ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazilitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 19. 

XIII. Of Experience. 

CHAPTER XIII

OF EXPERIENCE

There is no desire more natural than that of knowledge. We try all waysthat can lead us to it; where reason is wanting, we therein employexperience, "Per varios usus artem experientia fecit, Exemplo monstrante viam, "

 ["By various trials experience created art, example shewing the way. "--Manilius, i. 59. ]

which is a means much more weak and cheap; but truth is so great a thingthat we ought not to disdain any mediation that will guide us to it. Reason has so many forms that we know not to which to take; experiencehas no fewer; the consequence we would draw from the comparison of eventsis unsure, by reason they are always unlike. There is no quality souniversal in this image of things as diversity and variety. Both theGreeks and the Latins and we, for the most express example of similitude, employ that of eggs; and yet there have been men, particularly one atDelphos, who could distinguish marks of difference amongst eggs so wellthat he never mistook one for another, and having many hens, could tellwhich had laid it. 

Dissimilitude intrudes itself of itself in our works; no art can arriveat perfect similitude: neither Perrozet nor any other can so carefullypolish and blanch the backs of his cards that some gamesters will notdistinguish them by seeing them only shuffled by another. Resemblancedoes not so much make one as difference makes another. Nature hasobliged herself to make nothing other that was not unlike. 

And yet I am not much pleased with his opinion, who thought by themultitude of laws to curb the authority of judges in cutting out for themtheir several parcels; he was not aware that there is as much liberty andlatitude in the interpretation of laws as in their form; and they butfool themselves, who think to lessen and stop our disputes by recallingus to the express words of the Bible: forasmuch as our mind does not findthe field less spacious wherein to controvert the sense of another thanto deliver his own; and as if there were less animosity and tartness incommentary than in invention. We see how much he was mistaken, for wehave more laws in France than all the rest of the world put together, andmore than would be necessary for the government of all the worlds ofEpicurus:

 "Ut olim flagitiis, sic nunc legibus, laboramus. "

 ["As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by laws. "--Tacitus, Annal. , iii. 25. ]

and yet we have left so much to the opinions and decisions of our judgesthat there never was so full a liberty or so full a license. What haveour legislators gained by culling out a hundred thousand particularcases, and by applying to these a hundred thousand laws? This numberholds no manner of proportion with the infinite diversity of humanactions; the multiplication of our inventions will never arrive at thevariety of examples; add to these a hundred times as many more, it willstill not happen that, of events to come, there shall one be found that, in this vast number of millions of events so chosen and recorded, shallso tally with any other one, and be so exactly coupled and matched withit that there will not remain some circumstance and diversity which willrequire a diverse judgment. There is little relation betwixt ouractions, which are in perpetual mutation, and fixed and immutable laws;the most to be desired are those that are the most rare, the most simpleand general; and I am even of opinion that we had better have none at allthan to have them in so prodigious a number as we have. 

Nature always gives them better and happier than those we make ourselves;witness the picture of the Golden Age of the Poets and the state whereinwe see nations live who have no other. Some there are, who for theironly judge take the first passer-by that travels along their mountains, to determine their cause; and others who, on their market day, choose outsome one amongst them upon the spot to decide their controversies. Whatdanger would there be that the wisest amongst us should so determineours, according to occurrences and at sight, without obligation ofexample and consequence? For every foot its own shoe. King Ferdinand, sending colonies to the Indies, wisely provided that they should notcarry along with them any students of jurisprudence, for fear lest suitsshould get footing in that new world, as being a science in its ownnature, breeder of altercation and division; judging with Plato, "thatlawyers and physicians are bad institutions of a country. "

Whence does it come to pass that our common language, so easy for allother uses, becomes obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts?and that he who so clearly expresses himself in whatever else he speaksor writes, cannot find in these any way of declaring himself that doesnot fall into doubt and contradiction? if it be not that the princes ofthat art, applying themselves with a peculiar attention to cull outportentous words and to contrive artificial sentences, have so weighedevery syllable, and so thoroughly sifted every sort of quirkingconnection that they are now confounded and entangled in the infinity offigures and minute divisions, and can no more fall within any rule orprescription, nor any certain intelligence:

 "Confusum est, quidquid usque in pulverem sectum est. "

 ["Whatever is beaten into powder is undistinguishable (confused). " --Seneca, Ep. , 89. ]

As you see children trying to bring a mass of quicksilver to a certainnumber of parts, the more they press and work it and endeavour to reduceit to their own will, the more they irritate the liberty of this generousmetal; it evades their endeavour and sprinkles itself into so manyseparate bodies as frustrate all reckoning; so is it here, for insubdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doubts; theyput us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties, andlengthen and disperse them. In sowing and retailing questions they makethe world fructify and increase in uncertainties and disputes, as theearth is made fertile by being crumbled and dug deep. 

 "Difficultatem facit doctrina. "

 ["Learning (Doctrine) begets difficulty. " --Quintilian, Insat. Orat. , x. 3. ]

We doubted of Ulpian, and are still now more perplexed with Bartolus andBaldus. We should efface the trace of this innumerable diversity ofopinions; not adorn ourselves with it, and fill posterity with crotchets. I know not what to say to it; but experience makes it manifest, that somany interpretations dissipate truth and break it. Aristotle wrote to beunderstood; if he could not do this, much less will another that is notso good at it; and a third than he, who expressed his own thoughts. Weopen the matter, and spill it in pouring out: of one subject we make athousand, and in multiplying and subdividing them, fall again into theinfinity of atoms of Epicurus. Never did two men make the same judgmentof the same thing; and 'tis impossible to find two opinions exactlyalike, not only in several men, but in the same man, at diverse hours. I often find matter of doubt in things of which the commentary hasdisdained to take notice; I am most apt to stumble in an even country, like some horses that I have known, that make most trips in the smoothestway. 

Who will not say that glosses augment doubts and ignorance, since there'sno book to be found, either human or divine, which the world busiesitself about, whereof the difficulties are cleared by interpretation. The hundredth commentator passes it on to the next, still more knotty andperplexed than he found it. When were we ever agreed amongst ourselves:"This book has enough; there is now no more to be said about it"? Thisis most apparent in the law; we give the authority of law to infinitedoctors, infinite decrees, and as many interpretations; yet do we findany end of the need of interpretating? is there, for all that, anyprogress or advancement towards peace, or do we stand in need of anyfewer advocates and judges than when this great mass of law was yet inits first infancy? On the contrary, we darken and bury intelligence; wecan no longer discover it, but at the mercy of so many fences andbarriers. Men do not know the natural disease of the mind; it doesnothing but ferret and inquire, and is eternally wheeling, juggling, andperplexing itself like silkworms, and then suffocates itself in its work;"Mus in pice. "--["A mouse in a pitch barrel. "]--It thinks it discoversat a great distance, I know not what glimpses of light and imaginarytruth: but whilst running to it, so many difficulties, hindrances, andnew inquisitions cross it, that it loses its way, and is made drunk withthe motion: not much unlike AEsop's dogs, that seeing something like adead body floating in the sea, and not being able to approach it, set towork to drink the water and lay the passage dry, and so chokedthemselves. To which what one Crates' said of the writings of Heraclitusfalls pat enough, "that they required a reader who could swim well, " sothat the depth and weight of his learning might not overwhelm and stiflehim. 'Tis nothing but particular weakness that makes us content withwhat others or ourselves have found out in this chase after knowledge:one of better understanding will not rest so content; there is alwaysroom for one to follow, nay, even for ourselves; and another road; thereis no end of our inquisitions; our end is in the other world. 'Tis asign either that the mind has grown shortsighted when it is satisfied, orthat it has got weary. No generous mind can stop in itself; it willstill tend further and beyond its power; it has sallies beyond itseffects; if it do not advance and press forward, and retire, and rush andwheel about, 'tis but half alive; its pursuits are without bound ormethod; its aliment is admiration, the chase, ambiguity, which Apollosufficiently declared in always speaking to us in a double, obscure, andoblique sense: not feeding, but amusing and puzzling us. 'Tis anirregular and perpetual motion, without model and without aim; itsinventions heat, pursue, and interproduce one another:

Estienne de la Boetie; thus translated by Cotton:

 "So in a running stream one wave we see After another roll incessantly, And as they glide, each does successively Pursue the other, each the other fly By this that's evermore pushed on, and this By that continually preceded is: The water still does into water swill, Still the same brook, but different water still. "

There is more ado to interpret interpretations than to interpret things, and more books upon books than upon any other subject; we do nothing butcomment upon one another. Every place swarms with commentaries; ofauthors there is great scarcity. Is it not the principal and mostreputed knowledge of our later ages to understand the learned? Is it notthe common and final end of all studies? Our opinions are grafted uponone another; the first serves as a stock to the second, the second to thethird, and so forth; thus step by step we climb the ladder; whence itcomes to pass that he who is mounted highest has often more honour thanmerit, for he is got up but an inch upon the shoulders of the last, butone. 

How often, and, peradventure, how foolishly, have I extended my book tomake it speak of itself; foolishly, if for no other reason but this, thatit should remind me of what I say of others who do the same: that thefrequent amorous glances they cast upon their work witness that theirhearts pant with self-love, and that even the disdainful severitywherewith they scourge them are but the dandlings and caressings ofmaternal love; as Aristotle, whose valuing and undervaluing himself oftenspring from the same air of arrogance. My own excuse is, that I ought inthis to have more liberty than others, forasmuch as I write specificallyof myself and of my writings, as I do of my other actions; that my themeturns upon itself; but I know not whether others will accept this excuse. 

I observed in Germany that Luther has left as many divisions and disputesabout the doubt of his opinions, and more, than he himself raised uponthe Holy Scriptures. Our contest is verbal: I ask what nature is, whatpleasure, circle, and substitution are? the question is about words, andis answered accordingly. A stone is a body; but if a man should furtherurge: "And what is a body?"--"Substance"; "And what is substance?" andso on, he would drive the respondent to the end of his Calepin. 

 [Calepin (Ambrogio da Calepio), a famous lexicographer of the fifteenth century. His Polyglot Dictionary became so famous, that Calepin became a common appellation for a lexicon]

We exchange one word for another, and often for one less understood. I better know what man is than I know what Animal is, or Mortal, orRational. To satisfy one doubt, they give me three; 'tis the Hydra'shead. Socrates asked Menon, "What virtue was. " "There is, " says Menon, "the virtue of a man and of a woman, of a magistrate and of a privateperson, of an old man and of a child. " "Very fine, " cried Socrates, "we were in quest of one virtue, and thou hast brought us a wholeswarm. " We put one question, and they return us a whole hive. As noevent, no face, entirely resembles another, so do they not entirelydiffer: an ingenious mixture of nature. If our faces were not alike, wecould not distinguish man from beast; if they were not unlike, we couldnot distinguish one man from another; all things hold by some similitude;every example halts, and the relation which is drawn from experience isalways faulty and imperfect. Comparisons are ever-coupled at one end orother: so do the laws serve, and are fitted to every one of our affairs, by some wrested, biassed, and forced interpretation. 

Since the ethic laws, that concern the particular duty of every one inhimself, are so hard to be framed, as we see they are, 'tis no wonder ifthose which govern so many particulars are much more so. Do but considerthe form of this justice that governs us; 'tis a true testimony of humanweakness, so full is it of error and contradiction. What we find to befavour and severity in justice--and we find so much of them both, that Iknow not whether the medium is as often met with are sickly and unjustmembers of the very body and essence of justice. Some country peoplehave just brought me news in great haste, that they presently left in aforest of mine a man with a hundred wounds upon him, who was yetbreathing, and begged of them water for pity's sake, and help to carryhim to some place of relief; they tell me they durst not go near him, buthave run away, lest the officers of justice should catch them there; andas happens to those who are found near a murdered person, they should becalled in question about this accident, to their utter ruin, havingneither money nor friends to defend their innocence. What could I havesaid to these people? 'Tis certain that this office of humanity wouldhave brought them into trouble. 

How many innocent people have we known that have been punished, and thiswithout the judge's fault; and how many that have not arrived at ourknowledge? This happened in my time: certain men were condemned to diefor a murder committed; their sentence, if not pronounced, at leastdetermined and concluded on. The judges, just in the nick, are informedby the officers of an inferior court hard by, that they have some men incustody, who have directly confessed the murder, and made an indubitablediscovery of all the particulars of the fact. Yet it was gravelydeliberated whether or not they ought to suspend the execution of thesentence already passed upon the first accused: they considered thenovelty of the example judicially, and the consequence of reversingjudgments; that the sentence was passed, and the judges deprived ofrepentance; and in the result, these poor devils were sacrificed by theforms of justice. Philip, or some other, provided against a likeinconvenience after this manner. He had condemned a man in a great finetowards another by an absolute judgment. The truth some time after beingdiscovered, he found that he had passed an unjust sentence. On one sidewas the reason of the cause; on the other side, the reason of thejudicial forms: he in some sort satisfied both, leaving the sentence inthe state it was, and out of his own purse recompensing the condemnedparty. But he had to do with a reparable affair; my men were irreparablyhanged. How many condemnations have I seen more criminal than the crimesthemselves?

All which makes me remember the ancient opinions, "That 'tis of necessitya man must do wrong by retail who will do right in gross; and injusticein little things, who would come to do justice in great: that humanjustice is formed after the model of physic, according to which, all thatis useful is also just and honest: and of what is held by the Stoics, that Nature herself proceeds contrary to justice in most of her works:and of what is received by the Cyrenaics, that there is nothing just ofitself, but that customs and laws make justice: and what the Theodoriansheld that theft, sacrilege, and all sorts of uncleanness, are just in asage, if he knows them to be profitable to him. " There is no remedy: Iam in the same case that Alcibiades was, that I will never, if I can helpit, put myself into the hands of a man who may determine as to my head, where my life and honour shall more depend upon the skill and diligenceof my attorney than on my own innocence. I would venture myself withsuch justice as would take notice of my good deeds, as well as my ill;where I had as much to hope as to fear: indemnity is not sufficient payto a man who does better than not to do amiss. Our justice presents tous but one hand, and that the left hand, too; let him be who he may, heshall be sure to come off with loss. 

In China, of which kingdom the government and arts, without commerce withor knowledge of ours, surpass our examples in several excellent features, and of which the history teaches me how much greater and more various theworld is than either the ancients or we have been able to penetrate, theofficers deputed by the prince to visit the state of his provinces, asthey punish those who behave themselves ill in their charge, so do theyliberally reward those who have conducted themselves better than thecommon sort, and beyond the necessity of their duty; these there presentthemselves, not only to be approved but to get; not simply to be paid, but to have a present made to them. 

No judge, thank God, has ever yet spoken to me in the quality of a judge, upon any account whatever, whether my own or that of a third party, whether criminal or civil; nor no prison has ever received me, not evento walk there. Imagination renders the very outside of a jaildispleasing to me; I am so enamoured of liberty, that should I beinterdicted the access to some corner of the Indies, I should live alittle less at my ease; and whilst I can find earth or air openelsewhere, I shall never lurk in any place where I must hide myself. My God! how ill should I endure the condition wherein I see so manypeople, nailed to a corner of the kingdom, deprived of the right to enterthe principal cities and courts, and the liberty of the public roads, for having quarrelled with our laws. If those under which I live shouldshake a finger at me by way of menace, I would immediately go seek outothers, let them be where they would. All my little prudence in thecivil wars wherein we are now engaged is employed that they may nothinder my liberty of going and coming. 

Now, the laws keep up their credit, not for being just, but because theyare laws; 'tis the mystic foundation of their authority; they have noother, and it well answers their purpose. They are often made by fools, still oftener by men who, out of hatred to equality, fail in equity, butalways by men, vain and irresolute authors. There is nothing so much, nor so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty, as the laws. Whoever obeysthem because they are just, does not justly obey them as he ought. OurFrench laws, by their irregularity and deformity, lend, in some sort, ahelping hand to the disorder and corruption that all manifest in theirdispensation and execution: the command is so perplexed and inconstant, that it in some sort excuses alike disobedience and defect in theinterpretation, the administration and the observation of it. What fruitthen soever we may extract from experience, that will little advantageour institution, which we draw from foreign examples, if we make solittle profit of that we have of our own, which is more familiar to us, and, doubtless, sufficient to instruct us in that whereof we have need. I study myself more than any other subject; 'tis my metaphysic, myphysic:

 "Quis deus hanc mundi temperet arte domum: Qua venit exoriens, qua deficit: unde coactis Cornibus in plenum menstrua luna redit Unde salo superant venti, quid flamine captet Eurus, et in nubes unde perennis aqua; Sit ventura dies mundi quae subruat arces.... "

 ["What god may govern with skill this dwelling of the world? whence rises the monthly moon, whither wanes she? how is it that her horns are contracted and reopen? whence do winds prevail on the main? what does the east wind court with its blasts? and whence are the clouds perpetually supplied with water? is a day to come which may undermine the world?"--Propertius, iii. 5, 26. ]

 "Quaerite, quos agitat mundi labor. "

 ["Ask whom the cares of the world trouble"--Lucan, i. 417. ]

In this universality, I suffer myself to be ignorantly and negligentlyled by the general law of the world: I shall know it well enough when Ifeel it; my learning cannot make it alter its course; it will not changeitself for me; 'tis folly to hope it, and a greater folly to concernone's self about it, seeing it is necessarily alike public and common. The goodness and capacity of the governor ought absolutely to dischargeus of all care of the government: philosophical inquisitions andcontemplations serve for no other use but to increase our curiosity. The philosophers; with great reason, send us back to the rules of nature;but they have nothing to do with so sublime a knowledge; they falsifythem, and present us her face painted with too high and too adulterate acomplexion, whence spring so many different pictures of so uniform asubject. As she has given us feet to walk with, so has she given usprudence to guide us in life: not so ingenious, robust, and pompous aprudence as that of their invention; but yet one that is easy, quiet, andsalutary, and that very well performs what the other promises, in him whohas the good luck to know how to employ it sincerely and regularly, thatis to say, according to nature. The most simply to commit one's self tonature is to do it most wisely. Oh, what a soft, easy, and wholesomepillow is ignorance and incuriosity, whereon to repose a well-orderedhead!

I had rather understand myself well in myself, than in Cicero. Of theexperience I have of myself, I find enough to make me wise, if I were buta good scholar: whoever will call to mind the excess of his past anger, and to what a degree that fever transported him, will see the deformityof this passion better than in Aristotle, and conceive a more just hatredagainst it; whoever will remember the ills he has undergone, those thathave threatened him, and the light occasions that have removed him fromone state to another, will by that prepare himself for future changes, and the knowledge of his condition. The life of Caesar has no greaterexample for us than our own: though popular and of command, 'tis still alife subject to all human accidents. Let us but listen to it; we applyto ourselves all whereof we have principal need; whoever shall call tomemory how many and many times he has been mistaken in his own judgment, is he not a great fool if he does not ever after suspect it? When I findmyself convinced, by the reason of another, of a false opinion, I do notso much learn what he has said to me that is new and the particularignorance--that would be no great acquisition--as, in general, I learn myown debility and the treachery of my understanding, whence I extract thereformation of the whole mass. In all my other errors I do the same, andfind from this rule great utility to life; I regard not the species andindividual as a stone that I have stumbled at; I learn to suspect mysteps throughout, and am careful to place them right. To learn that aman has said or done a foolish thing is nothing: a man must learn that heis nothing but a fool, a much more ample, and important instruction. Thefalse steps that my memory has so often made, even then when it was mostsecure and confident of itself, are not idly thrown away; it vainlyswears and assures me I shake my ears; the first opposition that is madeto its testimony puts me into suspense, and I durst not rely upon it inanything of moment, nor warrant it in another person's concerns: and wereit not that what I do for want of memory, others do more often for wantof good faith, I should always, in matter of fact, rather choose to takethe truth from another's mouth than from my own. If every one would pryinto the effects and circumstances of the passions that sway him, as Ihave done into those which I am most subject to, he would see themcoming, and would a little break their impetuosity and career; they donot always seize us on a sudden; there is threatening and degrees

 "Fluctus uti primo coepit cum albescere vento, Paulatim sese tollit mare, et altius undas Erigit, inde imo consurgit ad aethera fundo. "

 ["As with the first wind the sea begins to foam, and swells, thence higher swells, and higher raises the waves, till the ocean rises from its depths to the sky. "--AEneid, vii. 528. ]

Judgment holds in me a magisterial seat; at least it carefully endeavoursto make it so: it leaves my appetites to take their own course, hatredand friendship, nay, even that I bear to myself, without change orcorruption; if it cannot reform the other parts according to its ownmodel, at least it suffers not itself to be corrupted by them, but playsits game apart. 

The advice to every one, "to know themselves, " should be of importanteffect, since that god of wisdom and light' caused it to be written onthe front of his temple, --[At Delphi]--as comprehending all he had toadvise us. Plato says also, that prudence is no other thing than theexecution of this ordinance; and Socrates minutely verifies it inXenophon. The difficulties and obscurity are not discerned in anyscience but by those who are got into it; for a certain degree ofintelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not, and wemust push against a door to know whether it be bolted against us or no:whence this Platonic subtlety springs, that "neither they who know are toenquire, forasmuch as they know; nor they who do not know, forasmuch asto inquire they must know what they inquire of. " So in this, "of knowinga man's self, " that every man is seen so resolved and satisfied withhimself, that every man thinks himself sufficiently intelligent, signifies that every one knows nothing about the matter; as Socratesgives Euthydemus to understand. I, who profess nothing else, thereinfind so infinite a depth and variety, that all the fruit I have reapedfrom my learning serves only to make me sensible how much I have tolearn. To my weakness, so often confessed, I owe the propension I haveto modesty, to the obedience of belief prescribed me, to a constantcoldness and moderation of opinions, and a hatred of that troublesome andwrangling arrogance, wholly believing and trusting in itself, the capitalenemy of discipline and truth. Do but hear them domineer; the firstfopperies they utter, 'tis in the style wherewith men establish religionsand laws:

 "Nihil est turpius, quam cognitioni et perceptions assertionem approbationemque praecurrere. "

 ["Nothing is worse than that assertion and decision should precede knowledge and perception. "--Cicero, Acad. , i. 13. ]

Aristarchus said that anciently there were scarce seven sages to be foundin the world, and in his time scarce so many fools: have not we morereason than he to say so in this age of ours? Affirmation and obstinacyare express signs of want of wit. This fellow may have knocked his noseagainst the ground a hundred times in a day, yet he will be at his Ergo'sas resolute and sturdy as before. You would say he had had some new souland vigour of understanding infused into him since, and that it happenedto him, as to that ancient son of the earth, who took fresh courage andvigour by his fall;

 "Cui cum tetigere parentem, jam defecta vigent renovata robore membra:"

 ["Whose broken limbs, when they touched his mother earth, immediately new force acquired. "--Lucan, iv. 599. ]

does not this incorrigible coxcomb think that he assumes a newunderstanding by undertaking a new dispute? 'Tis by my own experiencethat I accuse human ignorance, which is, in my opinion, the surest partof the world's school. Such as will not conclude it in themselves, by sovain an example as mine, or their own, let them believe it from Socrates, the master of masters; for the philosopher Antisthenes said to hisdisciples, "Let us go and hear Socrates; there I will be a pupil with you";and, maintaining this doctrine of the Stoic sect, "that virtue wassufficient to make a life completely happy, having no need of any otherthing whatever"; except of the force of Socrates, added he. 

That long attention that I employ in considering myself, also fits rileto judge tolerably enough of others; and there are few things whereof Ispeak better and with better excuse. I happen very often more exactly tosee and distinguish the qualities of my friends than they do themselves:I have astonished some with the pertinence of my description, and havegiven them warning of themselves. By having from my infancy beenaccustomed to contemplate my own life in those of others, I have acquireda complexion studious in that particular; and when I am once interit uponit, I let few things about me, whether countenances, humours, or discourses, that serve to that purpose, escape me. I study all, both what I am to avoid and what I am to follow. Also in my friends, I discover by their productions their inward inclinations; not byarranging this infinite variety of so diverse and unconnected actionsinto certain species and chapters, and distinctly distributing my parcelsand divisions under known heads and classes;

 "Sed neque quam multae species, nec nomina quae sint, Est numerus. "

 ["But neither can we enumerate how many kinds there what are their names. "--Virgil, Georg. , ii. 103. ]

The wise speak and deliver their fancies more specifically, and piece bypiece; I, who see no further into things than as use informs me, presentmine generally without rule and experimentally: I pronounce my opinion bydisjointed articles, as a thing that cannot be spoken at once and ingross; relation and conformity are not to be found in such low and commonsouls as ours. Wisdom is a solid and entire building, of which everypiece keeps its place and bears its mark:

 "Sola sapientia in se tota conversa est. "

 ["Wisdom only is wholly within itself"--Cicero, De Fin. , iii. 7. ]

I leave it to artists, and I know not whether or no they will be able tobring it about, in so perplexed, minute, and fortuitous a thing, tomarshal into distinct bodies this infinite diversity of faces, to settleour inconstancy, and set it in order. I do not only find it hard topiece our actions to one another, but I moreover find it hard properly todesign each by itself by any principal quality, so ambiguous and variformthey are with diverse lights. That which is remarked for rare inPerseus, king of Macedon, "that his mind, fixing itself to no onecondition, wandered in all sorts of living, and represented manners sowild and erratic that it was neither known to himself or any other whatkind of man he was, " seems almost to fit all the world; and, especially, I have seen another of his make, to whom I think this conclusion mightmore properly be applied; no moderate settledness, still running headlongfrom one extreme to another, upon occasions not to be guessed at; no lineof path without traverse and wonderful contrariety: no one quality simpleand unmixed; so that the best guess men can one day make will be, that heaffected and studied to make himself known by being not to be known. Aman had need have sound ears to hear himself frankly criticised; and asthere are few who can endure to hear it without being nettled, those whohazard the undertaking it to us manifest a singular effect of friendship;for 'tis to love sincerely indeed, to venture to wound and offend us, forour own good. I think it harsh to judge a man whose ill qualities aremore than his good ones: Plato requires three things in him who willexamine the soul of another: knowledge, benevolence, boldness. 

I was sometimes asked, what I should have thought myself fit for, had anyone designed to make use of me, while I was of suitable years:

 "Dum melior vires sanguis dabat, aemula necdum Temporibus geminis canebat sparsa senectus:"

 ["Whilst better blood gave me vigour, and before envious old age whitened and thinned my temples. "--AEneid, V. 415. ]

"for nothing, " said I; and I willingly excuse myself from knowinganything which enslaves me to others. But I had told the truth to mymaster, --[Was this Henri VI. ? D. W. ]--and had regulated his manners, ifhe had so pleased, not in gross, by scholastic lessons, which Iunderstand not, and from which I see no true reformation spring in thosethat do; but by observing them by leisure, at all opportunities, andsimply and naturally judging them as an eye-witness, distinctly one byone; giving him to understand upon what terms he was in the commonopinion, in opposition to his flatterers. There is none of us who wouldnot be worse than kings, if so continually corrupted as they are withthat sort of canaille. How, if Alexander, that great king andphilosopher, cannot defend himself from them!

I should have had fidelity, judgment, and freedom enough for thatpurpose. It would be a nameless office, otherwise it would lose itsgrace and its effect; and 'tis a part that is not indifferently fit forall men; for truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all timesand indiscriminately; its use, noble as it is, has its circumspectionsand limits. It often falls out, as the world goes, that a man lets itslip into the ear of a prince, not only to no purpose, but moreoverinjuriously and unjustly; and no man shall make me believe that avirtuous remonstrance may not be viciously applied, and that the interestof the substance is not often to give way to that of the form. 

For such a purpose, I would have a man who is content with his ownfortune:

 "Quod sit, esse velit, nihilque malit, "

 ["Who is pleased with what he is and desires nothing further. " --Martial, x. Ii, 18. ]

and of moderate station; forasmuch as, on the one hand, he would not beafraid to touch his master's heart to the quick, for fear by that meansof losing his preferment: and, on the other hand, being of no highquality, he would have more easy communication with all sorts of people. I would have this office limited to only one person; for to allow theprivilege of his liberty and privacy to many, would beget an inconvenientirreverence; and of that one, I would above all things require thefidelity of silence. 

A king is not to be believed when he brags of his constancy in standingthe shock of the enemy for his glory, if for his profit and amendment hecannot stand the liberty of a friend's advice, which has no other powerbut to pinch his ear, the remainder of its effect being still in his ownhands. Now, there is no condition of men whatever who stand in so greatneed of true and free advice and warning, as they do: they sustain apublic life, and have to satisfy the opinion of so many spectators, that, as those about them conceal from them whatever should divert them fromtheir own way, they insensibly find themselves involved in the hatred anddetestation of their people, often upon occasions which they might haveavoided without any prejudice even of their pleasures themselves, hadthey been advised and set right in time. Their favourites commonly havemore regard to themselves than to their master; and indeed it answerswith them, forasmuch as, in truth, most offices of real friendship, whenapplied to the sovereign, are under a rude and dangerous hazard, so thattherein there is great need, not only of very great affection andfreedom, but of courage too. 

In fine, all this hodge-podge which I scribble here, is nothing but aregister of the essays of my own life, which, for the internal soundness, is exemplary enough to take instruction against the grain; but as tobodily health, no man can furnish out more profitable experience than I, who present it pure, and no way corrupted and changed by art or opinion. Experience is properly upon its own dunghill in the subject of physic, where reason wholly gives it place: Tiberius said that whoever had livedtwenty years ought to be responsible to himself for all things that werehurtful or wholesome to him, and know how to order himself withoutphysic;

 [All that Suetonius says in his Life of Tiberius is that this emperor, after he was thirty years old, governed his health without the aid of physicians; and what Plutarch tells us, in his essay on the Rules and Precepts of Health, is that Tiberius said that the man who, having attained sixty years, held out his pulse to a physician was a fool. ]

and he might have learned it of Socrates, who, advising his disciples tobe solicitous of their health as a chief study, added that it was hard ifa man of sense, having a care to his exercise and diet, did not betterknow than any physician what was good or ill for him. And physic itselfprofesses always to have experience for the test of its operations: soPlato had reason to say that, to be a right physician, it would benecessary that he who would become such, should first himself have passedthrough all the diseases he pretends to cure, and through all theaccidents and circumstances whereof he is to judge. 'Tis but reason theyshould get the pox, if they will know how to cure it; for my part, I should put myself into such hands; the others but guide us, like himwho paints seas and rocks and ports sitting at table, and there makes themodel of a ship sailing in all security; but put him to the work itself, he knows not at which end to begin. They make such a description of ourmaladies as a town crier does of a lost horse or dog--such a color, sucha height, such an ear--but bring it to him and he knows it not, for allthat. If physic should one day give me some good and visible relief, then truly I will cry out in good earnest:

 "Tandem effcaci do manus scientiae. "

 ["Show me and efficacious science, and I will take it by the hand. " --Horace, xvii. I. ]

The arts that promise to keep our bodies and souls in health promise agreat deal; but, withal, there are none that less keep their promise. And, in our time, those who make profession of these arts amongst us, less manifest the effects than any other sort of men; one may say ofthem, at the most, that they sell medicinal drugs; but that they arephysicians, a man cannot say. 

 [The edition of 1588 adds: "Judging by themselves, and those who are ruled by them. "]

I have lived long enough to be able to give an account of the custom thathas carried me so far; for him who has a mind to try it, as his taster, I have made the experiment. Here are some of the articles, as my memoryshall supply me with them; I have no custom that has not varied accordingto circumstances; but I only record those that I have been bestacquainted with, and that hitherto have had the greatest possession ofme. 

My form of life is the same in sickness as in health; the same bed, thesame hours, the same meat, and even the same drink, serve me in bothconditions alike; I add nothing to them but the moderation of more orless, according to my strength and appetite. My health is to maintain mywonted state without disturbance. I see that sickness puts me off it onone side, and if I will be ruled by the physicians, they will put me offon the other; so that by fortune and by art I am out of my way. I believe nothing more certainly than this, that I cannot be hurt by theuse of things to which I have been so long accustomed. 'Tis for customto give a form to a man's life, such as it pleases him; she is all in allin that: 'tis the potion of Circe, that varies our nature as she bestpleases. How many nations, and but three steps from us, think the fearof the night-dew, that so manifestly is hurtful to us, a ridiculousfancy; and our own watermen and peasants laugh at it. You make a Germansick if you lay him upon a mattress, as you do an Italian if you lay himon a feather-bed, and a Frenchman, if without curtains or fire. A Spanishstomach cannot hold out to eat as we can, nor ours to drink like theSwiss. A German made me very merry at Augsburg, by finding fault withour hearths, by the same arguments which we commonly make use of indecrying their stoves: for, to say the truth, the smothered heat, andthen the smell of that heated matter of which the fire is composed, verymuch offend such as are not used to them; not me; and, indeed, the heatbeing always equal, constant, and universal, without flame, withoutsmoke, and without the wind that comes down our chimneys, they may manyways sustain comparison with ours. Why do we not imitate the Romanarchitecture? for they say that anciently fires were not made in thehouses, but on the outside, and at the foot of them, whence the heat wasconveyed to the whole fabric by pipes contrived in the wall, which weredrawn twining about the rooms that were to be warmed: which I have seenplainly described somewhere in Seneca. This German hearing me commendthe conveniences and beauties of his city, which truly deserves it, beganto compassionate me that I had to leave it; and the first inconveniencehe alleged to me was, the heaviness of head that the chimneys elsewherewould bring upon me. He had heard some one make this complaint, andfixed it upon us, being by custom deprived of the means of perceiving itat home. All heat that comes from the fire weakens and dulls me. Evenussaid that fire was the best condiment of life: I rather choose any otherway of making myself warm. 

We are afraid to drink our wines, when toward the bottom of the cask; inPortugal those fumes are reputed delicious, and it is the beverage ofprinces. In short, every nation has many customs and usages that are notonly unknown to other nations, but savage and miraculous in their sight. What should we do with those people who admit of no evidence that is notin print, who believe not men if they are not in a book, nor truth if itbe not of competent age? we dignify our fopperies when we commit them tothe press: 'tis of a great deal more weight to say, "I have read such athing, " than if you only say, "I have heard such a thing. " But I, who nomore disbelieve a man's mouth than his pen, and who know that men writeas indiscreetly as they speak, and who look upon this age as one that ispast, as soon quote a friend as Aulus Gelliusor Macrobius; and what Ihave seen, as what they have written. And, as 'tis held of virtue, thatit is not greater for having continued longer, so do I hold of truth, that for being older it is none the wiser. I often say, that it is merefolly that makes us run after foreign and scholastic examples; theirfertility is the same now that it was in the time of Homer and Plato. But is it not that we seek more honour from the quotation, than from thetruth of the matter in hand? As if it were more to the purpose to borrowour proofs from the shops of Vascosan or Plantin, than from what is to beseen in our own village; or else, indeed, that we have not the wit tocull out and make useful what we see before us, and to judge of itclearly enough to draw it into example: for if we say that we wantauthority to give faith to our testimony, we speak from the purpose;forasmuch as, in my opinion, of the most ordinary, common, and knownthings, could we but find out their light, the greatest miracles ofnature might be formed, and the most wonderful examples, especially uponthe subject of human actions. 

Now, upon this subject, setting aside the examples I have gathered frombooks, and what Aristotle says of Andron the Argian, that he travelledover the arid sands of Lybia without drinking: a gentleman, who has verywell behaved himself in several employments, said, in a place where Iwas, that he had ridden from Madrid to Lisbon, in the heat of summer, without any drink at all. He is very healthful and vigorous for his age, and has nothing extraordinary in the use of his life, but this, to livesometimes two or three months, nay, a whole year, as he has told me, without drinking. He is sometimes thirsty, but he lets it pass over, and he holds that it is an appetite which easily goes off of itself;and he drinks more out of caprice than either for need or pleasure. 

Here is another example: 'tis not long ago that I found one of thelearnedest men in France, among those of not inconsiderable fortune, studying in a corner of a hall that they had separated for him withtapestry, and about him a rabble of his servants full of licence. Hetold me, and Seneca almost says the same of himself, he made anadvantage of this hubbub; that, beaten with this noise, he so muchthe more collected and retired himself into himself for contemplation, and that this tempest of voices drove back his thoughts within himself. Being a student at Padua, he had his study so long situated amid therattle of coaches and the tumult of the square, that he not only formedhimself to the contempt, but even to the use of noise, for the service ofhis studies. Socrates answered Alcibiades, who was astonished how hecould endure the perpetual scolding of his wife, "Why, " said he, "asthose do who are accustomed to the ordinary noise of wheels drawingwater. " I am quite otherwise; I have a tender head and easilydiscomposed; when 'tis bent upon anything, the least buzzing of a flymurders it. 

Seneca in his youth having warmly espoused the example of Sextius, ofeating nothing that had died, for a whole year dispensed with such food, and, as he said, with pleasure, and discontinued it that he might not besuspected of taking up this rule from some new religion by which it wasprescribed: he adopted, in like manner, from the precepts of Attalus acustom not to lie upon any sort of bedding that gave way under hisweight, and, even to his old age, made use of such as would not yield toany pressure. What the usage of his time made him account roughness, that of ours makes us look upon as effeminacy. 

Do but observe the difference betwixt the way of living of my labourersand my own; the Scythians and Indians have nothing more remote both frommy capacity and my form. I have picked up charity boys to serve me: whosoon after have quitted both my kitchen and livery, only that they mightreturn to their former course of life; and I found one afterwards, picking mussels out of the sewer for his dinner, whom I could neither byentreaties nor threats reclaim from the sweetness he found in indigence. Beggars have their magnificences and delights, as well as the rich, and, 'tis said, their dignities and polities. These are the effects ofcustom; she can mould us, not only into what form she pleases (the sagessay we ought to apply ourselves to the best, which she will soon makeeasy to us), but also to change and variation, which is the most nobleand most useful instruction of all she teaches us. The best of my bodilyconditions is that I am flexible and not very obstinate: I haveinclinations more my own and ordinary, and more agreeable than others;but I am diverted from them with very little ado, and easily slip into acontrary course. A young man ought to cross his own rules, to awaken hisvigour and to keep it from growing faint and rusty; and there is nocourse of life so weak and sottish as that which is carried on by ruleand discipline;

 "Ad primum lapidem vectari quum placet, hora Sumitur ex libro; si prurit frictus ocelli Angulus, inspecta genesi, collyria quaerit;"

 ["When he is pleased to have himself carried to the first milestone, the hour is chosen from the almanac; if he but rub the corner of his eye, his horoscope having been examined, he seeks the aid of salves. "---Juvenal, vi. 576. ]

he shall often throw himself even into excesses, if he will take myadvice; otherwise the least debauch will destroy him, and render himtroublesome and disagreeable in company. The worst quality in awell-bred man is over-fastidiousness, and an obligation to a certainparticular way; and it is particular, if not pliable and supple. It is akind of reproach, not to be able, or not to dare, to do what we see thoseabout us do; let such as these stop at home. It is in every manunbecoming, but in a soldier vicious and intolerable: who, as Philopcemensaid, ought to accustom himself to every variety and inequality of life. 

Though I have been brought up, as much as was possible, to liberty andindependence, yet so it is that, growing old, and having by indifferencemore settled upon certain forms (my age is now past instruction, and hashenceforward nothing to do but to keep itself up as well as it can), custom has already, ere I was aware, so imprinted its character in me incertain things, that I look upon it as a kind of excess to leave themoff; and, without a force upon myself, cannot sleep in the daytime, noreat between meals, nor breakfast, nor go to bed, without a great intervalbetwixt eating and sleeping, --[Gastroesophogeal Reflux. D. W. ]--as ofthree hours after supper; nor get children but before I sleep, nor getthem standing; nor endure my own sweat; nor quench my thirst either withpure water or pure wine; nor keep my head long bare, nor cut my hairafter dinner; and I should be as uneasy without my gloves as without myshirt, or without washing when I rise from table or out of my bed; and Icould not lie without a canopy and curtains, as if they were essentialthings. I could dine without a tablecloth, but without a clean napkin, after the German fashion, very incommodiously; I foul them more than theGermans or Italians do, and make but little use either of spoon or fork. I complain that they did not keep up the fashion, begun after the exampleof kings, to change our napkin at every service, as they do our plate. We are told of that laborious soldier Marius that, growing old, he becamenice in his drink, and never drank but out of a particular cup of his ownI, in like manner, have suffered myself to fancy a certain form ofglasses, and not willingly to drink in common glasses, no more than froma strange common hand: all metal offends me in comparison of a clear andtransparent matter: let my eyes taste, too, according to their capacity. I owe several other such niceties to custom. Nature has also, on theother side, helped me to some of hers: as not to be able to endure morethan two full meals in one day, without overcharging my stomach, nor atotal abstinence from one of those meals without filling myself withwind, drying up my mouth, and dulling my appetite; the finding greatinconvenience from overmuch evening air; for of late years, in nightmarches, which often happen to be all night long, after five or six hoursmy stomach begins to be queasy, with a violent pain in my head, so that Ialways vomit before the day can break. When the others go to breakfast, I go to sleep; and when I rise, I am as brisk and gay as before. I hadalways been told that the night dew never rises but in the beginning ofthe night; but for some years past, long and familiar intercourse witha lord, possessed with the opinion that the night dew is more sharp anddangerous about the declining of the sun, an hour or two before it sets, which he carefully avoids, and despises that of the night, he almostimpressed upon me, not so much his reasoning as his experiences. What, shall mere doubt and inquiry strike our imagination, so as to change us?Such as absolutely and on a sudden give way to these propensions, drawtotal destruction upon themselves. I am sorry for several gentlemen who, through the folly of their physicians, have in their youth and healthwholly shut themselves up: it were better to endure a cough, than, bydisuse, for ever to lose the commerce of common life in things of sogreat utility. Malignant science, to interdict us the most pleasanthours of the day! Let us keep our possession to the last; for the mostpart, a man hardens himself by being obstinate, and corrects hisconstitution, as Caesar did the falling sickness, by dint of contempt. A man should addict himself to the best rules, but not enslave himself tothem, except to such, if there be any such, where obligation andservitude are of profit. 

Both kings and philosophers go to stool, and ladies too; public lives arebound to ceremony; mine, that is obscure and private, enjoys all naturaldispensation; soldier and Gascon are also qualities a little subject toindiscretion; wherefore I shall say of this act of relieving nature, thatit is desirable to refer it to certain prescribed and nocturnal hours, and compel one's self to this by custom, as I have done; but not tosubject one's self, as I have done in my declining years, to a particularconvenience of place and seat for that purpose, and make it troublesomeby long sitting; and yet, in the fouler offices, is it not in somemeasure excusable to require more care and cleanliness?

 "Naturt homo mundum et elegans animal est. "

 ["Man is by nature a clean and delicate creature. "--Seneca, Ep. , 92. ]

Of all the actions of nature, I am the most impatient of beinginterrupted in that. I have seen many soldiers troubled with theunruliness of their bellies; whereas mine and I never fail of ourpunctual assignation, which is at leaping out of bed, if someindispensable business or sickness does not molest us. 

I think then, as I said before, that sick men cannot better placethemselves anywhere in more safety, than in sitting still in that courseof life wherein they have been bred and trained up; change, be it what itwill, distempers and puts one out. Do you believe that chestnuts canhurt a Perigordin or a Lucchese, or milk and cheese the mountain people?We enjoin them not only a new, but a contrary, method of life; a changethat the healthful cannot endure. Prescribe water to a Breton ofthreescore and ten; shut a seaman up in a stove; forbid a Basque footmanto walk: you will deprive them of motion, and in the end of air andlight:

 "An vivere tanti est? Cogimur a suetis animum suspendere rebus, Atque, ut vivamus, vivere desinimus. . Hos superesse reor, quibus et spirabilis aer Et lux, qua regimur, redditur ipsa gravis. "

 ["Is life worth so much? We are compelled to withhold the mind from things to which we are accustomed; and, that we may live, we cease to live . . . . Do I conceive that they still live, to whom the respirable air, and the light itself, by which we are governed, is rendered oppressive?" --Pseudo-Gallus, Eclog. , i. 155, 247. ]

If they do no other good, they do this at least, that they preparepatients betimes for death, by little and little undermining and cuttingoff the use of life. 

Both well and sick, I have ever willingly suffered myself to obey theappetites that pressed upon me. I give great rein to my desires andpropensities; I do not love to cure one disease by another; I hateremedies that are more troublesome than the disease itself. To besubject to the colic and subject to abstain from eating oysters are twoevils instead of one; the disease torments us on the one side, and theremedy on the other. Since we are ever in danger of mistaking, let usrather run the hazard of a mistake, after we have had the pleasure. Theworld proceeds quite the other way, and thinks nothing profitable that isnot painful; it has great suspicion of facility. My appetite, in variousthings, has of its own accord happily enough accommodated itself to thehealth of my stomach. Relish and pungency in sauces were pleasant to mewhen young; my stomach disliking them since, my taste incontinentlyfollowed. Wine is hurtful to sick people, and 'tis the first thing thatmy mouth then finds distasteful, and with an invincible dislike. Whatever I take against my liking does me harm; and nothing hurts me thatI eat with appetite and delight. I never received harm by any actionthat was very pleasant to me; and accordingly have made all medicinalconclusions largely give way to my pleasure; and I have, when I wasyoung, "Quem circumcursans huc atque huc saepe Cupido Fulgebat crocink splendidus in tunic. "

 ["When Cupid, fluttering round me here and there, shone in his rich purple mantle. "--Catullus, lxvi. 133. ]

given myself the rein as licentiously and inconsiderately to the desirethat was predominant in me, as any other whomsoever:

 "Et militavi non sine gloria;"

 ["And I have played the soldier not ingloriously. " --Horace, Od. , iii. 26, 2. ]

yet more in continuation and holding out, than in sally:

 "Sex me vix memini sustinuisse vices. "

 ["I can scarcely remember six bouts in one night" --Ovid, Amor. , iii. 7, 26. ]

'Tis certainly a misfortune and a miracle at once to confess at what atender age I first came under the subjection of love: it was, indeed, bychance; for it was long before the years of choice or knowledge; I do notremember myself so far back; and my fortune may well be coupled with thatof Quartilla, who could not remember when she was a maid:

 "Inde tragus, celeresque pili, mirandaque matri Barba meae. "

 ["Thence the odour of the arm-pits, the precocious hair, and the beard which astonished my mother. "--Martial, xi. 22, 7. ]

Physicians modify their rules according to the violent longings thathappen to sick persons, ordinarily with good success; this great desirecannot be imagined so strange and vicious, but that nature must have ahand in it. And then how easy a thing is it to satisfy the fancy? In myopinion; this part wholly carries it, at least, above all the rest. Themost grievous and ordinary evils are those that fancy loads us with; thisSpanish saying pleases me in several aspects:

 "Defenda me Dios de me. "

 ["God defend me from myself. "]

I am sorry when I am sick, that I have not some longing that might giveme the pleasure of satisfying it; all the rules of physic would hardly beable to divert me from it. I do the same when I am well; I can see verylittle more to be hoped or wished for. 'Twere pity a man should be soweak and languishing, as not to have even wishing left to him. 

The art of physic is not so fixed, that we need be without authority forwhatever we do; it changes according to climates and moons, according toFernel and to Scaliger. --[Physicians to Henry II. ]--If your physiciandoes not think it good for you to sleep, to drink wine, or to eat suchand such meats, never trouble yourself; I will find you another thatshall not be of his opinion; the diversity of medical arguments andopinions embraces all sorts and forms. I saw a miserable sick personpanting and burning for thirst, that he might be cured, who wasafterwards laughed at for his pains by another physician, who condemnedthat advice as prejudicial to him: had he not tormented himself to goodpurpose? There lately died of the stone a man of that profession, whohad made use of extreme abstinence to contend with his disease: hisfellow-physicians say that, on the contrary, this abstinence had driedhim up and baked the gravel in his kidneys. 

I have observed, that both in wounds and sicknesses, speaking discomposesand hurts me, as much as any irregularity I can commit. My voice painsand tires me, for 'tis loud and forced; so that when I have gone to awhisper some great persons about affairs of consequence, they have oftendesired me to moderate my voice. 

This story is worth a diversion. Some one in a certain Greek schoolspeaking loud as I do, the master of the ceremonies sent to him to speaksoftly: "Tell him, then, he must send me, " replied the other, "the tonehe would have me speak in. " To which the other replied, "That he shouldtake the tone from the ears of him to whom he spake. " It was well said, if it is to be understood: "Speak according to the affair you arespeaking about to your auditor, " for if it mean, "'tis sufficient that hehear you, or govern yourself by him, " I do not find it to be reason. Thetone and motion of my voice carries with it a great deal of theexpression and signification of my meaning, and 'tis I who am to governit, to make myself understood: there is a voice to instruct, a voice toflatter, and a voice to reprehend. I will not only that my voice reachhim, but, peradventure, that it strike and pierce him. When I rate myvalet with sharp and bitter language, it would be very pretty for him tosay; "Pray, master, speak lower; I hear you very well":

 "Est quaedam vox ad auditum accommodata, non magnitudine, sed proprietate. "

 ["There is a certain voice accommodated to the hearing, not by its loudness, but by its propriety. "--Quintilian, xi. 3. ]

Speaking is half his who speaks, and half his who hears; the latterought to prepare himself to receive it, according to its bias; as withtennis-players, he who receives the ball, shifts and prepares, accordingas he sees him move who strikes the stroke, and according to the strokeitself. 

Experience has, moreover, taught me this, that we ruin ourselves byimpatience. Evils have their life and limits, their diseases and theirrecovery. 

The constitution of maladies is formed by the pattern of the constitutionof animals; they have their fortune and their days limited from theirbirth; he who attempts imperiously to cut them short by force in themiddle of their course, lengthens and multiplies them, and incensesinstead of appeasing them. I am of Crantor's opinion, that we areneither obstinately and deafly to oppose evils, nor succumb to them fromwant of courage; but that we are naturally to give way to them, accordingto their condition and our own. We ought to grant free passage todiseases; I find they stay less with me, who let them alone; and I havelost some, reputed the most tenacious and obstinate, by their own decay, without help and without art, and contrary to its rules. Let us a littlepermit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairsthan we. But such an one died of it; and so shall you: if not of thatdisease, of another. And how many have not escaped dying, who have hadthree physicians at their tails? Example is a vague and universalmirror, and of various reflections. If it be a delicious medicine, takeit: 'tis always so much present good. I will never stick at the name northe colour, if it be pleasant and grateful to the palate: pleasure is oneof the chiefest kinds of profit. I have suffered colds, goutydefluxions, relaxations, palpitations of the heart, megrims, and otheraccidents, to grow old and die in time a natural death. I have so lostthem when I was half fit to keep them: they are sooner prevailed upon bycourtesy than huffing. We must patiently suffer the laws of ourcondition; we are born to grow old, to grow weak, and to be sick, indespite of all medicine. 'Tis the first lesson the Mexicans teach theirchildren; so soon as ever they are born they thus salute them: "Thou artcome into the world, child, to endure: endure, suffer, and say nothing. "'Tis injustice to lament that which has befallen any one which may befallevery one:

 "Indignare, si quid in to inique proprio constitutum est. "

 ["Then be angry, when there is anything unjustly decreed against thee alone. "--Seneca, Ep. , 91. ]

See an old man who begs of God that he will maintain his health vigorousand entire; that is to say, that he restore him to youth:

 "Stulte, quid haec frustra votis puerilibus optas?"

 ["Fool! why do you vainly form these puerile wishes?" --Ovid. , Trist. , 111. 8, II. ]

is it not folly? his condition is not capable of it. The gout, thestone, and indigestion are symptoms of long years; as heat, rains, andwinds are of long journeys. Plato does not believe that AEsculapiustroubled himself to provide by regimen to prolong life in a weak andwasted body, useless to his country and to his profession, or to begethealthful and robust children; and does not think this care suitable tothe Divine justice and prudence, which is to direct all things toutility. My good friend, your business is done; nobody can restore you;they can, at the most, but patch you up, and prop you a little, and bythat means prolong your misery an hour or two:

 "Non secus instantem cupiens fulcire ruinam, Diversis contra nititur obiicibus; Donec certa dies, omni compage soluta, Ipsum cum rebus subruat auxilium. "

 ["Like one who, desiring to stay an impending ruin, places various props against it, till, in a short time, the house, the props, and all, giving way, fall together. "--Pseudo-Gallus, i. 171. ]

We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade; our life, like the harmonyof the world, is composed of contrary things--of diverse tones, sweet andharsh, sharp and flat, sprightly and solemn: the musician who should onlyaffect some of these, what would he be able to do? he must know how tomake use of them all, and to mix them; and so we should mingle the goodsand evils which are consubstantial with our life; our being cannotsubsist without this mixture, and the one part is no less necessary to itthan the other. To attempt to combat natural necessity, is to representthe folly of Ctesiphon, who undertook to kick with his mule. --[Plutarch, How to restrain Anger, c. 8. ]

I consult little about the alterations I feel: for these doctors takeadvantage; when they have you at their mercy, they surfeit your ears withtheir prognostics; and formerly surprising me, weakened with sickness, injuriously handled me with their dogmas and magisterial fopperies--onewhile menacing me with great pains, and another with approaching death. Hereby I was indeed moved and shaken, but not subdued nor jostled from myplace; and though my judgment was neither altered nor distracted, yet itwas at least disturbed: 'tis always agitation and combat. 

Now, I use my imagination as gently as I can, and would discharge it, ifI could, of all trouble and contest; a man must assist, flatter, anddeceive it, if he can; my mind is fit for that office; it needs noappearances throughout: could it persuade as it preaches, it wouldsuccessfully relieve me. Will you have an example? It tells me: "that'tis for my good to have the stone: that the structure of my age mustnaturally suffer some decay, and it is now time it should begin todisjoin and to confess a breach; 'tis a common necessity, and there isnothing in it either miraculous or new; I therein pay what is due to oldage, and I cannot expect a better bargain; that society ought to comfortme, being fallen into the most common infirmity of my age; I seeeverywhere men tormented with the same disease, and am honoured by thefellowship, forasmuch as men of the best quality are most frequentlyafflicted with it: 'tis a noble and dignified disease: that of such asare struck with it, few have it to a less degree of pain; that these areput to the trouble of a strict diet and the daily taking of nauseouspotions, whereas I owe my better state purely to my good fortune; forsome ordinary broths of eringo or burst-wort that I have twice or thricetaken to oblige the ladies, who, with greater kindness than my pain wassharp, would needs present me half of theirs, seemed to me equally easyto take and fruitless in operation, the others have to pay a thousandvows to AEsculapius, and as many crowns to their physicians, for thevoiding a little gravel, which I often do by the aid of nature: even thedecorum of my countenance is not disturbed in company; and I can hold mywater ten hours, and as long as any man in health. The fear of thisdisease, " says my mind, "formerly affrighted thee, when it was unknown tothee; the cries and despairing groans of those who make it worse by theirimpatience, begot a horror in thee. 'Tis an infirmity that punishes themembers by which thou hast most offended. Thou art a conscientiousfellow;"

 "Quae venit indigne poena, dolenda venit:"

 ["We are entitled to complain of a punishment that we have not deserved. "--Ovid, Heroid. , v. 8. ]

"consider this chastisement: 'tis very easy in comparison of others, andinflicted with a paternal tenderness: do but observe how late it comes;it only seizes on and incommodes that part of thy life which is, one wayand another, sterile and lost; having, as it were by composition, giventime for the licence and pleasures of thy youth. The fear and thecompassion that the people have of this disease serve thee for matter ofglory; a quality whereof if thou bast thy judgment purified, and that thyreason has somewhat cured it, thy friends notwithstanding, discern sometincture in thy complexion. 'Tis a pleasure to hear it said of oneselfwhat strength of mind, what patience! Thou art seen to sweat with pain, to turn pale and red, to tremble, to vomit blood, to suffer strangecontractions and convulsions, at times to let great tears drop from thineeyes, to urine thick, black, and dreadful water, or to have it suppressedby some sharp and craggy stone, that cruelly pricks and tears the neck ofthe bladder, whilst all the while thou entertainest the company with anordinary countenance; droning by fits with thy people; making one in acontinuous discourse, now and then making excuse for thy pain, andrepresenting thy suffering less than it is. Dost thou call to mind themen of past times, who so greedily sought diseases to keep their virtuein breath and exercise? Put the case that nature sets thee on and impelsthee to this glorious school, into which thou wouldst never have enteredof thy own free will. If thou tellest me that it is a dangerous andmortal disease, what others are not so? for 'tis a physical cheat toexpect any that they say do not go direct to death: what matters if theygo thither by accident, or if they easily slide and slip into the paththat leads us to it? But thou dost not die because thou art sick; thoudiest because thou art living: death kills thee without the help ofsickness: and sickness has deferred death in some, who have lived longerby reason that they thought themselves always dying; to which may beadded, that as in wounds, so in diseases, some are medicinal andwholesome. The stone is often no less long-lived than you; we see menwith whom it has continued from their infancy even to their extreme oldage; and if they had not broken company, it would have been with themlonger still; you more often kill it than it kills you. And though itshould present to you the image of approaching death, were it not a goodoffice to a man of such an age, to put him in mind of his end? And, which is worse, thou hast no longer anything that should make thee desireto be cured. Whether or no, common necessity will soon call thee away. Do but consider how skilfully and gently she puts thee out of concernwith life, and weans thee from the world; not forcing thee with atyrannical subjection, like so many other infirmities which thou seestold men afflicted withal, that hold them in continual torment, and keepthem in perpetual and unintermitted weakness and pains, but by warningsand instructions at intervals, intermixing long pauses of repose, as itwere to give thee opportunity to meditate and ruminate upon thy lesson, at thy own ease and leisure. To give thee means to judge aright, and toassume the resolution of a man of courage, it presents to thee the stateof thy entire condition, both in good and evil; and one while a verycheerful and another an insupportable life, in one and the same day. Ifthou embracest not death, at least thou shakest hands with it once amonth; whence thou hast more cause to hope that it will one day surprisethee without menace; and that being so often conducted to the water-side, but still thinking thyself to be upon the accustomed terms, thou and thyconfidence will at one time or another be unexpectedly wafted over. Aman cannot reasonably complain of diseases that fairly divide the timewith health. "

I am obliged to Fortune for having so often assaulted me with the samesort of weapons: she forms and fashions me by use, hardens and habituatesme, so that I can know within a little for how much I shall be quit. Forwant of natural memory, I make one of paper; and as any new symptomhappens in my disease, I set it down, whence it falls out that, havingnow almost passed through all sorts of examples, if anything strikingthreatens me, turning over these little loose notes, as the Sybillineleaves, I never fail of finding matter of consolation from somefavourable prognostic in my past experience. Custom also makes me hopebetter for the time to come; for, the conduct of this clearing out havingso long continued, 'tis to be believed that nature will not alter hercourse, and that no other worse accident will happen than what I alreadyfeel. And besides, the condition of this disease is not unsuitable to myprompt and sudden complexion: when it assaults me gently, I am afraid, for 'tis then for a great while; but it has, naturally, brisk andvigorous excesses; it claws me to purpose for a day or two. My kidneysheld out an age without alteration; and I have almost now lived another, since they changed their state; evils have their periods, as well asbenefits: peradventure, the infirmity draws towards an end. Age weakensthe heat of my stomach, and, its digestion being less perfect, sends thiscrude matter to my kidneys; why, at a certain revolution, may not theheat of my kidneys be also abated, so that they can no more petrify myphlegm, and nature find out some other way of purgation. Years haveevidently helped me to drain certain rheums; and why not these excrementswhich furnish matter for gravel? But is there anything delightful incomparison of this sudden change, when from an excessive pain, I come, bythe voiding of a stone, to recover, as by a flash of lightning, thebeautiful light of health, so free and full, as it happens in our suddenand sharpest colics? Is there anything in the pain suffered, that onecan counterpoise to the pleasure of so sudden an amendment? Oh, how muchdoes health seem the more pleasant to me, after a sickness so near and socontiguous, that I can distinguish them in the presence of one another, in their greatest show; when they appear in emulation, as if to make headagainst and dispute it with one another! As the Stoics say that vicesare profitably introduced to give value to and to set off virtue, we can, with better reason and less temerity of conjecture, say that nature hasgiven us pain for the honour and service of pleasure and indolence. WhenSocrates, after his fetters were knocked off, felt the pleasure of thatitching which the weight of them had caused in his legs, he rejoiced toconsider the strict alliance betwixt pain and pleasure; how they arelinked together by a necessary connection, so that by turns they followand mutually beget one another; and cried out to good AEsop, that heought out of this consideration to have taken matter for a fine fable. 

The worst that I see in other diseases is, that they are not so grievousin their effect as they are in their issue: a man is a whole year inrecovering, and all the while full of weakness and fear. There is somuch hazard, and so many steps to arrive at safety, that there is no endon't before they have unmuffled you of a kerchief, and then of a cap, before they allow you to walk abroad and take the air, to drink wine, tolie with your wife, to eat melons, 'tis odds you relapse into some newdistemper. The stone has this privilege, that it carries itself cleanoff: whereas the other maladies always leave behind them some impressionand alteration that render the body subject to a new disease, and lend ahand to one another. Those are excusable that content themselves withpossessing us, without extending farther and introducing their followers;but courteous and kind are those whose passage brings us any profitableissue. Since I have been troubled with the stone, I find myself freedfrom all other accidents, much more, methinks, than I was before, andhave never had any fever since; I argue that the extreme and frequentvomitings that I am subject to purge me: and, on the other hand, mydistastes for this and that, and the strange fasts I am forced to keep, digest my peccant humours, and nature, with those stones, voids whateverthere is in me superfluous and hurtful. Let them never tell me that itis a medicine too dear bought: for what avail so many stinking draughts, so many caustics, incisions, sweats, setons, diets, and so many othermethods of cure, which often, by reason we are not able to undergo theirviolence and importunity, bring us to our graves? So that when I havethe stone, I look upon it as physic; when free from it, as an absolutedeliverance. 

And here is another particular benefit of my disease; which is, that italmost plays its game by itself, and lets 'me play mine, if I have onlycourage to do it; for, in its greatest fury, I have endured it ten hourstogether on horseback. Do but endure only; you need no other regimenplay, run, dine, do this and t'other, if you can; your debauch will doyou more good than harm; say as much to one that has the pox, the gout, or hernia! The other diseases have more universal obligations; rack ouractions after another kind of manner, disturb our whole order, and totheir consideration engage the whole state of life: this only pinches theskin; it leaves the understanding and the will wholly at our owndisposal, and the tongue, the hands, and the feet; it rather awakens thanstupefies you. The soul is struck with the ardour of a fever, overwhelmed with an epilepsy, and displaced by a sharp megrim, and, inshort, astounded by all the diseases that hurt the whole mass and themost noble parts; this never meddles with the soul; if anything goesamiss with her, 'tis her own fault; she betrays, dismounts, and abandonsherself. There are none but fools who suffer themselves to be persuadedthat this hard and massive body which is baked in our kidneys is to bedissolved by drinks; wherefore, when it is once stirred, there is nothingto be done but to give it passage; and, for that matter, it will itselfmake one. 

I moreover observe this particular convenience in it, that it is adisease wherein we have little to guess at: we are dispensed from thetrouble into which other diseases throw us by the uncertainty of theircauses, conditions, and progress; a trouble that is infinitely painful:we have no need of consultations and doctoral interpretations; the senseswell enough inform us both what it is and where it is. 

By suchlike arguments, weak and strong, as Cicero with the disease of hisold age, I try to rock asleep and amuse my imagination, and to dress itswounds. If I find them worse tomorrow, I will provide new stratagems. That this is true: I am come to that pass of late, that the least motionforces pure blood out of my kidneys: what of that? I move about, nevertheless, as before, and ride after my hounds with a juvenile andinsolent ardour; and hold that I have very good satisfaction for anaccident of that importance, when it costs me no more but a dullheaviness and uneasiness in that part; 'tis some great stone that wastesand consumes the substance of my kidneys and my life, which I by littleand little evacuate, not without some natural pleasure, as an excrementhenceforward superfluous and troublesome. Now if I feel anythingstirring, do not fancy that I trouble myself to consult my pulse or myurine, thereby to put myself upon some annoying prevention; I shall soonenough feel the pain, without making it more and longer by the disease offear. He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears. Towhich may be added that the doubts and ignorance of those who take uponthem to expound the designs of nature and her internal progressions, andthe many false prognostics of their art, ought to give us to understandthat her ways are inscrutable and utterly unknown; there is greatuncertainty, variety, and obscurity in what she either promises orthreatens. Old age excepted, which is an indubitable sign of theapproach of death, in all other accidents I see few signs of the future, whereon we may ground our divination. I only judge of myself by actualsensation, not by reasoning: to what end, since I am resolved to bringnothing to it but expectation and patience? Will you know how much I getby this? observe those who do otherwise, and who rely upon so manydiverse persuasions and counsels; how often the imagination presses uponthem without any bodily pain. I have many times amused myself, beingwell and in safety, and quite free from these dangerous attacks incommunicating them to the physicians as then beginning to discoverthemselves in me; I underwent the decree of their dreadful conclusions, being all the while quite at my ease, and so much the more obliged to thefavour of God and better satisfied of the vanity of this art. 

There is nothing that ought so much to be recommended to youth asactivity and vigilance our life is nothing but movement. I bestir myselfwith great difficulty, and am slow in everything, whether in rising, going to bed, or eating: seven of the clock in the morning is early forme, and where I rule, I never dine before eleven, nor sup till after six. I formerly attributed the cause of the fevers and other diseases I fellinto to the heaviness that long sleeping had brought upon me, and haveever repented going to sleep again in the morning. Plato is more angryat excess of sleeping than at excess of drinking. I love to lie hard andalone, even without my wife, as kings do; pretty well covered withclothes. They never warm my bed, but since I have grown old they give meat need cloths to lay to my feet and stomach. They found fault with thegreat Scipio that he was a great sleeper; not, in my opinion, for anyother reason than that men were displeased that he alone should havenothing in him to be found fault with. If I am anything fastidious in myway of living 'tis rather in my lying than anything else; but generallyI give way and accommodate myself as well as any one to necessity. Sleeping has taken up a great part of my life, and I yet continue, at theage I now am, to sleep eight or nine hours at one breath. I wean myselfwith utility from this proneness to sloth, and am evidently the betterfor so doing. I find the change a little hard indeed, but in three days'tis over; and I see but few who live with less sleep, when needrequires, and who more constantly exercise themselves, or to whom longjourneys are less troublesome. My body is capable of a firm, but not ofa violent or sudden agitation. I escape of late from violent exercises, and such as make me sweat: my limbs grow weary before they are warm. I can stand a whole day together, and am never weary of walking; but frommy youth I have ever preferred to ride upon paved roads; on foot, I getup to the haunches in dirt, and little fellows as I am are subject in thestreets to be elbowed and jostled for want of presence; I have ever lovedto repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high orhigher than my seat. 

There is no profession as pleasant as the military, a profession bothnoble in its execution (for valour is the stoutest, proudest, and mostgenerous of all virtues), and noble in its cause: there is no utilityeither more universal or more just than the protection of the peace andgreatness of one's country. The company of so many noble, young, andactive men delights you; the ordinary sight of so many tragic spectacles;the freedom of the conversation, without art; a masculine andunceremonious way of living, please you; the variety of a thousandseveral actions; the encouraging harmony of martial music that ravishesand inflames both your ears and souls; the honour of this occupation, nay, even its hardships and difficulties, which Plato holds so light thatin his Republic he makes women and children share in them, are delightfulto you. You put yourself voluntarily upon particular exploits andhazards, according as you judge of their lustre and importance; and, avolunteer, find even life itself excusably employed:

 "Pulchrumque mori succurrit in armis. "

 ["'Tis fine to die sword in hand. " ("And he remembers that it is honourable to die in arms. ")--AEneid, ii. 317. ]

To fear common dangers that concern so great a multitude of men; not todare to do what so many sorts of souls, what a whole people dare, is fora heart that is poor and mean beyond all measure: company encourages evenchildren. If others excel you in knowledge, in gracefulness, instrength, or fortune, you have alternative resources at your disposal;but to give place to them in stability of mind, you can blame no one forthat but yourself. Death is more abject, more languishing andtroublesome, in bed than in a fight: fevers and catarrhs as painful andmortal as a musket-shot. Whoever has fortified himself valiantly to bearthe accidents of common life need not raise his courage to be a soldier:

 "Vivere, mi Lucili, militare est. "

 ["To live, my Lucilius, is (to make war) to be a soldier. " --Seneca, Ep. , 96. ]

I do not remember that I ever had the itch, and yet scratching is one ofnature's sweetest gratifications, and so much at hand; but repentancefollows too near. I use it most in my ears, which are at intervals aptto itch. 

I came into the world with all my senses entire, even to perfection. Mystomach is commodiously good, as also is my head and my breath; and, forthe most part, uphold themselves so in the height of fevers. I havepassed the age to which some nations, not without reason, have prescribedso just a term of life that they would not suffer men to exceed it; andyet I have some intermissions, though short and inconstant, so clean andsound as to be little inferior to the health and pleasantness of myyouth. I do not speak of vigour and sprightliness; 'tis not reason theyshould follow me beyond their limits:

 "Non hoc amplius est liminis, aut aquae Coelestis, patiens latus. "

 ["I am no longer able to stand waiting at a door in the rain. " --Horace, Od. , iii. 10, 9. ]

My face and eyes presently discover my condition; all my alterationsbegin there, and appear somewhat worse than they really are; my friendsoften pity me before I feel the cause in myself. My looking-glass doesnot frighten me; for even in my youth it has befallen me more than onceto have a scurvy complexion and of ill augury, without any greatconsequence, so that the physicians, not finding any cause withinanswerable to that outward alteration, attributed it to the mind and tosome secret passion that tormented me within; but they were deceived. If my body would govern itself as well, according to my rule, as my minddoes, we should move a little more at our ease. My mind was then notonly free from trouble, but, moreover, full of joy and satisfaction, as it commonly is, half by its complexion, half by its design:

 "Nec vitiant artus aegrae contagia mentis. "

 ["Nor do the troubles of the body ever affect my mind. " --Ovid, Trist. , iii. 8, 25. ]

I am of the opinion that this temperature of my soul has often raised mybody from its lapses; this is often depressed; if the other be not briskand gay, 'tis at least tranquil and at rest. I had a quartan ague fouror five months, that made me look miserably ill; my mind was always, ifnot calm, yet pleasant. If the pain be without me, the weakness andlanguor do not much afflict me; I see various corporal faintings, thatbeget a horror in me but to name, which yet I should less fear than athousand passions and agitations of the mind that I see about me. I makeup my mind no more to run; 'tis enough that I can crawl along; nor do Imore complain of the natural decadence that I feel in myself:

 "Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus?"

 ["Who is surprised to see a swollen goitre in the Alps?" --Juvenal, xiii. 162. ]

than I regret that my duration shall not be as long and entire as that ofan oak. 

I have no reason to complain of my imagination; I have had few thoughtsin my life that have so much as broken my sleep, except those of desire, which have awakened without afflicting me. I dream but seldom, and thenof chimaeras and fantastic things, commonly produced from pleasantthoughts, and rather ridiculous than sad; and I believe it to be truethat dreams are faithful interpreters of our inclinations; but there isart required to sort and understand them

 "Res, quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident, Quaeque agunt vigilantes, agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt, Minus mirandum est. "

 ["'Tis less wonder, what men practise, think, care for, see, and do when waking, (should also run in their heads and disturb them when they are asleep) and which affect their feelings, if they happen to any in sleep. "--Attius, cited in Cicero, De Divin. , i. 22. ]

Plato, moreover, says, that 'tis the office of prudence to drawinstructions of divination of future things from dreams: I don't knowabout this, but there are wonderful instances of it that Socrates, Xenophon, and Aristotle, men of irreproachable authority, relate. Historians say that the Atlantes never dream; who also never eat anyanimal food, which I add, forasmuch as it is, peradventure, the reasonwhy they never dream, for Pythagoras ordered a certain preparation ofdiet to beget appropriate dreams. Mine are very gentle, without anyagitation of body or expression of voice. I have seen several of my timewonderfully disturbed by them. Theon the philosopher walked in hissleep, and so did Pericles servant, and that upon the tiles and top ofthe house. 

I hardly ever choose my dish at table, but take the next at hand, andunwillingly change it for another. A confusion of meats and a clatter ofdishes displease me as much as any other confusion: I am easily satisfiedwith few dishes: and am an enemy to the opinion of Favorinus, that in afeast they should snatch from you the meat you like, and set a plate ofanother sort before you; and that 'tis a pitiful supper, if you do notsate your guests with the rumps of various fowls, the beccafico onlydeserving to be all eaten. I usually eat salt meats, yet I prefer breadthat has no salt in it; and my baker never sends up other to my table, contrary to the custom of the country. In my infancy, what they had mostto correct in me was the refusal of things that children commonly bestlove, as sugar, sweetmeats, and march-panes. My tutor contended withthis aversion to delicate things, as a kind of over-nicety; and indeed'tis nothing else but a difficulty of taste, in anything it appliesitself to. Whoever cures a child of an obstinate liking for brown bread, bacon, or garlic, cures him also of pampering his palate. There are somewho affect temperance and plainness by wishing for beef and ham amongstthe partridges; 'tis all very fine; this is the delicacy of the delicate;'tis the taste of an effeminate fortune that disrelishes ordinary andaccustomed things. 

 "Per qux luxuria divitiarum taedio ludit. "

 ["By which the luxury of wealth causes tedium. "--Seneca, Ep. , 18. ]

Not to make good cheer with what another is enjoying, and to be curiousin what a man eats, is the essence of this vice:

 "Si modica coenare times olus omne patella. "

 ["If you can't be content with herbs in a small dish for supper. " --Horace, Ep. , i. 5, 2. ]

There is indeed this difference, that 'tis better to oblige one'sappetite to things that are most easy to be had; but 'tis always vice tooblige one's self. I formerly said a kinsman of mine was overnice, who, by being in our galleys, had unlearned the use of beds and to undresswhen he went to sleep. 

If I had any sons, I should willingly wish them my fortune. The goodfather that God gave me (who has nothing of me but the acknowledgment ofhis goodness, but truly 'tis a very hearty one) sent me from my cradle tobe brought up in a poor village of his, and there continued me all thewhile I was at nurse, and still longer, bringing me up to the meanest andmost common way of living:

 "Magna pars libertatis est bene moratus venter. "

 ["A well-governed stomach is a great part of liberty. " --Seneca, Ep. , 123. ]

Never take upon yourselves, and much less give up to your wives, the careof their nurture; leave the formation to fortune, under popular andnatural laws; leave it to custom to train them up to frugality andhardship, that they may rather descend from rigour than mount up to it. This humour of his yet aimed at another end, to make me familiar with thepeople and the condition of men who most need our assistance; consideringthat I should rather regard them who extend their arms to me, than thosewho turn their backs upon me; and for this reason it was that he providedto hold me at the font persons of the meanest fortune, to oblige andattach me to them. 

Nor has his design succeeded altogether ill; for, whether upon theaccount of the more honour in such a condescension, or out of a naturalcompassion that has a very great power over me, I have an inclinationtowards the meaner sort of people. The faction which I should condemn inour wars, I should more sharply condemn, flourishing and successful; itwill somewhat reconcile me to it, when I shall see it miserable andoverwhelmed. How willingly do I admire the fine humour of Cheilonis, daughter and wife to kings of Sparta. Whilst her husband Cleombrotus, inthe commotion of her city, had the advantage over Leonidas her father, she, like a good daughter, stuck close to her father in all his miseryand exile, in opposition to the conqueror. But so soon as the chance ofwar turned, she changed her will with the change of fortune, and bravelyturned to her husband's side, whom she accompanied throughout, where hisruin carried him: admitting, as it appears to me, no other choice than tocleave to the side that stood most in need of her, and where she couldbest manifest her compassion. I am naturally more apt to follow theexample of Flaminius, who rather gave his assistance to those who hadmost need of him than to those who had power to do him good, than I do tothat of Pyrrhus, who was of an humour to truckle under the great and todomineer over the poor. 

Long sittings at table both trouble me and do me harm; for, be it that Iwas so accustomed when a child, I eat all the while I sit. Therefore itis that at my own house, though the meals there are of the shortest, Iusually sit down a little while after the rest, after the manner ofAugustus, but I do not imitate him in rising also before the rest; on thecontrary, I love to sit still a long time after, and to hear them talk, provided I am none of the talkers: for I tire and hurt myself withspeaking upon a full stomach, as much as I find it very wholesome andpleasant to argue and to strain my voice before dinner. 

The ancient Greeks and Romans had more reason than we in setting apartfor eating, which is a principal action of life, if they were notprevented by other extraordinary business, many hours and the greatestpart of the night; eating and drinking more deliberately than we do, whoperform all our actions post-haste; and in extending this naturalpleasure to more leisure and better use, intermixing with profitableconversation. 

They whose concern it is to have a care of me, may very easily hinder mefrom eating anything they think will do me harm; for in such matters Inever covet nor miss anything I do not see; but withal, if it once comesin my sight, 'tis in vain to persuade me to forbear; so that when Idesign to fast I must be kept apart from the suppers, and must have onlyso much given me as is required for a prescribed collation; for if totable, I forget my resolution. When I order my cook to alter the mannerof dressing any dish, all my family know what it means, that my stomachis out of order, and that I shall not touch it. 

I love to have all meats, that will endure it, very little boiled orroasted, and prefer them very high, and even, as to several, quite gone. Nothing but hardness generally offends me (of any other quality I am aspatient and indifferent as any man I have known); so that, contrary tothe common humour, even in fish it often happens that I find them bothtoo fresh and too firm; not for want of teeth, which I ever had good, even to excellence, and which age does not now begin to threaten; I havealways been used every morning to rub them with a napkin, and before andafter dinner. God is favourable to those whom He makes to die bydegrees; 'tis the only benefit of old age; the last death will be so muchthe less painful; it will kill but a half or a quarter of a man. Thereis one tooth lately fallen out without drawing and without pain; it wasthe natural term of its duration; in that part of my being and severalothers, are already dead, others half dead, of those that were mostactive and in the first rank during my vigorous years; 'tis so I melt andsteal away from myself. What a folly it would be in my understanding toapprehend the height of this fall, already so much advanced, as if itwere from the very top! I hope I shall not. I, in truth, receive aprincipal consolation in meditating my death, that it will be just andnatural, and that henceforward I cannot herein either require or hopefrom Destiny any other but unlawful favour. Men make themselves believethat we formerly had longer lives as well as greater stature. But theydeceive themselves; and Solon, who was of those elder times, limits theduration of life to threescore and ten years. I, who have so much and souniversally adored that "The mean is best, " of the passed time, and whohave concluded the most moderate measures to be the most perfect, shallI pretend to an immeasurable and prodigious old age? Whatever happenscontrary to the course of nature may be troublesome; but what comesaccording to her should always be pleasant:

 "Omnia, quae secundum naturam fiunt, sunt habenda in bonis. "

 ["All things that are done according to nature are to be accounted good. "--Cicero, De Senect. , c. 19. ]

And so, says Plato, the death which is occasioned by wounds and diseasesis violent; but that which comes upon us, old age conducting us to it, isof all others the most easy, and in some sort delicious:

 "Vitam adolescentibus vis aufert, senibus maturitas. "

 ["Young men are taken away by violence, old men by maturity. " --Cicero, ubi sup. ]

Death mixes and confounds itself throughout with life; decay anticipatesits hour, and shoulders itself even into the course of our advance. I have portraits of myself taken at five-and-twenty and five-and-thirtyyears of age. I compare them with that lately drawn: how many times isit no longer me; how much more is my present image unlike the former, than unlike my dying one? It is too much to abuse nature, to make hertrot so far that she must be forced to leave us, and abandon our conduct, our eyes, teeth, legs, and all the rest to the mercy of a foreign andhaggard countenance, and to resign us into the hands of art, being wearyof following us herself. 

I am not excessively fond either of salads or fruits, except melons. Myfather hated all sorts of sauces; I love them all. Eating too much hurtsme; but, as to the quality of what I eat, I do not yet certainly knowthat any sort of meat disagrees with me; neither have I observed thateither full moon or decrease, autumn or spring, have any influence uponme. We have in us motions that are inconstant and unknown; for example, I found radishes first grateful to my stomach, since that nauseous, andnow again grateful. In several other things, I find my stomach andappetite vary after the same manner; I have changed again and again fromwhite wine to claret, from claret to white wine. 

I am a great lover of fish, and consequently make my fasts feasts andfeasts fasts; and I believe what some people say, that it is more easy ofdigestion than flesh. As I make a conscience of eating flesh uponfish-days, so does my taste make a conscience of mixing fish and flesh;the difference betwixt them seems to me too remote. 

From my youth, I have sometimes kept out of the way at meals; either tosharpen my appetite against the next morning (for, as Epicurus fasted andmade lean meals to accustom his pleasure to make shift without abundance, I, on the contrary, do it to prepare my pleasure to make better and morecheerful use of abundance); or else I fasted to preserve my vigour forthe service of some action of body or mind: for both the one and theother of these is cruelly dulled in me by repletion; and, above allthings, I hate that foolish coupling of so healthful and sprightly agoddess with that little belching god, bloated with the fumes of hisliquor--[ Montaigne did not approve of coupling Bacchus with Venus. ]--or to cure my sick stomach, or for want of fit company; for I say, as thesame Epicurus did, that one is not so much to regard what he eats, aswith whom; and I commend Chilo, that he would not engage himself to be atPeriander's feast till he was first informed who were to be the otherguests; no dish is so acceptable to me, nor no sauce so appetising, asthat which is extracted from society. I think it more wholesome to eatmore leisurely and less, and to eat oftener; but I would have appetiteand hunger attended to; I should take no pleasure to be fed with three orfour pitiful and stinted repasts a day, after a medicinal manner: whowill assure me that, if I have a good appetite in the morning, I shallhave the same at supper? But we old fellows especially, let us take thefirst opportune time of eating, and leave to almanac-makers hopes andprognostics. The utmost fruit of my health is pleasure; let us take holdof the present and known. I avoid the invariable in these laws offasting; he who would have one form serve him, let him avoid thecontinuing it; we harden ourselves in it; our strength is there stupefiedand laid asleep; six months after, you shall find your stomach so inuredto it, that all you have got is the loss of your liberty of doingotherwise but to your prejudice. 

I never keep my legs and thighs warmer in winter than in summer; onesimple pair of silk stockings is all. I have suffered myself, for therelief of my colds, to keep my head warmer, and my belly upon the accountof my colic: my diseases in a few days habituate themselves thereto, anddisdained my ordinary provisions: we soon get from a coif to a kerchiefover it, from a simple cap to a quilted hat; the trimmings of the doubletmust not merely serve for ornament: there must be added a hare's skin ora vulture's skin, and a cap under the hat: follow this gradation, and youwill go a very fine way to work. I will do nothing of the sort, andwould willingly leave off what I have begun. If you fall into any newinconvenience, all this is labour lost; you are accustomed to it; seekout some other. Thus do they destroy themselves who submit to bepestered with these enforced and superstitious rules; they must addsomething more, and something more after that; there is no end on't. 

For what concerns our affairs and pleasures, it is much more commodious, as the ancients did, to lose one's dinner, and defer making good cheertill the hour of retirement and repose, without breaking up a day; and sowas I formerly used to do. As to health, I since by experience find, onthe contrary, that it is better to dine, and that the digestion is betterwhile awake. I am not very used to be thirsty, either well or sick; mymouth is, indeed, apt to be dry, but without thirst; and commonly I neverdrink but with thirst that is created by eating, and far on in the meal;I drink pretty well for a man of my pitch: in summer, and at a relishingmeal, I do not only exceed the limits of Augustus, who drank but thriceprecisely; but not to offend Democritus rule, who forbade that men shouldstop at four times as an unlucky number, I proceed at need to the fifthglass, about three half-pints; for the little glasses are my favourites, and I like to drink them off, which other people avoid as an unbecomingthing. I mix my wine sometimes with half, sometimes with the third partwater; and when I am at home, by an ancient custom that my father'sphysician prescribed both to him and himself, they mix that which isdesigned for me in the buttery, two or three hours before 'tis broughtin. 'Tis said that Cranabs, king of Attica, was the inventor of thiscustom of diluting wine; whether useful or no, I have heard disputed. I think it more decent and wholesome for children to drink no wine tillafter sixteen or eighteen years of age. The most usual and common methodof living is the most becoming; all particularity, in my opinion, is tobe avoided; and I should as much hate a German who mixed water with hiswine, as I should a Frenchman who drank it pure. Public usage gives thelaw in these things. 

I fear a mist, and fly from smoke as from the plague: the first repairs Ifell upon in my own house were the chimneys and houses of office, thecommon and insupportable defects of all old buildings; and amongst thedifficulties of war I reckon the choking dust they made us ride in awhole day together. I have a free and easy respiration, and my colds forthe most part go off without offence to the lungs and without a cough. 

The heat of summer is more an enemy to me than the cold of winter; for, besides the incommodity of heat, less remediable than cold, and besidesthe force of the sunbeams that strike upon the head, all glittering lightoffends my eyes, so that I could not now sit at dinner over against aflaming fire. 

To dull the whiteness of paper, in those times when I was more wont toread, I laid a piece of glass upon my book, and found my eyes muchrelieved by it. I am to this hour--to the age of fifty-four--Ignorant ofthe use of spectacles; and I can see as far as ever I did, or any other. 'Tis true that in the evening I begin to find a little disturbance andweakness in my sight if I read, an exercise I have always foundtroublesome, especially by night. Here is one step back, and a verymanifest one; I shall retire another: from the second to the third, andso to the fourth, so gently, that I shall be stark blind before I shallbe sensible of the age and decay of my sight: so artificially do theFatal Sisters untwist our lives. And so I doubt whether my hearingbegins to grow thick; and you will see I shall have half lost it, when Ishall still lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me. A manmust screw up his soul to a high pitch to make it sensible how it ebbsaway. 

My walking is quick and firm; and I know not which of the two, my mind ormy body, I have most to do to keep in the same state. That preacher isvery much my friend who can fix my attention a whole sermon through: inplaces of ceremony, where every one's countenance is so starched, where Ihave seen the ladies keep even their eyes so fixed, I could never orderit so, that some part or other of me did not lash out; so that though Iwas seated, I was never settled; and as to gesticulation, I am neverwithout a switch in my hand, walking or riding. As the philosopherChrysippus' maid said of her master, that he was only drunk in his legs, for it was his custom to be always kicking them about in what placesoever he sat; and she said it when, the wine having made all hiscompanions drunk, he found no alteration in himself at all; it may havebeen said of me from my infancy, that I had either folly or quicksilverin my feet, so much stirring and unsettledness there is in them, whereverthey are placed. 

'Tis indecent, besides the hurt it does to one's health, and even to thepleasure of eating, to eat greedily as I do; I often bite my tongue, andsometimes my fingers, in my haste. Diogenes, meeting a boy eating afterthat manner, gave his tutor a box on the ear! There were men at Romethat taught people to chew, as well as to walk, with a good grace. Ilose thereby the leisure of speaking, which gives great relish to thetable, provided the discourse be suitable, that is, pleasant and short. 

There is jealousy and envy amongst our pleasures; they cross and hinderone another. Alcibiades, a man who well understood how to make goodcheer, banished even music from the table, that it might not disturb theentertainment of discourse, for the reason, as Plato tells us, "that itis the custom of ordinary people to call fiddlers and singing men tofeasts, for want of good discourse and pleasant talk, with which men ofunderstanding know how to entertain one another. " Varro requires allthis in entertainments: "Persons of graceful presence and agreeableconversation, who are neither silent nor garrulous; neatness anddelicacy, both of meat and place; and fair weather. " The art of diningwell is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure; neither thegreatest captains nor the greatest philosophers have disdained the use orscience of eating well. My imagination has delivered three repasts tothe custody of my memory, which fortune rendered sovereignly sweet to me, upon several occasions in my more flourishing age; my present stateexcludes me; for every one, according to the good temper of body and mindwherein he then finds himself, furnishes for his own share a particulargrace and savour. I, who but crawl upon the earth, hate this inhumanwisdom, that will have us despise and hate all culture of the body; Ilook upon it as an equal injustice to loath natural pleasures as to betoo much in love with them. Xerxes was a blockhead, who, environed withall human delights, proposed a reward to him who could find out others;but he is not much less so who cuts off any of those pleasures thatnature has provided for him. A man should neither pursue nor avoid them, but receive them. I receive them, I confess, a little too warmly andkindly, and easily suffer myself to follow my natural propensions. Wehave no need to exaggerate their inanity; they themselves will make ussufficiently sensible of it, thanks to our sick wet-blanket mind, thatputs us out of taste with them as with itself; it treats both itself andall it receives, one while better, and another worse, according to itsinsatiable, vagabond, and versatile essence:

 "Sincerum est nisi vas, quodcunque infundis, acescit. "

 ["Unless the vessel be clean, it will sour whatever you put into it. "--Horace, Ep. , i. 2, 54. ]

I, who boast that I so curiously and particularly embrace theconveniences of life, find them, when I most nearly consider them, verylittle more than wind. But what? We are all wind throughout; and, moreover, the wind itself, more discreet than we, loves to bluster andshift from corner to corner, and contents itself with its proper officeswithout desiring stability and solidity-qualities not its own. 

The pure pleasures, as well as the pure displeasures, of the imagination, say some, are the greatest, as was expressed by the balance ofCritolaiis. 'Tis no wonder; it makes them to its own liking, and cutsthem out of the whole cloth; of this I every day see notable examples, and, peradventure, to be desired. But I, who am of a mixed and heavycondition, cannot snap so soon at this one simple object, but that Inegligently suffer myself to be carried away with the present pleasuresof the, general human law, intellectually sensible, and sensiblyintellectual. The Cyrenaic philosophers will have it that as corporalpains, so corporal pleasures are more powerful, both as double and asmore just. There are some, as Aristotle says, who out of a savage kindof stupidity dislike them; and I know others who out of ambition do thesame. Why do they not, moreover, forswear breathing? why do they notlive of their own? why not refuse light, because it is gratuitous, andcosts them neither invention nor exertion? Let Mars, Pallas, or Mercuryafford them their light by which to see, instead of Venus, Ceres, andBacchus. These boastful humours may counterfeit some content, for whatwill not fancy do? But as to wisdom, there is no touch of it. Will theynot seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives? I hatethat we should be enjoined to have our minds in the clouds, when ourbodies are at table; I would not have the mind nailed there, nor wallowthere; I would have it take place there and sit, but not lie down. Aristippus maintained nothing but the body, as if we had no soul; Zenocomprehended only the soul, as if we had no body: both of them faultily. Pythagoras, they say, followed a philosophy that was all contemplation, Socrates one that was all conduct and action; Plato found a mean betwixtthe two; but they only say this for the sake of talking. The truetemperament is found in Socrates; and, Plato is much more Socratic thanPythagoric, and it becomes him better. When I dance, I dance; when Isleep, I sleep. Nay, when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if mythoughts are some part of the time taken up with external occurrences, I some part of the time call them back again to my walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of that solitude, and to myself. 

Nature has mother-like observed this, that the actions she has enjoinedus for our necessity should be also pleasurable to us; and she invites usto them, not only by reason, but also by appetite, and 'tis injustice toinfringe her laws. When I see alike Caesar and Alexander, in the midstof his greatest business, so fully enjoy human and corporal pleasures, Ido not say that he relaxed his mind: I say that he strengthened it, byvigour of courage subjecting those violent employments and laboriousthoughts to the ordinary usage of life: wise, had he believed the lastwas his ordinary, the first his extraordinary, vocation. We are greatfools. "He has passed his life in idleness, " say we: "I have donenothing to-day. " What? have you not lived? that is not only thefundamental, but the most illustrious, of your occupations. "Had I beenput to the management of great affairs, I should have made it seen what Icould do. " "Have you known how to meditate and manage your life? youhave performed the greatest work of all. " In order to shew and developherself, nature needs only fortune; she equally manifests herself in allstages, and behind a curtain as well as without one. Have you known howto regulate your conduct, you have done a great deal more than he who hascomposed books. Have you known how to take repose, you have done morethan he who has taken empires and cities. 

The glorious masterpiece of man is to live to purpose; all other things:to reign, to lay up treasure, to build, are but little appendices andprops. I take pleasure in seeing a general of an army, at the foot of abreach he is presently to assault, give himself up entire and free atdinner, to talk and be merry with his friends. And Brutus, when heavenand earth were conspired against him and the Roman liberty, stealing somehour of the night from his rounds to read and scan Polybius in allsecurity. 'Tis for little souls, buried under the weight of affairs, notfrom them to know how clearly to disengage themselves, not to know how tolay them aside and take them up again:

 "O fortes, pejoraque passi Mecum saepe viri! nunc vino pellite curas Cras ingens iterabimus aequor. "

 ["O brave spirits, who have often suffered sorrow with me, drink cares away; tomorrow we will embark once more on the vast sea. " --Horace, Od. , i. 7, 30. ]

Whether it be in jest or earnest, that the theological and Sorbonnicalwine, and their feasts, are turned into a proverb, I find it reasonablethey should dine so much more commodiously and pleasantly, as they haveprofitably and seriously employed the morning in the exercise of theirschools. The conscience of having well spent the other hours, is thejust and savoury sauce of the dinner-table. The sages lived after thatmanner; and that inimitable emulation to virtue, which astonishes us bothin the one and the other Cato, that humour of theirs, so severe as evento be importunate, gently submits itself and yields to the laws of thehuman condition, of Venus and Bacchus; according to the precepts of theirsect, that require the perfect sage to be as expert and intelligent inthe use of natural pleasures as in all other duties of life:

 "Cui cor sapiat, ei et sapiat palatus. "

Relaxation and facility, methinks, wonderfully honour and best become astrong and generous soul. Epaminondas did not think that to take part, and that heartily, in songs and sports and dances with the young men ofhis city, were things that in any way derogated from the honour of hisglorious victories and the perfect purity of manners that was in him. And amongst so many admirable actions of Scipio the grandfather, a personworthy to be reputed of a heavenly extraction, there is nothing thatgives him a greater grace than to see him carelessly and childishlytrifling at gathering and selecting cockle shells, and playing at quoits, [This game, as the "Dictionnaire de Trevoux" describes it, is one wherein two persons contend which of them shall soonest pick up some object. ]

amusing and tickling himself in representing by writing in comedies themeanest and most popular actions of men. And his head full of thatwonderful enterprise of Hannibal and Africa, visiting the schools inSicily, and attending philosophical lectures, to the extent of arming theblind envy of his enemies at Rome. Nor is there anything more remarkablein Socrates than that, old as he was, he found time to make himselftaught dancing and playing upon instruments, and thought it time wellspent. This same man was seen in an ecstasy, standing upon his feet awhole day and a night together, in the presence of all the Grecian army, surprised and absorbed by some profound thought. He was the first, amongst so many valiant men of the army, to run to the relief ofAlcibiades, oppressed with the enemy, to shield him with his own body, and disengage him from the crowd by absolute force of arms. It was hewho, in the Delian battle, raised and saved Xenophon when fallen from hishorse; and who, amongst all the people of Athens, enraged as he was at sounworthy a spectacle, first presented himself to rescue Theramenes, whomthe thirty tyrants were leading to execution by their satellites, anddesisted not from his bold enterprise but at the remonstrance ofTheramenes himself, though he was only followed by two more in all. Hewas seen, when courted by a beauty with whom he was in love, to maintainat need a severe abstinence. He was seen ever to go to the wars, andwalk upon ice, with bare feet; to wear the same robe, winter and summer;to surpass all his companions in patience of bearing hardships, and toeat no more at a feast than at his own private dinner. He was seen, forseven-and-twenty years together, to endure hunger, poverty, theindocility of his children, and the nails of his wife, with the samecountenance. And, in the end, calumny, tyranny, imprisonment, fetters, and poison. But was this man obliged to drink full bumpers by any ruleof civility? he was also the man of the whole army with whom theadvantage in drinking, remained. And he never refused to play atnoisettes, nor to ride the hobby-horse with children, and it became himwell; for all actions, says philosophy, equally become and equally honoura wise man. We have enough wherewithal to do it, and we ought never tobe weary of presenting the image of this great man in all the patternsand forms of perfection. There are very few examples of life, full andpure; and we wrong our teaching every day, to propose to ourselves thosethat are weak and imperfect, scarce good for any one service, and ratherpull us back; corrupters rather than correctors of manners. The peopledeceive themselves; a man goes much more easily indeed by the ends, wherethe extremity serves for a bound, a stop, and guide, than by the middleway, large and open; and according to art, more than according to nature:but withal much less nobly and commendably. 

Greatness of soul consists not so much in mounting and in pressingforward, as in knowing how to govern and circumscribe itself; it takeseverything for great, that is enough, and demonstrates itself inpreferring moderate to eminent things. There is nothing so fine andlegitimate as well and duly to play the man; nor science so arduous aswell and naturally to know how to live this life; and of all theinfirmities we have, 'tis the most barbarous to despise our being. 

Whoever has a mind to isolate his spirit, when the body is ill at ease, to preserve it from the contagion, let him by all means do it if he can:but otherwise let him on the contrary favour and assist it, and notrefuse to participate of its natural pleasures with a conjugalcomplacency, bringing to it, if it be the wiser, moderation, lest byindiscretion they should get confounded with displeasure. Intemperanceis the pest of pleasure; and temperance is not its scourge, but ratherits seasoning. Euxodus, who therein established the sovereign good, andhis companions, who set so high a value upon it, tasted it in its mostcharming sweetness, by the means of temperance, which in them wassingular and exemplary. 

I enjoin my soul to look upon pain and pleasure with an eye equallyregulated:

 "Eodem enim vitio est effusio animi in laetitia quo in dolore contractio, "

 ["For from the same imperfection arises the expansion of the mind in pleasure and its contraction in sorrow. " --Cicero, Tusc. Quaes. , iv. 31. ]

and equally firm; but the one gaily and the other severely, and so far asit is able, to be careful to extinguish the one as to extend the other. The judging rightly of good brings along with it the judging soundly ofevil: pain has something of the inevitable in its tender beginnings, andpleasure something of the evitable in its excessive end. Plato couplesthem together, and wills that it should be equally the office offortitude to fight against pain, and against the immoderate and charmingblandishments of pleasure: they are two fountains, from which whoeverdraws, when and as much as he needs, whether city, man, or beast, is veryfortunate. The first is to be taken medicinally and upon necessity, andmore scantily; the other for thirst, but not to, drunkenness. Pain, pleasure, love and hatred are the first things that a child is sensibleof: if, when reason comes, they apply it to themselves, that is virtue. 

I have a special vocabulary of my own; I "pass away time, " when it is illand uneasy, but when 'tis good I do not pass it away: "I taste it overagain and adhere to it"; one must run over the ill and settle upon thegood. This ordinary phrase of pastime, and passing away the time, represents the usage of those wise sort of people who think they cannotdo better with their lives than to let them run out and slide away, passthem over, and baulk them, and, as much as they can, ignore them and shunthem as a thing of troublesome and contemptible quality: but I know it tobe another kind of thing, and find it both valuable and commodious, evenin its latest decay, wherein I now enjoy it; and nature has delivered itinto our hands in such and so favourable circumstances that we have onlyourselves to blame if it be troublesome to us, or escapes usunprofitably:

 "Stulti vita ingrata est, trepida est, tota in futurum fertur. "

 ["The life of a fool is thankless, timorous, and wholly bent upon the future. "--Seneca, Ep:, 15. ]

Nevertheless I compose myself to lose mine without regret; but withal asa thing that is perishable by its condition, not that it molests orannoys me. Nor does it properly well become any not to be displeasedwhen they die, excepting such as are pleased to live. There is goodhusbandry in enjoying it: I enjoy it double to what others do; for themeasure of its fruition depends upon our more or less application to it. Chiefly that I perceive mine to be so short in time, I desire to extendit in weight; I will stop the promptitude of its flight by thepromptitude of my grasp; and by the vigour of using it compensate thespeed of its running away. In proportion as the possession of life ismore short, I must make it so much deeper and fuller. 

Others feel the pleasure of content and prosperity; I feel it too, aswell as they, but not as it passes and slips by; one should study, taste, and ruminate upon it to render condign thanks to Him who grants it to us. They enjoy the other pleasures as they do that of sleep, without knowingit. To the end that even sleep itself should not so stupidly escape fromme, I have formerly caused myself to be disturbed in my sleep, so that Imight the better and more sensibly relish and taste it. I ponder withmyself of content; I do not skim over, but sound it; and I bend myreason, now grown perverse and peevish, to entertain it. Do I findmyself in any calm composedness? is there any pleasure that tickles me?I do not suffer it to dally with my senses only; I associate my soul toit too: not there to engage itself, but therein to take delight; notthere to lose itself, but to be present there; and I employ it, on itspart, to view itself in this prosperous state, to weigh and appreciateits happiness and to amplify it. It reckons how much it stands indebtedto God that its conscience and the intestine passions are in repose; thatit has the body in its natural disposition, orderly and competentlyenjoying the soft and soothing functions by which He, of His grace ispleased to compensate the sufferings wherewith His justice at His goodpleasure chastises us. It reflects how great a benefit it is to be soprotected, that which way soever it turns its eye the heavens are calmaround it. No desire, no fear, no doubt, troubles the air; nodifficulty, past, present, or to, come, that its imagination may not passover without offence. This consideration takes great lustre from thecomparison of different conditions. So it is that I present to mythought, in a thousand aspects, those whom fortune or their own errorcarries away and torments. And, again, those who, more like to me, sonegligently and incuriously receive their good fortune. Those are folkswho spend their time indeed; they pass over the present and that whichthey possess, to wait on hope, and for shadows and vain images whichfancy puts before them:

 "Morte obita quales fama est volitare figuras, Aut quae sopitos deludunt somnia sensus:"

 ["Such forms as those which after death are reputed to hover about, or dreams which delude the senses in sleep. "--AEneid, x. 641. ]

which hasten and prolong their flight, according as they are pursued. The fruit and end of their pursuit is to pursue; as Alexander said, thatthe end of his labour was to labour:

 "Nil actum credens, cum quid superesset agendum. "

 ["Thinking nothing done, if anything remained to be done. --"Lucan, ii. 657. ]

For my part then, I love life and cultivate it, such as it has pleasedGod to bestow it upon us. I do not desire it should be without thenecessity of eating and drinking; and I should think it a not lessexcusable failing to wish it had been twice as long;

 "Sapiens divitiarum naturalium quaesitor acerrimus:"

 ["A wise man is the keenest seeker for natural riches. " --Seneca, Ep. , 119. ]

nor that we should support ourselves by putting only a little of thatdrug into our mouths, by which Epimenides took away his appetite and kepthimself alive; nor that we should stupidly beget children with ourfingers or heels, but rather; with reverence be it spoken, that we mightvoluptuously beget them with our fingers and heels; nor that the bodyshould be without desire and without titillation. These are ungratefuland wicked complaints. I accept kindly, and with gratitude, what naturehas done for me; am well pleased with it, and proud of it. A man doeswrong to that great and omnipotent giver to refuse, annul, or disfigurehis gift: all goodness himself, he has made everything good:

 "Omnia quae secundum naturam sunt, aestimatione digna sunt. "

 ["All things that are according to nature are worthy of esteem. " --Cicero, De Fin. , iii. 6. ]

Of philosophical opinions, I preferably embrace those that are mostsolid, that is to say, the most human and most our own: my discourse is, suitable to my manners, low and humble: philosophy plays the child, to mythinking, when it puts itself upon its Ergos to preach to us that 'tis abarbarous alliance to marry the divine with the earthly, the reasonablewith the unreasonable, the severe with the indulgent, the honest with thedishonest. That pleasure is a brutish quality, unworthy to be tasted bya wise man; that the sole pleasure he extracts from the enjoyment of afair young wife is a pleasure of his conscience to perform an actionaccording to order, as to put on his boots for a profitable journey. Oh, that its followers had no more right, nor nerves, nor vigour ingetting their wives' maidenheads than in its lesson. 

This is not what Socrates says, who is its master and ours: he values, ashe ought, bodily pleasure; but he prefers that of the mind as having moreforce, constancy, facility, variety, and dignity. This, according tohim, goes by no means alone--he is not so fantastic--but only it goesfirst; temperance with him is the moderatrix, not the adversary ofpleasure. Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle thanprudent and just. 

 "Intrandum est in rerum naturam, et penitus, quid ea postulet, pervidendum. "

 ["A man must search into the nature of things, and fully examine what she requires. "--Cicero, De Fin. , V. 16. ]

I hunt after her foot throughout: we have confounded it with artificialtraces; and that academic and peripatetic good, which is "to liveaccording to it, " becomes on this account hard to limit and explain; andthat of the Stoics, neighbour to it, which is "to consent to nature. "Is it not an error to esteem any actions less worthy, because they arenecessary? And yet they will not take it out of my head, that it is nota very convenient marriage of pleasure with necessity, with which, saysan ancient, the gods always conspire. To what end do we dismember bydivorce a building united by so close and brotherly a correspondence?Let us, on the contrary, confirm it by mutual offices; let the mind rouseand quicken the heaviness of the body, and the body stay and fix thelevity of the soul:

 "Qui, velut summum bonum, laudat animac naturam, et, tanquam malum, naturam carnis accusat, profectd et animam carnatiter appetit, et carnem carnaliter fugit; quoniam id vanitate sentit humans, non veritate divina. "

 ["He who commends the nature of the soul as the supreme good, and condemns the nature of the flesh as evil, at once both carnally desires the soul, and carnally flies the flesh, because he feels thus from human vanity, not from divine truth. " --St. Augustin, De Civit. Dei, xiv. 5. ]

In this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care;we stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission toman, to conduct man according to his condition; 'tis express, plain, andthe very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictlyprescribed it to us. Authority has power only to work in regard tomatters of common judgment, and is of more weight in a foreign language;therefore let us again charge at it in this place:

 "Stultitiae proprium quis non dixerit, ignave et contumaciter facere, quae facienda sunt; et alio corpus impellere, alio animum; distrahique inter diversissimos motus?"

 ["Who will not say, that it is the property of folly, slothfully and contumaciously to perform what is to be done, and to bend the body one way and the mind another, and to be distracted betwixt wholly different motions?"--Seneca, Ep. , 74. ]

To make this apparent, ask any one, some day, to tell you what whimsiesand imaginations he put into his pate, upon the account of which hediverted his thoughts from a good meal, and regrets the time he spends ineating; you will find there is nothing so insipid in all the dishes atyour table as this wise meditation of his (for the most part we hadbetter sleep than wake to the purpose we wake); and that his discoursesand notions are not worth the worst mess there. Though they were theecstasies of Archimedes himself, what then? I do not here speak of, normix with the rabble of us ordinary men, and the vanity of the thoughtsand desires that divert us, those venerable souls, elevated by the ardourof devotion and religion, to a constant and conscientious meditation ofdivine things, who, by the energy of vivid and vehement hope, prepossessing the use of the eternal nourishment, the final aim and laststep of Christian desires, the sole constant, and incorruptible pleasure, disdain to apply themselves to our necessitous, fluid, and ambiguousconveniences, and easily resign to the body the care and use of sensualand temporal pasture; 'tis a privileged study. Between ourselves, I haveever observed supercelestial opinions and subterranean manners to be ofsingular accord. 

AEsop, that great man, saw his master piss as he walked: "What then, "said he, "must we drop as we run?" Let us manage our time; there yetremains a great deal idle and ill employed. The mind has not willinglyother hours enough wherein to do its business, without disassociatingitself from the body, in that little space it must have for itsnecessity. They would put themselves out of themselves, and escape frombeing men. It is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels, they transform themselves into beasts; instead of elevating, they laythemselves lower. These transcendental humours affright me, like highand inaccessible places; and nothing is hard for me to digest in the lifeof Socrates but his ecstasies and communication with demons; nothing sohuman in Plato as that for which they say he was called divine; and ofour sciences, those seem to be the most terrestrial and low that arehighest mounted; and I find nothing so humble and mortal in the life ofAlexander as his fancies about his immortalisation. Philotas pleasantlyquipped him in his answer; he congratulated him by letter concerning theoracle of Jupiter Ammon, which had placed him amongst the gods: "Upon thyaccount I am glad of it, but the men are to be pitied who are to livewith a man, and to obey him, who exceeds and is not contented with themeasure of a man:"

 "Diis to minorem quod geris, imperas. "

 ["Because thou carriest thyself lower than the gods, thou rulest. " --Horace, Od. , iii. 6, 5. ]

The pretty inscription wherewith the Athenians honoured the entry ofPompey into their city is conformable to my sense: "By so much thou arta god, as thou confessest thee a man. " 'Tis an absolute and, as it were, a divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being. We seek other conditions, by reason we do not understand the use of ourown; and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside. 'Tis to much purpose to go upon stilts, for, when upon stilts, we mustyet walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne inthe world, we are but seated upon our breech. The fairest lives, in myopinion, are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the commonand human model without miracle, without extravagance. Old age stands alittle in need of a more gentle treatment. Let us recommend that to God, the protector of health and wisdom, but let it be gay and sociable:

 "Frui paratis et valido mihi Latoe, dones, et precor, integra Cum mente; nec turpem senectam Degere, nec Cithara carentem. "

 ["Grant it to me, Apollo, that I may enjoy my possessions in good health; let me be sound in mind; let me not lead a dishonourable old age, nor want the cittern. "--Horace, Od. , i. 31, 17. ]

Or:

 ["Grant it to me, Apollo, that I may enjoy what I have in good health; let me be sound in body and mind; let me live in honour when old, nor let music be wanting. "]

APOLOGY:[In fact, the first edition of the Essays (Bordeaux, 1580) has very fewquotations. These became more numerous in the edition of 1588; but themultitude of classical texts which at times encumber Montaigne's text, only dates from the posthumous edition of 1595] he had made thesecollections in the four last years of his life, as an amusement of his"idleness. "--Le Clerc. They grow, however, more sparing in the ThirdBook. 

 ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

 A well-governed stomach is a great part of liberty Affirmation and obstinacy are express signs of want of wit Alexander said, that the end of his labour was to labour All actions equally become and equally honour a wise man As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by law At the most, but patch you up, and prop you a little better have none at all than to have them in so prodigious a num Both kings and philosophers go to stool Cannot stand the liberty of a friend's advice Cleave to the side that stood most in need of her Condemnations have I seen more criminal than the crimes Customs and laws make justice Dignify our fopperies when we commit them to the press Diversity of medical arguments and opinions embraces all Every man thinks himself sufficiently intelligent Excuse myself from knowing anything which enslaves me to others First informed who were to be the other guests Go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside Got up but an inch upon the shoulders of the last, but one Hate remedies that are more troublesome than the disease itself He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears How many and many times he has been mistaken in his own judgment "I have done nothing to-day. "--"What? have you not lived?" If it be a delicious medicine, take it Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not Intemperance is the pest of pleasure Language: obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts Last death will kill but a half or a quarter of a man Law: breeder of altercation and division Laws keep up their credit, not for being just--but as laws Lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me. Learn my own debility and the treachery of my understanding Life of Caesar has no greater example for us than our own Long sittings at table both trouble me and do me harm Made all medicinal conclusions largely give way to my pleasure Man after who held out his pulse to a physician was a fool Man must learn that he is nothing but a fool More ado to interpret interpretations More books upon books than upon any other subject Never did two men make the same judgment of the same thing None that less keep their promise (than physicians) Nor get children but before I sleep, nor get them standing Nothing so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty, as the laws Our justice presents to us but one hand Perpetual scolding of his wife (of Socrates) Physician: pass through all the diseases he pretends to cure Plato angry at excess of sleeping than at excess of drinking Plato: lawyers and physicians are bad institutions of a country Prolong your misery an hour or two Put us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties Resolved to bring nothing to it but expectation and patience Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications Seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives So weak and languishing, as not to have even wishing left to him Soft, easy, and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity Study makes me sensible how much I have to learn Style wherewith men establish religions and laws Subdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doub That we may live, we cease to live The mean is best There is none of us who would not be worse than kings Thinking nothing done, if anything remained to be done Thinks nothing profitable that is not painful Thou diest because thou art living Tis so I melt and steal away from myself Truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times Truth, that for being older it is none the wiser We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade We ought to grant free passage to diseases Whoever will call to mind the excess of his past anger Why do we not imitate the Roman architecture? Wrangling arrogance, wholly believing and trusting in itself Yet do we find any end of the need of interpretating?