Whoever, also, should hereunto join the geometricalpropositions that, by the certainty of their demonstrations, conclude thecontained to be greater than the containing, the centre to be as great asits circumference, and that find out two lines incessantly approachingeach other, which yet can never meet, and the philosopher's stone, andthe quadrature of the circle, where the reason and the effect are soopposite, might, peradventure, find some argument to second this boldsaying of Pliny:

 "Solum certum nihil esse certi, et homine nihil miserius ant superbius. "

 ["It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing is more miserable or more proud than man. "--Nat. Hist. , ii. 7. ]

CHAPTER XV

THAT OUR DESIRES ARE AUGMENTED BY DIFFICULTY

There is no reason that has not its contrary, say the wisest of thephilosophers. I was just now ruminating on the excellent saying one ofthe ancients alleges for the contempt of life: "No good can bringpleasure, unless it be that for the loss of which we are beforehandprepared. "

 "In aequo est dolor amissae rei, et timor amittendae, "

 ["The grief of losing a thing, and the fear of losing it, are equal. "--Seneca, Ep. , 98. ]

meaning by this that the fruition of life cannot be truly pleasant to usif we are in fear of losing it. It might, however, be said, on thecontrary, that we hug and embrace this good so much the more earnestly, and with so much greater affection, by how much we see it the lessassured and fear to have it taken from us: for it is evident, as fireburns with greater fury when cold comes to mix with it, that our will ismore obstinate by being opposed:

 "Si nunquam Danaen habuisset ahenea turris, Non esses, Danae, de Jove facta parens;"

 ["If a brazen tower had not held Danae, you would not, Danae, have been made a mother by Jove. "--Ovid, Amoy. , ii. 19, 27. ]

and that there is nothing naturally so contrary to our taste as satietywhich proceeds from facility; nor anything that so much whets it asrarity and difficulty:

 "Omnium rerum voluptas ipso, quo debet fugare, periculo crescit. "

 ["The pleasure of all things increases by the same danger that should deter it. "--Seneca, De Benef. , vii. 9. ]

 "Galla, nega; satiatur amor, nisi gaudia torquent. "

 ["Galla, refuse me; love is glutted with joys that are not attended with trouble. "--Martial, iv. 37. ]

To keep love in breath, Lycurgus made a decree that the married people ofLacedaemon should never enjoy one another but by stealth; and that itshould be as great a shame to take them in bed together as committingwith others. The difficulty of assignations, the danger of surprise, theshame of the morning, "Et languor, et silentium, Et latere petitus imo Spiritus:"

 ["And languor, and silence, and sighs, coming from the innermost heart. "--Hor. , Epod. , xi. 9. ]

these are what give the piquancy to the sauce. How many very wantonlypleasant sports spring from the most decent and modest language of theworks on love? Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it ismuch sweeter when it smarts and has the skin rippled. The courtesanFlora said she never lay with Pompey but that she made him wear theprints of her teeth. --[Plutarch, Life of Pompey, c. I. ]

 "Quod petiere, premunt arcte, faciuntque dolorem Corporis, et dentes inlidunt saepe labellis . . . Et stimuli subsunt, qui instigant laedere ad ipsum, Quodcunque est, rabies unde illae germina surgunt. "

 ["What they have sought they dress closely, and cause pain; on the lips fix the teeth, and every kiss indents: urged by latent stimulus the part to wound"--Lucretius, i. 4. ]

And so it is in everything: difficulty gives all things their estimation;the people of the march of Ancona more readily make their vows to St. James, and those of Galicia to Our Lady of Loreto; they make wonderfulto-do at Liege about the baths of Lucca, and in Tuscany about those ofAspa: there are few Romans seen in the fencing school of Rome, which isfull of French. That great Cato also, as much as us, nauseated his wifewhilst she was his, and longed for her when in the possession of another. I was fain to turn out into the paddock an old horse, as he was not to begoverned when he smelt a mare: the facility presently sated him astowards his own, but towards strange mares, and the first that passed bythe pale of his pasture, he would again fall to his importunate neighingsand his furious heats as before. Our appetite contemns and passes bywhat it has in possession, to run after that it has not:

 "Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat. "

 ["He slights her who is close at hand, and runs after her who flees from him. "--Horace, Sat. , i. 2, 108. ]

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to't:

 "Nisi to servare puellam Incipis, incipiet desinere esse mea:"

 ["Unless you begin to guard your mistress, she will soon begin to be no longer mine. "--Ovid, Amoy. , ii. 19, 47. ]

to give it wholly up to us is to beget in us contempt. Want andabundance fall into the same inconvenience:

 "Tibi quod superest, mihi quod desit, dolet. "

 ["Your superfluities trouble you, and what I want troubles me. --"Terence, Phoym. , i. 3, 9. ]

Desire and fruition equally afflict us. The rigors of mistresses aretroublesome, but facility, to say truth, still more so; forasmuch asdiscontent and anger spring from the esteem we have of the thing desired, heat and actuate love, but satiety begets disgust; 'tis a blunt, dull, stupid, tired, and slothful passion:

 "Si qua volet regnare diu, contemnat amantem. "

 ["She who would long retain her power must use her lover ill. " --Ovid, Amor. , ii. 19, 33]

 "Contemnite, amantes: Sic hodie veniet, si qua negavit heri. "

 ["Slight your mistress; she will to-day come who denied you yesterday. --"Propertius, ii. 14, 19. ]

Why did Poppea invent the use of a mask to hide the beauties of her face, but to enhance it to her lovers? Why have they veiled, even below theheels, those beauties that every one desires to show, and that every onedesires to see? Why do they cover with so many hindrances, one overanother, the parts where our desires and their own have their principalseat? And to what serve those great bastion farthingales, with which ourladies fortify their haunches, but to allure our appetite and to draw uson by removing them farther from us?

 "Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri. "

 ["She flies to the osiers, and desires beforehand to be seen going. " --Virgil, Eclog. , iii. 65. ]

 "Interdum tunica duxit operta moram. "

 ["The hidden robe has sometimes checked love. " --Propertius, ii. 15, 6. ]

To what use serves the artifice of this virgin modesty, this gravecoldness, this severe countenance, this professing to be ignorant ofthings that they know better than we who instruct them in them, but toincrease in us the desire to overcome, control, and trample underfoot atpleasure all this ceremony and all these obstacles? For there is notonly pleasure, but, moreover, glory, in conquering and debauching thatsoft sweetness and that childish modesty, and to reduce a cold andmatronlike gravity to the mercy of our ardent desires: 'tis a glory, say they, to triumph over modesty, chastity, and temperance; and whoeverdissuades ladies from those qualities, betrays both them and himself. We are to believe that their hearts tremble with affright, that the verysound of our words offends the purity of their ears, that they hate usfor talking so, and only yield to our importunity by a compulsive force. Beauty, all powerful as it is, has not wherewithal to make itselfrelished without the mediation of these little arts. Look into Italy, where there is the most and the finest beauty to be sold, how it isnecessitated to have recourse to extrinsic means and other artifices torender itself charming, and yet, in truth, whatever it may do, beingvenal and public, it remains feeble and languishing. Even so in virtueitself, of two like effects, we notwithstanding look upon that as thefairest and most worthy, wherein the most trouble and hazard are setbefore us. 

'Tis an effect of the divine Providence to suffer the holy Church to beafflicted, as we see it, with so many storms and troubles, by thisopposition to rouse pious souls, and to awaken them from that drowsylethargy wherein, by so long tranquillity, they had been immerged. If we should lay the loss we have sustained in the number of those whohave gone astray, in the balance against the benefit we have had by beingagain put in breath, and by having our zeal and strength revived byreason of this opposition, I know not whether the utility would notsurmount the damage. 

We have thought to tie the nuptial knot of our marriages more fast andfirm by having taken away all means of dissolving it, but the knot of thewill and affection is so much the more slackened and made loose, by howmuch that of constraint is drawn closer; and, on the contrary, that whichkept the marriages at Rome so long in honour and inviolate, was theliberty every one who so desired had to break them; they kept their wivesthe better, because they might part with them, if they would; and, in thefull liberty of divorce, five hundred years and more passed away beforeany one made use on't. 

 "Quod licet, ingratum est; quod non licet, acrius urit. "

 ["What you may, is displeasing; what is forbidden, whets the appetite. --"Ovid, Amor. , ii. 19. ]

We might here introduce the opinion of an ancient upon this occasion, "that executions rather whet than dull the edge of vices: that they donot beget the care of doing well, that being the work of reason anddiscipline, but only a care not to be taken in doing ill:"

 "Latius excisae pestis contagia serpunt. "

 ["The plague-sore being lanced, the infection spreads all the more. " --Rutilius, Itinerar. 1, 397. ]

I do not know that this is true; but I experimentally know, that nevercivil government was by that means reformed; the order and regimen ofmanners depend upon some other expedient. 

The Greek histories make mention of the Argippians, neighbours toScythia, who live without either rod or stick for offence; where not onlyno one attempts to attack them, but whoever can fly thither is safe, byreason of their virtue and sanctity of life, and no one is so bold as tolay hands upon them; and they have applications made to them to determinethe controversies that arise betwixt men of other countries. There is acertain nation, where the enclosures of gardens and fields they wouldpreserve, are made only of a string of cotton; and, so fenced, is morefirm and secure than by our hedges and ditches. 

 "Furem signata sollicitant . . . Aperta effractarius praeterit. "

 ["Things sealed, up invite a thief: the housebreaker passes by open doors. "--Seneca, Epist. , 68. ]

Peradventure, the facility of entering my house, amongst other things, has been a means to preserve it from the violence of our civil wars:defence allures attempt, and defiance provokes an enemy. I enervated thesoldiers' design by depriving the exploit of danger and all manner ofmilitary glory, which is wont to serve them for pretence and excuse:whatever is bravely, is ever honourably, done, at a time when justice isdead. I render them the conquest of my house cowardly and base; it isnever shut to any one that knocks; my gate has no other guard than aporter, and he of ancient custom and ceremony; who does not so much serveto defend it as to offer it with more decorum and grace; I have no otherguard nor sentinel than the stars. A gentleman would play the fool tomake a show of defence, if he be not really in a condition to defendhimself. He who lies open on one side, is everywhere so; our ancestorsdid not think of building frontier garrisons. The means of assaulting, I mean without battery or army, and of surprising our houses, increasesevery day more and more beyond the means to guard them; men's wits aregenerally bent that way; in invasion every one is concerned: none but therich in defence. Mine was strong for the time when it was built; I haveadded nothing to it of that kind, and should fear that its strength mightturn against myself; to which we are to consider that a peaceable timewould require it should be dismantled. There is danger never to be ableto regain it, and it would be very hard to keep; for in intestinedissensions, your man may be of the party you fear; and where religion isthe pretext, even a man's nearest relations become unreliable, with somecolour of justice. The public exchequer will not maintain our domesticgarrisons; they would exhaust it: we ourselves have not the means to doit without ruin, or, which is more inconvenient and injurious, withoutruining the people. The condition of my loss would be scarcely worse. As to the rest, you there lose all; and even your friends will be moreready to accuse your want of vigilance and your improvidence, and yourignorance of and indifference to your own business, than to pity you. That so many garrisoned houses have been undone whereas this of mineremains, makes me apt to believe that they were only lost by beingguarded; this gives an enemy both an invitation and colour of reason; alldefence shows a face of war. Let who will come to me in God's name; butI shall not invite them; 'tis the retirement I have chosen for my reposefrom war. I endeavour to withdraw this corner from the public tempest, as I also do another corner in my soul. Our war may put on what forms itwill, multiply and diversify itself into new parties; for my part, I stirnot. Amongst so many garrisoned houses, myself alone amongst those of myrank, so far as I know, in France, have trusted purely to Heaven for theprotection of mine, and have never removed plate, deeds, or hangings. I will neither fear nor save myself by halves. If a full acknowledgmentacquires the Divine favour, it will stay with me to the end: if not, Ihave still continued long enough to render my continuance remarkable andfit to be recorded. How? Why, there are thirty years that I have thuslived. 

CHAPTER XVI

OF GLORY

There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice which denotes andsignifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of thesubstance; 'tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it. God, who is all fulness in Himself and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may beaugmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to Hisexterior works: which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him, forasmuch as He can have no accession of good, we attribute to His name, which is the part out of Him that is nearest to us. Thus is it that toGod alone glory and honour appertain; and there is nothing so remote fromreason as that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, beingindigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and havingcontinual need of amelioration, 'tis to that we ought to employ all ourendeavour. We are all hollow and empty; 'tis not with wind and voicethat we are to fill ourselves; we want a more solid substance to repairus: a man starving with hunger would be very simple to seek rather toprovide himself with a gay garment than with a good meal: we are to lookafter that whereof we have most need. As we have it in our ordinaryprayers:

 "Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus. "

We are in want of beauty, health, wisdom, virtue, and such like essentialqualities: exterior ornaments should, be looked after when we have madeprovision for necessary things. Divinity treats amply and morepertinently of this subject, but I am not much versed in it. 

Chrysippus and Diogenes were the earliest and firmest advocates of thecontempt of glory; and maintained that, amongst all pleasures, there wasnone more dangerous nor more to be avoided than that which proceeds fromthe approbation of others. And, in truth, experience makes us sensible ofmany very hurtful treasons in it. There is nothing that so poisonsprinces as flattery, nor anything whereby wicked men more easily obtaincredit and favour with them; nor panderism so apt and so usually made useof to corrupt the chastity of women as to wheedle and entertain them withtheir own praises. The first charm the Syrens made use of to allureUlysses is of this nature:

 "Deca vers nous, deca, o tres-louable Ulysse, Et le plus grand honneur don't la Grece fleurisse. "

 ["Come hither to us, O admirable Ulysses, come hither, thou greatest ornament and pride of Greece. "--Homer, Odysseus, xii. 184. ]

These philosophers said, that all the glory of the world was not worth anunderstanding man's holding out his finger to obtain it:

 "Gloria quantalibet quid erit, si gloria tantum est?"

 ["What is glory, be it as glorious as it may be, if it be no more than glory?"--Juvenal, Sat. , vii. 81. ]

I say for it alone; for it often brings several commodities along withit, for which it may justly be desired: it acquires us good-will, andrenders us less subject and exposed to insult and offence from others, and the like. It was also one of the principal doctrines of Epicurus;for this precept of his sect, Conceal thy life, that forbids men toencumber themselves with public negotiations and offices, alsonecessarily presupposes a contempt of glory, which is the world'sapprobation of those actions we produce in public. --[Plutarch, Whetherthe saying, Conceal thy life, is well said. ]--He that bids us concealourselves, and to have no other concern but for ourselves, and who willnot have us known to others, would much less have us honoured andglorified; and so advises Idomeneus not in any sort to regulate hisactions by the common reputation or opinion, except so as to avoid theother accidental inconveniences that the contempt of men might bring uponhim. 

These discourses are, in my opinion, very true and rational; but we are, I know not how, double in ourselves, which is the cause that what webelieve we do not believe, and cannot disengage ourselves from what wecondemn. Let us see the last and dying words of Epicurus; they aregrand, and worthy of such a philosopher, and yet they carry some touchesof the recommendation of his name and of that humour he had decried byhis precepts. Here is a letter that he dictated a little before his lastgasp:

 "EPICUYUS TO HEYMACHUS, health. 

 "Whilst I was passing over the happy and last day of my life, I write this, but, at the same time, afflicted with such pain in my bladder and bowels that nothing can be greater, but it was recompensed with the pleasure the remembrance of my inventions and doctrines brought to my soul. Now, as the affection thou hast ever from thy infancy borne towards me and philosophy requires, take upon thee the protection of Metrodorus' children. "

This is the letter. And that which makes me interpret that the pleasurehe says he had in his soul concerning his inventions, has some referenceto the reputation he hoped for thence after his death, is the manner ofhis will, in which he gives order that Amynomachus and Timocrates, hisheirs, should, every January, defray the expense of the celebration ofhis birthday as Hermachus should appoint; and also the expense thatshould be made the twentieth of every moon in entertaining thephilosophers, his friends, who should assemble in honour of the memory ofhim and of Metrodorus. --[Cicero, De Finibus, ii. 30. ]

Carneades was head of the contrary opinion, and maintained that glory wasto be desired for itself, even as we embrace our posthumous issue forthemselves, having no knowledge nor enjoyment of them. This opinion hasnot failed to be the more universally followed, as those commonly arethat are most suitable to our inclinations. Aristotle gives it the firstplace amongst external goods; and avoids, as too extreme vices, theimmoderate either seeking or evading it. I believe that, if we had thebooks Cicero wrote upon this subject, we should there find prettystories; for he was so possessed with this passion, that, if he haddared, I think he could willingly have fallen into the excess that othersdid, that virtue itself was not to be coveted, but upon the account ofthe honour that always attends it:

 "Paulum sepultae distat inertiae Celata virtus:"

 ["Virtue concealed little differs from dead sloth. " --Horace, Od. , iv. 9, 29. ]

which is an opinion so false, that I am vexed it could ever enter intothe understanding of a man that was honoured with the name ofphilosopher. 

If this were true, men need not be virtuous but in public; and we shouldbe no further concerned to keep the operations of the soul, which is thetrue seat of virtue, regular and in order, than as they are to arrive atthe knowledge of others. Is there no more in it, then, but only slilyand with circumspection to do ill? "If thou knowest, " says Carneades, "of a serpent lurking in a place where, without suspicion, a person isgoing to sit down, by whose death thou expectest an advantage, thou dostill if thou dost not give him caution of his danger; and so much the morebecause the action is to be known by none but thyself. " If we do nottake up of ourselves the rule of well-doing, if impunity pass with us forjustice, to how many sorts of wickedness shall we every day abandonourselves? I do not find what Sextus Peduceus did, in faithfullyrestoring the treasure that C. Plotius had committed to his sole secrecyand trust, a thing that I have often done myself, so commendable, as Ishould think it an execrable baseness, had we done otherwise; and I thinkit of good use in our days to recall the example of P. Sextilius Rufus, whom Cicero accuses to have entered upon an inheritance contrary to hisconscience, not only not against law, but even by the determination ofthe laws themselves; and M. Crassus and Hortensius, who, by reason oftheir authority and power, having been called in by a stranger to sharein the succession of a forged will, that so he might secure his own part, satisfied themselves with having no hand in the forgery, and refused notto make their advantage and to come in for a share: secure enough, ifthey could shroud themselves from accusations, witnesses, and thecognisance of the laws:

 "Meminerint Deum se habere testem, id est (ut ego arbitror) mentem suam. "

 ["Let them consider they have God to witness, that is (as I interpret it), their own consciences. "--Cicero, De Offic. , iii. 10. ]

Virtue is a very vain and frivolous thing if it derive its recommendationfrom glory; and 'tis to no purpose that we endeavour to give it a stationby itself, and separate it from fortune; for what is more accidental thanreputation?

 "Profecto fortuna in omni re dominatur: ea res cunctas ex libidine magis, quhm ex vero, celebrat, obscuratque. "

 ["Fortune rules in all things; it advances and depresses things more out of its own will than of right and justice. " --Sallust, Catilina, c. 8. ]

So to order it that actions may be known and seen is purely the work offortune; 'tis chance that helps us to glory, according to its owntemerity. I have often seen her go before merit, and often very muchoutstrip it. He who first likened glory to a shadow did better than hewas aware of; they are both of them things pre-eminently vain glory also, like a shadow, goes sometimes before the body, and sometimes in lengthinfinitely exceeds it. They who instruct gentlemen only to employ theirvalour for the obtaining of honour:

 "Quasi non sit honestum, quod nobilitatum non sit;"

 ["As though it were not a virtue, unless celebrated" --Cicero De Offic. Iii. 10. ]

what do they intend by that but to instruct them never to hazardthemselves if they are not seen, and to observe well if there bewitnesses present who may carry news of their valour, whereas a thousandoccasions of well-doing present themselves which cannot be taken noticeof? How many brave individual actions are buried in the crowd of abattle? Whoever shall take upon him to watch another's behaviour in sucha confusion is not very busy himself, and the testimony he shall give ofhis companions' deportment will be evidence against himself:

 "Vera et sapiens animi magnitudo, honestum illud, quod maxime naturam sequitur, in factis positum, non in gloria, judicat. "

 ["The true and wise magnanimity judges that the bravery which most follows nature more consists in act than glory. " --Cicero, De Offic. I. 19. ]

All the glory that I pretend to derive from my life is that I have livedit in quiet; in quiet, not according to Metrodorus, or Arcesilaus, orAristippus, but according to myself. For seeing philosophy has not beenable to find out any way to tranquillity that is good in common, letevery one seek it in particular. 

To what do Caesar and Alexander owe the infinite grandeur of their renownbut to fortune? How many men has she extinguished in the beginning oftheir progress, of whom we have no knowledge, who brought as much courageto the work as they, if their adverse hap had not cut them off in thefirst sally of their arms? Amongst so many and so great dangers I do notremember I have anywhere read that Caesar was ever wounded; a thousandhave fallen in less dangers than the least of those he went through. Aninfinite number of brave actions must be performed without witness andlost, before one turns to account. A man is not always on the top of abreach, or at the head of an army, in the sight of his general, as upon ascaffold; a man is often surprised betwixt the hedge and the ditch; hemust run the hazard of his life against a henroost; he must dislodge fourrascally musketeers out of a barn; he must prick out single from hisparty, and alone make some attempts, according as necessity will have it. And whoever will observe will, I believe, find it experimentally true, that occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous; and thatin the wars of our own times there have more brave men been lost inoccasions of little moment, and in the dispute about some little paltryfort, than in places of greatest importance, and where their valour mighthave been more honourably employed. 

Who thinks his death achieved to ill purpose if he do not fall on somesignal occasion, instead of illustrating his death, wilfully obscures hislife, suffering in the meantime many very just occasions of hazardinghimself to slip out of his hands; and every just one is illustriousenough, every man's conscience being a sufficient trumpet to him. 

 "Gloria nostra est testimonium conscientiae nostrae. "

 ["For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience. " --Corinthians, i. I. ]

He who is only a good man that men may know it, and that he may be thebetter esteemed when 'tis known; who will not do well but upon conditionthat his virtue may be known to men: is one from whom much service is notto be expected:

 "Credo ch 'el reste di quel verno, cose Facesse degne di tener ne conto; Ma fur fin' a quel tempo si nascose, Che non a colpa mia s' hor 'non le conto Perche Orlando a far l'opre virtuose Piu ch'a narrar le poi sempre era pronto; Ne mai fu alcun' de'suoi fatti espresso, Se non quando ebbe i testimonii appresso. "

 ["The rest of the winter, I believe, was spent in actions worthy of narration, but they were done so secretly that if I do not tell them I am not to blame, for Orlando was more bent to do great acts than to boast of them, so that no deeds of his were ever known but those that had witnesses. "--Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, xi. 81. ]

A man must go to the war upon the account of duty, and expect therecompense that never fails brave and worthy actions, how private soever, or even virtuous thoughts-the satisfaction that a well-disposedconscience receives in itself in doing well. A man must be valiant forhimself, and upon account of the advantage it is to him to have hiscourage seated in a firm and secure place against the assaults offortune:

 "Virtus, repulsaa nescia sordidx Intaminatis fulget honoribus Nec sumit, aut ponit secures Arbitrio popularis aura. "

 ["Virtue, repudiating all base repulse, shines in taintless honours, nor takes nor leaves dignity at the mere will of the vulgar. "--Horace, Od. , iii. 2, 17. ]

It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part, but forourselves within, where no eyes can pierce but our own; there she defendsus from the fear of death, of pain, of shame itself: there she arms usagainst the loss of our children, friends, and fortunes: and whenopportunity presents itself, she leads us on to the hazards of war:

 "Non emolumento aliquo, sed ipsius honestatis decore. "

 ["Not for any profit, but for the honour of honesty itself. " --Cicero, De Finib. , i. 10. ]

This profit is of much greater advantage, and more worthy to be covetedand hoped for, than, honour and glory, which are no other than afavourable judgment given of us. 

A dozen men must be called out of a whole nation to judge about an acreof land; and the judgment of our inclinations and actions, the mostdifficult and most important matter that is, we refer to the voice anddetermination of the rabble, the mother of ignorance, injustice, andinconstancy. Is it reasonable that the life of a wise man shoulddepend upon the judgment of fools?

 "An quidquam stultius, quam, quos singulos contemnas, eos aliquid putare esse universes?"

 ["Can anything be more foolish than to think that those you despise singly, can be anything else in general. " --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , v. 36. ]

He that makes it his business to please them, will have enough to do andnever have done; 'tis a mark that can never be aimed at or hit:

 "Nil tam inaestimabile est, quam animi multitudinis. "

 ["Nothing is to be so little understood as the minds of the multitude. "--Livy, xxxi. 34. ]

Demetrius pleasantly said of the voice of the people, that he made nomore account of that which came from above than of that which came frombelow. He [Cicero] says more:

 "Ego hoc judico, si quando turpe non sit, tamen non esse non turpe, quum id a multitudine laudatur. "

 ["I am of opinion, that though a thing be not foul in itself, yet it cannot but become so when commended by the multitude. " --Cicero, De Finib. , ii. 15. ]

No art, no activity of wit, could conduct our steps so as to follow sowandering and so irregular a guide; in this windy confusion of the noiseof vulgar reports and opinions that drive us on, no way worth anythingcan be chosen. Let us not propose to ourselves so floating and waveringan end; let us follow constantly after reason; let the public approbationfollow us there, if it will; and as it wholly depends upon fortune, wehave no reason sooner to expect it by any other way than that. Eventhough I would not follow the right way because it is right, I should, however, follow it as having experimentally found that, at the end ofthe reckoning, 'tis commonly the most happy and of greatest utility. 

 "Dedit hoc providentia hominibus munus, ut honesta magis juvarent. "

 ["This gift Providence has given to men, that honest things should be the most agreeable. "--Quintilian, Inst. Orat. , i. 12. ]

The mariner of old said thus to Neptune, in a great tempest: "O God, thouwilt save me if thou wilt, and if thou choosest, thou wilt destroy me;but, however, I will hold my rudder straight. "--[Seneca, Ep. , 85. ]--I have seen in my time a thousand men supple, halfbred, ambiguous, whomno one doubted to be more worldly-wise than I, lose themselves, where Ihave saved myself:

 "Risi successus posse carere dolos. "

 ["I have laughed to see cunning fail of success. " --Ovid, Heroid, i. 18. ]

Paulus AEmilius, going on the glorious expedition of Macedonia, above allthings charged the people of Rome not to speak of his actions during hisabsence. Oh, the license of judgments is a great disturbance to greataffairs! forasmuch as every one has not the firmness of Fabius againstcommon, adverse, and injurious tongues, who rather suffered his authorityto be dissected by the vain fancies of men, than to do less well in hischarge with a favourable reputation and the popular applause. 

There is I know not what natural sweetness in hearing one's selfcommended; but we are a great deal too fond of it:

 "Laudari metuam, neque enim mihi cornea fibra est Sed recti finemque extremumque esse recuso Euge tuum, et belle. "

 ["I should fear to be praised, for my heart is not made of horn; but I deny that 'excellent--admirably done, ' are the terms and final aim of virtue. "--Persius, i. 47. ]

I care not so much what I am in the opinions of others, as what I am inmy own; I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing. Strangers seenothing but events and outward appearances; everybody can set a good faceon the matter, when they have trembling and terror within: they do notsee my heart, they see but my countenance. One is right in decrying thehypocrisy that is in war; for what is more easy to an old soldier than toshift in a time of danger, and to counterfeit the brave when he has nomore heart than a chicken? There are so many ways to avoid hazarding aman's own person, that we have deceived the world a thousand times beforewe come to be engaged in a real danger: and even then, finding ourselvesin an inevitable necessity of doing something, we can make shift for thattime to conceal our apprehensions by setting a good face on the business, though the heart beats within; and whoever had the use of the Platonicring, which renders those invisible that wear it, if turned inwardtowards the palm of the hand, a great many would very often hidethemselves when they ought most to appear, and would repent being placedin so honourable a post, where necessity must make them bold. 

 "Falsus honor juvat, et mendax infamia terret Quem nisi mendosum et mendacem?"

 ["False honour pleases, and calumny affrights, the guilty and the sick. "--Horace, Ep. , i. 16, 89. ]

Thus we see how all the judgments that are founded upon externalappearances, are marvellously uncertain and doubtful; and that there isno so certain testimony as every one is to himself. In these, how manysoldiers' boys are companions of our glory? he who stands firm in anopen trench, what does he in that more than fifty poor pioneers who opento him the way and cover it with their own bodies for fivepence a daypay, do before him?

 "Non quicquid turbida Roma Elevet, accedas; examenque improbum in illa Castiges trutina: nec to quaesiveris extra. "

 ["Do not, if turbulent Rome disparage anything, accede; nor correct a false balance by that scale; nor seek anything beyond thyself. " --Persius, Sat. , i. 5. ]

The dispersing and scattering our names into many mouths, we call makingthem more great; we will have them there well received, and that thisincrease turn to their advantage, which is all that can be excusable inthis design. But the excess of this disease proceeds so far that manycovet to have a name, be it what it will. Trogus Pompeius says ofHerostratus, and Titus Livius of Manlius Capitolinus, that they were moreambitious of a great reputation than of a good one. This is very common;we are more solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak; and itis enough for us that our names are often mentioned, be it after whatmanner it will. It should seem that to be known, is in some sort to havea man's life and its duration in others' keeping. I, for my part, holdthat I am not, but in myself; and of that other life of mine which liesin the knowledge of my friends, to consider it naked and simply initself, I know very well that I am sensible of no fruit nor enjoymentfrom it but by the vanity of a fantastic opinion; and when I shall bedead, I shall be still and much less sensible of it; and shall, withal, absolutely lose the use of those real advantages that sometimesaccidentally follow it. 

I shall have no more handle whereby to take hold of reputation, neithershall it have any whereby to take hold of or to cleave to me; for toexpect that my name should be advanced by it, in the first place, I haveno name that is enough my own; of two that I have, one is common to allmy race, and indeed to others also; there are two families at Paris andMontpellier, whose surname is Montaigne, another in Brittany, and one inXaintonge, De La Montaigne. The transposition of one syllable only wouldsuffice so to ravel our affairs, that I shall share in their glory, andthey peradventure will partake of my discredit; and, moreover, myancestors have formerly been surnamed, Eyquem, --[Eyquem was thepatronymic. ]--a name wherein a family well known in England is at thisday concerned. As to my other name, every one may take it that will, andso, perhaps, I may honour a porter in my own stead. And besides, thoughI had a particular distinction by myself, what can it distinguish, when Iam no more? Can it point out and favour inanity?

 "Non levior cippus nunc imprimit ossa? Laudat posteritas! Nunc non e manibus illis, Nunc non a tumulo fortunataque favilla, Nascentur violae?"

 ["Does the tomb press with less weight upon my bones? Do comrades praise? Not from my manes, not from the tomb, not from the ashes will violets grow. "--Persius, Sat. , i. 37. ]

but of this I have spoken elsewhere. As to what remains, in a greatbattle where ten thousand men are maimed or killed, there are not fifteenwho are taken notice of; it must be some very eminent greatness, or someconsequence of great importance that fortune has added to it, thatsignalises a private action, not of a harquebuser only, but of a greatcaptain; for to kill a man, or two, or ten: to expose a man's selfbravely to the utmost peril of death, is indeed something in every one ofus, because we there hazard all; but for the world's concern, they arethings so ordinary, and so many of them are every day seen, and theremust of necessity be so many of the same kind to produce any notableeffect, that we cannot expect any particular renown from it:

 "Casus multis hic cognitus, ac jam Tritus, et a medio fortunae ductus acervo. "

 ["The accident is known to many, and now trite; and drawn from the midst of Fortune's heap. "--Juvenal, Sat. , xiii. 9. ]

Of so many thousands of valiant men who have died within these fifteenhundred years in France with their swords in their hands, not a hundredhave come to our knowledge. The memory, not of the commanders only, butof battles and victories, is buried and gone; the fortunes of above halfof the world, for want of a record, stir not from their place, and vanishwithout duration. If I had unknown events in my possession, I shouldthink with great ease to out-do those that are recorded, in all sorts ofexamples. Is it not strange that even of the Greeks and Romans, with somany writers and witnesses, and so many rare and noble exploits, so feware arrived at our knowledge:

 "Ad nos vix tenuis famx perlabitur aura. "

 ["An obscure rumour scarce is hither come. "--AEneid, vii. 646. ]

It will be much if, a hundred years hence, it be remembered in generalthat in our times there were civil wars in France. The Lacedaemonians, entering into battle, sacrificed to the Muses, to the end that theiractions might be well and worthily written, looking upon it as a divineand no common favour, that brave acts should find witnesses that couldgive them life and memory. Do we expect that at every musket-shot wereceive, and at every hazard we run, there must be a register ready torecord it? and, besides, a hundred registers may enrol them whosecommentaries will not last above three days, and will never come to thesight of any one. We have not the thousandth part of ancient writings;'tis fortune that gives them a shorter or longer life, according to herfavour; and 'tis permissible to doubt whether those we have be not theworst, not having seen the rest. Men do not write histories of things ofso little moment: a man must have been general in the conquest of anempire or a kingdom; he must have won two-and-fifty set battles, andalways the weaker in number, as Caesar did: ten thousand brave fellowsand many great captains lost their lives valiantly in his service, whosenames lasted no longer than their wives and children lived:

 "Quos fama obscura recondit. "

 ["Whom an obscure reputation conceals. "--AEneid, v. 302. ]

Even those whom we see behave themselves well, three months or threeyears after they have departed hence, are no more mentioned than if theyhad never been. Whoever will justly consider, and with due proportion, of what kind of men and of what sort of actions the glory sustains itselfin the records of history, will find that there are very few actions andvery few persons of our times who can there pretend any right. How manyworthy men have we known to survive their own reputation, who have seenand suffered the honour and glory most justly acquired in their youth, extinguished in their own presence? And for three years of thisfantastic and imaginary life we must go and throw away our true andessential life, and engage ourselves in a perpetual death! The sagespropose to themselves a nobler and more just end in so important anenterprise:

 "Recte facti, fecisse merces est: officii fructus, ipsum officium est. "

 ["The reward of a thing well done is to have done it; the fruit of a good service is the service itself. "--Seneca, Ep. , 8. ]

It were, peradventure, excusable in a painter or other artisan, or in arhetorician or a grammarian, to endeavour to raise himself a name by hisworks; but the actions of virtue are too noble in themselves to seek anyother reward than from their own value, and especially to seek it in thevanity of human judgments. 

If this false opinion, nevertheless, be of such use to the public as tokeep men in their duty; if the people are thereby stirred up to virtue;if princes are touched to see the world bless the memory of Trajan, andabominate that of Nero; if it moves them to see the name of that greatbeast, once so terrible and feared, so freely cursed and reviled by everyschoolboy, let it by all means increase, and be as much as possiblenursed up and cherished amongst us; and Plato, bending his wholeendeavour to make his citizens virtuous, also advises them not to despisethe good repute and esteem of the people; and says it falls out, by acertain Divine inspiration, that even the wicked themselves oft-times, aswell by word as opinion, can rightly distinguish the virtuous from thewicked. This person and his tutor are both marvellous and boldartificers everywhere to add divine operations and revelations wherehuman force is wanting:

 "Ut tragici poetae confugiunt ad deum, cum explicare argumenti exitum non possunt:"

 ["As tragic poets fly to some god when they cannot explain the issue of their argument. "--Cicero, De Nat. Deor. , i. 20. ]

and peradventure, for this reason it was that Timon, railing at him, called him the great forger of miracles. Seeing that men, by theirinsufficiency, cannot pay themselves well enough with current money, letthe counterfeit be superadded. 'Tis a way that has been practised by allthe legislators: and there is no government that has not some mixtureeither of ceremonial vanity or of false opinion, that serves for a curbto keep the people in their duty. 'Tis for this that most of them havetheir originals and beginnings fabulous, and enriched with supernaturalmysteries; 'tis this that has given credit to bastard religions, andcaused them to be countenanced by men of understanding; and for this, that Numa and Sertorius, to possess their men with a better opinion ofthem, fed them with this foppery; one, that the nymph Egeria, the otherthat his white hind, brought them all their counsels from the gods. And the authority that Numa gave to his laws, under the title of thepatronage of this goddess, Zoroaster, legislator of the Bactrians andPersians, gave to his under the name of the God Oromazis: Trismegistus, legislator of the Egyptians, under that of Mercury; Xamolxis, legislatorof the Scythians, under that of Vesta; Charondas, legislator of theChalcidians, under that of Saturn; Minos, legislator of the Candiots, under that of Jupiter; Lycurgus, legislator of the Lacedaemonians, underthat of Apollo; and Draco and Solon, legislators of the Athenians, underthat of Minerva. And every government has a god at the head of it;the others falsely, that truly, which Moses set over the Jews at theirdeparture out of Egypt. The religion of the Bedouins, as the Sire deJoinville reports, amongst other things, enjoined a belief that the soulof him amongst them who died for his prince, went into another body morehappy, more beautiful, and more robust than the former; by which meansthey much more willingly ventured their lives:

 "In ferrum mens prona viris, animaeque capaces Mortis, et ignavum est rediturae parcere vitae. "

 ["Men's minds are prone to the sword, and their souls able to bear death; and it is base to spare a life that will be renewed. " --Lucan, i. 461. ]

This is a very comfortable belief, however erroneous. Every nation hasmany such examples of its own; but this subject would require a treatiseby itself. 

To add one word more to my former discourse, I would advise the ladies nolonger to call that honour which is but their duty:

 "Ut enim consuetudo loquitur, id solum dicitur honestum, quod est populari fama gloriosum;"

 ["As custom puts it, that only is called honest which is glorious by the public voice. "--Cicero, De Finibus, ii. 15. ]

their duty is the mark, their honour but the outward rind. Neither wouldI advise them to give this excuse for payment of their denial: for Ipresuppose that their intentions, their desire, and will, which arethings wherein their honour is not at all concerned, forasmuch as nothingthereof appears without, are much better regulated than the effects:

 "Qux quia non liceat, non facit, illa facit:"

 ["She who only refuses, because 'tis forbidden, consents. " --Ovid, Amor. , ii. 4, 4. ]

The offence, both towards God and in the conscience, would be as great todesire as to do it; and, besides, they are actions so private and secretof themselves, as would be easily enough kept from the knowledge ofothers, wherein the honour consists, if they had not another respect totheir duty, and the affection they bear to chastity, for itself. Everywoman of honour will much rather choose to lose her honour than to hurther conscience. 

CHAPTER XVII

OF PRESUMPTION

There is another sort of glory, which is the having too good an opinionof our own worth. 'Tis an inconsiderate affection with which we flatterourselves, and that represents us to ourselves other than we truly are:like the passion of love, that lends beauties and graces to the object, and makes those who are caught by it, with a depraved and corruptjudgment, consider the thing which they love other and more perfect thanit is. 

I would not, nevertheless, for fear of failing on this side, that a manshould not know himself aright, or think himself less than he is; thejudgment ought in all things to maintain its rights; 'tis all the reasonin the world he should discern in himself, as well as in others, whattruth sets before him; if it be Caesar, let him boldly think himself thegreatest captain in the world. We are nothing but ceremony: ceremonycarries us away, and we leave the substance of things: we hold by thebranches, and quit the trunk and the body; we have taught the ladies toblush when they hear that but named which they are not at all afraid todo: we dare not call our members by their right names, yet are not afraidto employ them in all sorts of debauchery: ceremony forbids us to expressby words things that are lawful and natural, and we obey it: reasonforbids us to do things unlawful and ill, and nobody obeys it. I findmyself here fettered by the laws of ceremony; for it neither permits aman to speak well of himself, nor ill: we will leave her there for thistime. 

They whom fortune (call it good or ill) has made to, pass their lives insome eminent degree, may by their public actions manifest what they are;but they whom she has only employed in the crowd, and of whom nobody willsay a word unless they speak themselves, are to be excused if they takethe boldness to speak of themselves to such as are interested to knowthem; by the example of Lucilius:

 "Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim Credebat libris, neque si male cesserat, usquam Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit, ut omnis, Votiva pateat veluri descripta tabella Vita senis;"

 ["He formerly confided his secret thoughts to his books, as to tried friends, and for good and evil, resorted not elsewhere: hence it came to pass, that the old man's life is there all seen as on a votive tablet. "--Horace, Sat. , ii. I, 30. ]

he always committed to paper his actions and thoughts, and thereportrayed himself such as he found himself to be:

 "Nec id Rutilio et Scauro citra fidem; aut obtrectationi fuit. "

 ["Nor was this considered a breach of good faith or a disparagement to Rutilius or Scaurus. "--Tacitus, Agricola, c. I. ]

I remember, then, that from my infancy there was observed in me I knownot what kind of carriage and behaviour, that seemed to relish of prideand arrogance. I will say this, by the way, that it is not unreasonableto suppose that we have qualities and inclinations so much our own, andso incorporate in us, that we have not the means to feel and recognisethem: and of such natural inclinations the body will retain a certainbent, without our knowledge or consent. It was an affectationconformable with his beauty that made Alexander carry his head on oneside, and caused Alcibiades to lisp; Julius Caesar scratched his headwith one finger, which is the fashion of a man full of troublesomethoughts; and Cicero, as I remember, was wont to pucker up his nose, asign of a man given to scoffing; such motions as these may imperceptiblyhappen in us. There are other artificial ones which I meddle not with, as salutations and congees, by which men acquire, for the most partunjustly, the reputation of being humble and courteous: one may be humbleout of pride. I am prodigal enough of my hat, especially in summer, andnever am so saluted but that I pay it again from persons of what qualitysoever, unless they be in my own service. I should make it my request tosome princes whom I know, that they would be more sparing of thatceremony, and bestow that courtesy where it is more due; for being soindiscreetly and indifferently conferred on all, it is thrown away to nopurpose; if it be without respect of persons, it loses its effect. Amongst irregular deportment, let us not forget that haughty one of theEmperor Constantius, who always in public held his head upright andstiff, without bending or turning on either side, not so much as to lookupon those who saluted him on one side, planting his body in a rigidimmovable posture, without suffering it to yield to the motion of hiscoach, not daring so much as to spit, blow his nose, or wipe his facebefore people. I know not whether the gestures that were observed in mewere of this first quality, and whether I had really any occult pronenessto this vice, as it might well be; and I cannot be responsible for themotions of the body; but as to the motions of the soul, I must hereconfess what I think of the matter. 

This glory consists of two parts; the one in setting too great a valueupon ourselves, and the other in setting too little a value upon others. As to the one, methinks these considerations ought, in the first place, to be of some force: I feel myself importuned by an error of the soulthat displeases me, both as it is unjust, and still more as it istroublesome; I attempt to correct it, but I cannot root it out; and thisis, that I lessen the just value of things that I possess, and overvaluethings, because they are foreign, absent, and none of mine; this humourspreads very far. As the prerogative of the authority makes husbandslook upon their own wives with a vicious disdain, and many fathers theirchildren; so I, betwixt two equal merits, should always be swayed againstmy own; not so much that the jealousy of my advancement and betteringtroubles my judgment, and hinders me from satisfying myself, as that ofitself possession begets a contempt of what it holds and rules. Foreigngovernments, manners, and languages insinuate themselves into my esteem;and I am sensible that Latin allures me by the favour of its dignity tovalue it above its due, as it does with children, and the common sort ofpeople: the domestic government, house, horse, of my neighbour, though nobetter than my own, I prize above my own, because they are not mine. Besides that I am very ignorant in my own affairs, I am struck by theassurance that every one has of himself: whereas there is scarcelyanything that I am sure I know, or that I dare be responsible to myselfthat I can do: I have not my means of doing anything in condition andready, and am only instructed therein after the effect; as doubtful of myown force as I am of another's. Whence it comes to pass that if I happento do anything commendable, I attribute it more to my fortune thanindustry, forasmuch as I design everything by chance and in fear. I havethis, also, in general, that of all the opinions antiquity has held ofmen in gross, I most willingly embrace and adhere to those that mostcontemn and undervalue us, and most push us to naught; methinks, philosophy has never so fair a game to play as when it falls upon ourvanity and presumption; when it most lays open our irresolution, weakness, and ignorance. I look upon the too good opinion that man hasof himself to be the nursing mother of all the most false opinions, bothpublic and private. Those people who ride astride upon the epicycle ofMercury, who see so far into the heavens, are worse to me than atooth-drawer that comes to draw my teeth; for in my study, the subject ofwhich is man, finding so great a variety of judgments, so profound alabyrinth of difficulties, one upon another, so great diversity anduncertainty, even in the school of wisdom itself, you may judge, seeingthese people could not resolve upon the knowledge of themselves and theirown condition, which is continually before their eyes, and within them, seeing they do not know how that moves which they themselves move, norhow to give us a description of the springs they themselves govern andmake use of, how can I believe them about the ebbing and flowing of theNile? The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for ascourge, says the Holy Scripture. 

But to return to what concerns myself; I think it would be very difficultfor any other man to have a meaner opinion of himself; nay, for any otherto have a meaner opinion of me than of myself: I look upon myself as oneof the common sort, saving in this, that I have no better an opinion ofmyself; guilty of the meanest and most popular defects, but not disowningor excusing them; and I do not value myself upon any other account thanbecause I know my own value. If there be any vanity in the case, 'tissuperficially infused into me by the treachery of my complexion, and hasno body that my judgment can discern: I am sprinkled, but not dyed. Forin truth, as to the effects of the mind, there is no part of me, be itwhat it will, with which I am satisfied; and the approbation of othersmakes me not think the better of myself. My judgment is tender and nice, especially in things that concern myself. 

I ever repudiate myself, and feel myself float and waver by reason of myweakness. I have nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment. My sightis clear and regular enough, but, at working, it is apt to dazzle; as Imost manifestly find in poetry: I love it infinitely, and am able to givea tolerable judgment of other men's works; but, in good earnest, when Iapply myself to it, I play the child, and am not able to endure myself. A man may play the fool in everything else, but not in poetry;

 "Mediocribus esse poetis Non dii, non homines, non concessere columnae. "

 ["Neither men, nor gods, nor the pillars (on which the poets offered their writings) permit mediocrity in poets. " --Horace, De Arte Poet. , 372. ]

I would to God this sentence was written over the doors of all ourprinters, to forbid the entrance of so many rhymesters!

 "Verum Nihil securius est malo poetae. "

 ["The truth is, that nothing is more confident than a bad poet. " --Martial, xii. 63, 13. ]

Why have not we such people?--[As those about to be mentioned. ]--Dionysius the father valued himself upon nothing so much as his poetry;at the Olympic games, with chariots surpassing all the others inmagnificence, he sent also poets and musicians to present his verses, with tent and pavilions royally gilt and hung with tapestry. When hisverses came to be recited, the excellence of the delivery at firstattracted the attention of the people; but when they afterwards came topoise the meanness of the composition, they first entered into disdain, and continuing to nettle their judgments, presently proceeded to fury, and ran to pull down and tear to pieces all his pavilions: and, that hischariots neither performed anything to purpose in the race, and that theship which brought back his people failed of making Sicily, and was bythe tempest driven and wrecked upon the coast of Tarentum, they certainlybelieved was through the anger of the gods, incensed, as they themselveswere, against the paltry Poem; and even the mariners who escaped from thewreck seconded this opinion of the people: to which also the oracle thatforetold his death seemed to subscribe; which was, "that Dionysius shouldbe near his end, when he should have overcome those who were better thanhimself, " which he interpreted of the Carthaginians, who surpassed him inpower; and having war with them, often declined the victory, not to incurthe sense of this prediction; but he understood it ill; for the godindicated the time of the advantage, that by favour and injustice heobtained at Athens over the tragic poets, better than himself, havingcaused his own play called the Leneians to be acted in emulation;presently after which victory he died, and partly of the excessive joy heconceived at the success. 

 [Diodorus Siculus, xv. 7. --The play, however, was called the "Ransom of Hector. " It was the games at which it was acted that were called Leneian; they were one of the four Dionysiac festivals. ]

What I find tolerable of mine, is not so really and in itself, but incomparison of other worse things, that I see well enough received. Ienvy the happiness of those who can please and hug themselves in whatthey do; for 'tis an easy thing to be so pleased, because a man extractsthat pleasure from himself, especially if he be constant in hisself-conceit. I know a poet, against whom the intelligent and theignorant, abroad and at home, both heaven and earth exclaim that he hasbut very little notion of it; and yet, for all that, he has never a whitthe worse opinion of himself; but is always falling upon some new piece, always contriving some new invention, and still persists in his opinion, by so much the more obstinately, as it only concerns him to maintain it. 

My works are so far from pleasing me, that as often as I review them, they disgust me:

 "Cum relego, scripsisse pudet; quia plurima cerno, Me quoque, qui feci, judice, digna lini. "

 ["When I reperuse, I blush at what I have written; I ever see one passage after another that I, the author, being the judge, consider should be erased. "--Ovid, De Ponto, i. 5, 15. ]

I have always an idea in my soul, and a sort of disturbed image whichpresents me as in a dream with a better form than that I have made useof; but I cannot catch it nor fit it to my purpose; and even that idea isbut of the meaner sort. Hence I conclude that the productions of thosegreat and rich souls of former times are very much beyond the utmoststretch of my imagination or my wish; their writings do not only satisfyand fill me, but they astound me, and ravish me with admiration; I judgeof their beauty; I see it, if not to the utmost, yet so far at least as'tis possible for me to aspire. Whatever I undertake, I owe a sacrificeto the Graces, as Plutarch says of some one, to conciliate their favour:

 "Si quid enim placet, Si quid dulce horninum sensibus influit, Debentur lepidis omnia Gratiis. "

 ["If anything please that I write, if it infuse delight into men's minds, all is due to the charming Graces. " The verses are probably by some modern poet. ]

They abandon me throughout; all I write is rude; polish and beauty arewanting: I cannot set things off to any advantage; my handling addsnothing to the matter; for which reason I must have it forcible, veryfull, and that has lustre of its own. If I pitch upon subjects that arepopular and gay, 'tis to follow my own inclination, who do not affect agrave and ceremonious wisdom, as the world does; and to make myself moresprightly, but not my style more wanton, which would rather have themgrave and severe; at least if I may call that a style which is an informand irregular way of speaking, a popular jargon, a proceeding withoutdefinition, division, conclusion, perplexed like that Amafanius andRabirius. --[Cicero, Acad. , i. 2. ]--I can neither please nor delight, nor even tickle my readers: the best story in the world is spoiled by myhandling, and becomes flat; I cannot speak but in rough earnest, and amtotally unprovided of that facility which I observe in many of myacquaintance, of entertaining the first comers and keeping a wholecompany in breath, or taking up the ear of a prince with all sorts ofdiscourse without wearying themselves: they never want matter by reasonof the faculty and grace they have in taking hold of the first thing thatstarts up, and accommodating it to the humour and capacity of those withwhom they have to do. Princes do not much affect solid discourses, nor Ito tell stories. The first and easiest reasons, which are commonly thebest taken, I know not how to employ: I am an ill orator to the commonsort. I am apt of everything to say the extremest that I know. Cicerois of opinion that in treatises of philosophy the exordium is the hardestpart; if this be true, I am wise in sticking to the conclusion. And yetwe are to know how to wind the string to all notes, and the sharpest isthat which is the most seldom touched. There is at least as muchperfection in elevating an empty as in supporting a weighty thing. A manmust sometimes superficially handle things, and sometimes push them home. I know very well that most men keep themselves in this lower form fromnot conceiving things otherwise than by this outward bark; but I likewiseknow that the greatest masters, and Xenophon and Plato are often seen tostoop to this low and popular manner of speaking and treating of things, but supporting it with graces which never fail them. 

Farther, my language has nothing in it that is facile and polished; 'tisrough, free, and irregular, and as such pleases, if not my judgment, atall events my inclination, but I very well perceive that I sometimes givemyself too much rein, and that by endeavouring to avoid art andaffectation I fall into the other inconvenience:

 "Brevis esse laboro, Obscurus fio. "

 [ Endeavouring to be brief, I become obscure. " --Hor. , Art. Poet. , 25. ]

Plato says, that the long or the short are not properties, that eithertake away or give value to language. Should I attempt to follow theother more moderate, united, and regular style, I should never attain toit; and though the short round periods of Sallust best suit with myhumour, yet I find Caesar much grander and harder to imitate; and thoughmy inclination would rather prompt me to imitate Seneca's way of writing, yet I do nevertheless more esteem that of Plutarch. Both in doing andspeaking I simply follow my own natural way; whence, peradventure, itfalls out that I am better at speaking than writing. Motion and actionanimate words, especially in those who lay about them briskly, as I do, and grow hot. The comportment, the countenance; the voice, the robe, theplace, will set off some things that of themselves would appear no betterthan prating. Messalla complains in Tacitus of the straitness of somegarments in his time, and of the fashion of the benches where the oratorswere to declaim, that were a disadvantage to their eloquence. 

My French tongue is corrupted, both in the pronunciation and otherwise, by the barbarism of my country. I never saw a man who was a native ofany of the provinces on this side of the kingdom who had not a twang ofhis place of birth, and that was not offensive to ears that were purelyFrench. And yet it is not that I am so perfect in my Perigordin: for Ican no more speak it than High Dutch, nor do I much care. 'Tis alanguage (as the rest about me on every side, of Poitou, Xaintonge, Angoumousin, Limousin, Auvergne), a poor, drawling, scurvy language. There is, indeed, above us towards the mountains a sort of Gascon spoken, that I am mightily taken with: blunt, brief, significant, and in truth amore manly and military language than any other I am acquainted with, assinewy, powerful, and pertinent as the French is graceful, neat, andluxuriant. 

As to the Latin, which was given me for my mother tongue, I have bydiscontinuance lost the use of speaking it, and, indeed, of writing ittoo, wherein I formerly had a particular reputation, by which you may seehow inconsiderable I am on that side. 

Beauty is a thing of great recommendation in the correspondence amongstmen; 'tis the first means of acquiring the favour and good liking of oneanother, and no man is so barbarous and morose as not to perceive himselfin some sort struck with its attraction. The body has a great share inour being, has an eminent place there, and therefore its structure andcomposition are of very just consideration. They who go about todisunite and separate our two principal parts from one another are toblame; we must, on the contrary, reunite and rejoin them. We mustcommand the soul not to withdraw and entertain itself apart, not todespise and abandon the body (neither can she do it but by some apishcounterfeit), but to unite herself close to it, to embrace, cherish, assist, govern, and advise it, and to bring it back and set it into thetrue way when it wanders; in sum, to espouse and be a husband to it, sothat their effects may not appear to be diverse and contrary, but uniformand concurring. Christians have a particular instruction concerning thisconnection, for they know that the Divine justice embraces this societyand juncture of body and soul, even to the making the body capable ofeternal rewards; and that God has an eye to the whole man's ways, andwills that he receive entire chastisement or reward according to hisdemerits or merits. The sect of the Peripatetics, of all sects the mostsociable, attribute to wisdom this sole care equally to provide for thegood of these two associate parts: and the other sects, in notsufficiently applying themselves to the consideration of this mixture, show themselves to be divided, one for the body and the other for thesoul, with equal error, and to have lost sight of their subject, which isMan, and their guide, which they generally confess to be Nature. Thefirst distinction that ever was amongst men, and the first considerationthat gave some pre-eminence over others, 'tis likely was the advantage ofbeauty:

 "Agros divisere atque dedere Pro facie cujusque, et viribus ingenioque; Nam facies multum valuit, viresque vigebant. "

 ["They distributed and conferred the lands to every man according to his beauty and strength and understanding, for beauty was much esteemed and strength was in favour. "--Lucretius, V. 1109. ]

Now I am of something lower than the middle stature, a defect that notonly borders upon deformity, but carries withal a great deal ofinconvenience along with it, especially for those who are in office andcommand; for the authority which a graceful presence and a majestic mienbeget is wanting. C. Marius did not willingly enlist any soldiers whowere not six feet high. The Courtier has, indeed, reason to desire amoderate stature in the gentlemen he is setting forth, rather than anyother, and to reject all strangeness that should make him be pointed at. But if I were to choose whether this medium must be rather below thanabove the common standard, I would not have it so in a soldier. Littlemen, says Aristotle, are pretty, but not handsome; and greatness of soulis discovered in a great body, as beauty is in a conspicuous stature: theEthiopians and Indians, says he, in choosing their kings and magistrates, had regard to the beauty and stature of their persons. They had reason;for it creates respect in those who follow them, and is a terror to theenemy, to see a leader of a brave and goodly stature march at the head ofa battalion:

 "Ipse inter primos praestanti corpore Turnus Vertitur arma, tenens, et toto vertice supra est. "

 ["In the first rank marches Turnus, brandishing his weapon, taller by a head than all the rest. "--Virgil, AEneid, vii. 783. ]

Our holy and heavenly king, of whom every circumstance is most carefullyand with the greatest religion and reverence to be observed, has nothimself rejected bodily recommendation, "Speciosus forma prae filiis hominum. "

 ["He is fairer than the children of men. "--Psalm xiv. 3. ]

And Plato, together with temperance and fortitude, requires beauty in theconservators of his republic. It would vex you that a man should applyhimself to you amongst your servants to inquire where Monsieur is, andthat you should only have the remainder of the compliment of the hat thatis made to your barber or your secretary; as it happened to poorPhilopoemen, who arriving the first of all his company at an inn where hewas expected, the hostess, who knew him not, and saw him an unsightlyfellow, employed him to go help her maids a little to draw water, andmake a fire against Philopoemen's coming; the gentlemen of his trainarriving presently after, and surprised to see him busy in this fineemployment, for he failed not to obey his landlady's command, asked himwhat he was doing there: "I am, " said he, "paying the penalty of myugliness. " The other beauties belong to women; the beauty of stature isthe only beauty of men. Where there is a contemptible stature, neitherthe largeness and roundness of the forehead, nor the whiteness andsweetness of the eyes, nor the moderate proportion of the nose, nor thelittleness of the ears and mouth, nor the evenness and whiteness of theteeth, nor the thickness of a well-set brown beard, shining like the huskof a chestnut, nor curled hair, nor the just proportion of the head, nora fresh complexion, nor a pleasing air of a face, nor a body without anyoffensive scent, nor the just proportion of limbs, can make a handsomeman. I am, as to the rest, strong and well knit; my face is not puffed, but full, and my complexion betwixt jovial and melancholic, moderatelysanguine and hot, "Unde rigent setis mihi crura, et pectora villis;"

 ["Whence 'tis my legs and breast bristle with hair. " --Martial, ii. 36, 5. ]

my health vigorous and sprightly, even to a well advanced age, and rarelytroubled with sickness. Such I was, for I do not now make any account ofmyself, now that I am engaged in the avenues of old age, being alreadypast forty:

 "Minutatim vires et robur adultum Frangit, et in partem pejorem liquitur aetas:"

 ["Time by degrees breaks our strength and makes us grow feeble. --"Lucretius, ii. 1131. ]

what shall be from this time forward, will be but a half-being, and nomore me: I every day escape and steal away from myself:

 "Singula de nobis anni praedantur euntes. "

 ["Of the fleeting years each steals something from me. " --Horace, Ep. , ii. 2. ]

Agility and address I never had, and yet am the son of a very active andsprightly father, who continued to be so to an extreme old age. I havescarce known any man of his condition, his equal in all bodily exercises, as I have seldom met with any who have not excelled me, except inrunning, at which I was pretty good. In music or singing, for which Ihave a very unfit voice, or to play on any sort of instrument, they couldnever teach me anything. In dancing, tennis, or wrestling, I could neverarrive to more than an ordinary pitch; in swimming, fencing, vaulting, and leaping, to none at all. My hands are so clumsy that I cannot evenwrite so as to read it myself, so that I had rather do what I havescribbled over again, than take upon me the trouble to make it out. I donot read much better than I write, and feel that I weary my auditorsotherwise (I am) not a bad clerk. I cannot decently fold up a letter, nor could ever make a pen, or carve at table worth a pin, nor saddle ahorse, nor carry a hawk and fly her, nor hunt the dogs, nor lure a hawk, nor speak to a horse. In fine, my bodily qualities are very well suitedto those of my soul; there is nothing sprightly, only a full and firmvigour: I am patient enough of labour and pains, but it is only when I govoluntary to work, and only so long as my own desire prompts me to it:

 "Molliter austerum studio fallente laborem. "

 ["Study softly beguiling severe labour. " --Horace, Sat. , ii. 2, 12. ]

otherwise, if I am not allured with some pleasure, or have other guidethan my own pure and free inclination, I am good for nothing: for I am ofa humour that, life and health excepted, there is nothing for which Iwill bite my nails, and that I will purchase at the price of torment ofmind and constraint:

 "Tanti mihi non sit opaci Omnis arena Tagi, quodque in mare volvitur aurum. "

 ["I would not buy rich Tagus sands so dear, nor all the gold that lies in the sea. "--Juvenal, Sat. , iii. 54. ]

Extremely idle, extremely given up to my own inclination both by natureand art, I would as willingly lend a man my blood as my pains. I have asoul free and entirely its own, and accustomed to guide itself after itsown fashion; having hitherto never had either master or governor imposedupon me: I have walked as far as I would, and at the pace that bestpleased myself; this is it that has rendered me unfit for the service ofothers, and has made me of no use to any one but myself. 

Nor was there any need of forcing my heavy and lazy disposition; forbeing born to such a fortune as I had reason to be contented with (areason, nevertheless, that a thousand others of my acquaintance wouldhave rather made use of for a plank upon which to pass over in search ofhigher fortune, to tumult and disquiet), and with as much intelligence asI required, I sought for no more, and also got no more:

 "Non agimur tumidis velis Aquilone secundo, Non tamen adversis aetatem ducimus Austris Viribus, ingenio, specie, virtute, loco, re, Extremi primorum, extremis usque priores. "

 ["The northern wind does not agitate our sails; nor Auster trouble our course with storms. In strength, talent, figure, virtue, honour, wealth, we are short of the foremost, but before the last. " --Horace, Ep. , ii. 2, 201. ]

I had only need of what was sufficient to content me: which neverthelessis a government of soul, to take it right, equally difficult in all sortsof conditions, and that, of custom, we see more easily found in want thanin abundance: forasmuch, peradventure, as according to the course of ourother passions, the desire of riches is more sharpened by their use thanby the need of them: and the virtue of moderation more rare than that ofpatience; and I never had anything to desire, but happily to enjoy theestate that God by His bounty had put into my hands. I have never knownanything of trouble, and have had little to do in anything but themanagement of my own affairs: or, if I have, it has been upon conditionto do it at my own leisure and after my own method; committed to my trustby such as had a confidence in me, who did not importune me, and who knewmy humour; for good horsemen will make shift to get service out of arusty and broken-winded jade. 

Even my infancy was trained up after a gentle and free manner, and exemptfrom any rigorous subjection. All this has helped me to a complexiondelicate and incapable of solicitude, even to that degree that I love tohave my losses and the disorders wherein I am concerned, concealed fromme. In the account of my expenses, I put down what my negligence costsme in feeding and maintaining it;

 "Haec nempe supersunt, Quae dominum fallunt, quae prosunt furibus. "

 ["That overplus, which the owner knows not of, but which benefits the thieves"--Horace, Ep. , i. 645]

I love not to know what I have, that I may be less sensible of my loss;I entreat those who serve me, where affection and integrity are absent, to deceive me with something like a decent appearance. For want ofconstancy enough to support the shock of adverse accidents to which weare subject, and of patience seriously to apply myself to the managementof my affairs, I nourish as much as I can this in myself, wholly leavingall to fortune "to take all things at the worst, and to resolve to bearthat worst with temper and patience"; that is the only thing I aim at, and to which I apply my whole meditation. In a danger, I do not so muchconsider how I shall escape it, as of how little importance it is, whether I escape it or no: should I be left dead upon the place, whatmatter? Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and applymyself to them, if they will not apply themselves to me. I have no greatart to evade, escape from or force fortune, and by prudence to guide andincline things to my own bias. I have still less patience to undergo thetroublesome and painful care therein required; and the most uneasycondition for me is to be suspended on urgent occasions, and to beagitated betwixt hope and fear. 

Deliberation, even in things of lightest moment, is very troublesome tome; and I find my mind more put to it to undergo the various tumblingsand tossings of doubt and consultation, than to set up its rest and toacquiesce in whatever shall happen after the die is thrown. Few passionsbreak my sleep, but of deliberations, the least will do it. As in roads, I preferably avoid those that are sloping and slippery, and put myselfinto the beaten track how dirty or deep soever, where I can fall nolower, and there seek my safety: so I love misfortunes that are purelyso, that do not torment and tease me with the uncertainty of theirgrowing better; but that at the first push plunge me directly into theworst that can be expected

 "Dubia plus torquent mala. "

 ["Doubtful ills plague us worst. " --Seneca, Agamemnon, iii. 1, 29. ]

In events I carry myself like a man; in conduct, like a child. The fearof the fall more fevers me than the fall itself. The game is not worththe candle. The covetous man fares worse with his passion than the poor, and the jealous man than the cuckold; and a man ofttimes loses more bydefending his vineyard than if he gave it up. The lowest walk is thesafest; 'tis the seat of constancy; you have there need of no one butyourself; 'tis there founded and wholly stands upon its own basis. Hasnot this example of a gentleman very well known, some air of philosophyin it? He married, being well advanced in years, having spent his youthin good fellowship, a great talker and a great jeerer, calling to mindhow much the subject of cuckoldry had given him occasion to talk andscoff at others. To prevent them from paying him in his own coin, hemarried a wife from a place where any one finds what he wants for hismoney: "Good morrow, strumpet"; "Good morrow, cuckold"; and there was notanything wherewith he more commonly and openly entertained those who cameto see him than with this design of his, by which he stopped the privatechattering of mockers, and blunted all the point from this reproach. 

As to ambition, which is neighbour, or rather daughter, to presumption, fortune, to advance me, must have come and taken me by the hand; for totrouble myself for an uncertain hope, and to have submitted myself to allthe difficulties that accompany those who endeavour to bring themselvesinto credit in the beginning of their progress, I could never have doneit:

 "Spem pretio non emo. "

 ["I will not purchase hope with ready money, " (or), "I do not purchase hope at a price. " --Terence, Adelphi, ii. 3, 11. ]

I apply myself to what I see and to what I have in my hand, and go notvery far from the shore, "Alter remus aquas, alter tibi radat arenas:"

 ["One oar plunging into the sea, the other raking the sands. " --Propertius, iii. 3, 23. ]

and besides, a man rarely arrives at these advancements but in firsthazarding what he has of his own; and I am of opinion that if a man havesufficient to maintain him in the condition wherein he was born andbrought up, 'tis a great folly to hazard that upon the uncertainty ofaugmenting it. He to whom fortune has denied whereon to set his foot, and to settle a quiet and composed way of living, is to be excused if heventure what he has, because, happen what will, necessity puts him uponshifting for himself:

 "Capienda rebus in malis praeceps via est:"

 ["A course is to be taken in bad cases. " (or), "A desperate case must have a desperate course. " ---Seneca, Agamemnon, ii. 1, 47. ]

and I rather excuse a younger brother for exposing what his friends haveleft him to the courtesy of fortune, than him with whom the honour of hisfamily is entrusted, who cannot be necessitous but by his own fault. I have found a much shorter and more easy way, by the advice of the goodfriends I had in my younger days, to free myself from any such ambition, and to sit still:

 "Cui sit conditio dulcis sine pulvere palmae:"

 ["What condition can compare with that where one has gained the palm without the dust of the course. "--Horace, Ep. , i. I, 51. ]

judging rightly enough of my own strength, that it was not capable of anygreat matters; and calling to mind the saying of the late ChancellorOlivier, that the French were like monkeys that swarm up a tree frombranch to branch, and never stop till they come to the highest, and thereshew their breech. 

 "Turpe est, quod nequeas, capiti committere pondus, Et pressum inflexo mox dare terga genu. "

 ["It is a shame to load the head so that it cannot bear the burthen, and the knees give way. "--Propertius, iii. 9, 5. ]

I should find the best qualities I have useless in this age; the facilityof my manners would have been called weakness and negligence; my faithand conscience, scrupulosity and superstition; my liberty and freedomwould have been reputed troublesome, inconsiderate, and rash. Ill luckis good for something. It is good to be born in a very depraved age; forso, in comparison of others, you shall be reputed virtuous good cheap; hewho in our days is but a parricide and a sacrilegious person is an honestman and a man of honour:

 "Nunc, si depositum non inficiatur amicus, Si reddat veterem cum tota aerugine follem, Prodigiosa fides, et Tuscis digna libellis, Quaeque coronata lustrari debeat agna:"

 ["Now, if a friend does not deny his trust, but restores the old purse with all its rust; 'tis a prodigious faith, worthy to be enrolled in amongst the Tuscan annals, and a crowned lamb should be sacrificed to such exemplary integrity. "--Juvenal, Sat. , xiii. 611. ]

and never was time or place wherein princes might propose to themselvesmore assured or greater rewards for virtue and justice. The first whoshall make it his business to get himself into favour and esteem by thoseways, I am much deceived if he do not and by the best title outstrip hiscompetitors: force and violence can do something, but not always all. We see merchants, country justices, and artisans go cheek by jowl withthe best gentry in valour and military knowledge: they perform honourableactions, both in public engagements and private quarrels; they fightduels, they defend towns in our present wars; a prince stifles hisspecial recommendation, renown, in this crowd; let him shine bright inhumanity, truth, loyalty, temperance, and especially injustice; marksrare, unknown, and exiled; 'tis by no other means but by the solegoodwill of the people that he can do his business; and no otherqualities can attract their goodwill like those, as being of the greatestutility to them:

 "Nil est tam populare, quam bonitas. "

 ["Nothing is so popular as an agreeable manner (goodness). " --Cicero, Pro Ligar. , c. 12. ]

By this standard I had been great and rare, just as I find myself nowpigmy and vulgar by the standard of some past ages, wherein, if no otherbetter qualities concurred, it was ordinary and common to see a manmoderate in his revenges, gentle in resenting injuries, religious of hisword, neither double nor supple, nor accommodating his faith to the willof others, or the turns of the times: I would rather see all affairs goto wreck and ruin than falsify my faith to secure them. For as to thisnew virtue of feigning and dissimulation, which is now in so greatcredit, I mortally hate it; and of all vices find none that evidences somuch baseness and meanness of spirit. 'Tis a cowardly and servile humourto hide and disguise a man's self under a visor, and not to dare to showhimself what he is; 'tis by this our servants are trained up totreachery; being brought up to speak what is not true, they make noconscience of a lie. A generous heart ought not to belie its ownthoughts; it will make itself seen within; all there is good, or at leasthuman. Aristotle reputes it the office of magnanimity openly andprofessedly to love and hate; to judge and speak with all freedom; andnot to value the approbation or dislike of others in comparison of truth. Apollonius said it was for slaves to lie, and for freemen to speak truth:'tis the chief and fundamental part of virtue; we must love it foritself. He who speaks truth because he is obliged so to do, and becauseit serves him, and who is not afraid to lie when it signifies nothing toanybody, is not sufficiently true. My soul naturally abominates lying, and hates the very thought of it. I have an inward shame and a sharpremorse, if sometimes a lie escapes me: as sometimes it does, beingsurprised by occasions that allow me no premeditation. A man must notalways tell all, for that were folly: but what a man says should be whathe thinks, otherwise 'tis knavery. I do not know what advantage menpretend to by eternally counterfeiting and dissembling, if not never tobe believed when they speak the truth; it may once or twice pass withmen; but to profess the concealing their thought, and to brag, as some ofour princes have done, that they would burn their shirts if they knewtheir true intentions, which was a saying of the ancient Metellius ofMacedon; and that they who know not how to dissemble know not how torule, is to give warning to all who have anything to do with them, thatall they say is nothing but lying and deceit:

 "Quo quis versutior et callidior est, hoc invisior et suspectior, detracto opinione probitatis:"

 ["By how much any one is more subtle and cunning, by so much is he hated and suspected, the opinion of his integrity being withdrawn. " --Cicero, De Off. , ii. 9. ]

it were a great simplicity in any one to lay any stress either on thecountenance or word of a man who has put on a resolution to be alwaysanother thing without than he is within, as Tiberius did; and I cannotconceive what part such persons can have in conversation with men, seeingthey produce nothing that is received as true: whoever is disloyal totruth is the same to falsehood also. 

Those of our time who have considered in the establishment of the duty ofa prince the good of his affairs only, and have preferred that to thecare of his faith and conscience, might have something to say to a princewhose affairs fortune had put into such a posture that he might for everestablish them by only once breaking his word: but it will not go so;they often buy in the same market; they make more than one peace andenter into more than one treaty in their lives. Gain tempts to the firstbreach of faith, and almost always presents itself, as in all other illacts, sacrileges, murders, rebellions, treasons, as being undertaken forsome kind of advantage; but this first gain has infinite mischievousconsequences, throwing this prince out of all correspondence andnegotiation, by this example of infidelity. Soliman, of the Ottomanrace, a race not very solicitous of keeping their words or compacts, when, in my infancy, he made his army land at Otranto, being informedthat Mercurino de' Gratinare and the inhabitants of Castro were detainedprisoners, after having surrendered the place, contrary to the articlesof their capitulation, sent orders to have them set at liberty, saying, that having other great enterprises in hand in those parts, thedisloyalty, though it carried a show of present utility, would for thefuture bring on him a disrepute and distrust of infinite prejudice. 

Now, for my part, I had rather be troublesome and indiscreet than aflatterer and a dissembler. I confess that there may be some mixture ofpride and obstinacy in keeping myself so upright and open as I do, without any consideration of others; and methinks I am a little too free, where I ought least to be so, and that I grow hot by the opposition ofrespect; and it may be also, that I suffer myself to follow thepropension of my own nature for want of art; using the same liberty, speech, and countenance towards great persons, that I bring with me frommy own house: I am sensible how much it declines towards incivility andindiscretion but, besides that I am so bred, I have not a wit suppleenough to evade a sudden question, and to escape by some evasion, nor tofeign a truth, nor memory enough to retain it so feigned; nor, truly, assurance enough to maintain it, and so play the brave out of weakness. And therefore it is that I abandon myself to candour, always to speak asI think, both by complexion and design, leaving the event to fortune. Aristippus was wont to say, that the principal benefit he had extractedfrom philosophy was that he spoke freely and openly to all. 

Memory is a faculty of wonderful use, and without which the judgment canvery hardly perform its office: for my part I have none at all. What anyone will propound to me, he must do it piecemeal, for to answer a speechconsisting of several heads I am not able. I could not receive acommission by word of mouth without a note-book. And when I have aspeech of consequence to make, if it be long, I am reduced to themiserable necessity of getting by heart word for word, what I am to say;I should otherwise have neither method nor assurance, being in fear thatmy memory would play me a slippery trick. But this way is no lessdifficult to me than the other; I must have three hours to learn threeverses. And besides, in a work of a man's own, the liberty and authorityof altering the order, of changing a word, incessantly varying thematter, makes it harder to stick in the memory of the author. The moreI mistrust it the worse it is; it serves me best by chance; I mustsolicit it negligently; for if I press it, 'tis confused, and after itonce begins to stagger, the more I sound it, the more it is perplexed;it serves me at its own hour, not at mine. 

And the same defect I find in my memory, I find also in several otherparts. I fly command, obligation, and constraint; that which I canotherwise naturally and easily do, if I impose it upon myself by anexpress and strict injunction, I cannot do it. Even the members of mybody, which have a more particular jurisdiction of their own, sometimesrefuse to obey me, if I enjoin them a necessary service at a certainhour. This tyrannical and compulsive appointment baffles them; theyshrink up either through fear or spite, and fall into a trance. Beingonce in a place where it is looked upon as barbarous discourtesy not topledge those who drink to you, though I had there all liberty allowed me, I tried to play the good fellow, out of respect to the ladies who werethere, according to the custom of the country; but there was sport enoughfor this pressure and preparation, to force myself contrary to my customand inclination, so stopped my throat that I could not swallow one drop, and was deprived of drinking so much as with my meat; I found myselfgorged, and my, thirst quenched by the quantity of drink that myimagination had swallowed. This effect is most manifest in such as havethe most vehement and powerful imagination: but it is natural, notwithstanding, and there is no one who does not in some measure feelit. They offered an excellent archer, condemned to die, to save hislife, if he would show some notable proof of his art, but he refused totry, fearing lest the too great contention of his will should make himshoot wide, and that instead of saving his life, he should also lose thereputation he had got of being a good marksman. A man who thinks ofsomething else, will not fail to take over and over again the same numberand measure of steps, even to an inch, in the place where he walks; butif he made it his business to measure and count them, he will find thatwhat he did by nature and accident, he cannot so exactly do by design. 

My library, which is a fine one among those of the village type, issituated in a corner of my house; if anything comes into my head that Ihave a mind to search or to write, lest I should forget it in but goingacross the court, I am fain to commit it to the memory of some other. If I venture in speaking to digress never so little from my subject, I aminfallibly lost, which is the reason that I keep myself, in discourse, strictly close. I am forced to call the men who serve me either by thenames of their offices or their country; for names are very hard for meto remember. I can tell indeed that there are three syllables, that ithas a harsh sound, and that it begins or ends with such a letter; butthat's all; and if I should live long, I do not doubt but I should forgetmy own name, as some others have done. Messala Corvinus was two yearswithout any trace of memory, which is also said of Georgius Trapezuntius. For my own interest, I often meditate what a kind of life theirs was, andif, without this faculty, I should have enough left to support me withany manner of ease; and prying narrowly into it, I fear that thisprivation, if absolute, destroys all the other functions of the soul:

 "Plenus rimarum sum, hac atque iliac perfluo. "

 ["I'm full of chinks, and leak out every way. " --Ter. , Eunuchus, ii. 2, 23. ]

It has befallen me more than once to forget the watchword I had threehours before given or received, and to forget where I had hidden mypurse; whatever Cicero is pleased to say, I help myself to lose what Ihave a particular care to lock safe up:

 "Memoria certe non modo Philosophiam sed omnis vitae usum, omnesque artes, una maxime continet. "

 ["It is certain that memory contains not only philosophy, but all the arts and all that appertain to the use of life. " --Cicero, Acad. , ii. 7. ]

Memory is the receptacle and case of science: and therefore mine being sotreacherous, if I know little, I cannot much complain. I know, ingeneral, the names of the arts, and of what they treat, but nothing more. I turn over books; I do not study them. What I retain I no longerrecognise as another's; 'tis only what my judgment has made its advantageof, the discourses and imaginations in which it has been instructed: theauthor, place, words, and other circumstances, I immediately forget; andI am so excellent at forgetting, that I no less forget my own writingsand compositions than the rest. I am very often quoted to myself, and amnot aware of it. Whoever should inquire of me where I had the verses andexamples, that I have here huddled together, would puzzle me to tell him, and yet I have not borrowed them but from famous and known authors, notcontenting myself that they were rich, if I, moreover, had them not fromrich and honourable hands, where there is a concurrence of authority withreason. It is no great wonder if my book run the same fortune that otherbooks do, if my memory lose what I have written as well as what I haveread, and what I give, as well as what I receive. 

Besides the defect of memory, I have others which very much contribute tomy ignorance; I have a slow and heavy wit, the least cloud stops itsprogress, so that, for example, I never propose to it any never so easy ariddle that it could find out; there is not the least idle subtlety thatwill not gravel me; in games, where wit is required, as chess, draughts, and the like, I understand no more than the common movements. I have aslow and perplexed apprehension, but what it once apprehends, itapprehends well, for the time it retains it. My sight is perfect, entire, and discovers at a very great distance, but is soon weary andheavy at work, which occasions that I cannot read long, but am forced tohave one to read to me. The younger Pliny can inform such as have notexperimented it themselves, how important an impediment this is to thosewho devote themselves to this employment. 

There is no so wretched and coarse a soul, wherein some particularfaculty is not seen to shine; no soul so buried in sloth and ignorance, but it will sally at one end or another; and how it comes to pass that aman blind and asleep to everything else, shall be found sprightly, clear, and excellent in some one particular effect, we are to inquire of ourmasters: but the beautiful souls are they that are universal, open, andready for all things; if not instructed, at least capable of being so;which I say to accuse my own; for whether it be through infirmity ornegligence (and to neglect that which lies at our feet, which we have inour hands, and what nearest concerns the use of life, is far from mydoctrine) there is not a soul in the world so awkward as mine, and soignorant of many common things, and such as a man cannot without shamefail to know. I must give some examples. 

I was born and bred up in the country, and amongst husbandmen; I have hadbusiness and husbandry in my own hands ever since my predecessors, whowere lords of the estate I now enjoy, left me to succeed them; and yet Ican neither cast accounts, nor reckon my counters: most of our currentmoney I do not know, nor the difference betwixt one grain and another, either growing or in the barn, if it be not too apparent, and scarcelycan distinguish between the cabbage and lettuce in my garden. I do notso much as understand the names of the chief instruments of husbandry, nor the most ordinary elements of agriculture, which the very childrenknow: much less the mechanic arts, traffic, merchandise, the variety andnature of fruits, wines, and viands, nor how to make a hawk fly, nor tophysic a horse or a dog. And, since I must publish my whole shame, 'tisnot above a month ago, that I was trapped in my ignorance of the use ofleaven to make bread, or to what end it was to keep wine in the vat. They conjectured of old at Athens, an aptitude for the mathematics inhim they saw ingeniously bavin up a burthen of brushwood. In earnest, they would draw a quite contrary conclusion from me, for give me thewhole provision and necessaries of a kitchen, I should starve. By thesefeatures of my confession men may imagine others to my prejudice: butwhatever I deliver myself to be, provided it be such as I really am, I have my end; neither will I make any excuse for committing to papersuch mean and frivolous things as these: the meanness of the subjectcompells me to it. They may, if they please, accuse my project, but notmy progress: so it is, that without anybody's needing to tell me, Isufficiently see of how little weight and value all this is, and thefolly of my design: 'tis enough that my judgment does not contradictitself, of which these are the essays. 

 "Nasutus sis usque licet, sis denique nasus, Quantum noluerit ferre rogatus Atlas; Et possis ipsum to deridere Latinum, Non potes in nugas dicere plura mess, Ipse ego quam dixi: quid dentem dente juvabit Rodere? carne opus est, si satur esse velis. Ne perdas operam; qui se mirantur, in illos Virus habe; nos haec novimus esse nihil. "

 ["Let your nose be as keen as it will, be all nose, and even a nose so great that Atlas will refuse to bear it: if asked, Could you even excel Latinus in scoffing; against my trifles you could say no more than I myself have said: then to what end contend tooth against tooth? You must have flesh, if you want to be full; lose not your labour then; cast your venom upon those that admire themselves; I know already that these things are worthless. "--Mart. , xiii. 2. ]

I am not obliged not to utter absurdities, provided I am not deceived inthem and know them to be such: and to trip knowingly, is so ordinary withme, that I seldom do it otherwise, and rarely trip by chance. 'Tis nogreat matter to add ridiculous actions to the temerity of my humour, since I cannot ordinarily help supplying it with those that are vicious. 

I was present one day at Barleduc, when King Francis II. , for a memorialof Rene, king of Sicily, was presented with a portrait he had drawn ofhimself: why is it not in like manner lawful for every one to drawhimself with a pen, as he did with a crayon? I will not, therefore, omitthis blemish though very unfit to be published, which is irresolution; avery great effect and very incommodious in the negotiations of theaffairs of the world; in doubtful enterprises, I know not which tochoose:

 "Ne si, ne no, nel cor mi suona intero. "

 ["My heart does not tell me either yes or no. "--Petrarch. ]

I can maintain an opinion, but I cannot choose one. By reason that inhuman things, to what sect soever we incline, many appearances presentthemselves that confirm us in it; and the philosopher Chrysippus said, that he would of Zeno and Cleanthes, his masters, learn their doctrinesonly; for, as to proofs and reasons, he should find enough of his own. Which way soever I turn, I still furnish myself with causes, andlikelihood enough to fix me there; which makes me detain doubt and theliberty of choosing, till occasion presses; and then, to confess thetruth, I, for the most part, throw the feather into the wind, as thesaying is, and commit myself to the mercy of fortune; a very lightinclination and circumstance carries me along with it. 

 "Dum in dubio est animus, paulo momento huc atque Illuc impellitur. "

 ["While the mind is in doubt, in a short time it is impelled this way and that. "--Terence, Andr. , i. 6, 32. ]

The uncertainty of my judgment is so equally balanced in mostoccurrences, that I could willingly refer it to be decided by the chanceof a die: and I observe, with great consideration of our human infirmity, the examples that the divine history itself has left us of this custom ofreferring to fortune and chance the determination of election in doubtfulthings:

 "Sors cecidit super Matthiam. "

 ["The lot fell upon Matthew. "--Acts i. 26. ]

Human reason is a two-edged and dangerous sword: observe in the hands ofSocrates, her most intimate and familiar friend, how many several pointsit has. I am thus good for nothing but to follow and suffer myself to beeasily carried away with the crowd; I have not confidence enough in myown strength to take upon me to command and lead; I am very glad to findthe way beaten before me by others. If I must run the hazard of anuncertain choice, I am rather willing to have it under such a one as ismore confident in his opinions than I am in mine, whose ground andfoundation I find to be very slippery and unsure. 

Yet I do not easily change, by reason that I discern the same weakness incontrary opinions:

 "Ipsa consuetudo assentiendi periculosa esse videtur, et lubrica;"

 ["The very custom of assenting seems to be dangerous and slippery. "--Cicero, Acad. , ii. 21. ]

especially in political affairs, there is a large field open for changesand contestation:

 "Justa pari premitur veluti cum pondere libra, Prona, nec hac plus pane sedet, nec surgit ab illa. "

 ["As a just balance, pressed with equal weight, neither dips nor rises on either side. "--Tibullus, iv. 41. ]

Machiavelli's writings, for example, were solid enough for the subject, yet were they easy enough to be controverted; and they who have done so, have left as great a facility of controverting theirs; there was neverwanting in that kind of argument replies and replies upon replies, and asinfinite a contexture of debates as our wrangling lawyers have extendedin favour of long suits:

 "Caedimur et totidem plagis consumimus hostem;"

 ["We are slain, and with as many blows kill the enemy" (or), "It is a fight wherein we exhaust each other by mutual wounds. " --Horace, Epist. , ii. 2, 97. ]

the reasons have little other foundation than experience, and the varietyof human events presenting us with infinite examples of all sorts offorms. An understanding person of our times says: That whoever would, incontradiction to our almanacs, write cold where they say hot, and wetwhere they say dry, and always put the contrary to what they foretell; ifhe were to lay a wager, he would not care which side he took, exceptingwhere no uncertainty could fall out, as to promise excessive heats atChristmas, or extremity of cold at Midsummer. I have the same opinion ofthese political controversies; be on which side you will, you have asfair a game to play as your adversary, provided you do not proceed so faras to shock principles that are broad and manifest. And yet, in myconceit, in public affairs, there is no government so ill, provided it beancient and has been constant, that is not better than change andalteration. 

Our manners are infinitely corrupt, and wonderfully incline to the worse;of our laws and customs there are many that are barbarous and monstrousnevertheless, by reason of the difficulty of reformation, and the dangerof stirring things, if I could put something under to stop the wheel, andkeep it where it is, I would do it with all my heart:

 "Numquam adeo foedis, adeoque pudendis Utimur exemplis, ut non pejora supersint. "

 ["The examples we use are not so shameful and foul but that worse remain behind. "--Juvenal, viii. 183. ]

The worst thing I find in our state is instability, and that our laws, no more than our clothes, cannot settle in any certain form. It is veryeasy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things arefull of it: it is very easy to beget in a people a contempt of ancientobservances; never any man undertook it but he did it; but to establish abetter regimen in the stead of that which a man has overthrown, many whohave attempted it have foundered. I very little consult my prudence inmy conduct; I am willing to let it be guided by the public rule. Happythe people who do what they are commanded, better than they who command, without tormenting themselves as to the causes; who suffer themselvesgently to roll after the celestial revolution! Obedience is never purenor calm in him who reasons and disputes. 

In fine, to return to myself: the only thing by which I something esteemmyself, is that wherein never any man thought himself to be defective; myrecommendation is vulgar, common, and popular; for who ever thought hewanted sense? It would be a proposition that would imply a contradictionin itself; 'tis a disease that never is where it is discerned; 'tistenacious and strong, but what the first ray of the patient's sightnevertheless pierces through and disperses, as the beams of the sun dothick and obscure mists; to accuse one's self would be to excuse in thiscase, and to condemn, to absolve. There never was porter or the silliestgirl, that did not think they had sense enough to do their business. We easily enough confess in others an advantage of courage, strength, experience, activity, and beauty, but an advantage in judgment we yieldto none; and the reasons that proceed simply from the natural conclusionsof others, we think, if we had but turned our thoughts that way, weshould ourselves have found out as well as they. Knowledge, style, andsuch parts as we see in others' works, we are soon aware of, if theyexcel our own: but for the simple products of the understanding, everyone thinks he could have found out the like in himself, and is hardlysensible of the weight and difficulty, if not (and then with much ado) inan extreme and incomparable distance. And whoever should be able clearlyto discern the height of another's judgment, would be also able to raisehis own to the same pitch. So that it is a sort of exercise, from whicha man is to expect very little praise; a kind of composition of smallrepute. And, besides, for whom do you write? The learned, to whom theauthority appertains of judging books, know no other value but that oflearning, and allow of no other proceeding of wit but that of eruditionand art: if you have mistaken one of the Scipios for another, what is allthe rest you have to say worth? Whoever is ignorant of Aristotle, according to their rule, is in some sort ignorant of himself; vulgarsouls cannot discern the grace and force of a lofty and delicate style. Now these two sorts of men take up the world. The third sort into whosehands you fall, of souls that are regular and strong of themselves, is sorare, that it justly has neither name nor place amongst us; and 'tis somuch time lost to aspire unto it, or to endeavour to please it. 

'Tis commonly said that the justest portion Nature has given us of herfavours is that of sense; for there is no one who is not contented withhis share: is it not reason? whoever should see beyond that, would seebeyond his sight. I think my opinions are good and sound, but who doesnot think the same of his own? One of the best proofs I have that mineare so is the small esteem I have of myself; for had they not been verywell assured, they would easily have suffered themselves to have beendeceived by the peculiar affection I have to myself, as one that placesit almost wholly in myself, and do not let much run out. All that othersdistribute amongst an infinite number of friends and acquaintance, totheir glory and grandeur, I dedicate to the repose of my own mind and tomyself; that which escapes thence is not properly by my direction:

 "Mihi nempe valere et vivere doctus. "

 ["To live and to do well for myself. " --Lucretius, v. 959. ]

Now I find my opinions very bold and constant in condemning my ownimperfection. And, to say the truth, 'tis a subject upon which Iexercise my judgment as much as upon any other. The world looks alwaysopposite; I turn my sight inwards, and there fix and employ it. I haveno other business but myself, I am eternally meditating upon myself, considering and tasting myself. Other men's thoughts are ever wanderingabroad, if they will but see it; they are still going forward:

 "Nemo in sese tentat descendere;"

 ["No one thinks of descending into himself. " --Persius, iv. 23. ]

for my part, I circulate in myself. This capacity of trying the truth, whatever it be, in myself, and this free humour of not over easilysubjecting my belief, I owe principally to myself; for the strongest andmost general imaginations I have are those that, as a man may say, wereborn with me; they are natural and entirely my own. I produced themcrude and simple, with a strong and bold production, but a littletroubled and imperfect; I have since established and fortified them withthe authority of others and the sound examples of the ancients, whom Ihave found of the same judgment: they have given me faster hold, and amore manifest fruition and possession of that I had before embraced. Thereputation that every one pretends to of vivacity and promptness of wit, I seek in regularity; the glory they pretend to from a striking andsignal action, or some particular excellence, I claim from order, correspondence, and tranquillity of opinions and manners:

 "Omnino si quidquam est decorum, nihil est profecto magis, quam aequabilitas universae vitae, tum singularum actionum, quam conservare non possis, si, aliorum naturam imitans, omittas tuam. "

 ["If anything be entirely decorous, nothing certainly can be more so than an equability alike in the whole life and in every particular action; which thou canst not possibly observe if, imitating other men's natures, thou layest aside thy own. "--Cicero, De Of. , i. 31. ]

Here, then, you see to what degree I find myself guilty of this firstpart, that I said was the vice of presumption. As to the second, whichconsists in not having a sufficient esteem for others, I know not whetheror no I can so well excuse myself; but whatever comes on't I am resolvedto speak the truth. And whether, peradventure, it be that the continualfrequentation I have had with the humours of the ancients, and the ideaof those great souls of past ages, put me out of taste both with othersand myself, or that, in truth, the age we live in produces but veryindifferent things, yet so it is that I see nothing worthy of any greatadmiration. Neither, indeed, have I so great an intimacy with many menas is requisite to make a right judgment of them; and those with whom mycondition makes me the most frequent, are, for the most part, men whohave little care of the culture of the soul, but that look upon honour asthe sum of all blessings, and valour as the height of all perfection. 

What I see that is fine in others I very readily commend and esteem: nay, I often say more in their commendation than I think they really deserve, and give myself so far leave to lie, for I cannot invent a false subject:my testimony is never wanting to my friends in what I conceive deservespraise, and where a foot is due I am willing to give them a foot and ahalf; but to attribute to them qualities that they have not, I cannot doit, nor openly defend their imperfections. Nay, I frankly give my veryenemies their due testimony of honour; my affection alters, my judgmentdoes not, and I never confound my animosity with other circumstances thatare foreign to it; and I am so jealous of the liberty of my judgment thatI can very hardly part with it for any passion whatever. I do myself agreater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie. Thiscommendable and generous custom is observed of the Persian nation, thatthey spoke of their mortal enemies and with whom they were at deadly war, as honourably and justly as their virtues deserved. 

I know men enough that have several fine parts; one wit, another courage, another address, another conscience, another language: one science, another, another; but a generally great man, and who has all these braveparts together, or any one of them to such a degree of excellence that weshould admire him or compare him with those we honour of times past, myfortune never brought me acquainted with; and the greatest I ever knew, Imean for the natural parts of the soul, was Etienne De la Boetie; his wasa full soul indeed, and that had every way a beautiful aspect: a soul ofthe old stamp, and that had produced great effects had his fortune beenso pleased, having added much to those great natural parts by learningand study. 

But how it comes to pass I know not, and yet it is certainly so, there isas much vanity and weakness of judgment in those who profess the greatestabilities, who take upon them learned callings and bookish employments asin any other sort of men whatever; either because more is required andexpected from them, and that common defects are excusable in them, orbecause the opinion they have of their own learning makes them more boldto expose and lay themselves too open, by which they lose and betraythemselves. As an artificer more manifests his want of skill in a richmatter he has in hand, if he disgrace the work by ill handling andcontrary to the rules required, than in a matter of less value; and menare more displeased at a disproportion in a statue of gold than in one ofplaster; so do these when they advance things that in themselves and intheir place would be good; for they make use of them without discretion, honouring their memories at the expense of their understandings, andmaking themselves ridiculous by honouring Cicero, Galen, Ulpian, and St. Jerome alike. 

I willingly fall again into the discourse of the vanity of our education, the end of which is not to render us good and wise, but learned, and shehas obtained it. She has not taught us to follow and embrace virtue andprudence, but she has imprinted in us their derivation and etymology; weknow how to decline Virtue, if we know not how to love it; if we do notknow what prudence is really and in effect, and by experience, we have ithowever by jargon and heart: we are not content to know the extraction, kindred, and alliances of our neighbours; we desire, moreover, to havethem our friends and to establish a correspondence and intelligence withthem; but this education of ours has taught us definitions, divisions, and partitions of virtue, as so many surnames and branches of agenealogy, without any further care of establishing any familiarity orintimacy betwixt her and us. It has culled out for our initiatoryinstruction not such books as contain the soundest and truest opinions, but those that speak the best Greek and Latin, and by their fine wordshas instilled into our fancy the vainest humours of antiquity. 

A good education alters the judgment and manners; as it happened toPolemon, a lewd and debauched young Greek, who going by chance to hearone of Xenocrates' lectures, did not only observe the eloquence andlearning of the reader, and not only brought away, the knowledge of somefine matter, but a more manifest and more solid profit, which was thesudden change and reformation of his former life. Whoever found such aneffect of our discipline?

 "Faciasne, quod olim Mutatus Polemon? ponas insignia morbi Fasciolas, cubital, focalia; potus ut ille Dicitur ex collo furtim carpsisse coronas, Postquam est impransi correptus voce magistri?"

 ["Will you do what reformed Polemon did of old? will you lay aside the joys of your disease, your garters, capuchin, muffler, as he in his cups is said to have secretly torn off his garlands from his neck when he heard what that temperate teacher said?" --Horace, Sat. , ii. 3, 253]

That seems to me to be the least contemptible condition of men, which byits plainness and simplicity is seated in the lowest degree, and invitesus to a more regular course. I find the rude manners and language ofcountry people commonly better suited to the rule and prescription oftrue philosophy, than those of our philosophers themselves:

 "Plus sapit vulgus, quia tantum, quantum opus est, sapit. "

 ["The vulgar are so much the wiser, because they only know what is needful for them to know. "--Lactantms, Instit. Div. , iii. 5. ]

The most remarkable men, as I have judged by outward appearance (for tojudge of them according to my own method, I must penetrate a great dealdeeper), for soldiers and military conduct, were the Duc de Guise, whodied at Orleans, and the late Marshal Strozzi; and for men of greatability and no common virtue, Olivier and De l'Hospital, Chancellors ofFrance. Poetry, too, in my opinion, has flourished in this age of ours;we have abundance of very good artificers in the trade: D'Aurat, Beza, Buchanan, L'Hospital, Montdore, Turnebus; as to the French poets, Ibelieve they raised their art to the highest pitch to which it can everarrive; and in those parts of it wherein Ronsard and Du Bellay excel, Ifind them little inferior to the ancient perfection. Adrian Turnebusknew more, and what he did know, better than any man of his time, or longbefore him. The lives of the last Duke of Alva, and of our Constable deMontmorency, were both of them great and noble, and that had many rareresemblances of fortune; but the beauty and glory of the death of thelast, in the sight of Paris and of his king, in their service, againsthis nearest relations, at the head of an army through his conductvictorious, and by a sudden stroke, in so extreme old age, meritsmethinks to be recorded amongst the most remarkable events of our times. As also the constant goodness, sweetness of manners, and conscientiousfacility of Monsieur de la Noue, in so great an injustice of armedparties (the true school of treason, inhumanity, and robbery), wherein healways kept up the reputation of a great and experienced captain. 

I have taken a delight to publish in several places the hopes I have ofMarie de Gournay le Jars, [She was adopted by him in 1588. See Leon Feugere's Mademoiselle de Gournay: 'Etude sur sa Vie et ses Ouvrages'. ]

my adopted daughter; and certainly beloved by me more than paternally, and enveloped in my retirement and solitude as one of the best parts ofmy own being: I have no longer regard to anything in this world but her. And if a man may presage from her youth, her soul will one day be capableof very great things; and amongst others, of the perfection of thatsacred friendship, to which we do not read that any of her sex could everyet arrive; the sincerity and solidity of her manners are alreadysufficient for it, and her affection towards me more than superabundant, and such, in short, as that there is nothing more to be wished, if notthat the apprehension she has of my end, being now five-and-fifty yearsold, might not so much afflict her. The judgment she made of my firstEssays, being a woman, so young, and in this age, and alone in her owncountry; and the famous vehemence wherewith she loved me, and desired myacquaintance solely from the esteem she had thence of me, before she eversaw my face, is an incident very worthy of consideration. 

Other virtues have had little or no credit in this age; but valour isbecome popular by our civil wars; and in this, we have souls brave evento perfection, and in so great number that the choice is impossible tomake. 

This is all of extraordinary and uncommon grandeur that has hithertoarrived at my knowledge. 

 ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 A generous heart ought not to belie its own thoughts A man may play the fool in everything else, but not in poetry Against my trifles you could say no more than I myself have said Agitated betwixt hope and fear All defence shows a face of war Almanacs An advantage in judgment we yield to none Any old government better than change and alteration Anything becomes foul when commended by the multitude Appetite runs after that it has not Armed parties (the true school of treason, inhumanity, robbery) Authority to be dissected by the vain fancies of men Authority which a graceful presence and a majestic mien beget Be on which side you will, you have as fair a game to play Beauty of stature is the only beauty of men Believing Heaven concerned at our ordinary actions Better at speaking than writing. Motion and action animate word Caesar's choice of death: "the shortest" Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful Content: more easily found in want than in abundance Curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge Defence allures attempt, and defiance provokes an enemy Desire of riches is more sharpened by their use than by the need Difficulty gives all things their estimation Doubt whether those (old writings) we have be not the worst Doubtful ills plague us worst Endeavouring to be brief, I become obscure Engaged in the avenues of old age, being already past forty Every government has a god at the head of it Executions rather whet than dull the edge of vices Fear of the fall more fevers me than the fall itself Folly to hazard that upon the uncertainty of augmenting it. For who ever thought he wanted sense? Fortune rules in all things Gentleman would play the fool to make a show of defence Happen to do anything commendable, I attribute it to fortune Having too good an opinion of our own worth He should discern in himself, as well as in others He who is only a good man that men may know it How many worthy men have we known to survive their reputation Humble out of pride I am very glad to find the way beaten before me by others I find myself here fettered by the laws of ceremony I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead I have not a wit supple enough to evade a sudden question I have nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing Ill luck is good for something Imitating other men's natures, thou layest aside thy own Immoderate either seeking or evading glory or reputation Impunity pass with us for justice It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part Knowledge of others, wherein the honour consists Lessen the just value of things that I possess License of judgments is a great disturbance to great affairs Lose what I have a particular care to lock safe up Loses more by defending his vineyard than if he gave it up. More brave men been lost in occasions of little moment More solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak My affection alters, my judgment does not No way found to tranquillity that is good in common Not being able to govern events, I govern myself Not conceiving things otherwise than by this outward bark Not for any profit, but for the honour of honesty itself Nothing is more confident than a bad poet Nothing that so poisons as flattery Obedience is never pure nor calm in him who reasons and disputes Occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous Of the fleeting years each steals something from me Office of magnanimity openly and professedly to love and hate Old age: applaud the past and condemn the present One may be humble out of pride Our will is more obstinate by being opposed Overvalue things, because they are foreign, absent Philopoemen: paying the penalty of my ugliness. Pleasing all: a mark that can never be aimed at or hit Poets Possession begets a contempt of what it holds and rules Prolong his life also prolonged and augmented his pain Regret so honourable a post, where necessity must make them bold Sense: no one who is not contented with his share Setting too great a value upon ourselves Setting too little a value upon others She who only refuses, because 'tis forbidden, consents Short of the foremost, but before the last Souls that are regular and strong of themselves are rare Suicide: a morsel that is to be swallowed without chewing Take all things at the worst, and to resolve to bear that worst The age we live in produces but very indifferent things The reward of a thing well done is to have done it The satiety of living, inclines a man to desire to die There is no reason that has not its contrary They do not see my heart, they see but my countenance Those who can please and hug themselves in what they do Tis far beyond not fearing death to taste and relish it To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to't Voice and determination of the rabble, the mother of ignorance Vulgar reports and opinions that drive us on We believe we do not believe We consider our death as a very great thing We have not the thousandth part of ancient writings We have taught the ladies to blush We set too much value upon ourselves Were more ambitious of a great reputation than of a good one What a man says should be what he thinks What he did by nature and accident, he cannot do by design What is more accidental than reputation? What, shall so much knowledge be lost Wiser who only know what is needful for them to know