ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 18. 

X. Of Managing the Will. XI. Of Cripples. XII. Of Physiognomy. 

CHAPTER X

OF MANAGING THE WILL

Few things, in comparison of what commonly affect other men, move, or, tosay better, possess me: for 'tis but reason they should concern a man, provided they do not possess him. I am very solicitous, both by studyand argument, to enlarge this privilege of insensibility, which is in menaturally raised to a pretty degree, so that consequently I espouse andam very much moved with very few things. I have a clear sight enough, but I fix it upon very few objects; I have a sense delicate and tenderenough; but an apprehension and application hard and negligent. I amvery unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myselfwholly on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curband restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears intoit, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and overwhich fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which Iso much value, 'tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately tocovet and heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable. A man oughtto moderate himself betwixt the hatred of pain and the love of pleasure:and Plato sets down a middle path of life betwixt the two. But againstsuch affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere, against those, I say, I oppose myself with my utmost power. 'Tis myopinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himselfto himself. Were my will easy to lend itself out and to be swayed, Ishould not stick there; I am too tender both by nature and use:

 "Fugax rerum, securaque in otia natus. "

 ["Avoiding affairs and born to secure ease. " --Ovid, De Trist. , iii. 2, 9. ]

Hot and obstinate disputes, wherein my adversary would at last have thebetter, the issue that would render my heat and obstinacy disgracefulwould peradventure vex me to the last degree. Should I set myself to itat the rate that others do, my soul would never have the force to bearthe emotion and alarms of those who grasp at so much; it wouldimmediately be disordered by this inward agitation. If, sometimes, Ihave been put upon the management of other men's affairs, I have promisedto take them in hand, but not into my lungs and liver; to take them uponme, not to incorporate them; to take pains, yes: to be impassioned aboutit, by no means; I have a care of them, but I will not sit upon them. I have enough to do to order and govern the domestic throng of those thatI have in my own veins and bowels, without introducing a crowd of othermen's affairs; and am sufficiently concerned about my own proper andnatural business, without meddling with the concerns of others. Such asknow how much they owe to themselves, and how many offices they are boundto of their own, find that nature has cut them out work enough of theirown to keep them from being idle. "Thou hast business enough at home:look to that. "

Men let themselves out to hire; their faculties are not for themselves, but for those to whom they have enslaved themselves; 'tis their tenantsoccupy them, not themselves. This common humour pleases not me. We mustbe thrifty of the liberty of our souls, and never let it out but uponjust occasions, which are very few, if we judge aright. Do but observesuch as have accustomed themselves to be at every one's call: they do itindifferently upon all, as well little as great, occasions; in that whichnothing concerns them; as much as in what imports them most. They thrustthemselves in indifferently wherever there is work to do and obligation, and are without life when not in tumultuous bustle:

 "In negotiis sunt, negotii cause, "

 ["They are in business for business' sake. "--Seneca, Ep. , 22. ]

It is not so much that they will go, as it is that they cannot standstill: like a rolling stone that cannot stop till it can go no further. Occupation, with a certain sort of men, is a mark of understanding anddignity: their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by beingrocked in a cradle; they may pronounce themselves as serviceable to theirfriends, as they are troublesome to themselves. No one distributes hismoney to others, but every one distributes his time and his life: thereis nothing of which we are so prodigal as of these two things, of whichto be thrifty would be both commendable and useful. I am of a quitecontrary humour; I look to myself, and commonly covet with no greatardour what I do desire, and desire little; and I employ and busy myselfat the same rate, rarely and temperately. Whatever they take in hand, they do it with their utmost will and vehemence. There are so manydangerous steps, that, for the more safety, we must a little lightly andsuperficially glide over the world, and not rush through it. Pleasureitself is painful in profundity:

 "Incedis per ignes, Suppositos cineri doloso. "

 ["You tread on fire, hidden under deceitful ashes. " --Horace, Od. , ii. I, 7. ]

The Parliament of Bordeaux chose me mayor of their city at a time when Iwas at a distance from France, --[At Bagno Della Villa, near Lucca, September 1581]--and still more remote from any such thought. I entreated to be excused, but I was told by my friends that I hadcommitted an error in so doing, and the greater because the king had, moreover, interposed his command in that affair. 'Tis an office thatought to be looked upon so much more honourable, as it has no othersalary nor advantage than the bare honour of its execution. It continuestwo years, but may be extended by a second election, which very rarelyhappens; it was to me, and had never been so but twice before: some yearsago to Monsieur de Lansac, and lately to Monsieur de Biron, Marshal ofFrance, in whose place I succeeded; and, I left mine to Monsieur deMatignon, Marshal of France also: proud of so noble a fraternity--

 "Uterque bonus pacis bellique minister. "

 ["Either one a good minister in peace and war. " --AEneid, xi. 658. ]

Fortune would have a hand in my promotion, by this particularcircumstance which she put in of her own, not altogether vain; forAlexander disdained the ambassadors of Corinth, who came to offer him aburgess-ship of their city; but when they proceeded to lay before himthat Bacchus and Hercules were also in the register, he graciouslythanked them. 

At my arrival, I faithfully and conscientiously represented myself tothem for such as I find myself to be--a man without memory, withoutvigilance, without experience, and without vigour; but withal, withouthatred, without ambition, without avarice, and without violence; thatthey might be informed of my qualities, and know what they were to expectfrom my service. And whereas the knowledge they had had of my latefather, and the honour they had for his memory, had alone incited them toconfer this favour upon me, I plainly told them that I should be verysorry anything should make so great an impression upon me as theiraffairs and the concerns of their city had made upon him, whilst he heldthe government to which they had preferred me. I remembered, when a boy, to have seen him in his old age cruelly tormented with these publicaffairs, neglecting the soft repose of his own house, to which thedeclension of his age had reduced him for several years before, themanagement of his own affairs, and his health; and certainly despisinghis own life, which was in great danger of being lost, by being engagedin long and painful journeys on their behalf. Such was he; and thishumour of his proceeded from a marvellous good nature; never was there amore charitable and popular soul. Yet this proceeding which I commend inothers, I do not love to follow myself, and am not without excuse. 

He had learned that a man must forget himself for his neighbour, and thatthe particular was of no manner of consideration in comparison with thegeneral. Most of the rules and precepts of the world run this way; todrive us out of ourselves into the street for the benefit of publicsociety; they thought to do a great feat to divert and remove us fromourselves, assuming we were but too much fixed there, and by a toonatural inclination; and have said all they could to that purpose: for'tis no new thing for the sages to preach things as they serve, not asthey are. Truth has its obstructions, inconveniences, andincompatibilities with us; we must often deceive that we may not deceiveourselves; and shut our eyes and our understandings to redress and amendthem:

 "Imperiti enim judicant, et qui frequenter in hoc ipsum fallendi sunt, ne errent. "

 ["For the ignorant judge, and therefore are oft to be deceived, less they should err. "--Quintil. , Inst. Orat. , xi. 17. ]

When they order us to love three, four, or fifty degrees of things aboveourselves, they do like archers, who, to hit the white, take their aim agreat deal higher than the butt; to make a crooked stick straight, webend it the contrary way. 

I believe that in the Temple of Pallas, as we see in all other religions, there were apparent mysteries to be exposed to the people; and others, more secret and high, that were only to be shown to such as wereprofessed; 'tis likely that in these the true point of friendship thatevery one owes to himself is to be found; not a false friendship, thatmakes us embrace glory, knowledge, riches, and the like, with a principaland immoderate affection, as members of our being; nor an indiscreet andeffeminate friendship, wherein it happens, as with ivy, that it decaysand ruins the walls it embraces; but a sound and regular friendship, equally useful and pleasant. He who knows the duties of this friendshipand practises them is truly of the cabinet of the Muses, and has attainedto the height of human wisdom and of our happiness, such an one, exactlyknowing what he owes to himself, will on his part find that he ought toapply to himself the use of the world and of other men; and to do this, to contribute to public society the duties and offices appertaining tohim. He who does not in some sort live for others, does not live muchfor himself:

 "Qui sibi amicus est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse. "

 ["He who is his own friend, is a friend to everybody else. " --Seneca, Ep. , 6. ]

The principal charge we have is, to every one his own conduct; and 'tisfor this only that we here are. As he who should forget to live avirtuous and holy life, and should think he acquitted himself of his dutyin instructing and training others up to it, would be a fool; even so hewho abandons his own particular healthful and pleasant living to serveothers therewith, takes, in my opinion, a wrong and unnatural course. 

I would not that men should refuse, in the employments they take uponthem, their attention, pains, eloquence, sweat, and blood if need be:

 "Non ipse pro caris amicis Aut patria, timidus perire:"

 ["Himself not afraid to die for beloved friends, or for his country. "--Horace, Od. , iv. 9, 51. ]

but 'tis only borrowed, and accidentally; his mind being always in reposeand in health; not without action, but without vexation, without passion. To be simply acting costs him so little, that he acts even sleeping;but it must be set on going with discretion; for the body receives theoffices imposed upon it just according to what they are; the mind oftenextends and makes them heavier at its own expense, giving them whatmeasure it pleases. Men perform like things with several sorts ofendeavour, and different contention of will; the one does well enoughwithout the other; for how many people hazard themselves every day in warwithout any concern which way it goes; and thrust themselves into thedangers of battles, the loss of which will not break their next night'ssleep? and such a man may be at home, out of the danger which he durstnot have looked upon, who is more passionately concerned for the issue ofthis war, and whose soul is more anxious about events than the soldierwho therein stakes his blood and his life. I could have engaged myselfin public employments without quitting my own matters a nail's breadth, and have given myself to others without abandoning myself. Thissharpness and violence of desires more hinder than they advance theexecution of what we undertake; fill us with impatience against slow orcontrary events, and with heat and suspicion against those with whom wehave to do. We never carry on that thing well by which we areprepossessed and led:

 "Male cuncta ministrat Impetus. "

 ["Impulse manages all things ill. "--Statius, Thebaid, x. 704. ]

He who therein employs only his judgment and address proceeds morecheerfully: he counterfeits, he gives way, he defers quite at his ease, according to the necessities of occasions; he fails in his attemptwithout trouble and affliction, ready and entire for a new enterprise;he always marches with the bridle in his hand. In him who is intoxicatedwith this violent and tyrannical intention, we discover, of necessity, much imprudence and injustice; the impetuosity of his desire carries himaway; these are rash motions, and, if fortune do not very much assist, of very little fruit. Philosophy directs that, in the revenge ofinjuries received, we should strip ourselves of choler; not that thechastisement should be less, but, on the contrary, that the revenge maybe the better and more heavily laid on, which, it conceives, will be bythis impetuosity hindered. For anger not only disturbs, but, of itself, also wearies the arms of those who chastise; this fire benumbs and wastestheir force; as in precipitation, "festinatio tarda est, "--haste tripsup its own heels, fetters, and stops itself:

 "Ipsa se velocitas implicat. "--Seneca, Ep. 44

For example, according to what I commonly see, avarice has no greaterimpediment than itself; the more bent and vigorous it is, the less itrakes together, and commonly sooner grows rich when disguised in a visorof liberality. 

A very excellent gentleman, and a friend of mine, ran a risk of impairinghis faculties by a too passionate attention and affection to the affairsof a certain prince his master;--[Probably the King of Navarre, afterwardHenry IV. ]--which master has thus portrayed himself to me; "that heforesees the weight of accidents as well as another, but that in thosefor which there is no remedy, he presently resolves upon suffering; inothers, having taken all the necessary precautions which by the vivacityof his understanding he can presently do, he quietly awaits what mayfollow. " And, in truth, I have accordingly seen him maintain a greatindifferency and liberty of actions and serenity of countenance in verygreat and difficult affairs: I find him much greater, and of greatercapacity in adverse than in prosperous fortune; his defeats are to himmore glorious than his victories, and his mourning than his triumph. 

Consider, that even in vain and frivolous actions, as at chess, tennis, and the like, this eager and ardent engaging with an impetuous desire, immediately throws the mind and members into indiscretion and disorder: aman astounds and hinders himself; he who carries himself more moderately, both towards gain and loss, has always his wits about him; the lesspeevish and passionate he is at play, he plays much more advantageouslyand surely. 

As to the rest, we hinder the mind's grasp and hold, in giving it so manythings to seize upon; some things we should only offer to it; tie it toothers, and with others incorporate it. It can feel and discern allthings, but ought to feed upon nothing but itself; and should beinstructed in what properly concerns itself, and that is properly of itsown having and substance. The laws of nature teach us what justly weneed. After the sages have told us that no one is indigent according tonature, and that every one is so according to opinion, they very subtlydistinguish betwixt the desires that proceed from her, and those thatproceed from the disorder of our own fancy: those of which we can see theend are hers; those that fly before us, and of which we can see no end, are our own: the poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of thesoul is irreparable:

 "Nam si, quod satis est homini, id satis esse potesset Hoc sat erat: nunc, quum hoc non est, qui credimus porro Divitias ullas animum mi explere potesse?"

 ["For if what is for man enough, could be enough, it were enough; but since it is not so, how can I believe that any wealth can give my mind content. "--Lucilius aped Nonium Marcellinum, V. Sec. 98. ]

Socrates, seeing a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furniturecarried in pomp through his city: "How many things, " said he, "I do notdesire!"--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , V. 32. ]--Metrodorus lived on twelveounces a day, Epicurus upon less; Metrocles slept in winter abroadamongst sheep, in summer in the cloisters of churches:

 "Sufficit ad id natura, quod poscit. "

 ["Nature suffices for what he requires. "--Seneca, Ep. , 90. ]

Cleanthes lived by the labour of his own hands, and boasted thatCleanthes, if he would, could yet maintain another Cleanthes. 

If that which nature exactly and originally requires of us for theconservation of our being be too little (as in truth what it is, and howgood cheap life may be maintained, cannot be better expressed than bythis consideration, that it is so little that by its littleness itescapes the gripe and shock of fortune), let us allow ourselves a littlemore; let us call every one of our habits and conditions nature; let usrate and treat ourselves by this measure; let us stretch ourappurtenances and accounts so far; for so far, I fancy, we have someexcuse. Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful. What iswanting to my custom, I reckon is wanting to me; and I should be almostas well content that they took away my life as cut me short in the waywherein I have so long lived. I am no longer in condition for any greatchange, nor to put myself into a new and unwonted course, not even toaugmentation. 'Tis past the time for me to become other than what I am;and as I should complain of any great good hap that should now befall me, that it came not in time to be enjoyed:

 "Quo mihi fortunas, si non conceditur uti?"

 ["What is the good fortune to me, if it is not granted to me to use it. "--Horace, Ep. , i. 5, 12. ]

so should I complain of any inward acquisition. It were almost betternever, than so late, to become an honest man, and well fit to live, whenone has no longer to live. I, who am about to make my exit out of theworld, would easily resign to any newcomer, who should desire it, all theprudence I am now acquiring in the world's commerce; after meat, mustard. I have no need of goods of which I can make no use; of what use isknowledge to him who has lost his head? 'Tis an injury and unkindness infortune to tender us presents that will only inspire us with a justdespite that we had them not in their due season. Guide me no more; Ican no longer go. Of so many parts as make up a sufficiency, patience isthe most sufficient. Give the capacity of an excellent treble to thechorister who has rotten lungs, and eloquence to a hermit exiled into thedeserts of Arabia. There needs no art to help a fall; the end findsitself of itself at the conclusion of every affair. My world is at anend, my form expired; I am totally of the past, and am bound to authoriseit, and to conform my outgoing to it. I will here declare, by way ofexample, that the Pope's late ten days' diminution

 [Gregory XIII. , in 1582, reformed the Calendar, and, in consequence, in France they all at once passed from the 9th to the 20th December. ]

has taken me so aback that I cannot well reconcile myself to it; I belongto the years wherein we kept another kind of account. So ancient and solong a custom challenges my adherence to it, so that I am constrained tobe somewhat heretical on that point incapable of any, though corrective, innovation. My imagination, in spite of my teeth, always pushes me tendays forward or backward, and is ever murmuring in my ears: "This ruleconcerns those who are to begin to be. " If health itself, sweet as itis, returns to me by fits, 'tis rather to give me cause of regret thanpossession of it; I have no place left to keep it in. Time leaves me;without which nothing can be possessed. Oh, what little account should Imake of those great elective dignities that I see in such esteem in theworld, that are never conferred but upon men who are taking leave of it;wherein they do not so much regard how well the man will discharge histrust, as how short his administration will be: from the very entry theylook at the exit. In short, I am about finishing this man, and notrebuilding another. By long use, this form is in me turned intosubstance, and fortune into nature. 

I say, therefore, that every one of us feeble creatures is excusable inthinking that to be his own which is comprised under this measure; butwithal, beyond these limits, 'tis nothing but confusion; 'tis the largestextent we can grant to our own claims. The more we amplify our need andour possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows ofFortune and adversities. The career of our desires ought to becircumscribed and restrained to a short limit of the nearest and mostcontiguous commodities; and their course ought, moreover, to be performednot in a right line, that ends elsewhere, but in a circle, of which thetwo points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves. Actionsthat are carried on without this reflection--a near and essentialreflection, I mean--such as those of ambitious and avaricious men, and somany more as run point-blank, and to whose career always carries thembefore themselves, such actions, I say; are erroneous and sickly. 

Most of our business is farce:

 "Mundus universus exercet histrioniam. " --[Petronius Arbiter, iii. 8. ]

We must play our part properly, but withal as a part of a borrowedpersonage; we must not make real essence of a mask and outwardappearance; nor of a strange person, our own; we cannot distinguish theskin from the shirt: 'tis enough to meal the face, without mealing thebreast. I see some who transform and transubstantiate themselves into asmany new shapes and new beings as they undertake new employments; and whostrut and fume even to the heart and liver, and carry their state alongwith them even to the close-stool: I cannot make them distinguish thesalutations made to themselves from those made to their commission, theirtrain, or their mule:

 "Tantum se fortunx permittunt, etiam ut naturam dediscant. "

 ["They so much give themselves up to fortune, as even to unlearn nature. "--Quintus Curtius, iii. 2. ]

They swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking, according to the height of their magisterial place. The Mayor ofBordeaux and Montaigne have ever been two by very manifest separation. Because one is an advocate or a financier, he must not ignore the knaverythere is in such callings; an honest man is not accountable for the viceor absurdity of his employment, and ought not on that account refuse totake the calling upon him: 'tis the usage of his country, and there ismoney to be got by it; a man must live by the world; and make his best ofit, such as it is. But the judgment of an emperor ought to be above hisempire, and see and consider it as a foreign accident; and he ought toknow how to enjoy himself apart from it, and to communicate himself asJames and Peter, to himself, at all events. 

I cannot engage myself so deep and so entire; when my will gives me toanything, 'tis not with so violent an obligation that my judgment isinfected with it. In the present broils of this kingdom, my own interesthas not made me blind to the laudable qualities of our adversaries, norto those that are reproachable in those men of our party. Others adoreall of their own side; for my part, I do not so much as excuse mostthings in those of mine: a good work has never the worst grace with mefor being made against me. The knot of the controversy excepted, I havealways kept myself in equanimity and pure indifference:

 "Neque extra necessitates belli praecipuum odium gero;"

 ["Nor bear particular hatred beyond the necessities of war. "]

for which I am pleased with myself; and the more because I see otherscommonly fail in the contrary direction. Such as extend their anger andhatred beyond the dispute in question, as most men do, show that theyspring from some other occasion and private cause; like one who, beingcured of an ulcer, has yet a fever remaining, by which it appears thatthe ulcer had another more concealed beginning. The reason is that theyare not concerned in the common cause, because it is wounding to thestate and general interest; but are only nettled by reason of theirparticular concern. This is why they are so especially animated, and toa degree so far beyond justice and public reason:

 "Non tam omnia universi, quam ea, quae ad quemque pertinent, singuli carpebant. "

 ["Every one was not so much angry against things in general, as against those that particularly concern himself. " --Livy, xxxiv. 36. ]

I would have the advantage on our side; but if it be not, I shall not runmad. I am heartily for the right party; but I do not want to be takennotice of as an especial enemy to others, and beyond the general quarrel. I marvellously challenge this vicious form of opinion: "He is of theLeague because he admires the graciousness of Monsieur de Guise; he isastonished at the King of Navarre's energy, therefore he is a Huguenot;he finds this to say of the manners of the king, he is thereforeseditious in his heart. " And I did not grant to the magistrate himselfthat he did well in condemning a book because it had placed a heretic--[Theodore de Beza. ]--amongst the best poets of the time. Shall we notdare to say of a thief that he has a handsome leg? If a woman be astrumpet, must it needs follow that she has a foul smell? Did they inthe wisest ages revoke the proud title of Capitolinus they had beforeconferred on Marcus Manlius as conservator of religion and the publicliberty, and stifle the memory of his liberality, his feats of arms, andmilitary recompenses granted to his valour, because he, afterwardsaspired to the sovereignty, to the prejudice of the laws of his country?If we take a hatred against an advocate, he will not be allowed the nextday to be eloquent. I have elsewhere spoken of the zeal that pushed onworthy men to the like faults. For my part, I can say, "Such an one doesthis thing ill, and another thing virtuously and well. " So in theprognostication or sinister events of affairs they would have every onein his party blind or a blockhead, and that our persuasion and judgmentshould subserve not truth, but to the project of our desires. I shouldrather incline towards the other extreme; so much I fear being subornedby my desire; to which may be added that I am a little tenderlydistrustful of things that I wish. 

I have in my time seen wonders in the indiscreet and prodigious facilityof people in suffering their hopes and belief to be led and governed, which way best pleased and served their leaders, despite a hundredmistakes one upon another, despite mere dreams and phantasms. I no morewonder at those who have been blinded and seduced by the fooleries ofApollonius and Mahomet. Their sense and understanding are absolutelytaken away by their passion; their discretion has no more any otherchoice than that which smiles upon them and encourages their cause. I had principally observed this in the beginning of our intestinedistempers; that other, which has sprung up since, in imitating, hassurpassed it; by which I am satisfied that it is a quality inseparablefrom popular errors; after the first, that rolls, opinions drive on oneanother like waves with the wind: a man is not a member of the body, ifit be in his power to forsake it, and if he do not roll the common way. But, doubtless, they wrong the just side when they go about to assist itwith fraud; I have ever been against that practice: 'tis only fit to workupon weak heads; for the sound, there are surer and more honest ways tokeep up their courage and to excuse adverse accidents. 

Heaven never saw a greater animosity than that betwixt Caesar and Pompey, nor ever shall; and yet I observe, methinks, in those brave souls, a great moderation towards one another: it was a jealousy of honour andcommand, which did not transport them to a furious and indiscreet hatred, and was without malignity and detraction: in their hottest exploits uponone another, I discover some remains of respect and good-will: and amtherefore of opinion that, had, it been possible, each of them wouldrather have done his business without the ruin of the other than with it. Take notice how much otherwise matters went with Marius and Sylla. 

We must not precipitate ourselves so headlong after our affections andinterests. As, when I was young, I opposed myself to the progress oflove which I perceived to advance too fast upon me, and had a care lestit should at last become so pleasing as to force, captivate, and whollyreduce me to its mercy: so I do the same upon all other occasions wheremy will is running on with too warm an appetite. I lean opposite to theside it inclines to; as I find it going to plunge and make itself drunkwith its own wine; I evade nourishing its pleasure so far, that I cannotrecover it without infinite loss. Souls that, through their ownstupidity, only discern things by halves, have this happiness, that theysmart less with hurtful things: 'tis a spiritual leprosy that has someshow of health, and such a health as philosophy does not altogethercontemn; but yet we have no reason to call it wisdom, as we often do. And after this manner some one anciently mocked Diogeries, who, in thedepth of winter and quite naked, went embracing an image of snow for atrial of his endurance: the other seeing him in this position, "Art thounow very cold?" said he. "Not at all, " replied Diogenes. "Why, then, "pursued the other, "what difficult and exemplary thing dost thou thinkthou doest in embracing that snow?" To take a true measure of constancy, one must necessarily know what the suffering is. 

But souls that are to meet with adverse events and the injuries offortune, in their depth and sharpness, that are to weigh and taste themaccording to their natural weight and bitterness, let such show theirskill in avoiding the causes and diverting the blow. What did King Cotysdo? He paid liberally for the rich and beautiful vessel that had beenpresented to him, but, seeing it was exceedingly brittle, he immediatelybroke it betimes, to prevent so easy a matter of displeasure against hisservants. In like manner, I have willingly avoided all confusion in myaffairs, and never coveted to have my estate contiguous to those of myrelations, and such with whom I coveted a strict friendship; for thencematter of unkindness and falling out often proceeds. I formerly lovedhazardous games of cards and dice; but have long since left them off, only for this reason that, with whatever good air I carried my losses, I could not help feeling vexed within. A man of honour, who ought to betouchily sensible of the lie or of an insult, and who is not to take ascurvy excuse for satisfaction, should avoid occasions of dispute. I shun melancholy, crabbed men, as I would the plague; and in matters Icannot talk of without emotion and concern I never meddle, if notcompelled by my duty:

 "Melius non incipient, quam desinent. "

 ["They had better never to begin than to have to desist. " --Seneca, Ep. , 72. ]

The surest way, therefore, is to prepare one's self beforehand foroccasions. 

I know very well that some wise men have taken another way, and have notfeared to grapple and engage to the utmost upon several subjects theseare confident of their own strength, under which they protect themselvesin all ill successes, making their patience wrestle and contend withdisaster:

 "Velut rupes, vastum quae prodit in aequor, Obvia ventorum furiis, expostaque ponto, Vim cunctam atque minas perfert coelique marisque; Ipsa immota manens. "

 ["As a rock, which projects into the vast ocean, exposed to the furious winds and the raging sea, defies the force and menaces of sky and sea, itself unshaken. "--Virgil, AEneid, x. 693. ]

Let us not attempt these examples; we shall never come up to them. Theyset themselves resolutely, and without agitation, to behold the ruin oftheir country, which possessed and commanded all their will: this is toomuch, and too hard a task for our commoner souls. Cato gave up thenoblest life that ever was upon this account; we meaner spirits must flyfrom the storm as far as we can; we must provide for sentiment, and notfor patience, and evade the blows we cannot meet. Zeno, seeingChremonides, a young man whom he loved, draw near to sit down by him, suddenly started up; and Cleanthes demanding of him the reason why he didso, "I hear, " said he, "that physicians especially order repose, andforbid emotion in all tumours. " Socrates does not say: "Do not surrenderto the charms of beauty; stand your ground, and do your utmost to opposeit. " "Fly it, " says he; "shun the fight and encounter of it, as of apowerful poison that darts and wounds at a distance. " And his gooddisciple, feigning or reciting, but, in my opinion, rather reciting thanfeigning, the rare perfections of the great Cyrus, makes him distrustfulof his own strength to resist the charms of the divine beauty of thatillustrous Panthea, his captive, and committing the visiting and keepingher to another, who could not have so much liberty as himself. And theHoly Ghost in like manner:

 "Ne nos inducas in tentationem. "

 ["Lead us not into temptation. "--St. Matthew, vi. 13. ]

We do not pray that our reason may not be combated and overcome byconcupiscence, but that it should not be so much as tried by it; that weshould not be brought into a state wherein we are so much as to sufferthe approaches, solicitations, and temptations of sin: and we beg ofAlmighty God to keep our consciences quiet, fully and perfectly deliveredfrom all commerce of evil. 

Such as say that they have reason for their revenging passion, or anyother sort of troublesome agitation of mind, often say true, as thingsnow are, but not as they were: they speak to us when the causes of theirerror are by themselves nourished and advanced; but look backward--recallthese causes to their beginning--and there you will put them to anonplus. Will they have their faults less, for being of longercontinuance; and that of an unjust beginning, the sequel can be just?Whoever shall desire the good of his country, as I do, without frettingor pining himself, will be troubled, but will not swoon to see itthreatening either its own ruin, or a no less ruinous continuance; poorvessel, that the waves, the winds, and the pilot toss and steer to socontrary designs!

 "In tam diversa magister Ventus et unda trahunt. "

He who does not gape after the favour of princes, as after a thing hecannot live without, does not much concern himself at the coldness oftheir reception and countenance, nor at the inconstancy of their wills. He who does not brood over his children or his honours with a slavishpropension, ceases not to live commodiously enough after their loss. Hewho does good principally for his own satisfaction will not be muchtroubled to see men judge of his actions contrary to his merit. Aquarter of an ounce of patience will provide sufficiently against suchinconveniences. I find ease in this receipt, redeeming myself in thebeginning as good cheap as I can; and find that by this means I haveescaped much trouble and many difficulties. With very little ado I stopthe first sally of my emotions, and leave the subject that begins to betroublesome before it transports me. He who stops not the start willnever be able to stop the course; he who cannot keep them out will never, get them out when they are once got in; and he who cannot arrive at thebeginning will never arrive at the end of all. Nor will he bear the fallwho cannot sustain the shock:

 "Etenim ipsae se impellunt, ubi semel a ratione discessum est; ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur imprudens, nec reperit locum consistendi. "

 ["For they throw themselves headlong when once they lose their reason; and infirmity so far indulges itself, and from want of prudence is carried out into deep water, nor finds a place to shelter it. "--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , iv. 18. ]

I am betimes sensible of the little breezes that begin to sing andwhistle within, forerunners of the storm:

 "Ceu flamina prima Cum deprensa fremunt sylvis et caeca volutant Murmura, venturos nautis prodentia ventos. "

 ["As the breezes, pent in the woods, first send out dull murmurs, announcing the approach of winds to mariners. "--AEneid, x. 97. ]

How often have I done myself a manifest injustice to avoid the hazard ofhaving yet a worse done me by the judges, after an age of vexations, dirty and vile practices, more enemies to my nature than fire or therack?

 "Convenit a litibus, quantum licet, et nescio an paulo plus etiam quam licet, abhorrentem esse: est enim non modo liberale, paululum nonnunquam de suo jure decedere, sed interdum etiam fructuosum. "

 ["A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may, and I know not whether not something more; for 'tis not only liberal, but sometimes also advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right. --"Cicero, De Offic. , ii. 18. ]

Were we wise, we ought to rejoice and boast, as I one day heard a younggentleman of a good family very innocently do, that his mother had losther cause, as if it had been a cough, a fever, or something verytroublesome to keep. Even the favours that fortune might have given methrough relationship or acquaintance with those who have sovereignauthority in those affairs, I have very conscientiously and verycarefully avoided employing them to the prejudice of others, and ofadvancing my pretensions above their true right. In fine, I have so muchprevailed by my endeavours (and happily I may say it) that I am to thisday a virgin from all suits in law; though I have had very fair offersmade me, and with very just title, would I have hearkened to them, and avirgin from quarrels too. I have almost passed over a long life withoutany offence of moment, either active or passive, or without ever hearinga worse word than my own name: a rare favour of Heaven. 

Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes: what ruin didour last Duke of Burgundy run into about a cartload of sheepskins!And was not the graving of a seal the first and principal cause of thegreatest commotion that this machine of the world ever underwent?--[The civil war between Marius and Sylla; see Plutarch's Life of Marius, c. 3. ]--for Pompey and Caesar were but the offsets and continuation ofthe two others: and I have in my time seen the wisest heads in thiskingdom assembled with great ceremony, and at the public expense, abouttreaties and agreements, of which the true decision, in the meantime, absolutely depended upon the ladies' cabinet council, and the inclinationof some bit of a woman. 

The poets very well understood this when they put all Greece and Asia tofire and sword about an apple. Look why that man hazards his life andhonour upon the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him acquaint youwith the occasion of the quarrel; he cannot do it without blushing: theoccasion is so idle and frivolous. 

A little thing will engage you in it; but being once embarked, all thecords draw; great provisions are then required, more hard and moreimportant. How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out?Now we should proceed contrary to the reed, which, at its firstspringing, produces a long and straight shoot, but afterwards, as iftired and out of breath, it runs into thick and frequent joints andknots, as so many pauses which demonstrate that it has no more its firstvigour and firmness; 'twere better to begin gently and coldly, and tokeep one's breath and vigorous efforts for the height and stress of thebusiness. We guide affairs in their beginnings, and have them in our ownpower; but afterwards, when they are once at work, 'tis they that guideand govern us, and we are to follow them. 

Yet do I not mean to say that this counsel has discharged me of alldifficulty, and that I have not often had enough to do to curb andrestrain my passions; they are not always to be governed according to themeasure of occasions, and often have their entries very sharp andviolent. But still good fruit and profit may thence be reaped; exceptfor those who in well-doing are not satisfied with any benefit, ifreputation be wanting; for, in truth, such an effect is not valued but byevery one to himself; you are better contented, but not more esteemed, seeing you reformed yourself before you got into the whirl of the dance, or that the provocative matter was in sight. Yet not in this only, butin all other duties of life also, the way of those who aim at honour isvery different from that they proceed by, who propose to themselves orderand reason. I find some who rashly and furiously rush into the lists andcool in the course. As Plutarch says, that those who, through falseshame, are soft and facile to grant whatever is desired of them, areafterwards as facile to break their word and to recant; so he who enterslightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it. The samedifficulty that keeps me from entering into it, would, when once hot andengaged in quarrel, incite me to maintain it with great obstinacy andresolution. 'Tis the tyranny of custom; when a man is once engaged; hemust go through with it, or die. "Undertake coolly, " said Bias, "but pursue with ardour. " For want of prudence, men fall into want ofcourage, which is still more intolerable. 

Most accommodations of the quarrels of these days of ours are shamefuland false; we only seek to save appearances, and in the meantime betrayand disavow our true intentions; we salve over the fact. We know verywell how we said the thing, and in what sense we spoke it, and thecompany know it, and our friends whom we have wished to make sensible ofour advantage, understand it well enough too: 'tis at the expense of ourfrankness and of the honour of our courage, that we disown our thoughts, and seek refuge in falsities, to make matters up. We give ourselves thelie, to excuse the lie we have given to another. You are not to considerif your word or action may admit of another interpretation; 'tis your owntrue and sincere interpretation, your real meaning in what you said ordid, that you are thenceforward to maintain, whatever it cost you. Menspeak to your virtue and conscience, which are not things to be put undera mask; let us leave these pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers ofthe law. The excuses and reparations that I see every day made and givento repair indiscretion, seem to me more scandalous than the indiscretionitself. It were better to affront your adversary a second time than tooffend yourself by giving him so unmanly a satisfaction. You have bravedhim in your heat and anger, and you would flatter and appease him in yourcooler and better sense; and by that means lay yourself lower and at hisfeet, whom before you pretended to overtop. I do not find anything agentleman can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said isinfamous, when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him;forasmuch as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honour thanpusillanimity. Passions are as easy for me to evade, as they are hardfor me to moderate:

 "Exscinduntur facilius ammo, quam temperantur. "

 ["They are more easily to be eradicated than governed. "]

He who cannot attain the noble Stoical impassibility, let him securehimself in the bosom of this popular stolidity of mine; what theyperformed by virtue, I inure myself to do by temperament. The middleregion harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophersand peasants, concur in tranquillity and happiness:

 "Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari! Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes, Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!"

 ["Happy is he who could discover the causes of things, and place under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan, and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs. "--Virgil, Georg. , ii. 490. ]

The births of all things are weak and tender; and therefore we shouldhave our eyes intent on beginnings; for as when, in its infancy, thedanger is not perceived, so when it is grown up, the remedy is as littleto be found. I had every day encountered a million of crosses, harder todigest in the progress of ambition, than it has been hard for me to curbthe natural propension that inclined me to it:

 "Jure perhorrui Lath conspicuum tollere verticem. "

 ["I ever justly feared to raise my head too high. " --Horace, Od. , iii. 16, 18. ]

All public actions are subject to uncertain and various interpretations;for too many heads judge of them. Some say of this civic employment ofmine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it isworth so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), thatI have behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languidtemperament; and they have some colour for what they say. I endeavouredto keep my mind and my thoughts in repose;

 "Cum semper natura, tum etiam aetate jam quietus;"

 ["As being always quiet by nature, so also now by age. " --Cicero, De Petit. Consul. , c. 2. ]

and if they sometimes lash out upon some rude and sensible impression, 'tis in truth without my advice. Yet from this natural heaviness ofmine, men ought not to conclude a total inability in me (for want of careand want of sense are two very different things), and much less anyunkindness or ingratitude towards that corporation who employed theutmost means they had in their power to oblige me, both before they knewme and after; and they did much more for me in choosing me anew than inconferring that honour upon me at first. I wish them all imaginablegood; and assuredly had occasion been, there is nothing I would havespared for their service; I did for them as I would have done for myself. 'Tis a good, warlike, and generous people, but capable of obedience anddiscipline, and of whom the best use may be made, if well guided. Theysay also that my administration passed over without leaving any mark ortrace. Good! They moreover accuse my cessation in a time when everybodyalmost was convicted of doing too much. I am impatient to be doing wheremy will spurs me on; but this itself is an enemy to perseverance. Lethim who will make use of me according to my own way, employ me in affairswhere vigour and liberty are required, where a direct, short, and, moreover, a hazardous conduct are necessary; I may do something; but ifit must be long, subtle, laborious, artificial and intricate, he hadbetter call in somebody else. All important offices are not necessarilydifficult: I came prepared to do somewhat rougher work, had there beengreat occasion; for it is in my power to do something more than I do, orthan I love to do. I did not, to my knowledge, omit anything that myduty really required. I easily forgot those offices that ambition mixeswith duty and palliates with its title; these are they that, for the mostpart, fill the eyes and ears, and give men the most satisfaction; not thething but the appearance contents them; if they hear no noise, they thinkmen sleep. My humour is no friend to tumult; I could appease a commotionwithout commotion, and chastise a disorder without being myselfdisorderly; if I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it, and put it on. My manners are languid, rather faint than sharp. I donot condemn a magistrate who sleeps, provided the people under his chargesleep as well as he: the laws in that case sleep too. For my part, Icommend a gliding, staid, and silent life:

 "Neque submissam et abjectam, neque se efferentem;"

 ["Neither subject and abject, nor obtrusive. " --Cicero, De Offic. , i. 34]

my fortune will have it so. I am descended from a family that has livedwithout lustre or tumult, and, time out of mind, particularly ambitiousof a character for probity. 

Our people nowadays are so bred up to bustle and ostentation, that goodnature, moderation, equability, constancy, and such like quiet andobscure qualities, are no more thought on or regarded. Rough bodies makethemselves felt; the smooth are imperceptibly handled: sickness is felt, health little or not at all; no more than the oils that foment us, incomparison of the pains for which we are fomented. 'Tis acting for one'sparticular reputation and profit, not for the public good, to refer thatto be done in the public squares which one may do in the council chamber;and to noon day what might have been done the night before; and to bejealous to do that himself which his colleague can do as well as he; sowere some surgeons of Greece wont to perform their operations uponscaffolds in the sight of the people, to draw more practice and profit. They think that good rules cannot be understood but by the sound oftrumpet. Ambition is not a vice of little people, nor of such modestmeans as ours. One said to Alexander: "Your father will leave you agreat dominion, easy and pacific"; this youth was emulous of his father'svictories and of the justice of his government; he would not have enjoyedthe empire of the world in ease and peace. Alcibiades, in Plato, hadrather die young, beautiful, rich, noble, and learned, and all this infull excellence, than to stop short of such condition; this disease is, peradventure, excusable in so strong and so full a soul. When wretchedand dwarfish little souls cajole and deceive themselves, and think tospread their fame for having given right judgment in an affair, ormaintained the discipline of the guard of a gate of their city, the morethey think to exalt their heads the more they show their tails. Thislittle well-doing has neither body nor life; it vanishes in the firstmouth, and goes no further than from one street to another. Talk of itby all means to your son or your servant, like that old fellow who, having no other auditor of his praises nor approver of his valour, boasted to his chambermaid, crying, "O Perrete, what a brave, clever manhast thou for thy master!" At the worst, talk of it to yourself, like acouncillor of my acquaintance, who, having disgorged a whole cartful oflaw jargon with great heat and as great folly, coming out of the councilchamber to make water, was heard very complacently to mutter betwixt histeeth:

 "Non nobis, domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam. "

 ["Not unto us, O Lord, not to us: but unto Thy name be the glory. " --Psalm cxiii. I. ]

He who gets it of nobody else, let him pay himself out of his own purse. 

Fame is not prostituted at so cheap a rate: rare and exemplary actions, to which it is due, would not endure the company of this prodigious crowdof petty daily performances. Marble may exalt your titles, as much asyou please, for having repaired a rod of wall or cleansed a public sewer;but not men of sense. Renown does not follow all good deeds, if noveltyand difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere esteem, accordingto the Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds from virtue; norwill they allow him bare thanks who, out of temperance, abstains from anold blear-eyed crone. Those who have known the admirable qualities ofScipio Africanus, deny him the glory that Panaetius attributes to him, ofbeing abstinent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of hisage. We have pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those ofgrandeur: our own are more natural, and by so much more solid and sure, as they are lower. If not for that of conscience, yet at least forambition's sake, let us reject ambition; let us disdain that thirst ofhonour and renown, so low and mendicant, that it makes us beg it of allsorts of people:

 "Quae est ista laus quae: possit e macello peti?"

 ["What praise is that which is to be got in the market-place (meat market)?" Cicero, De Fin. , ii. 15. ]

by abject means, and at what cheap rate soever: 'tis dishonour to be sohonoured. Let us learn to be no more greedy, than we are capable, ofglory. To be puffed up with every action that is innocent or of use, isonly for those with whom such things are extraordinary and rare: theywill value it as it costs them. The more a good effect makes a noise, the more do I abate of its goodness as I suspect that it was moreperformed for the noise, than upon account of the goodness: exposed uponthe stall, 'tis half sold. Those actions have much more grace andlustre, that slip from the hand of him that does them, negligently andwithout noise, and that some honest man thereafter finds out and raisesfrom the shade, to produce it to the light upon its own account, "Mihi quidem laudabiliora videntur omnia, quae sine venditatione, et sine populo teste fiunt, "

 ["All things truly seem more laudable to me that are performed without ostentation, and without the testimony of the people. " --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , ii. 26. ]

says the most ostentatious man that ever lived. 

I had but to conserve and to continue, which are silent and insensibleeffects: innovation is of great lustre; but 'tis interdicted in this age, when we are pressed upon and have nothing to defend ourselves from butnovelties. To forbear doing is often as generous as to do; but 'tis lessin the light, and the little good I have in me is of this kind. In fine, occasions in this employment of mine have been confederate with myhumour, and I heartily thank them for it. Is there any who desires to besick, that he may see his physician at work? and would not the physiciandeserve to be whipped who should wish the plague amongst us, that hemight put his art in practice? I have never been of that wicked humour, and common enough, to desire that troubles and disorders in this cityshould elevate and honour my government; I have ever heartily contributedall I could to their tranquillity and ease. 

He who will not thank me for the order, the sweet and silent calm thathas accompanied my administration, cannot, however, deprive me of theshare that belongs to me by title of my good fortune. And I am of such acomposition, that I would as willingly be lucky as wise, and had ratherowe my successes purely to the favour of Almighty God, than to anyoperation of my own. I had sufficiently published to the world myunfitness for such public offices; but I have something in me yet worsethan incapacity itself; which is, that I am not much displeased at it, and that I do not much go about to cure it, considering the course oflife that I have proposed to myself. 

Neither have I satisfied myself in this employment; but I have very neararrived at what I expected from my own performance, and have muchsurpassed what I promised them with whom I had to do: for I am apt topromise something less than what I am able to do, and than what I hope tomake good. I assure myself that I have left no offence or hatred behindme; to leave regret or desire for me amongst them, I at least know verywell that I never much aimed at it:

 "Mene huic confidere monstro! Mene salis placidi vultum, fluctusque quietos Ignorare?"

 ["Should I place confidence in this monster? Should I be ignorant of the dangers of that seeming placid sea, those now quiet waves?" --Virgil, Aeneid, V. 849. ]

CHAPTER XI

OF CRIPPLES

'Tis now two or three years ago that they made the year ten days shorterin France. --[By the adoption of the Gregorian calendar. ]--How manychanges may we expect should follow this reformation! it was reallymoving heaven and earth at once. Yet nothing for all that stirs from itsplace my neighbours still find their seasons of sowing and reaping, theopportunities of doing their business, the hurtful and propitious days, dust at the same time where they had, time out of mind, assigned them;there was no more error perceived in our old use, than there is amendmentfound in the alteration; so great an uncertainty there is throughout; sogross, obscure, and obtuse is our perception. 'Tis said that thisregulation might have been carried on with less inconvenience, bysubtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, theBissextile, which is in some sort a day of impediment and trouble, tillwe had exactly satisfied this debt, the which itself is not done by thiscorrection, and we yet remain some days in arrear: and yet, by thismeans, such order might be taken for the future, arranging that after therevolution of such or such a number of years, the supernumerary day mightbe always thrown out, so that we could not, henceforward, err abovefour-and-twenty hours in our computation. We have no other account oftime but years; the world has for many ages made use of that only; andyet it is a measure that to this day we are not agreed upon, and one thatwe still doubt what form other nations have variously given to it, andwhat was the true use of it. What does this saying of some mean, thatthe heavens in growing old bow themselves down nearer towards us, and putus into an uncertainty even of hours and days? and that which Plutarchsays of the months, that astrology had not in his time determined as tothe motion of the moon; what a fine condition are we in to keep recordsof things past. 

I was just now ruminating, as I often do, what a free and roving thinghuman reason is. I ordinarily see that men, in things propounded tothem, more willingly study to find out reasons than to ascertain truth:they slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination ofconsequences; they leave the things, and fly to the causes. Pleasanttalkers! The knowledge of causes only concerns him who has the conductof things; not us, who are merely to undergo them, and who have perfectlyfull and accomplished use of them, according to our need, withoutpenetrating into the original and essence; wine is none the more pleasantto him who knows its first faculties. On the contrary, both the body andthe soul interrupt and weaken the right they have of the use of the worldand of themselves, by mixing with it the opinion of learning; effectsconcern us, but the means not at all. To determine and to distributeappertain to superiority and command; as it does to subjection to accept. Let me reprehend our custom. They commonly begin thus: "How is such athing done?" Whereas they should say, "Is such a thing done?" Ourreason is able to create a hundred other worlds, and to find out thebeginnings and contexture; it needs neither matter nor foundation: let itbut run on, it builds as well in the air as on the earth, and withinanity as well as with matter:

 "Dare pondus idonea fumo. "

 ["Able to give weight to smoke. "--Persius, v. 20. ]

I find that almost throughout we should say, "there is no such thing, "and should myself often make use of this answer, but I dare not: for theycry that it is an evasion produced from ignorance and weakness ofunderstanding; and I am fain, for the most part, to juggle for company, and prate of frivolous subjects and tales that I believe not a word of;besides that, in truth, 'tis a little rude and quarrelsome flatly to denya stated fact; and few people but will affirm, especially in things hardto be believed, that they have seen them, or at least will name witnesseswhose authority will stop our mouths from contradiction. In this way, weknow the foundations and means of things that never were; and the worldscuffles about a thousand questions, of which both the Pro and the Conare false. 

 "Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in praecipitem locum non debeat se sapiens committere. "

 ["False things are so near the true, that a wise man should not trust himself in a precipitous place"--Cicero, Acad. , ii. 21. ]

Truth and lies are faced alike; their port, taste, and proceedings arethe same, and we look upon them with the same eye. I find that we arenot only remiss in defending ourselves from deceit, but that we seek andoffer ourselves to be gulled; we love to entangle ourselves in vanity, asa thing conformable to our being. 

I have seen the birth of many miracles in my time; which, although theywere abortive, yet have we not failed to foresee what they would havecome to, had they lived their full age. 'Tis but finding the end of theclew, and a man may wind off as much as he will; and there is a greaterdistance betwixt nothing and the least thing in the world than there isbetwixt this and the greatest. Now the first that are imbued with thisbeginning of novelty, when they set out with their tale, find, by theoppositions they meet with, where the difficulty of persuasion lies, andso caulk up that place with some false piece;

 [Voltaire says of this passage, "He who would learn to doubt should read this whole chapter of Montaigne, the least methodical of all philosophers, but the wisest and most amiable. " --Melanges Historiques, xvii. 694, ed. Of Lefevre. ]

besides that:

 "Insita hominibus libido alendi de industria rumores, "

 ["Men having a natural desire to nourish reports. " --Livy, xxviii. 24. ]

we naturally make a conscience of restoring what has been lent us, without some usury and accession of our own. The particular error firstmakes the public error, and afterwards, in turn, the public error makesthe particular one; and thus all this vast fabric goes forming and pilingitself up from hand to hand, so that the remotest witness knows moreabout it than those who were nearest, and the last informed is betterpersuaded than the first. 

'Tis a natural progress; for whoever believes anything, thinks it a workof charity to persuade another into the same opinion; which the better todo, he will make no difficulty of adding as much of his own invention ashe conceives necessary to his tale to encounter the resistance or want ofconception he meets with in others. I myself, who make a greatconscience of lying, and am not very solicitous of giving credit andauthority to what I say, yet find that in the arguments I have in hand, being heated with the opposition of another, or by the proper warmth ofmy own narration, I swell and puff up my subject by voice, motion, vigour, and force of words, and moreover, by extension and amplification, not without some prejudice to the naked truth; but I do it conditionallywithal, that to the first who brings me to myself, and who asks me theplain and bare truth, I presently surrender my passion, and deliver thematter to him without exaggeration, without emphasis, or any painting ofmy own. A quick and earnest way of speaking, as mine is, is apt to runinto hyperbole. There is nothing to which men commonly are more inclinedthan to make way for their own opinions; where the ordinary means failus, we add command, force, fire, and sword. 'Tis a misfortune to be atsuch a pass, that the best test of truth is the multitude of believers ina crowd, where the number of fools so much exceeds the wise:

 "Quasi vero quidquam sit tam valde, quam nil sapere, vulgare. "

 ["As if anything were so common as ignorance. " --Cicero, De Divin. , ii. ]

 "Sanitatis patrocinium est, insanientium turba. "

 ["The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise. " --St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, vi. 10. ]

'Tis hard to resolve a man's judgment against the common opinions: thefirst persuasion, taken from the very subject itself, possesses thesimple, and from them diffuses itself to the wise, under the authority ofthe number and antiquity of the witnesses. For my part, what I shouldnot believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred and one: and Ido not judge opinions by years. 

'Tis not long since one of our princes, in whom the gout had spoiled anexcellent nature and sprightly disposition, suffered himself to be so farpersuaded with the report made to him of the marvellous operations of acertain priest who by words and gestures cured all sorts of diseases, as to go a long journey to seek him out, and by the force of his mereimagination, for some hours so persuaded and laid his legs asleep, as toobtain that service from them they had long time forgotten. Had fortuneheaped up five or six such-like incidents, it had been enough to havebrought this miracle into nature. There was afterwards discovered somuch simplicity and so little art in the author of these performances, that he was thought too contemptible to be punished, as would be thoughtof most such things, were they well examined:

 "Miramur ex intervallo fallentia. "

 ["We admire after an interval (or at a distance) things that deceive. "--Seneca, Ep. , 118, 2. ]

So does our sight often represent to us strange images at a distance thatvanish on approaching near:

 "Nunquam ad liquidum fama perducitur. "

 ["Report is never fully substantiated. " --Quintus Curtius, ix. 2. ]

'Tis wonderful from how many idle beginnings and frivolous causes suchfamous impressions commonly, proceed. This it is that obstructsinformation; for whilst we seek out causes and solid and weighty ends, worthy of so great a name, we lose the true ones; they escape our sightby their littleness. And, in truth, a very prudent, diligent, and subtleinquisition is required in such searches, indifferent, and notprepossessed. To this very hour, all these miracles and strange eventshave concealed themselves from me: I have never seen greater monster ormiracle in the world than myself: one grows familiar with all strangethings by time and custom, but the more I frequent and the better I knowmyself, the more does my own deformity astonish me, the less I understandmyself. 

The principal right of advancing and producing such accidents is reservedto fortune. Passing the day before yesterday through a village twoleagues from my house, I found the place yet warm with a miracle that hadlately failed of success there, where with first the neighbourhood hadbeen several months amused; then the neighbouring provinces began to takeit up, and to run thither in great companies of all sorts of people. A young fellow of the place had one night in sport counterfeited thevoice of a spirit in his own house, without any other design at present, but only for sport; but this having succeeded with him better than heexpected, to extend his farce with more actors he associated with him astupid silly country girl, and at last there were three of them of thesame age and understanding, who from domestic, proceeded to public, preachings, hiding themselves under the altar of the church, neverspeaking but by night, and forbidding any light to be brought. Fromwords which tended to the conversion of the world, and threats of the dayof judgment (for these are subjects under the authority and reverence ofwhich imposture most securely lurks), they proceeded to visions andgesticulations so simple and ridiculous that--nothing could hardly be sogross in the sports of little children. Yet had fortune never so littlefavoured the design, who knows to what height this juggling might have atlast arrived? These poor devils are at present in prison, and are likeshortly to pay for the common folly; and I know not whether some judgewill not also make them smart for his. We see clearly into this, whichis discovered; but in many things of the like nature that exceed ourknowledge, I am of opinion that we ought to suspend our judgment, whetheras to rejection or as to reception. 

Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all theabuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid ofprofessing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things weare not able to refute: we speak of all things by precepts and decisions. The style at Rome was that even that which a witness deposed to havingseen with his own eyes, and what a judge determined with his most certainknowledge, was couched in this form of speaking: "it seems to me. " Theymake me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon meas infallible. I love these words which mollify and moderate thetemerity of our propositions: "peradventure; in some sort; some; 'tissaid, I think, " and the like: and had I been set to train up children Ihad put this way of answering into their mouths, inquiring and notresolving: "What does this mean? I understand it not; it may be: is ittrue?" so that they should rather have retained the form of pupils atthreescore years old than to go out doctors, as they do, at ten. Whoeverwill be cured of ignorance must confess it. 

Iris is the daughter of Thaumas;

 ["That is, of Admiration. She (Iris, the rainbow) is beautiful, and for that reason, because she has a face to be admired, she is said to have been the daughter of Thamus. " --Cicero, De Nat. Deor. , iii. 20. ]

admiration is the foundation of all philosophy, inquisition the progress, ignorance the end. But there is a sort of ignorance, strong andgenerous, that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge; anignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceiveknowledge itself. I read in my younger years a trial that Corras, [A celebrated Calvinist lawyer, born at Toulouse; 1513, and assassinated there, 4th October 1572. ]

a councillor of Toulouse, printed, of a strange incident, of two men whopresented themselves the one for the other. I remember (and I hardlyremember anything else) that he seemed to have rendered the imposture ofhim whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful and so far exceeding bothour knowledge and his own, who was the judge, that I thought it a verybold sentence that condemned him to be hanged. Let us have some form ofdecree that says, "The court understands nothing of the matter" morefreely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who, finding themselvesperplexed with a cause they could not unravel, ordered the parties toappear again after a hundred years. 

The witches of my neighbourhood run the hazard of their lives upon thereport of every new author who seeks to give body to their dreams. Toaccommodate the examples that Holy Writ gives us of such things, mostcertain and irrefragable examples, and to tie them to our modern events, seeing that we neither see the causes nor the means, will require anothersort-of wit than ours. It, peradventure, only appertains to that soleall-potent testimony to tell us. "This is, and that is, and not thatother. " God ought to be believed; and certainly with very good reason;but not one amongst us for all that who is astonished at his ownnarration (and he must of necessity be astonished if he be not out of hiswits), whether he employ it about other men's affairs or against himself. 

I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable, avoidingthose ancient reproaches:

 "Majorem fidem homines adhibent iis, quae non intelligunt; --Cupidine humani ingenii libentius obscura creduntur. "

 ["Men are most apt to believe what they least understand: and from the acquisitiveness of the human intellect, obscure things are more easily credited. " The second sentence is from Tacitus, Hist. 1. 22. ]

I see very well that men get angry, and that I am forbidden to doubt uponpain of execrable injuries; a new way of persuading! Thank God, I am notto be cuffed into belief. Let them be angry with those who accuse theiropinion of falsity; I only accuse it of difficulty and boldness, andcondemn the opposite affirmation equally, if not so imperiously, withthem. He who will establish this proposition by authority and huffingdiscovers his reason to be very weak. For a verbal and scholasticaltercation let them have as much appearance as their contradictors;

 "Videantur sane, non affirmentur modo;"

 ["They may indeed appear to be; let them not be affirmed (Let them state the probabilities, but not affirm. )" --Cicero, Acad. , n. 27. ]

but in the real consequence they draw from it these have much theadvantage. To kill men, a clear and strong light is required, and ourlife is too real and essential to warrant these supernatural andfantastic accidents. 

As to drugs and poisons, I throw them out of my count, as being the worstsort of homicides: yet even in this, 'tis said, that men are not alwaysto rely upon the personal confessions of these people; for they havesometimes been known to accuse themselves of the murder of persons whohave afterwards been found living and well. In these other extravagantaccusations, I should be apt to say, that it is sufficient a man, whatrecommendation soever he may have, be believed as to human things; but ofwhat is beyond his conception, and of supernatural effect, he ought thenonly to be believed when authorised by a supernatural approbation. Theprivilege it has pleased Almighty God to give to some of our witnesses, ought not to be lightly communicated and made cheap. I have my earsbattered with a thousand such tales as these: "Three persons saw him sucha day in the east three, the next day in the west: at such an hour, insuch a place, and in such habit"; assuredly I should not believe itmyself. How much more natural and likely do I find it that two menshould lie than that one man in twelve hours' time should fly with thewind from east to west? How much more natural that our understandingshould be carried from its place by the volubility of our disorderedminds, than that one of us should be carried by a strange spirit upon abroomstaff, flesh and bones as we are, up the shaft of a chimney? Letnot us seek illusions from without and unknown, we who are perpetuallyagitated with illusions domestic and our own. Methinks one is pardonablein disbelieving a miracle, at least, at all events where one can eludeits verification as such, by means not miraculous; and I am of St. Augustine's opinion, that, "'tis better to lean towards doubt thanassurance, in things hard to prove and dangerous to believe. "

'Tis now some years ago that I travelled through the territories of asovereign prince, who, in my favour, and to abate my incredulity, did methe honour to let me see, in his own presence, and in a private place, ten or twelve prisoners of this kind, and amongst others, an old woman, a real witch in foulness and deformity, who long had been famous in thatprofession. I saw both proofs and free confessions, and I know not whatinsensible mark upon the miserable creature: I examined and talked withher and the rest as much and as long as I would, and gave the best andsoundest attention I could, and I am not a man to suffer my judgment tobe made captive by prepossession. In the end, and in all conscience, Ishould rather have prescribed them hellebore than hemlock;

 "Captisque res magis mentibus, quam consceleratis similis visa;"

 ["The thing was rather to be attributed to madness, than malice. " ("The thing seemed to resemble minds possessed rather than guilty. ") --Livy, viii, 18. ]

justice has its corrections proper for such maladies. As to theoppositions and arguments that worthy men have made to me, both there, and often in other places, I have met with none that have convinced me, and that have not admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions. It is true, indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded uponexperience and fact, I do not go about to untie, neither have they anyend; I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot. After all, 'tis setting a man's conjectures at a very high price upon them to causea man to be roasted alive. 

We are told by several examples, as Praestantius of his father, thatbeing more profoundly, asleep than men usually are, he fancied himselfto be a mare, and that he served the soldiers for a sumpter; and whathe fancied himself to be, he really proved. If sorcerers dream somaterially; if dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves witheffects, still I cannot believe that therefore our will should beaccountable to justice; which I say as one who am neither judge nor privycouncillor, and who think myself by many degrees unworthy so to be, but aman of the common sort, born and avowed to the obedience of the publicreason, both in its words and acts. He who should record my idle talk asbeing to the prejudice of the pettiest law, opinion, or custom of hisparish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me much more; for, inwhat I say, I warrant no other certainty, but that 'tis what I had thenin my thought, a tumultuous and wavering thought. All I say is by way ofdiscourse, and nothing by way of advice:

 "Nec me pudet, ut istos fateri nescire, quod nesciam;"

 ["Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what I do not know. "--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , i. 25. ]

I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed; and so Itold a great man, who complained of the tartness and contentiousness ofmy exhortations. Perceiving you to be ready and prepared on one part, Ipropose to you the other, with all the diligence and care I can, to clearyour judgment, not to compel it. God has your hearts in His hands, andwill furnish you with the means of choice. I am not so presumptuous evenas to desire that my opinions should bias you--in a thing of so greatimportance: my fortune has not trained them up to so potent and elevatedconclusions. Truly, I have not only a great many humours, but also agreat many opinions, that I would endeavour to make my son dislike, if Ihad one. What, if the truest are not always the most commodious to man, being of so wild a composition?

Whether it be to the purpose or not, tis no great matter: 'tis a commonproverb in Italy, that he knows not Venus in her perfect sweetness whohas never lain with a lame mistress. Fortune, or some particularincident, long ago put this saying into the mouths of the people; and thesame is said of men as well as of women; for the queen of the Amazonsanswered the Scythian who courted her to love, "Lame men perform best. "In this feminine republic, to evade the dominion of the males, theylamed them in their infancy--arms, legs, and other members that gave themadvantage over them, and only made use of them in that wherein we, inthese parts of the world, make use of them. I should have been apt tothink; that the shuffling pace of the lame mistress added some newpleasure to the work, and some extraordinary titillation to those whowere at the sport; but I have lately learnt that ancient philosophy hasitself determined it, which says that the legs and thighs of lame women, not receiving, by reason of their imperfection, their due aliment, itfalls out that the genital parts above are fuller and better supplied andmuch more vigorous; or else that this defect, hindering exercise, theywho are troubled with it less dissipate their strength, and come moreentire to the sports of Venus; which also is the reason why the Greeksdecried the women-weavers as being more hot than other women by reason oftheir sedentary trade, which they carry on without any great exercise ofthe body. What is it we may not reason of at this rate? I might alsosay of these, that the jaggling about whilst so sitting at work, rousesand provokes their desire, as the swinging and jolting of coaches doesthat of our ladies. 

Do not these examples serve to make good what I said at first: that ourreasons often anticipate the effect, and have so infinite an extent ofjurisdiction that they judge and exercise themselves even on inanityitself and non-existency? Besides the flexibility of our invention toforge reasons of all sorts of dreams, our imagination is equally facileto receive impressions of falsity by very frivolous appearances; for, bythe sole authority of the ancient and common use of this proverb, I haveformerly made myself believe that I have had more pleasure in a woman byreason she was not straight, and accordingly reckoned that deformityamongst her graces. 

Torquato Tasso, in the comparison he makes betwixt France and Italy, says that he has observed that our legs are generally smaller than thoseof the Italian gentlemen, and attributes the cause of it to our beingcontinually on horseback; which is the very same cause from whichSuetonius draws a quite opposite conclusion; for he says, on thecontrary, that Germanicus had made his legs bigger by the continuation ofthe same exercise. 

Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding; it is the shoe ofTheramenes, fit for all feet. It is double and diverse, and the mattersare double and diverse too. "Give me a drachm of silver, " said a Cynicphilosopher to Antigonus. "That is not a present befitting a king, "replied he. "Give me then a talent, " said the other. "That is not apresent befitting a Cynic. "

 "Seu plures calor ille vias et caeca relaxat Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in herbas Seu durat magis, et venas astringit hiantes; Ne tenues pluviae, rapidive potentia colic Acrior, aut Boreae penetrabile frigus adurat. "

 ["Whether the heat opens more passages and secret pores through which the sap may be derived into the new-born herbs; or whether it rather hardens and binds the gaping veins that the small showers and keen influence of the violent sun or penetrating cold of Boreas may not hurt them. "--Virg. , Georg. , i. 89. ]

 "Ogni medaglia ha il suo rovescio. "

 ["Every medal has its reverse. "--Italian Proverb. ]

This is the reason why Clitomachus said of old that Carneades had outdonethe labours of Hercules, in having eradicated consent from men, that isto say, opinion and the courage of judging. This so vigorous fancy ofCarneades sprang, in my opinion, anciently from the impudence of thosewho made profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit. AEsop was set to sale with two other slaves; the buyer asked the first ofthese what he could do; he, to enhance his own value, promised mountainsand marvels, saying he could do this and that, and I know not what; thesecond said as much of himself or more: when it came to AEsop's turn, andthat he was also asked what he could do; "Nothing, " said he, "for thesetwo have taken up all before me; they know everything. " So has ithappened in the school of philosophy: the pride of those who attributedthe capacity of all things to the human mind created in others, out ofdespite and emulation, this opinion, that it is capable of nothing: theone maintain the same extreme in ignorance that the others do inknowledge; to make it undeniably manifest that man is immoderatethroughout, and can never stop but of necessity and the want of abilityto proceed further. 

CHAPTER XII

OF PHYSIOGNOMY

Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and trust; and'tis not amiss; we could not choose worse than by ourselves in so weak anage. That image of Socrates' discourses, which his friends havetransmitted to us, we approve upon no other account than a reverence topublic sanction: 'tis not according to our own knowledge; they are notafter our way; if anything of the kind should spring up now, few menwould value them. We discern no graces that are not pointed and puffedout and inflated by art; such as glide on in their own purity andsimplicity easily escape so gross a sight as ours; they have a delicateand concealed beauty, such as requires a clear and purified sight todiscover its secret light. Is not simplicity, as we take it, cousin-german to folly and a quality of reproach? Socrates makes hissoul move a natural and common motion: a peasant said this; a woman saidthat; he has never anybody in his mouth but carters, joiners, cobblers, and masons; his are inductions and similitudes drawn from the most commonand known actions of men; every one understands him. We should neverhave recognised the nobility and splendour of his admirable conceptionsunder so mean a form; we, who think all things low and flat that are notelevated, by learned doctrine, and who discern no riches but in pomp andshow. This world of ours is only formed for ostentation: men are onlypuffed up with wind, and are bandied to and fro like tennis-balls. Heproposed to himself no vain and idle fancies; his design was to furnishus with precepts and things that more really and fitly serve to the useof life;

 "Servare modum, finemque tenere, Naturamque sequi. "

 ["To keep a just mean, to observe a just limit, and to follow Nature. "--Lucan, ii. 381. ]

He was also always one and the same, and raised himself, not by startsbut by complexion, to the highest pitch of vigour; or, to say better, mounted not at all, but rather brought down, reduced, and subjected allasperities and difficulties to his original and natural condition; for inCato 'tis most manifest that 'tis a procedure extended far beyond thecommon ways of men: in the brave exploits of his life, and in his death, we find him always mounted upon the great horse; whereas the other evercreeps upon the ground, and with a gentle and ordinary pace, treats ofthe most useful matters, and bears himself, both at his death and in therudest difficulties that could present themselves, in the ordinary way ofhuman life. 

It has fallen out well that the man most worthy to be known and to bepresented to the world for example should be he of whom we have the mostcertain knowledge; he has been pried into by the most clear-sighted menthat ever were; the testimonies we have of him are admirable both infidelity and fulness. 'Tis a great thing that he was able so to orderthe pure imaginations of a child, that, without altering or wrestingthem, he thereby produced the most beautiful effects of our soul: hepresents it neither elevated nor rich; he only represents it sound, butassuredly with a brisk and full health. By these common and naturalsprings, by these ordinary and popular fancies, without being moved orput out, he set up not only the most regular, but the most high andvigorous beliefs, actions, and manners that ever were. 'Tis he whobrought again from heaven, where she lost her time, human wisdom, torestore her to man with whom her most just and greatest business lies. See him plead before his judges; observe by what reasons he rouses hiscourage to the hazards of war; with what arguments he fortifies hispatience against calumny, tyranny, death, and the perverseness of hiswife: you will find nothing in all this borrowed from arts and sciences:the simplest may there discover their own means and strength; 'tis notpossible more to retire or to creep more low. He has done human nature agreat kindness in showing it how much it can do of itself. 

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrowand to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than ofour own. Man can in nothing fix himself to his actual necessity: ofpleasure, wealth, and power, he grasps at more than he can hold; hisgreediness is incapable of moderation. And I find that in curiosity ofknowing he is the same; he cuts himself out more work than he can do, andmore than he needs to do: extending the utility of knowledge to the fullof its matter:

 "Ut omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque, intemperantia laboramus. "

 ["We carry intemperance into the study of literature, as well as into everything else. "--Seneca, Ep. , 106. ]

And Tacitus had reason to commend the mother of Agricola for havingrestrained her son in his too violent appetite for learning. 

Tis a good, if duly considered, which has in it, as the other goods ofmen have, a great deal of vanity and weakness, proper and natural toitself, and that costs very dear. Its acquisition is far more hazardousthan that of all other meat or drink; for, as to other things, what wehave bought we carry home in some vessel, and there have full leisure toexamine our purchase, how much we shall eat or drink of it, and when: butsciences we can, at the very first, stow into no other vessel than thesoul; we swallow them in buying, and return from the market, eitheralready infected or amended: there are some that only burden andovercharge the stomach, instead of nourishing; and, moreover, some that, under colour of curing, poison us. I have been pleased, in places whereI have been, to see men in devotion vow ignorance as well as chastity, poverty, and penitence: 'tis also a gelding of our unruly appetites, toblunt this cupidity that spurs us on to the study of books, and todeprive the soul of this voluptuous complacency that tickles us with theopinion of knowledge: and 'tis plenarily to accomplish the vow ofpoverty, to add unto it that of the mind. We need little doctrine tolive at our ease; and Socrates teaches us that this is in us, and the wayhow to find it, and the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency whichexceeds the natural is well-nigh superfluous and vain: 'tis much if itdoes not rather burden and cumber us than do us good:

 "Paucis opus est literis ad mentem bonam:"

 ["Little learning is needed to form a sound mind. " --Seneca, Ep. , 106. ]

'tis a feverish excess of the mind; a tempestuous and unquiet instrument. Do but recollect yourself, and you will find in yourself naturalarguments against death, true, and the fittest to serve you in time ofnecessity: 'tis they that make a peasant, and whole nations, die with asmuch firmness as a philosopher. Should I have died less cheerfullybefore I had read Cicero's Tusculan Quastiones? I believe not; and whenI find myself at the best, I perceive that my tongue is enriched indeed, but my courage little or nothing elevated by them; that is just as natureframed it at first, and defends itself against the conflict only after anatural and ordinary way. Books have not so much served me forinstruction as exercise. What if knowledge, trying to arm us with newdefences against natural inconveniences, has more imprinted in ourfancies their weight and greatness, than her reasons and subtleties tosecure us from them? They are subtleties, indeed, with which she oftenalarms us to little purpose. Do but observe how many slight andfrivolous, and, if nearly examined, incorporeal arguments, the closestand wisest authors scatter about one good one: they are but verbal quirksand fallacies to amuse and gull us: but forasmuch as it may be with someprofit, I will sift them no further; many of that sort are here and theredispersed up and down this book, either borrowed or by imitation. Therefore one ought to take a little heed not to call that force which isonly a pretty knack of writing, and that solid which is only sharp, orthat good which is only fine:

 "Quae magis gustata quam potata, delectant, "

 ["Which more delight in the tasting than in being drunk. " --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , v. 5. ]

everything that pleases does not nourish:

 "Ubi non ingenii, sed animi negotium agitur. "

 ["Where the question is not about the wit, but about the soul. " --Seneca, Ep. , 75. ]

To see the trouble that Seneca gives himself to fortify himself againstdeath; to see him so sweat and pant to harden and encourage himself, andbustle so long upon this perch, would have lessened his reputation withme, had he not very bravely held himself at the last. His so ardent andfrequent agitations discover that he was in himself impetuous andpassionate, "Magnus animus remissius loquitur, et securius . . . Non est alius ingenio, alius ammo color;"

 ["A great courage speaks more calmly and more securely. There is not one complexion for the wit and another for the mind. " --Seneca, Ep. 114, 115]

he must be convinced at his own expense; and he in some sort discoversthat he was hard pressed by his enemy. Plutarch's way, by how much it ismore disdainful and farther stretched, is, in my opinion, so much moremanly and persuasive: and I am apt to believe that his soul had moreassured and more regular motions. The one more sharp, pricks and makesus start, and more touches the soul; the other more constantly solid, forms, establishes, and supports us, and more touches the understanding. That ravishes the judgment, this wins it. I have likewise seen otherwritings, yet more reverenced than these, that in the representation ofthe conflict they maintain against the temptations of the flesh, paintthem, so sharp, so powerful and invincible, that we ourselves, who are ofthe common herd, are as much to wonder at the strangeness and unknownforce of their temptation, as at the resisting it. 

To what end do we so arm ourselves with this harness of science? Let uslook down upon the poor people that we see scattered upon the face of theearth, prone and intent upon their business, that neither know Aristotlenor Cato, example nor precept; from these nature every day extractseffects of constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we soinquisitively study in the schools: how many do I ordinarily see whoslight poverty? how many who desire to die, or who die without alarm orregret? He who is now digging in my garden, has this morning buried hisfather or his son. The very names by which they call diseases sweetenand mollify the sharpness of them: the phthisic is with them no more thana cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, asthey gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very greatand grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they neverkeep their beds but to die:

 "Simplex illa et aperta virtus in obscuram et solertem scientiam versa est. "

 ["That overt and simple virtue is converted into an obscure and subtle science. "--Seneca, Ep. , 95. ]

I was writing this about the time when a great load of our intestinetroubles for several months lay with all its weight upon me; I had theenemy at my door on one side, and the freebooters, worse enemies, on theother, "Non armis, sed vitiis, certatur;"

 ["The fight is not with arms, but with vices. "--Seneca, Ep. 95. ]

and underwent all sorts of military injuries at once:

 "Hostis adest dextra laevaque a parte timendus. Vicinoque malo terret utrumque latus. "

 ["Right and left a formidable enemy is to be feared, and threatens me on both sides with impending danger. "--Ovid, De Ponto, i. 3, 57. ]

A monstrous war! Other wars are bent against strangers, this againstitself, destroying itself with its own poison. It is of so malignant andruinous a nature, that it ruins itself with the rest; and with its ownrage mangles and tears itself to pieces. We more often see it dissolveof itself than through scarcity of any necessary thing or by force of theenemy. All discipline evades it; it comes to compose sedition, and isitself full of it; would chastise disobedience, and itself is theexample; and, employed for the defence of the laws, rebels against itsown. What a condition are we in! Our physic makes us sick!

 "Nostre mal s'empoisonne Du secours qu'on luy donne. "

 "Exuperat magis, aegrescitque medendo. "

 ["Our disease is poisoned with its very remedies"--AEnead, xii. 46. ]

 "Omnia fanda, nefanda, malo permista furore, Justificam nobis mentem avertere deorum. "

 ["Right and wrong, all shuffled together in this wicked fury, have deprived us of the gods' protection. " --Catullus, De Nuptiis Pelei et Thetidos, V. 405. ]

In the beginning of these popular maladies, one may distinguish the soundfrom the sick; but when they come to continue, as ours have done, thewhole body is then infected from head to foot; no part is free fromcorruption, for there is no air that men so greedily draw in thatdiffuses itself so soon and that penetrates so deep as that of licence. Our armies only subsist and are kept together by the cement offoreigners; for of Frenchmen there is now no constant and regular army tobe made. What a shame it is! there is no longer any discipline but whatwe see in the mercenary soldiers. As to ourselves, our conduct is atdiscretion, and that not of the chief, but every one at his own. Thegeneral has a harder game to play within than he has without; he it iswho has to follow, to court the soldiers, to give way to them; he alonehas to obey: all the rest if disolution and free licence. It pleases meto observe how much pusillanimity and cowardice there is in ambition; byhow abject and servile ways it must arrive at its end; but it displeasesme to see good and generous natures, and that are capable of justice, every day corrupted in the management and command of this confusion. Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation. We hadill-formed souls enough, without spoiling those that were generous andgood; so that, if we hold on, there will scarcely remain any with whom tointrust the health of this State of ours, in case fortune chance torestore it:

 "Hunc saltem everso juvenem succurrere seclo, Ne prohibete. "

 ["Forbid not, at least, that this young man repair this ruined age. " --Virgil, Georg. , i. 500. Montaigne probably refers to Henry, king of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV. ]

What has become of the old precept, "That soldiers ought more to feartheir chief than the enemy"?--[Valerius Maximus, Ext. 2. ]--and of thatwonderful example, that an orchard being enclosed within the precincts ofa camp of the Roman army, was seen at their dislodgment the next day inthe same condition, not an apple, though ripe and delicious, being pulledoff, but all left to the possessor? I could wish that our youth, insteadof the time they spend in less fruitful travels and less honourableemployments, would bestow one half of that time in being an eye-witnessof naval exploits, under some good captain of Rhodes, and the other halfin observing the discipline of the Turkish armies; for they have manydifferences and advantages over ours; one of these is, that our soldiersbecome more licentious in expeditions, theirs more temperate andcircumspect; for the thefts and insolencies committed upon the commonpeople, which are only punished with a cudgel in peace, are capital inwar; for an egg taken by a Turkish soldier without paying for it, fiftyblows with a stick is the fixed rate; for anything else, of what sort orhow trivial soever, not necessary to nourishment, they are presentlyimpaled or beheaded without mercy. I am astonished, in the history ofSelim, the most cruel conqueror that ever was, to see that when hesubdued Egypt, the beautiful gardens about Damascus being all open, andin a conquered land, and his army encamped upon the very place, should beleft untouched by the hands of the soldiers, by reason they had notreceived the signal of pillage. 

But is there any disease in a government that it is worth while to physicwith such a mortal drug?--[i. E. As civil war. ]--No, said Favonius, noteven the tyrannical usurpation of a Commonwealth. Plato, likewise, willnot consent that a man should violate the peace of his country in orderto cure it, and by no means approves of a reformation that disturbs andhazards all, and that is to be purchased at the price of the citizens'blood and ruin; determining it to be the duty of a good patriot in such acase to let it alone, and only to pray to God for his extraordinaryassistance: and he seems to be angry with his great friend Dion, forhaving proceeded somewhat after another manner. I was a Platonist inthis point before I knew there had ever been such a man as Plato in theworld. And if this person ought absolutely to be rejected from oursociety (he who by the sincerity of his conscience merited from thedivine favour to penetrate so far into the Christian light, through theuniversal darkness wherein the world was involved in his time), I do notthink it becomes us to suffer ourselves to be instructed by a heathen, how great an impiety it is not to expect from God any relief simply hisown and without our co-operation. I often doubt, whether amongst so manymen as meddle in such affairs, there is not to be found some one of soweak understanding as to have been really persuaded that he went towardsreformation by the worst of deformations; and advanced towards salvationby the most express causes that we have of most assured damnation; thatby overthrowing government, the magistracy, and the laws, in whoseprotection God has placed him, by dismembering his good mother, andgiving her limbs to be mangled by her old enemies, filling fraternalhearts with parricidal hatreds, calling devils and furies to his aid, hecan assist the most holy sweetness and justice of the divine law. Ambition, avarice, cruelty, and revenge have not sufficient naturalimpetuosity of their own; let us bait them with the glorious titles ofjustice and devotion. There cannot a worse state of things be imaginedthan where wickedness comes to be legitimate, and assumes, with themagistrates' permission, the cloak of virtue:

 "Nihil in speciem fallacius, quam prava religio, ubi deorum numen prxtenditur sceleribus. "

 ["Nothing has a more deceiving face than false religion, where the divinity of the gods is obscured by crimes. "--Livy, xxxix. 16. ]

The extremest sort of injustice, according to Plato, is where that whichis unjust should be reputed for just. 

The common people then suffered very much, and not present damage only:

 "Undique totis Usque adeo turbatur agris, "

 ["Such great disorders overtake our fields on every side. " --Virgil, Eclog. , i. II. ]

but future too; the living were to suffer, and so were they who were yetunborn; they stript them, and consequently myself, even of hope, takingfrom them all they had laid up in store to live on for many years:

 "Quae nequeunt secum ferre aut abducere, perdunt; Et cremat insontes turba scelesta casas . . . Muris nulla fides, squalent populatibus agri. "

 ["What they cannot bear away, they spoil; and the wicked mob burn harmless houses; walls cannot secure their masters, and the fields are squalid with devastation. " --Ovid, Trist. , iii. 10, 35; Claudianus, In Eutyop. , i. 244. ]

Besides this shock, I suffered others: I underwent the inconveniencesthat moderation brings along with it in such a disease: I was robbed onall hands; to the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, and to the Guelph aGhibelline; one of my poets expresses this very well, but I know notwhere it is. 

 ["So Tories called me Whig, and Whigs a Tory. "--Pope, after Horace. ]

The situation of my house, and my friendliness with my neighbours, presented me with one face; my life and my actions with another. Theydid not lay formal accusations to my charge, for they had no foundationfor so doing; I never hide my head from the laws, and whoever would havequestioned me, would have done himself a greater prejudice than me; theywere only mute suspicions that were whispered about, which never wantappearance in so confused a mixture, no more than envious or idle heads. I commonly myself lend a hand to injurious presumptions that fortunescatters abroad against me, by a way I have ever had of evading tojustify, excuse, or explain myself; conceiving that it were to compromisemy conscience to plead in its behalf:

 "Perspicuitas enim argumentatione elevatur;"

 ["For perspicuity is lessened by argument. " ("The clearness of a cause is clouded by argumentation. ") --Cicero, De Nat. Deor. , iii. 4. ]

and, as if every one saw as clearly into me as I do myself, instead ofretiring from an accusation, I step up to meet it, and rather give itsome kind of colour by an ironical and scoffing confession, if I do notsit totally mute, as of a thing not worth my answer. But such as lookupon this kind of behaviour of mine as too haughty a confidence, have aslittle kindness for me as they who interpret the weakness of anindefensible cause; namely, the great folks, towards whom want ofsubmission is the great fault, harsh towards all justice that knows andfeels itself, and is not submissive humble, and suppliant; I have oftenknocked my head against this pillar. So it is that at what then befellme, an ambitious man would have hanged himself, and a covetous man wouldhave done the same. I have no manner of care of getting;

 "Si mihi, quod nunc est, etiam minus; et mihi vivam Quod superest aevi, si quid superesse volent dii:"

 ["If I may have what I now own, or even less, and may live for myself what of life remains, if the gods grant me remaining years. " --Horace, Ep. , i. 18, 107. ]

but the losses that befall me by the injury of others, whether by theftor violence, go almost as near my heart as they would to that of the mostavaricious man. The offence troubles me, without comparison, more thanthe loss. A thousand several sorts of mischiefs fell upon me in the neckof one another; I could more cheerfully have borne them all at once. 

I was already considering to whom, amongst my friends, I might commit anecessitous and discredited old age; and having turned my eyes quiteround, I found myself bare. To let one's self fall plump down, and fromso great a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, andfortunate friendship: these are very rare, if there be any. At last, Isaw that it was safest for me to trust to myself in my necessity; and ifit should so fall out, that I should be but upon cold terms in Fortune'sfavour, I should so much the more pressingly recommend me to my own, andattach myself and look to myself all the more closely. Men on alloccasions throw themselves upon foreign assistance to spare their own, which is alone certain and sufficient to him who knows how therewith toarm himself. Every one runs elsewhere, and to the future, forasmuch asno one is arrived at himself. And I was satisfied that they wereprofitable inconveniences; forasmuch as, first, ill scholars are to beadmonished with the rod, when reason will not do, as a crooked piece ofwood is by fire and straining reduced to straightness. I have a greatwhile preached to myself to stick close to my own concerns, and separatemyself from the affairs of others; yet I am still turning my eyes aside. A bow, a favourable word, a kind look from a great person tempts me; ofwhich God knows if there is scarcity in these days, and what theysignify. I, moreover, without wrinkling my forehead, hearken to thepersuasions offered me, to draw me into the marketplace, and so gentlyrefuse, as if I were half willing to be overcome. Now for so indocile aspirit blows are required; this vessel which thus chops and cleaves, andis ready to fall one piece from another, must have the hoops forced downwith good sound strokes of a mallet. Secondly, that this accident servedme for exercise to prepare me for worse, if I, who both by the benefit offortune, and by the condition of my manners, hoped to be among the last, should happen to be one of the first assailed by this storm; instructingmyself betimes to constrain my life, and fit it for a new state. Thetrue liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself:

 "Potentissimus est, qui se habet in potestate. "

 ["He is most potent who is master of himself. "--Seneca, Ep. , 94. ]

In an ordinary and quiet time, a man prepares himself for moderate andcommon accidents; but in the confusion wherein we have been for thesethirty years, every Frenchman, whether personal or in general, seeshimself every hour upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of hisfortune: by so much the more ought he to have his courage supplied withthe strongest and most vigorous provisions. Let us thank fortune, thathas not made us live in an effeminate, idle, and languishing age; somewho could never have been so by other means will be made famous by theirmisfortunes. As I seldom read in histories the confusions of otherstates without regret that I was not present, the better to considerthem, so does my curiosity make me in some sort please myself in seeingwith my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public death, its form andsymptoms; and since I cannot hinder it, I am content to have beendestined to be present therein, and thereby to instruct myself. So dowe eagerly covet to see, though but in shadow and the fables of theatres, the pomp of tragic representations of human fortune; 'tis not withoutcompassion at what we hear, but we please ourselves in rousing ourdispleasure, by the rarity of these pitiable events. Nothing ticklesthat does not pinch. And good historians skip over, as stagnant waterand dead sea, calm narrations, to return to seditions, to wars, to whichthey know that we invite them. 

I question whether I can decently confess with how small a sacrifice ofits repose and tranquillity I have passed over above the one half of mylife amid the ruin of my country. I lend myself my patience somewhat toocheap, in accidents that do not privately assail me; and do not so muchregard what they take from me, as what remains safe, both within andwithout. There is comfort in evading, one while this, another whilethat, of the evils that are levelled at ourselves too, at last, but atpresent hurt others only about us; as also, that in matters of publicinterest, the more universally my affection is dispersed, the weaker itis: to which may be added, that it is half true:

 "Tantum ex publicis malis sentimus, quantum ad privatas res pertinet;"

 ["We are only so far sensible of public evils as they respect our private affairs. "--Livy, xxx. 44. ]

and that the health from which we fell was so ill, that itself relievesthe regret we should have for it. It was health, but only in comparisonwith the sickness that has succeeded it: we are not fallen from any greatheight; the corruption and brigandage which are in dignity and officeseem to me the least supportable: we are less injuriously rifled in awood than in a place of security. It was an universal juncture ofparticular members, each corrupted by emulation of the others, and mostof them with old ulcers, that neither received nor required any cure. This convulsion, therefore, really more animated than pressed me, by theassistance of my conscience, which was not only at peace within itself, but elevated, and I did not find any reason to complain of myself. Also, as God never sends evils, any more than goods, absolutely pure to men, my health continued at that time more than usually good; and, as I cando nothing without it, there are few things that I cannot do with it. It afforded me means to rouse up all my faculties, and to lay my handbefore the wound that would else, peradventure, have gone farther; and Iexperienced, in my patience, that I had some stand against fortune, andthat it must be a great shock could throw me out of the saddle. I do notsay this to provoke her to give me a more vigorous charge: I am herhumble servant, and submit to her pleasure: let her be content, in God'sname. Am I sensible of her assaults? Yes, I am. But, as those who arepossessed and oppressed with sorrow sometimes suffer themselves, nevertheless, by intervals to taste a little pleasure, and are sometimessurprised with a smile, so have I so much power over myself, as to makemy ordinary condition quiet and free from disturbing thoughts; yet Isuffer myself, withal, by fits to be surprised with the stings of thoseunpleasing imaginations that assault me, whilst I am arming myself todrive them away, or at least to wrestle with them. 

But behold another aggravation of the evil which befell me in the tail ofthe rest: both without doors and within I was assailed with a mostviolent plague, violent in comparison of all others; for as sound bodiesare subject to more grievous maladies, forasmuch as they, are not to beforced but by such, so my very healthful air, where no contagion, howevernear, in the memory of man, ever took footing, coming to be corrupted, produced strange effects:

 "Mista senum et juvenum densentur funera; nullum Saeva caput Proserpina fugit;"

 ["Old and young die in mixed heaps. Cruel Proserpine forbears none. "--Horace, Od. , i. 28, 19. ]

I had to suffer this pleasant condition, that the sight of my house, wasfrightful to me; whatever I had there was without guard, and left to themercy of any one who wished to take it. I myself, who am so hospitable, was in very great distress for a retreat for my family; a distractedfamily, frightful both to its friends and itself, and filling every placewith horror where it attempted to settle, having to shift its abode sosoon as any one's finger began but to ache; all diseases are thenconcluded to be the plague, and people do not stay to examine whetherthey are so or no. And the mischief on't is that, according to the rulesof art, in every danger that a man comes near, he must undergo aquarantine in fear of the evil, your imagination all the while tormentingyou at pleasure, and turning even your health itself into a fever. Yetall this would have much less affected me had I not withal been compelledto be sensible of the sufferings of others, and miserably to serve sixmonths together for a guide to this caravan; for I carry my own antidoteswithin myself, which are resolution and patience. Apprehension, which isparticularly feared in this disease, does not much trouble me; and, ifbeing alone, I should have been taken, it had been a less cheerless andmore remote departure; 'tis a kind of death that I do not think of theworst sort; 'tis commonly short, stupid, without pain, and consoled bythe public condition; without ceremony, without mourning, without acrowd. But as to the people about us, the hundredth part of them couldnot be saved:

 "Videas desertaque regna Pastorum, et longe saltus lateque vacantes. "

 ["You would see shepherds' haunts deserted, and far and wide empty pastures. "--Virgil, Georg. , iii. 476. ]

In this place my largest revenue is manual: what an hundred men ploughedfor me, lay a long time fallow. 

But then, what example of resolution did we not see in the simplicity ofall this people? Generally, every one renounced all care of life; thegrapes, the principal wealth of the country, remained untouched upon thevines; every man indifferently prepared for and expected death, eitherto-night or to-morrow, with a countenance and voice so far from fear, as if they had come to terms with this necessity, and that it was anuniversal and inevitable sentence. 'Tis always such; but how slenderhold has the resolution of dying? The distance and difference of a fewhours, the sole consideration of company, renders its apprehensionvarious to us. Observe these people; by reason that they die in the samemonth, children, young people, and old, they are no longer astonished atit; they no longer lament. I saw some who were afraid of staying behind, as in a dreadful solitude; and I did not commonly observe any othersolicitude amongst them than that of sepulture; they were troubled to seethe dead bodies scattered about the fields, at the mercy of the wildbeasts that presently flocked thither. How differing are the fancies ofmen; the Neorites, a nation subjected by Alexander, threw the bodies oftheir dead into the deepest and less frequented part of their woods, onpurpose to have them there eaten; the only sepulture reputed happyamongst them. Some, who were yet in health, dug their own graves; otherslaid themselves down in them whilst alive; and a labourer of mine, indying, with his hands and feet pulled the earth upon him. Was not thisto nestle and settle himself to sleep at greater ease? A bravery in somesort like that of the Roman soldiers who, after the battle of Cannae, were found with their heads thrust into holes in the earth, which theyhad made, and in suffocating themselves, with their own hands pulled theearth about their ears. In short, a whole province was, by the commonusage, at once brought to a course nothing inferior in undauntedness tothe most studied and premeditated resolution. 

Most of the instructions of science to encourage us herein have in themmore of show than of force, and more of ornament than of effect. We haveabandoned Nature, and will teach her what to do; teach her who so happilyand so securely conducted us; and in the meantime, from the footsteps ofher instruction, and that little which, by the benefit of ignorance, remains of her image imprinted in the life of this rustic rout ofunpolished men, science is constrained every day to borrow patterns forher disciples of constancy, tranquillity, and innocence. It is pretty tosee that these persons, full of so much fine knowledge, have to imitatethis foolish simplicity, and this in the primary actions of virtue; andthat our wisdom must learn even from beasts the most profitableinstructions in the greatest and most necessary concerns of our life;as, how we are to live and die, manage our property, love and bring upour children, maintain justice: a singular testimony of human infirmity;and that this reason we so handle at our pleasure, finding evermore somediversity and novelty, leaves in us no apparent trace of nature. Menhave done with nature as perfumers with oils; they have sophisticated herwith so many argumentations and far-fetched discourses, that she isbecome variable and particular to each, and has lost her proper, constant, and universal face; so that we must seek testimony from beasts, not subject to favour, corruption, or diversity of opinions. It is, indeed, true that even these themselves do not always go exactly in thepath of nature, but wherein they swerve, it is so little that you mayalways see the track; as horses that are led make many bounds andcurvets, but 'tis always at the length of the halter, and still followhim that leads them; and as a young hawk takes its flight, but stillunder the restraint of its tether:

 "Exsilia, torments, bells, morbos, naufragia meditare . . . Ut nullo sis malo tiro. "

 ["To meditate upon banishments, tortures, wars, diseases, and shipwrecks, that thou mayest not be a novice in any disaster. " --Seneca, Ep. , 91, 107. ]

What good will this curiosity do us, to anticipate all the inconveniencesof human nature, and to prepare ourselves with so much trouble againstthings which, peradventure, will never befall us?

 "Parem passis tristitiam facit, pati posse;"

 ["It troubles men as much that they may possibly suffer, as if they really did suffer. "--Idem, ibid. , 74. ]

not only the blow, but the wind of the blow strikes us: or, likephrenetic people--for certainly it is a phrensy--to go immediately andwhip yourself, because it may so fall out that Fortune may one day makeyou undergo it; and to put on your furred gown at Midsummer, because youwill stand in need of it at Christmas! Throw yourselves, say they, intothe experience of all the evils, the most extreme evils that can possiblybefall you, and so be assured of them. On the contrary, the most easyand most natural way would be to banish even the thoughts of them; theywill not come soon enough; their true being will not continue with uslong enough; our mind must lengthen and extend them; we must incorporatethem in us beforehand, and there entertain them, as if they would nototherwise sufficiently press upon our senses. "We shall find them heavyenough when they come, " says one of our masters, of none of the tendersects, but of the most severe; "in the meantime, favour thyself; believewhat pleases thee best; what good will it do thee to anticipate thy illfortune, to lose the present for fear of the future: and to make thyselfmiserable now, because thou art to be so in time?" These are his words. Science, indeed, does us one good office in instructing us exactly as tothe dimensions of evils, "Curis acuens mortalia corda!"

 ["Probing mortal hearts with cares. "--Virgil, Georg. , i. 23. ]

'Twere pity that any part of their greatness should escape our sense andknowledge. 

'Tis certain that for the most part the preparation for death hasadministered more torment than the thing itself. It was of old trulysaid, and by a very judicious author:

 "Minus afficit sensus fatigatio, quam cogitatio. "

 ["Suffering itself less afflicts the senses than the apprehension of suffering. "--Quintilian, Inst. Orat. , i. 12. ]

The sentiment of present death sometimes, of itself, animates us with aprompt resolution not to avoid a thing that is utterly inevitable: manygladiators have been seen in the olden time, who, after having foughttimorously and ill, have courageously entertained death, offering theirthroats to the enemies' sword and bidding them despatch. The sight offuture death requires a courage that is slow, and consequently hard to begot. If you know not how to die, never trouble yourself; nature will, atthe time, fully and sufficiently instruct you: she will exactly do thatbusiness for you; take you no care--

 "Incertam frustra, mortales, funeris horam, Quaeritis et qua sit mors aditura via.... Poena minor certam subito perferre ruinam; Quod timeas, gravius sustinuisse diu. "

 ["Mortals, in vain you seek to know the uncertain hour of death, and by what channel it will come upon you. "--Propertius, ii. 27, 1. "'Tis less painful to undergo sudden destruction; 'tis hard to bear that which you long fear. "--Incert. Auct. ]

We trouble life by the care of death, and death by the care of life: theone torments, the other frights us. It is not against death that weprepare, that is too momentary a thing; a quarter of an hour's suffering, without consequence and without damage, does not deserve especialprecepts: to say the truth, we prepare ourselves against the preparationsof death. Philosophy ordains that we should always have death before oureyes, to see and consider it before the time, and then gives us rules andprecautions to provide that this foresight and thought do us no harm;just so do physicians, who throw us into diseases, to the end they mayhave whereon to employ their drugs and their art. If we have not knownhow to live, 'tis injustice to teach us how to die, and make the enddifform from all the rest; if we have known how to live firmly andquietly, we shall know how to die so too. They may boast as much as theyplease:

 "Tota philosophorum vita commentatio mortis est;"

 ["The whole life of philosophers is the meditation of death. " --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , ii. 30. ]

but I fancy that, though it be the end, it is not the aim of life; 'tisits end, its extremity, but not, nevertheless, its object; it oughtitself to be its own aim and design; its true study is to order, govern, and suffer itself. In the number of several other offices, that thegeneral and principal chapter of Knowing how to live comprehends, is thisarticle of Knowing how to die; and, did not our fears give it weight, one of the lightest too. 

To judge of them by utility and by the naked truth, the lessons ofsimplicity are not much inferior to those which learning teaches us: nay, quite the contrary. Men differ in sentiment and force; we must lead themto their own good according to their capacities and by various ways:

 "Quo me comque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes. "

 ["Wherever the season takes me, (where the tempest drives me) there I am carried as a guest. "--Horace, Ep. , i. I, 15. ]

I never saw any peasant among my neighbours cogitate with whatcountenance and assurance he should pass over his last hour; natureteaches him not to think of death till he is dying; and then he does itwith a better grace than Aristotle, upon whom death presses with a doubleweight, both of itself and from so long a premeditation; and, therefore, it was the opinion of Caesar, that the least premeditated death was theeasiest and the most happy:

 "Plus dolet quam necesse est, qui ante dolet, quam necesse est. "

 ["He grieves more than is necessary, who grieves before it is necessary. "--Seneca, Ep. , 98. ]

The sharpness of this imagination springs from our curiosity: 'tis thuswe ever impede ourselves, desiring to anticipate and regulate naturalprescripts. It is only for the doctors to dine worse for it, when in thebest health, and to frown at the image of death; the common sort stand inneed of no remedy or consolation, but just in the shock, and when theblow comes; and consider on't no more than just what they endure. Is itnot then, as we say, that the stolidity and want of apprehension in thevulgar give them that patience m present evils, and that profoundcarelessness of future sinister accidents? That their souls, in beingmore gross and dull, are less penetrable and not so easily moved? If itbe so, let us henceforth, in God's name, teach nothing but ignorance;'tis the utmost fruit the sciences promise us, to which this stolidity sogently leads its disciples. 

We have no want of good masters, interpreters of natural simplicity. Socrates shall be one; for, as I remember, he speaks something to thispurpose to the judges who sat upon his life and death. 

 [That which follows is taken from the Apology of Socrates in Plato, chap. 17, &c. ]

"I am afraid, my masters, that if I entreat you not to put me to death, Ishall confirm the charge of my accusers, which is, that I pretend to bewiser than others, as having some more secret knowledge of things thatare above and below us. I have neither frequented nor known death, norhave ever seen any person that has tried its qualities, from whom toinform myself. Such as fear it, presuppose they know it; as for my part, I neither know what it is, nor what they do in the other world. Deathis, peradventure, an indifferent thing; peradventure, a thing to bedesired. 'Tis nevertheless to be believed, if it be a transmigrationfrom one place to another, that it is a bettering of one's condition togo and live with so many great persons deceased, and to be exempt fromhaving any more to do with unjust and corrupt judges; if it be anannihilation of our being, 'tis yet a bettering of one's condition toenter into a long and peaceable night; we find nothing more sweet in lifethan quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams. The things thatI know to be evil, as to injure one's neighbour and to disobey one'ssuperior, whether it be God or man, I carefully avoid; such as I do notknow whether they be good or evil, I cannot fear them. If I am to dieand leave you alive, the gods alone only know whether it will go betterwith you or with me. Wherefore, as to what concerns me, you may do asyou shall think fit. But according to my method of advising just andprofitable things, I say that you will do your consciences more right toset me at liberty, unless you see further into my cause than I do; and, judging according to my past actions, both public and private, accordingto my intentions, and according to the profit that so many of ourcitizens, both young and old, daily extract from my conversation, and thefruit that you all reap from me, you cannot more duly acquit yourselvestowards my merit than in ordering that, my poverty considered, I shouldbe maintained at the Prytanaeum, at the public expense, a thing that Ihave often known you, with less reason, grant to others. Do not imputeit to obstinacy or disdain that I do not, according to the custom, supplicate and go about to move you to commiseration. I have bothfriends and kindred, not being, as Homer says, begotten of wood or ofstone, no more than others, who might well present themselves before youwith tears and mourning, and I have three desolate children with whom tomove you to compassion; but I should do a shame to our city at the age Iam, and in the reputation of wisdom which is now charged against me, toappear in such an abject form. What would men say of the otherAthenians? I have always admonished those who have frequented mylectures, not to redeem their lives by an unbecoming action; and in thewars of my country, at Amphipolis, Potidea, Delia, and other expeditionswhere I have been, I have effectually manifested how far I was fromsecuring my safety by my shame. I should, moreover, compromise yourduty, and should invite you to unbecoming things; for 'tis not for myprayers to persuade you, but for the pure and solid reasons of justice. You have sworn to the gods to keep yourselves upright; and it would seemas if I suspected you, or would recriminate upon you that I do notbelieve that you are so; and I should testify against myself, not tobelieve them as I ought, mistrusting their conduct, and not purelycommitting my affair into their hands. I wholly rely upon them; and holdmyself assured they will do in this what shall be most fit both for youand for me: good men, whether living or dead, have no reason to fear thegods. "

Is not this an innocent child's pleading of an unimaginable loftiness, true, frank, and just, unexampled?--and in what a necessity employed!Truly, he had very good reason to prefer it before that which the greatorator Lysias had penned for him: admirably couched, indeed, in thejudiciary style, but unworthy of so noble a criminal. Had a suppliantvoice been heard out of the mouth of Socrates, that lofty virtue hadstruck sail in the height of its glory; and ought his rich and powerfulnature to have committed her defence to art, and, in her highest proof, have renounced truth and simplicity, the ornaments of his speaking, toadorn and deck herself with the embellishments of figures and theflourishes of a premeditated speech? He did very wisely, and likehimself, not to corrupt the tenor of an incorrupt life, and so sacred animage of the human form, to spin out his decrepitude another year, and tobetray the immortal memory of that glorious end. He owed his life not tohimself, but to the example of the world; had it not been a publicdamage, that he should have concluded it after a lazy and obscure manner?Assuredly, that careless and indifferent consideration of his deathdeserved that posterity should consider it so much the more, as indeedthey did; and there is nothing so just in justice than that which fortuneordained for his recommendation; for the Athenians abominated all thosewho had been causers of his death to such a degree, that they avoidedthem as excommunicated persons, and looked upon everything as pollutedthat had been touched by them; no one would wash with them in the publicbaths, none would salute or own acquaintance with them: so that, at last, unable longer to support this public hatred, they hanged themselves. 

If any one shall think that, amongst so many other examples that I had tochoose out of in the sayings of Socrates for my present purpose, I havemade an ill choice of this, and shall judge this discourse of hiselevated above common conceptions, I must tell them that I have properlyselected it; for I am of another opinion, and hold it to be a discourse, in rank and simplicity, much below and behind common conceptions. Herepresents, in an inartificial boldness and infantine security, the pureand first impression and ignorance of nature; for it is to be believedthat we have naturally a fear of pain, but not of death, by reason ofitself; 'tis a part of our being, and no less essential than living. 

To what end should nature have begotten in us a hatred to it and a horrorof it, considering that it is of so great utility to her in maintainingthe succession and vicissitude of her works? and that in this universalrepublic, it conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss orruin?

 "Sic rerum summa novatur. "

 "Mille animas una necata dedit. "

"The failing of one life is the passage to a thousand other lives. "

Nature has imprinted in beasts the care of themselves and of theirconservation; they proceed so far as hitting or hurting to be timorous ofbeing worse, of themselves, of our haltering and beating them, accidentssubject to their sense and experience; but that we should kill them, theycannot fear, nor have they the faculty to imagine and conclude such athing as death; it is said, indeed, that we see them not only cheerfullyundergo it, horses for the most part neighing and swans singing when theydie, but, moreover, seek it at need, of which elephants have given manyexamples. 

Besides, the method of arguing, of which Socrates here makes use, is itnot equally admirable both in simplicity and vehemence? Truly it is muchmore easy to speak like Aristotle and to live like Caesar than to speakand live as Socrates did; there lies the extreme degree of perfection anddifficulty; art cannot reach it. Now, our faculties are not so trainedup; we do not try, we do not know them; we invest ourselves with those ofothers, and let our own lie idle; as some one may say of me, that I havehere only made a nosegay of foreign flowers, having furnished nothing ofmy own but the thread to tie them. 

Certainly I have so far yielded to public opinion, that those borrowedornaments accompany me; but I do not mean that they shall cover me andhide me; that is quite contrary to my design, who desire to make a showof nothing but what is my own, and what is my own by nature; and had Itaken my own advice, I had at all hazards spoken purely alone, I more andmore load myself every day, [In fact, the first edition of the Essays (Bordeaux, 1580) has very few quotations. These became more numerous in the edition of 1588; but the multitude of classical texts which at times encumber Montaigne's text, only dates from the posthumous edition of 1595, he had made these collections in the four last years of his life, as an amusement of his "idleness. "--Le Clerc. They grow, however, more sparing in the Third Book. ]

beyond my purpose and first method, upon the account of idleness and thehumour of the age. If it misbecome me, as I believe it does, 'tis nomatter; it may be of use to some others. Such there are who quote Platoand Homer, who never saw either of them; and I also have taken things outof places far enough distant from their source. Without pains andwithout learning, having a thousand volumes about me in the place where Iwrite, I can presently borrow, if I please, from a dozen suchscrap-gatherers, people about whom I do not much trouble myself, wherewithto trick up this treatise of Physiognomy; there needs no more but apreliminary epistle of a German to stuff me with quotations. And so itis we go in quest of a tickling story to cheat the foolish world. Theselumber pies of commonplaces, wherewith so many furnish their studies, areof little use but to common subjects, and serve but to show us, and notto direct us: a ridiculous fruit of learning, that Socrates so pleasantlydiscusses against Euthydemus. I have seen books made of things that werenever either studied or understood; the author committing to several ofhis learned friends the examination of this and t'other matter to compileit, contenting himself, for his share, with having projected the design, and by his industry to have tied together this faggot of unknownprovisions; the ink and paper, at least, are his. This is to buy orborrow a book, and not to make one; 'tis to show men not that he can makea book, but that, whereof they may be in doubt, he cannot make one. A president, where I was, boasted that he had amassed together twohundred and odd commonplaces in one of his judgments; in telling which, he deprived himself of the glory he had got by it: in my opinion, apusillanimous and absurd vanity for such a subject and such a person. I do the contrary; and amongst so many borrowed things, am glad if I cansteal one, disguising and altering it for some new service; at the hazardof having it said that 'tis for want of understanding its natural use;I give it some particular touch of my own hand, to the end it may not beso absolutely foreign. These set their thefts in show and valuethemselves upon them, and so have more credit with the laws than I have:we naturalists I think that there is a great and incomparable preferencein the honour of invention over that of allegation. 

If I would have spoken by learning, I had spoken sooner; I had written ofthe time nearer to my studies, when I had more wit and better memory, andshould sooner have trusted to the vigour of that age than of this, wouldI have made a business of writing. And what if this gracious favour--[His acquaintance with Mademoiselle de Gournay. ]--which Fortune haslately offered me upon the account of this work, had befallen me in thattime of my life, instead of this, wherein 'tis equally desirable topossess, soon to be lost! Two of my acquaintance, great men in thisfaculty, have, in my opinion, lost half, in refusing to publish at fortyyears old, that they might stay till threescore. Maturity has itsdefects as well as green years, and worse; and old age is as unfit forthis kind of business as any other. He who commits his decrepitude tothe press plays the fool if he think to squeeze anything out thence thatdoes not relish of dreaming, dotage, and drivelling; the mind growscostive and thick in growing old. I deliver my ignorance in pomp andstate, and my learning meagrely and poorly; this accidentally andaccessorily, that principally and expressly; and write specifically ofnothing but nothing, nor of any science but of that inscience. I havechosen a time when my life, which I am to give an account of, lies whollybefore me; what remains has more to do with death; and of my deathitself, should I find it a prating death, as others do, I would willinglygive an account at my departure. 

Socrates was a perfect exemplar in all great qualities, and I am vexedthat he had so deformed a face and body as is said, and so unsuitable tothe beauty of his soul, himself being so amorous and such an admirer ofbeauty: Nature did him wrong. There is nothing more probable than theconformity and relation of the body to the soul:

 "Ipsi animi magni refert, quali in corpore locati sint: multo enim a corpore existunt, qux acuant mentem: multa qua obtundant;"

 ["It is of great consequence in what bodies minds are placed, for many things spring from the body that may sharpen the mind, and many that may blunt it. "--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , i. 33. ]

this refers to an unnatural ugliness and deformity of limbs; but we callugliness also an unseemliness at first sight, which is principally lodgedin the face, and disgusts us on very slight grounds: by the complexion, aspot, a rugged countenance, for some reasons often wholly inexplicable, in members nevertheless of good symmetry and perfect. The deformity, that clothed a very beautiful soul in La Boetie, was of this predicament:that superficial ugliness, which nevertheless is always the mostimperious, is of least prejudice to the state of the mind, and of littlecertainty in the opinion of men. The other, which is never properlycalled deformity, being more substantial, strikes deeper in. Not everyshoe of smooth shining leather, but every shoe well-made, shews the shapeof the foot within. As Socrates said of his, it betrayed equal uglinessin his soul, had he not corrected it by education; but in saying so, Ihold he was in jest, as his custom was; never so excellent a soul formeditself. 

I cannot often enough repeat how great an esteem I have for beauty, thatpotent and advantageous quality; he (La Boetie) called it "a shorttyranny, " and Plato, "the privilege of nature. " We have nothing thatexcels it in reputation; it has the first place in the commerce of men;it presents itself in the front; seduces and prepossesses our judgmentswith great authority and wonderful impression. Phryne had lost her causein the hands of an excellent advocate, if, opening her robe, she had notcorrupted her judges by the lustre of her beauty. And I find that Cyrus, Alexander, and Caesar, the three masters of the world, never neglectedbeauty in their greatest affairs; no more did the first Scipio. The sameword in Greek signifies both fair and good; and the Holy Word often saysgood when it means fair: I should willingly maintain the priority in goodthings, according to the song that Plato calls an idle thing, taken outof some ancient poet: "health, beauty, riches. " Aristotle says that theright of command appertains to the beautiful; and that, when there is aperson whose beauty comes near the images of the gods, veneration isequally due to him. To him who asked why people oftener and longerfrequent the company of handsome persons: "That question, " said he, "isonly to be asked by the blind. " Most of the philosophers, and thegreatest, paid for their schooling, and acquired wisdom by the favour andmediation of their beauty. Not only in the men that serve me, but alsoin the beasts, I consider it within two fingers' breadth of goodness. 

And yet I fancy that those features and moulds of face, and thoselineaments, by which men guess at our internal complexions and ourfortunes to come, is a thing that does not very directly and simply lieunder the chapter of beauty and deformity, no more than every good odourand serenity of air promises health, nor all fog and stink infection in atime of pestilence. Such as accuse ladies of contradicting their beautyby their manners, do not always hit right; for, in a face which is noneof the best, there may dwell some air of probity and trust; as, on thecontrary, I have read, betwixt two beautiful eyes, menaces of a dangerousand malignant nature. There are favourable physiognomies, so that in acrowd of victorious enemies, you shall presently choose, amongst men younever saw before, one rather than another to whom to surrender, and withwhom to intrust your life; and yet not properly upon the consideration ofbeauty. 

A person's look is but a feeble warranty; and yet it is somethingconsiderable too; and if I had to lash them, I would most severelyscourge the wicked ones who belie and betray the promises that nature hasplanted in their foreheads; I should with greater severity punish maliceunder a mild and gentle aspect. It seems as if there were some lucky andsome unlucky faces; and I believe there is some art in distinguishingaffable from merely simple faces, severe from rugged, malicious frompensive, scornful from melancholic, and such other bordering qualities. There are beauties which are not only haughty, but sour, and others thatare not only gentle, but more than that, insipid; to prognosticate fromthem future events is a matter that I shall leave undecided. 

I have, as I have said elsewhere as to my own concern, simply andimplicitly embraced this ancient rule, "That we cannot fail in followingNature, " and that the sovereign precept is to conform ourselves to her. I have not, as Socrates did, corrected my natural composition by theforce of reason, and have not in the least disturbed my inclination byart; I have let myself go as I came: I contend not; my two principalparts live, of their own accord, in peace and good intelligence, but mynurse's milk, thank God, was tolerably wholesome and good. Shall I saythis by the way, that I see in greater esteem than 'tis worth, and in usesolely among ourselves, a certain image of scholastic probity, a slave toprecepts, and fettered with hope and fear? I would have it such as thatlaws and religions should not make, but perfect and authorise it; thatfinds it has wherewithal to support itself without help, born and rootedin us from the seed of universal reason, imprinted in every man bynature. That reason which strengthens Socrates from his vicious bendrenders him obedient to the gods and men of authority in his city:courageous in death, not because his soul is immortal, but because he ismortal. 'Tis a doctrine ruinous to all government, and much more hurtfulthan ingenious and subtle, which persuades the people that a religiousbelief is alone sufficient, and without conduct, to satisfy the divinejustice. Use demonstrates to us a vast distinction betwixt devotion andconscience. 

I have a favourable aspect, both in form and in interpretation:

 "Quid dixi, habere me? imo habui, Chreme. "

 ["What did I say? that I have? no, Chremes, I had. " --Terence, Heaut. , act i. , sec. 2, v. 42. ]

 "Heu! tantum attriti corporis ossa vides;"

 ["Alas! of a worn body thou seest only the bones"]

and that makes a quite contrary show to that of Socrates. It has oftenbefallen me, that upon the mere credit of my presence and air, personswho had no manner of knowledge of me have put a very great confidence inme, whether in their own affairs or mine; and I have in foreign partsthence obtained singular and rare favours. But the two followingexamples are, peradventure, worth particular relation. A certain personplanned to surprise my house and me in it; his scheme was to come to mygates alone, and to be importunate to be let in. I knew him by name, and had fair reason to repose confidence in him, as being my neighbourand something related to me. I caused the gates to be opened to him, as I do to every one. There I found him, with every appearance of alarm, his horse panting and very tired. He entertained me with this story:"That, about half a league off, he had met with a certain enemy of his, whom I also knew, and had heard of their quarrel; that his enemy hadgiven him a very brisk chase, and that having been surprised in disorder, and his party being too weak, he had fled to my gates for refuge;and that he was in great trouble for his followers, whom (he said) heconcluded to be all either dead or taken. " I innocently did my best tocomfort, assure, and refresh him. Shortly after came four or five of hissoldiers, who presented themselves in the same countenance and affright, to get in too; and after them more, and still more, very well mounted andarmed, to the number of five-and-twenty or thirty, pretending that theyhad the enemy at their heels. This mystery began a little to awaken mysuspicion; I was not ignorant what an age I lived in, how much my housemight be envied, and I had several examples of others of my acquaintanceto whom a mishap of this sort had happened. But thinking there wasnothing to be got by having begun to do a courtesy, unless I went throughwith it, and that I could not disengage myself from them without spoilingall, I let myself go the most natural and simple way, as I always do, andinvited them all to come in. And in truth I am naturally very littleinclined to suspicion and distrust; I willingly incline towards excuseand the gentlest interpretation; I take men according to the commonorder, and do not more believe in those perverse and unnaturalinclinations, unless convinced by manifest evidence, than I do inmonsters and miracles; and I am, moreover, a man who willingly commitmyself to Fortune, and throw myself headlong into her arms; and I havehitherto found more reason to applaud than to blame myself for so doing, having ever found her more discreet about, and a greater friend to, myaffairs than I am myself. There are some actions in my life whereof theconduct may justly be called difficult, or, if you please, prudent; ofthese, supposing the third part to have been my own, doubtless the othertwo-thirds were absolutely hers. We make, methinks, a mistake in that wedo not enough trust Heaven with our affairs, and pretend to more from ourown conduct than appertains to us; and therefore it is that our designsso often miscarry. Heaven is jealous of the extent that we attribute tothe right of human prudence above its own, and cuts it all the shorter byhow much the more we amplify it. The last comers remained on horsebackin my courtyard, whilst their leader, who was with me in the parlour, would not have his horse put up in the stable, saying he shouldimmediately retire, so soon as he had news of his men. He saw himselfmaster of his enterprise, and nothing now remained but its execution. He has since several times said (for he was not ashamed to tell the storyhimself) that my countenance and frankness had snatched the treachery outof his hands. He again mounted his horse; his followers, who had theireyes intent upon him, to see when he would give the signal, being verymuch astonished to find him come away and leave his prey behind him. 

Another time, relying upon some truce just published in the army, I tooka journey through a very ticklish country. I had not ridden far, but Iwas discovered, and two or three parties of horse, from various places, were sent out to seize me; one of them overtook me on the third day, andI was attacked by fifteen or twenty gentlemen in vizors, followed at adistance by a band of foot-soldiers. I was taken, withdrawn into thethick of a neighbouring forest, dismounted, robbed, my trunks rifled, mymoney-box taken, and my horses and equipage divided amongst new masters. We had, in this copse, a very long contest about my ransom, which theyset so high, that it was manifest that I was not known to them. Theywere, moreover, in a very great debate about my life; and, in truth, there were various circumstances that clearly showed the danger I was in:

 "Tunc animis opus, AEnea, tunc pectore firmo. "

 ["Then, AEneas, there is need of courage, of a firm heart. " --AEneid, vi. 261. ]

I still insisted upon the truce, too willing they should have the gain ofwhat they had already taken from me, which was not to be despised, without promise of any other ransom. After two or three hours that wehad been in this place, and that they had mounted me upon a horse thatwas not likely to run from them, and committed me to the guard of fifteenor twenty harquebusiers, and dispersed my servants to others, havinggiven order that they should carry us away prisoners several ways, and Ibeing already got some two or three musket-shots from the place, "Jam prece Pollucis, jam Castoris, implorata, "

 ["By a prayer addressed now to Pollux, now to Castor. " --Catullus, lxvi. 65. ]

behold a sudden and unexpected alteration; I saw the chief return to mewith gentler language, making search amongst the troopers for myscattered property, and causing as much as could be recovered to berestored to me, even to my money-box; but the best present they made wasmy liberty, for the rest did not much concern me at that time. The truecause of so sudden a change, and of this reconsideration, without anyapparent impulse, and of so miraculous a repentance, in such a time, in aplanned and deliberate enterprise, and become just by usage (for, at thefirst dash, I plainly confessed to them of what party I was, and whitherI was going), truly, I do not yet rightly understand. The most prominentamongst them, who pulled off his vizor and told me his name, repeatedlytold me at the time, over and over again, that I owed my deliverance tomy countenance, and the liberty and boldness of my speech, that renderedme unworthy of such a misadventure, and should secure me from itsrepetition. 'Tis possible that the Divine goodness willed to make use ofthis vain instrument for my preservation; and it, moreover, defended methe next day from other and worse ambushes, of which these my assailantshad given me warning. The last of these two gentlemen is yet livinghimself to tell the story; the first was killed not long ago. 

If my face did not answer for me, if men did not read in my eyes and inmy voice the innocence of intention, I had not lived so long withoutquarrels and without giving offence, seeing the indiscreet whatever comesinto my head, and to judge so rashly of things. This way may, withreason, appear uncivil, and ill adapted to our way of conversation; butI have never met with any who judged it outrageous or malicious, or thattook offence at my liberty, if he had it from my own mouth; wordsrepeated have another kind of sound and sense. Nor do I hate any person;and I am so slow to offend, that I cannot do it, even upon the account ofreason itself; and when occasion has required me to sentence criminals, I have rather chosen to fail in point of justice than to do it:

 "Ut magis peccari nolim, quam satis animi ad vindicanda peccata habeam. "

 ["So that I had rather men should not commit faults than that I should have sufficient courage to condemn them. "---Livy, xxxix. 21. ]

Aristotle, 'tis said, was reproached for having been too merciful to awicked man: "I was indeed, " said he, "merciful to the man, but not to hiswickedness. " Ordinary judgments exasperate themselves to punishment bythe horror of the fact: but it cools mine; the horror of the first murdermakes me fear a second; and the deformity of the first cruelty makes meabhor all imitation of it. ' That may be applied to me, who am but aSquire of Clubs, which was said of Charillus, king of Sparta: "He cannotbe good, seeing he is not evil even to the wicked. " Or thus--forPlutarch delivers it both these ways, as he does a thousand other things, variously and contradictorily--"He must needs be good, because he is soeven to the wicked. " Even as in lawful actions I dislike to employmyself when for such as are displeased at it; so, to say the truth, inunlawful things I do not make conscience enough of employing myself whenit is for such as are willing. 

 ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may A person's look is but a feeble warranty Accept all things we are not able to refute Admiration is the foundation of all philosophy Advantageous, too, a little to recede from one's right All I say is by way of discourse, and nothing by way of advice Apt to promise something less than what I am able to do As if anything were so common as ignorance Authority of the number and antiquity of the witnesses Best test of truth is the multitude of believers in a crowd Books have not so much served me for instruction as exercise Books of things that were never either studied or understood Condemn the opposite affirmation equally Courageous in death, not because his soul is immortal--Socrates Death conduces more to birth and augmentation than to loss Decree that says, "The court understands nothing of the matter" Deformity of the first cruelty makes me abhor all imitation Enters lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it Establish this proposition by authority and huffing Extend their anger and hatred beyond the dispute in question Fabric goes forming and piling itself up from hand to hand Fortune heaped up five or six such-like incidents Hard to resolve a man's judgment against the common opinions Haste trips up its own heels, fetters, and stops itself He cannot be good, seeing he is not evil even to the wicked He who stops not the start will never be able to stop the course "How many things, " said he, "I do not desire!" How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out I am a little tenderly distrustful of things that I wish I am no longer in condition for any great change I am not to be cuffed into belief I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable I do not judge opinions by years I ever justly feared to raise my head too high I would as willingly be lucky as wise If I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it If they hear no noise, they think men sleep Impose them upon me as infallible Inconveniences that moderation brings (in civil war) Lend himself to others, and only give himself to himself Let not us seek illusions from without and unknown "Little learning is needed to form a sound mind. "--Seneca Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation Men are not always to rely upon the personal confessions Merciful to the man, but not to his wickedness--Aristotle Miracles and strange events have concealed themselves from me My humour is no friend to tumult Nosegay of foreign flowers, having furnished nothing of my own Not believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding Number of fools so much exceeds the wise Opinions we have are taken on authority and trust Others adore all of their own side Pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of the law Prepare ourselves against the preparations of death Profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit Quiet repose and a profound sleep without dreams Reasons often anticipate the effect Refusin to justify, excuse, or explain myself Remotest witness knows more about it than those who were nearest Restoring what has been lent us, wit usury and accession Richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow Right of command appertains to the beautiful-Aristotle Rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny a stated fact Suffer my judgment to be made captive by prepossession Swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking Taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance The last informed is better persuaded than the first The mind grows costive and thick in growing old The particular error first makes the public error Their souls seek repose in agitation They gently name them, so they patiently endure them (diseases) Those oppressed with sorrow sometimes surprised by a smile Threats of the day of judgment Tis better to lean towards doubt than assurance--Augustine Tis no matter; it may be of use to some others To forbear doing is often as generous as to do To kill men, a clear and strong light is required Too contemptible to be punished True liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself Vast distinction betwixt devotion and conscience We have naturally a fear of pain, but not of death What did I say? that I have? no, Chremes, I had Who discern no riches but in pomp and show Whoever will be cured of ignorance must confess it Would have every one in his party blind or a blockhead Wrong the just side when they go about to assist it with fraud Yet at least for ambition's sake, let us reject ambition