CHAPTER LVII

OF AGE

I cannot allow of the way in which we settle for ourselves the duration

of our life. I see that the sages contract it very much in comparison of

the common opinion: “what,” said the younger Cato to those who would stay

his hand from killing himself, “am I now of an age to be reproached that

I go out of the world too soon?” And yet he was but eight-and-forty

years old. He thought that to be a mature and advanced age, considering

how few arrive unto it. And such as, soothing their thoughts with I know

not what course of nature, promise to themselves some years beyond it,

could they be privileged from the infinite number of accidents to which

we are by a natural subjection exposed, they might have some reason so to

do. What am idle conceit is it to expect to die of a decay of strength,

which is the effect of extremest age, and to propose to ourselves no

shorter lease of life than that, considering it is a kind of death of all

others the most rare and very seldom seen? We call that only a natural

death; as if it were contrary to nature to see a man break his neck with

a fall, be drowned in shipwreck, be snatched away with a pleurisy or the

plague, and as if our ordinary condition did not expose us to these

inconveniences. Let us no longer flatter ourselves with these fine

words; we ought rather, peradventure, to call that natural which is

general, common, and universal.

To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and,

therefore, so much less natural than the others; ‘tis the last and

extremest sort of dying: and the more remote, the less to be hoped for.

It is, indeed, the bourn beyond which we are not to pass, and which the

law of nature has set as a limit, not to be exceeded; but it is, withal,

a privilege she is rarely seen to give us to last till then. ‘Tis a

lease she only signs by particular favour, and it may be to one only in

the space of two or three ages, and then with a pass to boot, to carry

him through all the traverses and difficulties she has strewed in the way

of this long career. And therefore my opinion is, that when once forty

years we should consider it as an age to which very few arrive. For

seeing that men do not usually proceed so far, it is a sign that we are

pretty well advanced; and since we have exceeded the ordinary bounds,

which is the just measure of life, we ought not to expect to go much

further; having escaped so many precipices of death, whereinto we have

seen so many other men fall, we should acknowledge that so extraordinary

a fortune as that which has hitherto rescued us from those eminent

perils, and kept us alive beyond the ordinary term of living, is not like

to continue long.

‘Tis a fault in our very laws to maintain this error: these say that a

man is not capable of managing his own estate till he be five-and-twenty

years old, whereas he will have much ado to manage his life so long.

Augustus cut off five years from the ancient Roman standard, and declared

that thirty years old was sufficient for a judge. Servius Tullius

superseded the knights of above seven-and-forty years of age from the

fatigues of war; Augustus dismissed them at forty-five; though methinks

it seems a little unreasonable that men should be sent to the fireside

till five-and-fifty or sixty years of age. I should be of opinion that

our vocation and employment should be as far as possible extended for the

public good: I find the fault on the other side, that they do not employ

us early enough. This emperor was arbiter of the whole world at

nineteen, and yet would have a man to be thirty before he could be fit to

determine a dispute about a gutter.

For my part, I believe our souls are adult at twenty as much as they are

ever like to be, and as capable then as ever. A soul that has not by

that time given evident earnest of its force and virtue will never after

come to proof. The natural qualities and virtues produce what they have

of vigorous and fine, within that term or never,

“Si l’espine rion picque quand nai,

A pene que picque jamai,”

[“If the thorn does not prick at its birth,

‘twill hardly ever prick at all.”]

as they say in Dauphin.

Of all the great human actions I ever heard or read of, of what sort

soever, I have observed, both in former ages and our own, more were

performed before the age of thirty than after; and this ofttimes in the

very lives of the same men. May I not confidently instance in those of

Hannibal and his great rival Scipio? The better half of their lives they

lived upon the glory they had acquired in their youth; great men after,

‘tis true, in comparison of others; but by no means in comparison of

themselves. As to my own particular, I do certainly believe that since

that age, both my understanding and my constitution have rather decayed

than improved, and retired rather than advanced. ‘Tis possible, that

with those who make the best use of their time, knowledge and experience

may increase with their years; but vivacity, promptitude, steadiness, and

other pieces of us, of much greater importance, and much more essentially

our own, languish and decay:

“Ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus aevi

Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus,

Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque, mensque.”

[“When once the body is shaken by the violence of time,

blood and vigour ebbing away, the judgment halts,

the tongue and the mind dote.”--Lucretius, iii. 452.]

Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind; and I have

seen enough who have got a weakness in their brains before either in

their legs or stomach; and by how much the more it is a disease of no

great pain to the sufferer, and of obscure symptoms, so much greater is

the danger. For this reason it is that I complain of our laws, not that

they keep us too long to our work, but that they set us to work too late.

For the frailty of life considered, and to how many ordinary and natural

rocks it is exposed, one ought not to give up so large a portion of it to

childhood, idleness, and apprenticeship.

[Which Cotton thus renders: “Birth though noble, ought not to share

so large a vacancy, and so tedious a course of education.” Florio

(1613) makes the passage read as-follows: “Methinks that,

considering the weakness of our life, and seeing the infinite number

of ordinary rocks and natural dangers it is subject unto, we should

not, so soon as we come into the world, allot so large a share

thereof unto unprofitable wantonness in youth, ill-breeding

idleness, and slow-learning prentisage.”]

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

Advise to choose weapons of the shortest sort

An ignorance that knowledge creates and begets

Ashamed to lay out as much thought and study upon it

Can neither keep nor enjoy anything with a good grace

Change of fashions

Chess: this idle and childish game

Death is terrible to Cicero, coveted by Cato

Death of old age the most rare and very seldom seen

Diogenes, esteeming us no better than flies or bladders

Do not to pray that all things may go as we would have them

Excel above the common rate in frivolous things

Expresses more contempt and condemnation than the other

Fancy that others cannot believe otherwise than as he does

Gradations above and below pleasure

Greatest apprehensions, from things unseen, concealed

He did not think mankind worthy of a wise man’s concern

Home anxieties and a mind enslaved by wearing complaints

How infirm and decaying material this fabric of ours is

I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback

Led by the ears by this charming harmony of words

Little knacks and frivolous subtleties

Men approve of things for their being rare and new

Must of necessity walk in the steps of another

Natural death the most rare and very seldom seen

Not to instruct but to be instructed.

Present Him such words as the memory suggests to the tongue

Psalms of King David: promiscuous, indiscreet

Rhetoric: an art to flatter and deceive

Rhetoric: to govern a disorderly and tumultuous rabble

Sitting betwixt two stools

Sometimes the body first submits to age, sometimes the mind

Stupidity and facility natural to the common people

The Bible: the wicked and ignorant grow worse by it.

The faintness that surprises in the exercises of Venus

Thucydides: which was the better wrestler

To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular

To make little things appear great was his profession

To smell, though well, is to stink

Valour will cause a trembling in the limbs as well as fear

Viscid melting kisses of youthful ardour in my wanton age

We can never be despised according to our full desert

When we have got it, we want something else

Women who paint, pounce, and plaster up their ruins

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazlitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 9.

I. Of the inconstancy of our actions.

II. Of drunkenness.

III. A custom of the Isle of Cea.

IV. To-morrow’s a new day.

V. Of conscience.

VI. Use makes perfect.

ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE

BOOK THE SECOND

CHAPTER I

OF THE INCONSTANCY OF OUR ACTIONS

Such as make it their business to oversee human actions, do not find

themselves in anything so much perplexed as to reconcile them and bring

them into the world’s eye with the same lustre and reputation; for they

commonly so strangely contradict one another that it seems impossible

they should proceed from one and the same person. We find the younger

Marius one while a son of Mars and another a son of Venus. Pope Boniface

VIII. entered, it is said, into his Papacy like a fox, behaved himself in

it like a lion, and died like a dog; and who could believe it to be the

same Nero, the perfect image of all cruelty, who, having the sentence of

a condemned man brought to him to sign, as was the custom, cried out,

“O that I had never been taught to write!” so much it went to his heart

to condemn a man to death. All story is full of such examples, and every

man is able to produce so many to himself, or out of his own practice or

observation, that I sometimes wonder to see men of understanding give

themselves the trouble of sorting these pieces, considering that

irresolution appears to me to be the most common and manifest vice of our

nature witness the famous verse of the player Publius:

“Malum consilium est, quod mutari non potest.”

[“‘Tis evil counsel that will admit no change.”

--Pub. Mim., ex Aul. Gell., xvii. 14.]

There seems some reason in forming a judgment of a man from the most

usual methods of his life; but, considering the natural instability of

our manners and opinions, I have often thought even the best authors a

little out in so obstinately endeavouring to make of us any constant and

solid contexture; they choose a general air of a man, and according to

that interpret all his actions, of which, if they cannot bend some to a

uniformity with the rest, they are presently imputed to dissimulation.

Augustus has escaped them, for there was in him so apparent, sudden, and

continual variety of actions all the whole course of his life, that he

has slipped away clear and undecided from the most daring critics. I can

more hardly believe a man’s constancy than any other virtue, and believe

nothing sooner than the contrary. He that would judge of a man in detail

and distinctly, bit by bit, would oftener be able to speak the truth. It

is a hard matter, from all antiquity, to pick out a dozen men who have

formed their lives to one certain and constant course, which is the

principal design of wisdom; for to comprise it all in one word, says one

of the ancients, and to contract all the rules of human life into one,

“it is to will, and not to will, always one and the same thing: I will

not vouchsafe,” says he, “to add, provided the will be just, for if it be

not just, it is impossible it should be always one.” I have indeed

formerly learned that vice is nothing but irregularity, and want of

measure, and therefore ‘tis impossible to fix constancy to it. ‘Tis a

saying of. Demosthenes, “that the beginning oh all virtue is

consultation and deliberation; the end and perfection, constancy.” If we

would resolve on any certain course by reason, we should pitch upon the

best, but nobody has thought on’t:

“Quod petit, spernit; repetit, quod nuper omisit;

AEstuat, et vitae disconvenit ordine toto.”

[“That which he sought he despises; what he lately lost, he seeks

again. He fluctuates, and is inconsistent in the whole order of

life.”--Horace, Ep., i. I, 98.]

Our ordinary practice is to follow the inclinations of our appetite, be

it to the left or right, upwards or downwards, according as we are wafted

by the breath of occasion. We never meditate what we would have till the

instant we have a mind to have it; and change like that little creature

which receives its colour from what it is laid upon. What we but just

now proposed to ourselves we immediately alter, and presently return

again to it; ‘tis nothing but shifting and inconsistency:

“Ducimur, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum.”

[“We are turned about like the top with the thong of others.”

--Idem, Sat., ii. 7, 82.]

We do not go, we are driven; like things that float, now leisurely, then

with violence, according to the gentleness or rapidity of the current:

“Nonne videmus,

Quid sibi quisque velit, nescire, et quaerere semper

Commutare locum, quasi onus deponere possit?”

[“Do we not see them, uncertain what they want, and always asking

for something new, as if they could get rid of the burthen.”

--Lucretius, iii. 1070.]

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

“Tales sunt hominum mentes, quali pater ipse

Juppiter auctificas lustravit lumine terras.”

[“Such are the minds of men, that they change as the light with

which father Jupiter himself has illumined the increasing earth.”

--Cicero, Frag. Poet, lib. x.]

We fluctuate betwixt various inclinations; we will nothing freely,

nothing absolutely, nothing constantly. In any one who had prescribed

and established determinate laws and rules in his head for his own

conduct, we should perceive an equality of manners, an order and an

infallible relation of one thing or action to another, shine through his

whole life; Empedocles observed this discrepancy in the Agrigentines,

that they gave themselves up to delights, as if every day was their last,

and built as if they had been to live for ever. The judgment would not

be hard to make, as is very evident in the younger Cato; he who therein

has found one step, it will lead him to all the rest; ‘tis a harmony of

very according sounds, that cannot jar. But with us ‘t is quite

contrary; every particular action requires a particular judgment. The

surest way to steer, in my opinion, would be to take our measures from

the nearest allied circumstances, without engaging in a longer

inquisition, or without concluding any other consequence. I was told,

during the civil disorders of our poor kingdom, that a maid, hard by the

place where I then was, had thrown herself out of a window to avoid being

forced by a common soldier who was quartered in the house; she was not

killed by the fall, and therefore, repeating her attempt would have cut

her own throat, had she not been prevented; but having, nevertheless,

wounded herself to some show of danger, she voluntarily confessed that

the soldier had not as yet importuned her otherwise; than by courtship,

earnest solicitation, and presents; but that she was afraid that in the

end he would have proceeded to violence, all which she delivered with

such a countenance and accent, and withal embrued in her own blood, the

highest testimony of her virtue, that she appeared another Lucretia; and

yet I have since been very well assured that both before and after she

was not so difficult a piece. And, according to my host’s tale in

Ariosto, be as handsome a man and as worthy a gentleman as you will, do

not conclude too much upon your mistress’s inviolable chastity for having

been repulsed; you do not know but she may have a better stomach to your

muleteer.

Antigonus, having taken one of his soldiers into a great degree of favour

and esteem for his valour, gave his physicians strict charge to cure him

of a long and inward disease under which he had a great while languished,

and observing that, after his cure, he went much more coldly to work than

before, he asked him what had so altered and cowed him: “Yourself, sir,”

replied the other, “by having eased me of the pains that made me weary of

my life.” Lucullus’s soldier having been rifled by the enemy, performed

upon them in revenge a brave exploit, by which having made himself a

gainer, Lucullus, who had conceived a good opinion of him from that

action, went about to engage him in some enterprise of very great danger,

with all the plausible persuasions and promises he could think of;

“Verbis, quae timido quoque possent addere mentem”

[“Words which might add courage to any timid man.”

--Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 1, 2.]

“Pray employ,” answered he, “some miserable plundered soldier in that

affair”:

“Quantumvis rusticus, ibit,

Ibit eo, quo vis, qui zonam perdidit, inquit;”

[“Some poor fellow, who has lost his purse, will go whither you

wish, said he.”--Horace, Ep., ii. 2, 39.]

and flatly refused to go. When we read that Mahomet having furiously

rated Chasan, Bassa of the Janissaries, because he had seen the

Hungarians break into his squadrons, and himself behave very ill in the

business, and that Chasan, instead of any other answer, rushed furiously

alone, scimitar in hand, into the first body of the enemy, where he was

presently cut to pieces, we are not to look upon that action,

peradventure, so much as vindication as a turn of mind, not so much

natural valour as a sudden despite. The man you saw yesterday so

adventurous and brave, you must not think it strange to see him as great

a poltroon the next: anger, necessity, company, wine, or the sound of the

trumpet had roused his spirits; this is no valour formed and established

by reason, but accidentally created by such circumstances, and therefore

it is no wonder if by contrary circumstances it appear quite another

thing.

These supple variations and contradictions so manifest in us, have given

occasion to some to believe that man has two souls; other two distinct

powers that always accompany and incline us, the one towards good and the

other towards ill, according to their own nature and propension; so

abrupt a variety not being imaginable to flow from one and the same

source.

For my part, the puff of every accident not only carries me along with it

according to its own proclivity, but moreover I discompose and trouble

myself by the instability of my own posture; and whoever will look

narrowly into his own bosom, will hardly find himself twice in the same

condition. I give to my soul sometimes one face and sometimes another,

according to the side I turn her to. If I speak variously of myself, it

is because I consider myself variously; all the contrarieties are there

to be found in one corner or another; after one fashion or another:

bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; prating, silent; laborious, delicate;

ingenious, heavy; melancholic, pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant;

liberal, covetous, and prodigal: I find all this in myself, more or less,

according as I turn myself about; and whoever will sift himself to the

bottom, will find in himself, and even in his own judgment, this

volubility and discordance. I have nothing to say of myself entirely,

simply, and solidly without mixture and confusion. ‘Distinguo’ is the

most universal member of my logic. Though I always intend to speak well

of good things, and rather to interpret such things as fall out in the

best sense than otherwise, yet such is the strangeness of our condition,

that we are often pushed on to do well even by vice itself, if well-doing

were not judged by the intention only. One gallant action, therefore,

ought not to conclude a man valiant; if a man were brave indeed, he would

be always so, and upon all occasions. If it were a habit of valour and

not a sally, it would render a man equally resolute in all accidents; the

same alone as in company; the same in lists as in a battle: for, let them

say what they will, there is not one valour for the pavement and another

for the field; he would bear a sickness in his bed as bravely as a wound

in the field, and no more fear death in his own house than at an assault.

We should not then see the same man charge into a breach with a brave

assurance, and afterwards torment himself like a woman for the loss of a

trial at law or the death of a child; when, being an infamous coward, he

is firm in the necessities of poverty; when he shrinks at the sight of a

barber’s razor, and rushes fearless upon the swords of the enemy, the

action is commendable, not the man.

Many of the Greeks, says Cicero,--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 27.]--

cannot endure the sight of an enemy, and yet are courageous in sickness;

the Cimbrians and Celtiberians quite contrary;

“Nihil enim potest esse aequabile,

quod non a certa ratione proficiscatur.”

[“Nothing can be regular that does not proceed from a fixed ground

of reason.”--Idem, ibid., c. 26.]

No valour can be more extreme in its kind than that of Alexander: but it

is of but one kind, nor full enough throughout, nor universal.

Incomparable as it is, it has yet some blemishes; of which his being so

often at his wits’ end upon every light suspicion of his captains

conspiring against his life, and the carrying himself in that inquisition

with so much vehemence and indiscreet injustice, and with a fear that

subverted his natural reason, is one pregnant instance. The

superstition, also, with which he was so much tainted, carries along with

it some image of pusillanimity; and the excess of his penitence for the

murder of Clytus is also a testimony of the unevenness of his courage.

All we perform is no other than a cento, as a man may say, of several

pieces, and we would acquire honour by a false title. Virtue cannot be

followed but for herself, and if one sometimes borrows her mask to some

other purpose, she presently pulls it away again. ‘Tis a vivid and

strong tincture which, when the soul has once thoroughly imbibed it, will

not out but with the piece. And, therefore, to make a right judgment of

a man, we are long and very observingly to follow his trace: if constancy

does not there stand firm upon her own proper base,

“Cui vivendi via considerata atque provisa est,”

[“If the way of his life is thoroughly considered and traced out.”

--Cicero, Paradox, v. 1.]

if the variety of occurrences makes him alter his pace (his path, I mean,

for the pace may be faster or slower) let him go; such an one runs before

the wind, “Avau le dent,” as the motto of our Talebot has it.

‘Tis no wonder, says one of the ancients, that chance has so great a

dominion over us, since it is by chance we live. It is not possible for

any one who has not designed his life for some certain end, it is

impossible for any one to arrange the pieces, who has not the whole form

already contrived in his imagination. Of what use are colours to him

that knows not what he is to paint? No one lays down a certain design

for his life, and we only deliberate thereof by pieces. The archer ought

first to know at what he is to aim, and then accommodate his arm, bow,

string, shaft, and motion to it; our counsels deviate and wander, because

not levelled to any determinate end. No wind serves him who addresses

his voyage to no certain, port. I cannot acquiesce in the judgment given

by one in the behalf of Sophocles, who concluded him capable of the

management of domestic affairs, against the accusation of his son, from

having read one of his tragedies.

Neither do I allow of the conjecture of the Parians, sent to regulate the

Milesians sufficient for such a consequence as they from thence derived

coming to visit the island, they took notice of such grounds as were best

husbanded, and such country-houses as were best governed; and having

taken the names of the owners, when they had assembled the citizens, they

appointed these farmers for new governors and magistrates; concluding

that they, who had been so provident in their own private concerns, would

be so of the public too. We are all lumps, and of so various and inform

a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and

there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and

others:

“Magnam rem puta, unum hominem agere.”

[“Esteem it a great thing always to act as one and the same

man.”--Seneca, Ep., 150.]

Since ambition can teach man valour, temperance, and liberality, and even

justice too; seeing that avarice can inspire the courage of a shop-boy,

bred and nursed up in obscurity and ease, with the assurance to expose

himself so far from the fireside to the mercy of the waves and angry

Neptune in a frail boat; that she further teaches discretion and

prudence; and that even Venus can inflate boys under the discipline of

the rod with boldness and resolution, and infuse masculine courage into

the heart of tender virgins in their mothers’ arms:

“Hac duce, custodes furtim transgressa jacentes,

Ad juvenem tenebris sola puella venit:”

[“She leading, the maiden, furtively passing by the recumbent

guards, goes alone in the darkness to the youth.”

--Tibullus, ii. 2, 75.]

‘tis not all the understanding has to do, simply to judge us by our

outward actions; it must penetrate the very soul, and there discover by

what springs the motion is guided. But that being a high and hazardous

undertaking, I could wish that fewer would attempt it.

CHAPTER II

OF DRUNKENNESS

The world is nothing but variety and disemblance, vices are all alike, as

they are vices, and peradventure the Stoics understand them so; but

although they are equally vices, yet they are not all equal vices; and he

who has transgressed the ordinary bounds a hundred paces:

“Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum,”

[“Beyond or within which the right cannot exist.”

--Horace, Sat., i, 1, 107.]

should not be in a worse condition than he that has advanced but ten, is

not to be believed; or that sacrilege is not worse than stealing a

cabbage:

“Nec vincet ratio hoc, tantumdem ut peccet, idemque,

Qui teneros caules alieni fregerit horti,

Et qui nocturnus divum sacra legerit.”

There is in this as great diversity as in anything whatever. The

confounding of the order and measure of sins is dangerous: murderers,

traitors, and tyrants get too much by it, and it is not reasonable they

should flatter their consciences, because another man is idle,

lascivious, or not assiduous at his devotion. Every one overrates the

offence of his companions, but extenuates his own. Our very instructors

themselves rank them sometimes, in my opinion, very ill. As Socrates

said that the principal office of wisdom was to distinguish good from

evil, we, the best of whom are vicious, ought also to say the same of the

science of distinguishing betwixt vice and vice, without which, and that

very exactly performed, the virtuous and the wicked will remain

confounded and unrecognised.

Now, amongst the rest, drunkenness seems to me to be a gross and brutish

vice. The soul has greater part in the rest, and there are some vices

that have something, if a man may so say, of generous in them; there are

vices wherein there is a mixture of knowledge, diligence, valour,

prudence, dexterity, and address; this one is totally corporeal and

earthly. And the rudest nation this day in Europe is that alone where it

is in fashion. Other vices discompose the understanding: this totally

overthrows it and renders the body stupid:

“Cum vini vis penetravit . . .

Consequitur gravitas membrorum, praepediuntur

Crura vacillanti, tardescit lingua, madet mens,

Nant oculi; clamor, singultus, jurgia, gliscunt.”

[“When the power of wine has penetrated us, a heaviness of the limbs

follows, the legs of the tottering person are impeded; the tongue

grows torpid, the mind is dimmed, the eyes swim; noise, hiccup, and

quarrels arise.--“Lucretius, i. 3, 475.]

The worst state of man is that wherein he loses the knowledge and

government of himself. And ‘tis said amongst other things upon this

subject, that, as the must fermenting in a vessel, works up to the top

whatever it has in the bottom, so wine, in those who have drunk beyond

measure, vents the most inward secrets:

“Tu sapientum

Curas et arcanum jocoso

Consilium retegis Lyaeo.”

[“Thou disclosest to the merry Lyacus the cares and secret

counsel of the wise.”--Horace, Od., xxi. 1, 114.]

[Lyacus, a name given to Bacchus.]

Josephus tells us that by giving an ambassador the enemy had sent to him

his full dose of liquor, he wormed out his secrets. And yet, Augustus,

committing the most inward secrets of his affairs to Lucius Piso, who

conquered Thrace, never found him faulty in the least, no more than

Tiberias did Cossus, with whom he intrusted his whole counsels, though we

know they were both so given to drink that they have often been fain to

carry both the one and the other drunk out of the Senate:

“Hesterno inflatum venas ut semper, Lyaeo.”

[“Their veins full, as usual, of yesterday’s wine.”

--Virgil, Egl., vi. 15.]

And the design of killing Caesar was as safely communicated to Cimber,

though he would often be drunk, as to Cassius, who drank nothing but

water.

[As to which Cassius pleasantly said: “What, shall I bear

a tyrant, I who cannot bear wine?”]

We see our Germans, when drunk as the devil, know their post, remember

the word, and keep to their ranks:

“Nec facilis victoria de madidis, et

Blaesis, atque mero titubantibus.”

[“Nor is a victory easily obtained over men so drunk, they can

scarce speak or stand.”--Juvenal, Sat., xv. 47.]

I could not have believed there had been so profound, senseless, and dead

a degree of drunkenness had I not read in history that Attalus having,

to put a notable affront upon him, invited to supper the same Pausanias,

who upon the very same occasion afterwards killed Philip of Macedon,

a king who by his excellent qualities gave sufficient testimony of his

education in the house and company of Epaminondas, made him drink to such

a pitch that he could after abandon his beauty, as of a hedge strumpet,

to the muleteers and servants of the basest office in the house. And I

have been further told by a lady whom I highly honour and esteem, that

near Bordeaux and about Castres where she lives, a country woman, a

widow of chaste repute, perceiving in herself the first symptoms of

breeding, innocently told her neighbours that if she had a husband she

should think herself with child; but the causes of suspicion every day

more and more increasing, and at last growing up to a manifest proof, the

poor woman was reduced to the necessity of causing it to be proclaimed in

her parish church, that whoever had done that deed and would frankly

confess it, she did not only promise to forgive, but moreover to marry

him, if he liked the motion; whereupon a young fellow that served her in

the quality of a labourer, encouraged by this proclamation, declared that

he had one holiday found her, having taken too much of the bottle, so

fast asleep by the chimney and in so indecent a posture, that he could

conveniently do his business without waking her; and they yet live

together man and wife.

It is true that antiquity has not much decried this vice; the writings

even of several philosophers speak very tenderly of it, and even amongst

the Stoics there are some who advise folks to give themselves sometimes

the liberty to drink, nay, to drunkenness, to refresh the soul:

“Hoc quoque virtutum quondam certamine, magnum

Socratem palmam promeruisse ferunt.”

[“In this trial of power formerly they relate that the great

Socrates deserved the palm.”--Cornet. Gallus, Ep., i. 47.]

That censor and reprover of others, Cato, was reproached that he was a

hard drinker:

“Narratur et prisci Catonis

Saepe mero caluisse virtus.”

[“And of old Cato it is said, that his courage was often warmed with

wine.”--Horace, Od., xxi. 3, 11.--Cato the Elder.]

Cyrus, that so renowned king, amongst the other qualities by which he

claimed to be preferred before his brother Artaxerxes, urged this

excellence, that he could drink a great deal more than he. And in the

best governed nations this trial of skill in drinking is very much in

use. I have heard Silvius, an excellent physician of Paris, say that

lest the digestive faculties of the stomach should grow idle, it were not

amiss once a month to rouse them by this excess, and to spur them lest

they should grow dull and rusty; and one author tells us that the

Persians used to consult about their most important affairs after being

well warmed with wine.

My taste and constitution are greater enemies to this vice than my

discourse; for besides that I easily submit my belief to the authority of

ancient opinions, I look upon it indeed as an unmanly and stupid vice,

but less malicious and hurtful than the others, which, almost all, more

directly jostle public society. And if we cannot please ourselves but it

must cost us something, as they hold, I find this vice costs a man’s

conscience less than the others, besides that it is of no difficult

preparation, nor hard to be found, a consideration not altogether to be

despised. A man well advanced both in dignity and age, amongst three

principal commodities that he said remained to him of life, reckoned to

me this for one, and where would a man more justly find it than amongst

the natural conveniences? But he did not take it right, for delicacy and

the curious choice of wines is therein to be avoided. If you found your

pleasure upon drinking of the best, you condemn yourself to the penance

of drinking of the worst. Your taste must be more indifferent and free;

so delicate a palate is not required to make a good toper. The Germans

drink almost indifferently of all wines with delight; their business is

to pour down and not to taste; and it’s so much the better for them:

their pleasure is so much the more plentiful and nearer at hand.

Secondly, to drink, after the French fashion, but at two meals, and then

very moderately, is to be too sparing of the favours of the god. There

is more time and constancy required than so. The ancients spent whole

nights in this exercise, and ofttimes added the day following to eke it

out, and therefore we are to take greater liberty and stick closer to our

work. I have seen a great lord of my time, a man of high enterprise and

famous success, that without setting himself to’t, and after his ordinary

rate of drinking at meals, drank not much less than five quarts of wine,

and at his going away appeared but too wise and discreet, to the

detriment of our affairs. The pleasure we hold in esteem for the course

of our lives ought to have a greater share of our time dedicated to it;

we should, like shopboys and labourers, refuse no occasion nor omit any

opportunity of drinking, and always have it in our minds. Methinks we

every day abridge and curtail the use of wine, and that the after

breakfasts, dinner snatches, and collations I used to see in my father’s

house, when I was a boy, were more usual and frequent then than now.

Is it that we pretend to a reformation? Truly, no: but it may be we are

more addicted to Venus than our fathers were. They are two exercises

that thwart and hinder one another in their vigour. Lechery weakens our

stomach on the one side; and on the other sobriety renders us more spruce

and amorous for the exercise of love.

‘Tis wonderful what strange stories I have heard my father tell of the

chastity of that age wherein he lived. It was for him to say it, being

both by art and nature cut out and finished for the service of ladies.

He spoke well and little: ever mixing his language with some illustration

out of authors most in use, especially in Spanish, and among the Spanish

he whom they called Marcus Aurelius--[ Guevara’s Golden Book of Marcus

Aurelius Antoninus.]--was ordinarily in his mouth. His behaviour was

gently grave, humble, and very modest; he was very solicitous of neatness

and propriety both in his person and clothes, whether on horseback or

afoot, he was monstrously punctual in his word; and of a conscience and

religion generally tending rather towards superstition than otherwise.

For a man of little stature, very strong, well proportioned, and well

knit; of a pleasing countenance inclining to brown, and very adroit in

all noble exercises. I have yet in the house to be seen canes poured

full of lead, with which they say he exercised his arms for throwing the

bar or the stone, or in fencing; and shoes with leaden soles to make him

lighter for running or leaping. Of his vaulting he has left little

miracles behind him: I have seen him when past three score laugh at our

exercises, and throw himself in his furred gown into the saddle, make the

tour of a table upon his thumbs and scarce ever mount the stairs into his

chamber without taking three or four steps at a time. But as to what I

was speaking of before; he said there was scarce one woman of quality of

ill fame in the whole province: he would tell of strange confidences, and

some of them his own, with virtuous women, free from any manner of

suspicion of ill, and for his own part solemnly swore he was a virgin at

his marriage; and yet it was after a long practice of arms beyond the

mountains, of which wars he left us a journal under his own hand, wherein

he has given a precise account from point to point of all passages, both

relating to the public and to himself. And he was, moreover, married at

a well advanced maturity, in the year 1528, the three-and-thirtieth year

of his age, upon his way home from Italy. But let us return to our

bottles.

The incommodities of old age, that stand in need of some refreshment and

support, might with reason beget in me a desire of this faculty, it being

as it were the last pleasure the course of years deprives us of. The

natural heat, say the good-fellows, first seats itself in the feet: that

concerns infancy; thence it mounts into the middle region, where it makes

a long abode and produces, in my opinion, the sole true pleasures of

human life; all other pleasures in comparison sleep; towards the end,

like a vapour that still mounts upward, it arrives at the throat, where

it makes its final residence, and concludes the progress. I do not,

nevertheless, understand how a man can extend the pleasure of drinking

beyond thirst, and forge in his imagination an appetite artificial and

against nature; my stomach would not proceed so far; it has enough to do

to deal with what it takes in for its necessity. My constitution is not

to care for drink but as following eating and washing down my meat, and

for that reason my last draught is always the greatest. And seeing that

in old age we have our palate furred with phlegms or depraved by some

other ill constitution, the wine tastes better to us as the pores are

cleaner washed and laid more open. At least, I seldom taste the first

glass well. Anacharsis wondered that the Greeks drank in greater glasses

towards the end of a meal than at the beginning; which was, I suppose,

for the same reason the Germans do the same, who then begin the battle of

drink.

Plato forbids children wine till eighteen years of age, and to get drunk

till forty; but, after forty, gives them leave to please themselves, and

to mix a little liberally in their feasts the influence of Dionysos, that

good deity who restores to younger men their gaiety and to old men their

youth; who mollifies the passions of the soul, as iron is softened by

fire; and in his Lazes allows such merry meetings, provided they have a

discreet chief to govern and keep them in order, as good and of great

utility; drunkenness being, he says, a true and certain trial of every

one’s nature, and, withal, fit to inspire old men with mettle to divert

themselves in dancing and music; things of great use, and that they dare

not attempt when sober. He, moreover, says that wine is able to supply

the soul with temperance and the body with health. Nevertheless, these

restrictions, in part borrowed from the Carthaginians, please him: that

men forbear excesses in the expeditions of war; that every judge and

magistrate abstain from it when about the administrations of his place or

the consultations of the public affairs; that the day is not to be

employed with it, that being a time due to other occupations, nor the

night on which a man intends to get children.

‘Tis said that the philosopher Stilpo, when oppressed with age, purposely

hastened his end by drinking pure wine. The same thing, but not designed

by him, despatched also the philosopher Arcesilaus.

But ‘tis an old and pleasant question, whether the soul of a wise man can

be overcome by the strength of wine?

“Si munitae adhibet vim sapientiae.”

To what vanity does the good opinion we have of ourselves push us? The

most regular and most perfect soul in the world has but too much to do to

keep itself upright, and from being overthrown by its own weakness.

There is not one of a thousand that is right and settled so much as one

minute in a whole life, and that may not very well doubt, whether

according to her natural condition she ever can be; but to join constancy

to it is her utmost perfection; I mean when nothing should jostle and

discompose her, which a thousand accidents may do. ‘Tis to much purpose

that the great poet Lucretius keeps such a clatter with his philosophy,

when, behold! he goes mad with a love philtre. Is it to be imagined

that an apoplexy will not stun Socrates as well as a porter? Some men

have forgotten their own names by the violence of a disease; and a slight

wound has turned the judgment of others topsy-turvy. Let him be as wise

as he will, after all he is but a man; and than that what is there more

frail, more miserable, or more nothing? Wisdom does not force our

natural dispositions,

“Sudores itaque, et pallorem exsistere toto

Corpore, et infringi linguam, vocemque aboriri,

Caligare oculos, sonere aures, succidere artus,

Demque concidere, ex animi terrore, videmus.”

[“Sweat and paleness come over the whole body, the tongue is

rendered powerless, the voice dies away, the eyes are darkened,

there is ringing in the ears, the limbs sink under us by the

influence of fear.”--Lucretius, iii. 155.]

he must shut his eyes against the blow that threatens him; he must

tremble upon the margin of a precipice, like a child; nature having

reserved these light marks of her authority, not to be forced by our

reason and the stoic virtue, to teach man his mortality and our weakness;

he turns pale with fear, red with shame, and groans with the cholic, if

not with desperate outcry, at least with hoarse and broken voice:

“Humani a se nihil alienum putet.”

[“Let him not think himself exempt from that which is incidental to

men in general.”--Terence, Heauton, i. 1, 25.]

The poets, that feign all things at pleasure, dare not acquit their

greatest heroes of tears:

“Sic fatur lacrymans, classique immittit habenas.”

[“Thus he speaks, weeping, and then sets sail with his fleet.”

--Aeneid, vi. i.]

‘Tis sufficient for a man to curb and moderate his inclinations, for

totally to suppress them is not in him to do. Even our great Plutarch,

that excellent and perfect judge of human actions, when he sees Brutus

and Torquatus kill their children, begins to doubt whether virtue could

proceed so far, and to question whether these persons had not rather been

stimulated by some other passion.--[Plutarch, Life of Publicola, c. 3.]

--All actions exceeding the ordinary bounds are liable to sinister

interpretation, for as much as our liking no more holds with what is

above than with what is below it.

Let us leave that other sect, that sets up an express profession of

scornful superiority--[The Stoics.]--: but when even in that sect,

reputed the most quiet and gentle, we hear these rhodomontades of

Metrodorus:

“Occupavi te, Fortuna, atque cepi: omnesque aditus tuos

interclusi ut ad me aspirare non posses;”

[“Fortune, I have got the better of thee, and have made all the

avenues so sure thou canst not come at me.”

--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 9.]

when Anaxarchus, by command of Nicocreon the tyrant of Cyprus, was put

into a stone mortar, and laid upon with mauls of iron, ceases not to say,

“Strike, batter, break; ‘tis not Anaxarchus, ‘tis but his sheath that you

pound and bray so”; when we hear our martyrs cry out to the tyrant from

the middle of the flame, “This side is roasted enough, fall to and eat,

it is enough done; fall to work with the other;” when we hear the child

in Josephus’ torn piece-meal with pincers, defying Antiochus, and crying

out with a constant and assured voice: “Tyrant, thou losest thy labour,

I am still at ease; where is the pain, where are the torments with which

thou didst so threaten me? Is this all thou canst do? My constancy

torments thee more than thy cruelty does me. O pitiful coward, thou

faintest, and I grow stronger; make me complain, make me bend, make me

yield if thou canst; encourage thy guards, cheer up thy executioners;

see, see they faint, and can do no more; arm them, flesh them anew, spur

them up”; truly, a man must confess that there is some phrenzy, some

fury, how holy soever, that at that time possesses those souls. When we

come to these Stoical sallies: “I had rather be mad than voluptuous,” a

saying of Antisthenes. When Sextius tells us, “he had rather be fettered

with affliction than pleasure”: when Epicurus takes upon him to play with

his gout, and, refusing health and ease, defies all torments, and

despising the lesser pains, as disdaining to contend with them, he covets

and calls out for others sharper, more violent, and more worthy of him;

“Spumantemque dari, pecora inter inertia, votis

Optat aprum, aut fulvum descendere monte leonem:”

[“And instead of timid beasts, wishes the foaming boar or tawny lion

would come from the mountain.”--AEneid, iv. 158.]

who but must conclude that these are wild sallies pushed on by a courage

that has broken loose from its place? Our soul cannot from her own seat

reach so high; ‘tis necessary she must leave it, raise herself up, and,

taking the bridle in her teeth, transport her man so far that he shall

afterwards himself be astonished at what he has done; as, in war, the

heat of battle impels generous soldiers to perform things of so infinite

danger, as afterwards, recollecting them, they themselves are the first

to wonder at; as it also fares with the poets, who are often rapt with

admiration of their own writings, and know not where again to find the

track through which they performed so fine a Career; which also is in

them called fury and rapture. And as Plato says, ‘tis to no purpose for

a sober-minded man to knock at the door of poesy: so Aristotle says, that

no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness; and he has reason

to call all transports, how commendable soever, that surpass our own

judgment and understanding, madness; forasmuch as wisdom is a regular

government of the soul, which is carried on with measure and proportion,

and for which she is to herself responsible. Plato argues thus, that the

faculty of prophesying is so far above us, that we must be out of

ourselves when we meddle with it, and our prudence must either be

obstructed by sleep or sickness, or lifted from her place by some

celestial rapture.

CHAPTER III

A CUSTOM OF THE ISLE OF CEA

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

If to philosophise be, as ‘tis defined, to doubt, much more to write at

random and play the fool, as I do, ought to be reputed doubting, for it

is for novices and freshmen to inquire and to dispute, and for the

chairman to moderate and determine.

My moderator is the authority of the divine will, that governs us without

contradiction, and that is seated above these human and vain

contestations.

Philip having forcibly entered into Peloponnesus, and some one saying to

Damidas that the Lacedaemonians were likely very much to suffer if they

did not in time reconcile themselves to his favour: “Why, you pitiful

fellow,” replied he, “what can they suffer who do not fear to die?” It

being also asked of Agis, which way a man might live free? “Why,” said

he, “by despising death.” These, and a thousand other sayings to the

same purpose, distinctly sound of something more than the patient

attending the stroke of death when it shall come; for there are several

accidents in life far worse to suffer than death itself. Witness the

Lacedaemonian boy taken by Antigonus, and sold for a slave, who being by

his master commanded to some base employment: “Thou shalt see,” says the

boy, “whom thou hast bought; it would be a shame for me to serve, being

so near the reach of liberty,” and having so said, threw himself from the

top of the house. Antipater severely threatening the Lacedaemonians,

that he might the better incline them to acquiesce in a certain demand of

his: “If thou threatenest us with more than death,” replied they, “we

shall the more willingly die”; and to Philip, having written them word

that he would frustrate all their enterprises: “What, wilt thou also

hinder us from dying?” This is the meaning of the sentence, “That the

wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can; and that the

most obliging present Nature has made us, and which takes from us all

colour of complaint of our condition, is to have delivered into our own

custody the keys of life; she has only ordered, one door into life, but a

hundred thousand ways out. We may be straitened for earth to live upon,

but earth sufficient to die upon can never be wanting, as Boiocalus

answered the Romans.”--[Tacitus, Annal., xiii. 56.]--Why dost thou

complain of this world? it detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the

cause, if thou livest in pain. There needs no more to die but to will to

die:

“Ubique mors est; optime hoc cavit deus.

Eripere vitam nemo non homini potest;

At nemo mortem; mille ad hanc aditus patent.”

[“Death is everywhere: heaven has well provided for that. Any one

may deprive us of life; no one can deprive us of death. To death

there are a thousand avenues.”--Seneca, Theb:, i, I, 151.]

Neither is it a recipe for one disease only; death is the infallible cure

of all; ‘tis a most assured port that is never to be feared, and very

often to be sought. It comes all to one, whether a man give himself his

end, or stays to receive it by some other means; whether he pays before

his day, or stay till his day of payment come; from whencesoever it

comes, it is still his; in what part soever the thread breaks, there’s

the end of the clue. The most voluntary death is the finest. Life

depends upon the pleasure of others; death upon our own. We ought not to

accommodate ourselves to our own humour in anything so much as in this.

Reputation is not concerned in such an enterprise; ‘tis folly to be

concerned by any such apprehension. Living is slavery if the liberty of

dying be wanting. The ordinary method of cure is carried on at the

expense of life; they torment us with caustics, incisions, and

amputations of limbs; they interdict aliment and exhaust our blood; one

step farther and we are cured indeed and effectually. Why is not the

jugular vein as much at our disposal as the median vein? For a desperate

disease a desperate cure. Servius the grammarian, being tormented with

the gout, could think of no better remedy than to apply poison to his

legs, to deprive them of their sense; let them be gouty at their will, so

they were insensible of pain. God gives us leave enough to go when He is

pleased to reduce us to such a condition that to live is far worse than

to die. ‘Tis weakness to truckle under infirmities, but it’s madness to

nourish them. The Stoics say, that it is living according to nature in a

wise man to, take his leave of life, even in the height of prosperity,

if he do it opportunely; and in a fool to prolong it, though he be

miserable, provided he be not indigent of those things which they repute

to be according to nature. As I do not offend the law against thieves

when I embezzle my own money and cut my own purse; nor that against

incendiaries when I burn my own wood; so am I not under the lash of those

made against murderers for having deprived myself of my own life.

Hegesias said, that as the condition of life did, so the condition of

death ought to depend upon our own choice. And Diogenes meeting the

philosopher Speusippus, so blown up with an inveterate dropsy that he was

fain to be carried in a litter, and by him saluted with the compliment,

“I wish you good health.” “No health to thee,” replied the other,

“who art content to live in such a condition.”

And in fact, not long after, Speusippus, weary of so languishing a state

of life, found a means to die.

But this does not pass without admitting a dispute: for many are of

opinion that we cannot quit this garrison of the world without the

express command of Him who has placed us in it; and that it appertains to

God who has placed us here, not for ourselves only but for His Glory and

the service of others, to dismiss us when it shall best please Him, and

not for us to depart without His licence: that we are not born for

ourselves only, but for our country also, the laws of which require an

account from us upon the score of their own interest, and have an action

of manslaughter good against us; and if these fail to take cognisance of

the fact, we are punished in the other world as deserters of our duty:

“Proxima deinde tenent maesti loca, qui sibi letum

Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi

Proiecere animas.”

[“Thence the sad ones occupy the next abodes, who, though free

from guilt, were by their own hands slain, and, hating light,

sought death.”--AEneid, vi. 434.]

There is more constancy in suffering the chain we are tied to than in

breaking it, and more pregnant evidence of fortitude in Regulus than in

Cato; ‘tis indiscretion and impatience that push us on to these

precipices: no accidents can make true virtue turn her back; she seeks

and requires evils, pains, and grief, as the things by which she is

nourished and supported; the menaces of tyrants, racks, and tortures

serve only to animate and rouse her:

“Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus

Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido,

Per damma, percmdes, ab ipso

Ducit opes, animumque ferro.”

[“As in Mount Algidus, the sturdy oak even from the axe itself

derives new vigour and life.”--Horace, Od., iv. 4, 57.]

And as another says:

“Non est, ut putas, virtus, pater,

Timere vitam; sed malis ingentibus

Obstare, nec se vertere, ac retro dare.”

[“Father, ‘tis no virtue to fear life, but to withstand great

misfortunes, nor turn back from them.”--Seneca, Theb., i. 190.]

Or as this:

“Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere mortem

Fortius ille facit, qui miser esse potest.”

[“It is easy in adversity to despise death; but he acts more

bravely, who can live wretched.”--Martial, xi. 56, 15.]

‘Tis cowardice, not virtue, to lie squat in a furrow, under a tomb, to

evade the blows of fortune; virtue never stops nor goes out of her path,

for the greatest storm that blows:

“Si fractus illabatur orbis,

Impavidum ferient ruinae.”

[“Should the world’s axis crack, the ruins will but crush

a fearless head.”--Horace, Od., iii. 3, 7.]

For the most part, the flying from other inconveniences brings us to

this; nay, endeavouring to evade death, we often run into its very mouth:

“Hic, rogo, non furor est, ne moriare, mori?”

[“Tell me, is it not madness, that one should die for fear

of dying?”--Martial, ii. 80, 2.]

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

it;

“Multos in summa pericula misfit

Venturi timor ipse mali: fortissimus ille est,

Qui promptus metuenda pati, si cominus instent,

Et differre potest.”

[“The fear of future ills often makes men run into extreme danger;

he is truly brave who boldly dares withstand the mischiefs he

apprehends, when they confront him and can be deferred.”

--Lucan, vii. 104.]

“Usque adeo, mortis formidine, vitae

Percipit humanos odium, lucisque videndae,

Ut sibi consciscant moerenti pectore lethum

Obliti fontem curarum hunc esse timorem.”

[“Death to that degree so frightens some men, that causing them to

hate both life and light, they kill themselves, miserably forgetting

that this same fear is the fountain of their cares.”

--Lucretius, iii. 79.]

Plato, in his Laws, assigns an ignominious sepulture to him who has

deprived his nearest and best friend, namely himself, of life and his

destined course, being neither compelled so to do by public judgment,

by any sad and inevitable accident of fortune, nor by any insupportable

disgrace, but merely pushed on by cowardice and the imbecility of a

timorous soul. And the opinion that makes so little of life, is

ridiculous; for it is our being, ‘tis all we have. Things of a nobler

and more elevated being may, indeed, reproach ours; but it is against

nature for us to contemn and make little account of ourselves; ‘tis a

disease particular to man, and not discerned in any other creatures, to

hate and despise itself. And it is a vanity of the same stamp to desire

to be something else than what we are; the effect of such a desire does

not at all touch us, forasmuch as it is contradicted and hindered in

itself. He that desires of a man to be made an angel, does nothing for

himself; he would be never the better for it; for, being no more, who

shall rejoice or be sensible of this benefit for him.

“Debet enim, misere cui forti, aegreque futurum est,

Ipse quoque esse in eo turn tempore, cum male possit

Accidere.”

[“For he to whom misery and pain are to be in the future, must

himself then exist, when these ills befall him.”

--Idem, ibid., 874.]

Security, indolence, impassability, the privation of the evils of this

life, which we pretend to purchase at the price of dying, are of no

manner of advantage to us: that man evades war to very little purpose who

can have no fruition of peace; and as little to the purpose does he avoid

trouble who cannot enjoy repose.

Amongst those of the first of these two opinions, there has been great

debate, what occasions are sufficient to justify the meditation of

self-murder, which they call “A reasonable exit.”--[ Diogenes Laertius,

Life of Zeno.]--For though they say that men must often die for trivial

causes, seeing those that detain us in life are of no very great weight,

yet there is to be some limit. There are fantastic and senseless humours

that have prompted not only individual men, but whole nations to destroy

themselves, of which I have elsewhere given some examples; and we further

read of the Milesian virgins, that by a frantic compact they hanged

themselves one after another till the magistrate took order in it,

enacting that the bodies of such as should be found so hanged should be

drawn by the same halter stark naked through the city. When Therykion

tried to persuade Cleomenes to despatch himself, by reason of the ill

posture of his affairs, and, having missed a death of more honour in the

battle he had lost, to accept of this the second in honour to it, and not

to give the conquerors leisure to make him undergo either an ignominious

death or an infamous life; Cleomenes, with a courage truly Stoic and

Lacedaemonian, rejected his counsel as unmanly and mean; “that,” said he,

“is a remedy that can never be wanting, but which a man is never to make

use of, whilst there is an inch of hope remaining”: telling him, “that

it was sometimes constancy and valour to live; that he would that even

his death should be of use to his country, and would make of it an act of

honour and virtue.” Therykion, notwithstanding, thought himself in the

right, and did his own business; and Cleomenes afterwards did the same,

but not till he had first tried the utmost malevolence of fortune. All

the inconveniences in the world are not considerable enough that a man

should die to evade them; and, besides, there being so many, so sudden

and unexpected changes in human things, it is hard rightly to judge when

we are at the end of our hope:

“Sperat et in saeva victus gladiator arena,

Sit licet infesto pollice turba minax.”

[“The gladiator conquered in the lists hopes on, though the

menacing spectators, turning their thumb, order him to die.”

--Pentadius, De Spe, ap. Virgilii Catadecta.]

All things, says an old adage, are to be hoped for by a man whilst he

lives; ay, but, replies Seneca, why should this rather be always running

in a man’s head that fortune can do all things for the living man, than

this, that fortune has no power over him that knows how to die?

Josephus, when engaged in so near and apparent danger, a whole people

being violently bent against him, that there was no visible means of

escape, nevertheless, being, as he himself says, in this extremity

counselled by one of his friends to despatch himself, it was well for him

that he yet maintained himself in hope, for fortune diverted the accident

beyond all human expectation, so that he saw himself delivered without

any manner of inconvenience. Whereas Brutus and Cassius, on the

contrary, threw away the remains of the Roman liberty, of which they were

the sole protectors, by the precipitation and temerity wherewith they

killed themselves before the due time and a just occasion. Monsieur

d’Anguien, at the battle of Serisolles, twice attempted to run himself

through, despairing of the fortune of the day, which went indeed very

untowardly on that side of the field where he was engaged, and by that

precipitation was very near depriving himself of the enjoyment of so

brave a victory. I have seen a hundred hares escape out of the very

teeth of the greyhounds:

“Aliquis carnifici suo superstes fuit.”

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

“Multa dies, variusque labor mutabilis nevi

Rettulit in melius; multos alterna revisens

Lusit, et in solido rursus fortuna locavit.”

[“Length of days, and the various labour of changeful time, have

brought things to a better state; fortune turning, shews a reverse

face, and again restores men to prosperity.”--AEneid, xi. 425.]

Piny says there are but three sorts of diseases, to escape which a man

has good title to destroy himself; the worst of which is the stone in the

bladder, when the urine is suppressed.

[“In the quarto edition of these essays, in 1588, Pliny is said to

mention two more, viz., a pain in the stomach and a headache, which,

he says (lib. xxv. c. 9.), were the only three distempers almost

for which men killed themselves.”]

Seneca says those only which for a long time are discomposing the

functions of the soul. And some there have been who, to avoid a worse

death, have chosen one to their own liking. Democritus, general of the

AEtolians, being brought prisoner to Rome, found means to make his escape

by night: but close pursued by his keepers, rather than suffer himself to

be retaken, he fell upon his own sword and died. Antinous and Theodotus,

their city of Epirus being reduced by the Romans to the last extremity,

gave the people counsel universally to kill themselves; but, these

preferring to give themselves up to the enemy, the two chiefs went to

seek the death they desired, rushing furiously upon the enemy, with

intention to strike home but not to ward a blow. The Island of Gozzo

being taken some years ago by the Turks, a Sicilian, who had two

beautiful daughters marriageable, killed them both with his own hand, and

their mother, running in to save them, to boot, which having done,

sallying out of the house with a cross-bow and harquebus, with two shots

he killed two of the Turks nearest to his door, and drawing his sword,

charged furiously in amongst the rest, where he was suddenly enclosed and

cut to pieces, by that means delivering his family and himself from

slavery and dishonour. The Jewish women, after having circumcised their

children, threw them and themselves down a precipice to avoid the cruelty

of Antigonus. I have been told of a person of condition in one of our

prisons, that his friends, being informed that he would certainly be

condemned, to avoid the ignominy of such a death suborned a priest to

tell him that the only means of his deliverance was to recommend himself

to such a saint, under such and such vows, and to fast eight days

together without taking any manner of nourishment, what weakness or

faintness soever he might find in himself during the time; he followed

their advice, and by that means destroyed himself before he was aware,

not dreaming of death or any danger in the experiment. Scribonia

advising her nephew Libo to kill himself rather than await the stroke of

justice, told him that it was to do other people’s business to preserve

his life to put it after into the hands of those who within three or four

days would fetch him to execution, and that it was to serve his enemies

to keep his blood to gratify their malice.

We read in the Bible that Nicanor, the persecutor of the law of God,

having sent his soldiers to seize upon the good old man Razis, surnamed

in honour of his virtue the father of the Jews: the good man, seeing no

other remedy, his gates burned down, and the enemies ready to seize him,

choosing rather to die nobly than to fall into the hands of his wicked

adversaries and suffer himself to be cruelly butchered by them, contrary

to the honour of his rank and quality, stabbed himself with his own

sword, but the blow, for haste, not having been given home, he ran and

threw himself from the top of a wall headlong among them, who separating

themselves and making room, he pitched directly upon his head;

notwithstanding which, feeling yet in himself some remains of life, he

renewed his courage, and starting up upon his feet all bloody and wounded

as he was, and making his way through the crowd to a precipitous rock,

there, through one of his wounds, drew out his bowels, which, tearing and

pulling to pieces with both his hands, he threw amongst his pursuers, all

the while attesting and invoking the Divine vengeance upon them for their

cruelty and injustice.

Of violences offered to the conscience, that against the chastity of

woman is, in my opinion, most to be avoided, forasmuch as there is a

certain pleasure naturally mixed with it, and for that reason the dissent

therein cannot be sufficiently perfect and entire, so that the violence

seems to be mixed with a little consent of the forced party. The

ecclesiastical history has several examples of devout persons who have

embraced death to secure them from the outrages prepared by tyrants

against their religion and honour. Pelagia and Sophronia, both

canonised, the first of these precipitated herself with her mother and

sisters into the river to avoid being forced by some soldiers, and the

last also killed herself to avoid being ravished by the Emperor

Maxentius.

It may, peradventure, be an honour to us in future ages, that a learned

author of this present time, and a Parisian, takes a great deal of pains

to persuade the ladies of our age rather to take any other course than to

enter into the horrid meditation of such a despair. I am sorry he had

never heard, that he might have inserted it amongst his other stories,

the saying of a woman, which was told me at Toulouse, who had passed

through the handling of some soldiers: “God be praised,” said she, “that

once at least in my life I have had my fill without sin.” In truth,

these cruelties are very unworthy the French good nature, and also, God

be thanked, our air is very well purged of them since this good advice:

‘tis enough that they say “no” in doing it, according to the rule of the

good Marot.

“Un doulx nenny, avec un doulx sourire

Est tant honneste.”--Marot.

History is everywhere full of those who by a thousand ways have exchanged

a painful and irksome life for death. Lucius Aruntius killed himself, to

fly, he said, both the future and the past. Granius Silvanus and Statius

Proximus, after having been pardoned by Nero, killed themselves; either

disdaining to live by the favour of so wicked a man, or that they might

not be troubled, at some other time, to obtain a second pardon,

considering the proclivity of his nature to suspect and credit

accusations against worthy men. Spargapises, son of Queen Tomyris, being

a prisoner of war to Cyrus, made use of the first favour Cyrus shewed

him, in commanding him to be unbound, to kill himself, having pretended

to no other benefit of liberty, but only to be revenged of himself for

the disgrace of being taken. Boges, governor in Eion for King Xerxes,

being besieged by the Athenian army under the conduct of Cimon, refused

the conditions offered, that he might safe return into Asia with all his

wealth, impatient to survive the loss of a place his master had given him

to keep; wherefore, having defended the city to the last extremity,

nothing being left to eat, he first threw all the gold and whatever else

the enemy could make booty of into the river Strymon, and then causing a

great pile to be set on fire, and the throats of all the women, children,

concubines, and servants to be cut, he threw their bodies into the fire,

and at last leaped into it himself.

Ninachetuen, an Indian lord, so soon as he heard the first whisper of the

Portuguese Viceroy’s determination to dispossess him, without any

apparent cause, of his command in Malacca, to transfer it to the King of

Campar, he took this resolution with himself: he caused a scaffold, more

long than broad, to be erected, supported by columns royally adorned with

tapestry and strewed with flowers and abundance of perfumes; all which

being prepared, in a robe of cloth of gold, set full of jewels of great

value, he came out into the street, and mounted the steps to the

scaffold, at one corner of which he had a pile lighted of aromatic wood.

Everybody ran to see to what end these unusual preparations were made;

when Ninachetuen, with a manly but displeased countenance, set forth how

much he had obliged the Portuguese nation, and with how unspotted

fidelity he had carried himself in his charge; that having so often,

sword in hand, manifested in the behalf of others, that honour was much

more dear to him than life, he was not to abandon the concern of it for

himself: that fortune denying him all means of opposing the affront

designed to be put upon him, his courage at least enjoined him to free

himself from the sense of it, and not to serve for a fable to the people,

nor for a triumph to men less deserving than himself; which having said

he leaped into the fire.

Sextilia, wife of Scaurus, and Paxaea, wife of Labeo, to encourage their

husbands to avoid the dangers that pressed upon them, wherein they had no

other share than conjugal affection, voluntarily sacrificed their own

lives to serve them in this extreme necessity for company and example.

What they did for their husbands, Cocceius Nerva did for his country,

with less utility though with equal affection: this great lawyer,

flourishing in health, riches, reputation, and favour with the Emperor,

had no other cause to kill himself but the sole compassion of the

miserable state of the Roman Republic. Nothing can be added to the

beauty of the death of the wife of Fulvius, a familiar favourite of

Augustus: Augustus having discovered that he had vented an important

secret he had entrusted him withal, one morning that he came to make his

court, received him very coldly and looked frowningly upon him. He

returned home, full of, despair, where he sorrowfully told his wife that,

having fallen into this misfortune, he was resolved to kill himself: to

which she roundly replied, “‘tis but reason you should, seeing that

having so often experienced the incontinence of my tongue, you could not

take warning: but let me kill myself first,” and without any more saying

ran herself through the body with a sword. Vibius Virrius, despairing of

the safety of his city besieged by the Romans and of their mercy, in the

last deliberation of his city’s senate, after many arguments conducing to

that end, concluded that the most noble means to escape fortune was by

their own hands: telling them that the enemy would have them in honour,

and Hannibal would be sensible how many faithful friends he had

abandoned; inviting those who approved of his advice to come to a good

supper he had ready at home, where after they had eaten well, they would

drink together of what he had prepared; a beverage, said he, that will

deliver our bodies from torments, our souls from insult, and our eyes and

ears from the sense of so many hateful mischiefs, as the conquered suffer

from cruel and implacable conquerors. I have, said he, taken order for

fit persons to throw our bodies into a funeral pile before my door so

soon as we are dead. Many enough approved this high resolution, but few

imitated it; seven-and-twenty senators followed him, who, after having

tried to drown the thought of this fatal determination in wine, ended the

feast with the mortal mess; and embracing one another, after they had

jointly deplored the misfortune of their country, some retired home to

their own houses, others stayed to be burned with Vibius in his funeral

pyre; and were all of them so long in dying, the vapour of the wine

having prepossessed the veins, and by that means deferred the effect of

poison, that some of them were within an hour of seeing the enemy inside

the walls of Capua, which was taken the next morning, and of undergoing

the miseries they had at so dear a rate endeavoured to avoid. Jubellius

Taurea, another citizen of the same country, the Consul Fulvius returning

from the shameful butchery he had made of two hundred and twenty-five

senators, called him back fiercely by name, and having made him stop:

“Give the word,” said he, “that somebody may dispatch me after the

massacre of so many others, that thou mayest boast to have killed a much

more valiant man than thyself.” Fulvius, disdaining him as a man out of

his wits, and also having received letters from Rome censuring the

inhumanity of his execution which tied his hands, Jubellius proceeded:

“Since my country has been taken, my friends dead, and having with my own

hands slain my wife and children to rescue them from the desolation of

this ruin, I am denied to die the death of my fellow-citizens, let me

borrow from virtue vengeance on this hated life,” and therewithal drawing

a short sword he carried concealed about him, he ran it through his own

bosom, falling down backward, and expiring at the consul’s feet.

Alexander, laying siege to a city of the Indies, those within, finding

themselves very hardly set, put on a vigorous resolution to deprive him

of the pleasure of his victory, and accordingly burned themselves in

general, together with their city, in despite of his humanity: a new kind

of war, where the enemies sought to save them, and they to destroy

themselves, doing to make themselves sure of death, all that men do to

secure life.

Astapa, a city of Spain, finding itself weak in walls and defence to

withstand the Romans, the inhabitants made a heap of all their riches and

furniture in the public place; and, having ranged upon this heap all the

women and children, and piled them round with wood and other combustible

matter to take sudden fire, and left fifty of their young men for the

execution of that whereon they had resolved, they made a desperate sally,

where for want of power to overcome, they caused themselves to be every

man slain. The fifty, after having massacred every living soul

throughout the whole city, and put fire to this pile, threw themselves

lastly into it, finishing their generous liberty, rather after an

insensible, than after a sorrowful and disgraceful manner, giving the

enemy to understand, that if fortune had been so pleased, they had as

well the courage to snatch from them victory as they had to frustrate and

render it dreadful, and even mortal to those who, allured by the

splendour of the gold melting in this flame, having approached it,

a great number were there suffocated and burned, being kept from retiring

by the crowd that followed after.

The Abydeans, being pressed by King Philip, put on the same resolution;

but, not having time, they could not put it ‘in effect. The king, who

was struck with horror at the rash precipitation of this execution (the

treasure and movables that they had condemned to the flames being first

seized), drawing off his soldiers, granted them three days’ time to kill

themselves in, that they might do it with more order and at greater ease:

which time they filled with blood and slaughter beyond the utmost excess

of all hostile cruelty, so that not so much as any one soul was left

alive that had power to destroy itself. There are infinite examples of

like popular resolutions which seem the more fierce and cruel in

proportion as the effect is more universal, and yet are really less so

than when singly executed; what arguments and persuasion cannot do with

individual men, they can do with all, the ardour of society ravishing

particular judgments.

The condemned who would live to be executed in the reign of Tiberius,

forfeited their goods and were denied the rites of sepulture; those who,

by killing themselves, anticipated it, were interred, and had liberty to

dispose of their estates by will.

But men sometimes covet death out of hope of a greater good. “I desire,”

says St. Paul, “to be with Christ,” and “who shall rid me of these

bands?” Cleombrotus of Ambracia, having read Plato’s Pheedo, entered

into so great a desire of the life to come that, without any other

occasion, he threw himself into the sea. By which it appears how

improperly we call this voluntary dissolution, despair, to which the

eagerness of hope often inclines us, and, often, a calm and temperate

desire proceeding from a mature and deliberate judgment. Jacques du

Chastel, bishop of Soissons, in St. Louis’s foreign expedition, seeing

the king and whole army upon the point of returning into France, leaving

the affairs of religion imperfect, took a resolution rather to go into

Paradise; wherefore, having taken solemn leave of his friends, he charged

alone, in the sight of every one, into the enemy’s army, where he was

presently cut to pieces. In a certain kingdom of the new discovered

world, upon a day of solemn procession, when the idol they adore is drawn

about in public upon a chariot of marvellous greatness; besides that many

are then seen cutting off pieces of their flesh to offer to him, there

are a number of others who prostrate themselves upon the place, causing

themselves to be crushed and broken to pieces under the weighty wheels,

to obtain the veneration of sanctity after death, which is accordingly

paid them. The death of the bishop, sword in hand, has more of

magnanimity in it, and less of sentiment, the ardour of combat taking

away part of the latter.

There are some governments who have taken upon them to regulate the

justice and opportunity of voluntary death. In former times there was

kept in our city of Marseilles a poison prepared out of hemlock, at the

public charge, for those who had a mind to hasten their end, having

first, before the six hundred, who were their senate, given account of

the reasons and motives of their design, and it was not otherwise lawful,

than by leave from the magistrate and upon just occasion to do violence

to themselves.--[Valerius Maximus, ii. 6, 7.]--The same law was also

in use in other places.

Sextus Pompeius, in his expedition into Asia, touched at the isle of Cea

in Negropont: it happened whilst he was there, as we have it from one

that was with him, that a woman of great quality, having given an account

to her citizens why she was resolved to put an end to her life, invited

Pompeius to her death, to render it the more honourable, an invitation

that he accepted; and having long tried in vain by the power of his

eloquence, which was very great, and persuasion, to divert her from that

design, he acquiesced in the end in her own will. She had passed the age

of four score and ten in a very happy state, both of body and mind; being

then laid upon her bed, better dressed than ordinary and leaning upon her

elbow, “The gods,” said she, “O Sextus Pompeius, and rather those I leave

than those I go to seek, reward thee, for that thou hast not disdained to

be both the counsellor of my life and the witness of my death. For my

part, having always experienced the smiles of fortune, for fear lest the

desire of living too long may make me see a contrary face, I am going, by

a happy end, to dismiss the remains of my soul, leaving behind two

daughters of my body and a legion of nephews”; which having said, with

some exhortations to her family to live in peace, she divided amongst

them her goods, and recommending her domestic gods to her eldest

daughter, she boldly took the bowl that contained the poison, and having

made her vows and prayers to Mercury to conduct her to some happy abode

in the other world, she roundly swallowed the mortal poison. This being

done, she entertained the company with the progress of its operation, and

how the cold by degrees seized the several parts of her body one after

another, till having in the end told them it began to seize upon her

heart and bowels, she called her daughters to do the last office and

close her eyes.

Pliny tells us of a certain Hyperborean nation where, by reason of the

sweet temperature of the air, lives rarely ended but by the voluntary

surrender of the inhabitants, who, being weary of and satiated with

living, had the custom, at a very old age, after having made good cheer,

to precipitate themselves into the sea from the top of a certain rock,

assigned for that service. Pain and the fear of a worse death seem to me

the most excusable incitements.

CHAPTER IV

TO-MORROW’S A NEW DAY

I give, as it seems to me, with good reason the palm to Jacques Amyot of

all our French writers, not only for the simplicity and purity of his

language, wherein he excels all others, nor for his constancy in going

through so long a work, nor for the depth of his knowledge, having been

able so successfully to smooth and unravel so knotty and intricate an

author (for let people tell me what they will, I understand nothing of

Greek; but I meet with sense so well united and maintained throughout his

whole translation, that certainly he either knew the true fancy of the

author, or having, by being long conversant with him, imprinted a vivid

and general idea of that of Plutarch in his soul, he has delivered us

nothing that either derogates from or contradicts him), but above all, I

am the most taken with him for having made so discreet a choice of a book

so worthy and of so great utility wherewith to present his country. We

ignorant fellows had been lost, had not this book raised us out of the

dirt; by this favour of his we dare now speak and write; the ladies are

able to read to schoolmasters; ‘tis our breviary. If this good man be

yet living, I would recommend to him Xenophon, to do as much by that;

‘tis a much more easy task than the other, and consequently more proper

for his age. And, besides, though I know not how, methinks he does

briskly--and clearly enough trip over steps another would have stumbled

at, yet nevertheless his style seems to be more his own where he does not

encounter those difficulties, and rolls away at his own ease.

I was just now reading this passage where Plutarch says of himself, that

Rusticus being present at a declamation of his at Rome, there received a

packet from the emperor, and deferred to open it till all was done: for

which, says he, all the company highly applauded the gravity of this

person. ‘Tis true, that being upon the subject of curiosity and of that

eager passion for news, which makes us with so much indiscretion and

impatience leave all to entertain a newcomer, and without any manner of

respect or outcry, tear open on a sudden, in what company soever, the

letters that are delivered to us, he had reason to applaud the gravity of

Rusticus upon this occasion; and might moreover have added to it the

commendation of his civility and courtesy, that would not interrupt the

current of his declamation. But I doubt whether any one can commend his

prudence; for receiving unexpected letters, and especially from an

emperor, it might have fallen out that the deferring to read them might

have been of great prejudice. The vice opposite to curiosity is

negligence, to which I naturally incline, and wherein I have seen some

men so extreme that one might have found letters sent them three or four

days before, still sealed up in their pockets.

I never open any letters directed to another; not only those intrusted

with me, but even such as fortune has guided to my hand; and am angry

with myself if my eyes unawares steal any contents of letters of

importance he is reading when I stand near a great man. Never was man

less inquisitive or less prying into other men’s affairs than I.

In our fathers’ days, Monsieur de Boutieres had like to have lost Turin

from having, while engaged in good company at supper, delayed to read

information that was sent him of the treason plotted against that city

where he commanded. And this very Plutarch has given me to understand,

that Julius Caesar had preserved himself, if, going to the Senate the day

he was assassinated by the conspirators, he had read a note which was

presented to him by, the way. He tells also the story of Archias, the

tyrant of Thebes, that the night before the execution of the design

Pelopidas had plotted to kill him to restore his country to liberty, he

had a full account sent him in writing by another Archias, an Athenian,

of the whole conspiracy, and that, this packet having been delivered to

him while he sat at supper, he deferred the opening of it, saying, which

afterwards turned to a proverb in Greece, “Business to-morrow.”

A wise man may, I think, out of respect to another, as not to disturb the

company, as Rusticus did, or not to break off another affair of

importance in hand, defer to read or hear any new thing that is brought

him; but for his own interest or particular pleasure, especially if he be

a public minister, that he will not interrupt his dinner or break his

sleep is inexcusable. And there was anciently at Rome, the consular

place, as they called it, which was the most honourable at the table, as

being a place of most liberty, and of more convenient access to those who

came in to speak to the person seated there; by which it appears, that

being at meat, they did not totally abandon the concern of other affairs

and incidents. But when all is said, it is very hard in human actions to

give so exact a rule upon moral reasons, that fortune will not therein

maintain her own right.

CHAPTER V

OF CONSCIENCE

The Sieur de la Brousse, my brother, and I, travelling one day together

during the time of our civil wars, met a gentleman of good sort. He was

of the contrary party, though I did not know so much, for he pretended

otherwise: and the mischief on’t is, that in this sort of war the cards

are so shuffled, your enemy not being distinguished from yourself by any

apparent mark either of language or habit, and being nourished under the

same law, air, and manners, it is very hard to avoid disorder and

confusion. This made me afraid myself of meeting any of our troops in a

place where I was not known, that I might not be in fear to tell my name,

and peradventure of something worse; as it had befallen me before, where,

by such a mistake, I lost both men and horses, and amongst others an

Italian gentleman my page, whom I bred with the greatest care and

affection, was miserably slain, in whom a youth of great promise and

expectation was extinguished. But the gentleman my brother and I met

had so desperate, half-dead a fear upon him at meeting with any horse,

or passing by any of the towns that held for the King, that I at last

discovered it to be alarms of conscience. It seemed to the poor man as

if through his visor and the crosses upon his cassock, one would have

penetrated into his bosom and read the most secret intentions of his

heart; so wonderful is the power of conscience. It makes us betray,

accuse, and fight against ourselves, and for want of other witnesses, to

give evidence against ourselves:

“Occultum quatiens animo tortore flagellum.”

[“The torturer of the soul brandishing a sharp scourge within.”

--Juvenal, iii. 195.]

This story is in every child’s mouth: Bessus the Paeonian, being

reproached for wantonly pulling down a nest of young sparrows and killing

them, replied, that he had reason to do so, seeing that those little

birds never ceased falsely to accuse him of the murder of his father.

This parricide had till then been concealed and unknown, but the

revenging fury of conscience caused it to be discovered by him himself,

who was to suffer for it. Hesiod corrects the saying of Plato, that

punishment closely follows sin, it being, as he says, born at the same

time with it. Whoever expects punishment already suffers it, and whoever

has deserved it expects it. Wickedness contrives torments against

itself:

“Malum consilium consultori pessimum.”

[“Ill designs are worst to the contriver.”

--Apud Aul. Gellium, iv. 5.]

as the wasp stings and hurts another, but most of all itself, for it

there loses its sting and its use for ever,

“Vitasque in vulnere ponunt.”

[“And leave their own lives in the wound.”

--Virgil, Geo., iv. 238.]

Cantharides have somewhere about them, by a contrariety of nature, a

counterpoison against their poison. In like manner, at the same time

that men take delight in vice, there springs in the conscience a

displeasure that afflicts us sleeping and waking with various tormenting

imaginations:

“Quippe ubi se multi, per somnia saepe loquentes,

Aut morbo delirantes, protraxe ferantur,

Et celata diu in medium peccata dedisse.”

[“Surely where many, often talking in their sleep, or raving in

disease, are said to have betrayed themselves, and to have given

publicity to offences long concealed.”--Lucretius, v. 1157.]

Apollodorus dreamed that he saw himself flayed by the Scythians and

afterwards boiled in a cauldron, and that his heart muttered these words

“I am the cause of all these mischiefs that have befallen thee.”

Epicurus said that no hiding-hole could conceal the wicked, since they

could never assure themselves of being hid whilst their conscience

discovered them to themselves.

“Prima est haec ultio, quod se

Judice nemo nocens absohitur.”

[“Tis the first punishment of sin that no man absolves himself.” or:

“This is the highest revenge, that by its judgment no offender is

absolved.”--Juvenal, xiii. 2.]

As an ill conscience fills us with fear, so a good one gives us greater

confidence and assurance; and I can truly say that I have gone through

several hazards with a more steady pace in consideration of the secret

knowledge I had of my own will and the innocence of my intentions:

“Conscia mens ut cuique sua est, ita concipit intra

Pectora pro facto spemque metumque suo.”

[“As a man’s conscience is, so within hope or fear prevails, suiting

to his design.”--Ovid, Fast., i. 485.]

Of this are a thousand examples; but it will be enough to instance three

of one and the same person. Scipio, being one day accused before the

people of Rome of some crimes of a very high nature, instead of excusing

himself or flattering his judges: “It will become you well,” said he,

“to sit in judgment upon a head, by whose means you have the power to

judge all the world.” Another time, all the answer he gave to several

impeachments brought against him by a tribune of the people, instead of

making his defence: “Let us go, citizens,” said he, “let us go render

thanks to the gods for the victory they gave me over the Carthaginians as

this day,” and advancing himself before towards the Temple, he had

presently all the assembly and his very accuser himself following at his

heels. And Petilius, having been set on by Cato to demand an account of

the money that had passed through his hands in the province of Antioch,

Scipio being come into the senate to that purpose, produced a book from

under his robe, wherein he told them was an exact account of his receipts

and disbursements; but being required to deliver it to the prothonotary

to be examined, he refused, saying, he would not do himself so great a

disgrace; and in the presence of the whole senate tore the book with his

own hands to pieces. I do not believe that the most seared conscience

could have counterfeited so great an assurance. He had naturally too

high a spirit and was accustomed to too high a fortune, says Titius

Livius, to know how to be criminal, and to lower himself to the meanness

of defending his innocence. The putting men to the rack is a dangerous

invention, and seems to be rather a trial of patience than of truth.

Both he who has the fortitude to endure it conceals the truth, and he who

has not: for why should pain sooner make me confess what really is, than

force me to say what is not? And, on the contrary, if he who is not

guilty of that whereof he is accused, has the courage to undergo those

torments, why should not he who is guilty have the same, so fair a reward

as life being in his prospect? I believe the ground of this invention

proceeds from the consideration of the force of conscience: for, to the

guilty, it seems to assist the rack to make him confess his fault and to

shake his resolution; and, on the other side, that it fortifies the

innocent against the torture. But when all is done, ‘tis, in plain

truth, a trial full of uncertainty and danger what would not a man say,

what would not a man do, to avoid so intolerable torments?

“Etiam innocentes cogit mentiri dolor.”

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

Whence it comes to pass, that him whom the judge has racked that he may

not die innocent, he makes him die both innocent and racked. A thousand

and a thousand have charged their own heads by false confessions, amongst

whom I place Philotas, considering the circumstances of the trial

Alexander put upon him and the progress of his torture. But so it is

that some say it is the least evil human weakness could invent; very

inhumanly, notwithstanding, and to very little purpose, in my opinion.

Many nations less barbarous in this than the Greeks and Romans who call

them so, repute it horrible and cruel to torment and pull a man to pieces

for a fault of which they are yet in doubt. How can he help your

ignorance? Are not you unjust, that, not to kill him without cause, do

worse than kill him? And that this is so, do but observe how often men

prefer to die without reason than undergo this examination, more painful

than execution itself; and that oft-times by its extremity anticipates

execution, and perform it. I know not where I had this story, but it

exactly matches the conscience of our justice in this particular. A

country-woman, to a general of a very severe discipline, accused one of

his soldiers that he had taken from her children the little soup meat she

had left to nourish them withal, the army having consumed all the rest;

but of this proof there was none. The general, after having cautioned

the woman to take good heed to what she said, for that she would make

herself guilty of a false accusation if she told a lie, and she

persisting, he presently caused the soldier’s belly to be ripped up to

clear the truth of the fact, and the woman was found to be right. An

instructive sentence.

CHAPTER VI

USE MAKES PERFECT

‘Tis not to be expected that argument and instruction, though we never so

voluntarily surrender our belief to what is read to us, should be of

force to lead us on so far as to action, if we do not, over and above,

exercise and form the soul by experience to the course for which we

design it; it will, otherwise, doubtless find itself at a loss when it

comes to the pinch of the business. This is the reason why those amongst

the philosophers who were ambitious to attain to a greater excellence,

were not contented to await the severities of fortune in the retirement

and repose of their own habitations, lest he should have surprised them

raw and inexpert in the combat, but sallied out to meet her, and

purposely threw themselves into the proof of difficulties. Some of them

abandoned riches to exercise themselves in a voluntary poverty; others

sought out labour and an austerity of life, to inure them to hardships

and inconveniences; others have deprived themselves of their dearest

members, as of sight, and of the instruments of generation, lest their

too delightful and effeminate service should soften and debauch the

stability of their souls.

But in dying, which is the greatest work we have to do, practice can give

us no assistance at all. A man may by custom fortify himself against

pain, shame, necessity, and such-like accidents, but as to death, we can

experiment it but once, and are all apprentices when we come to it.

There have, anciently, been men so excellent managers of their time that

they have tried even in death itself to relish and taste it, and who have

bent their utmost faculties of mind to discover what this passage is, but

they are none of them come back to tell us the news:

“Nemo expergitus exstat,

Frigida quern semel est vitai pausa sequuta.”

[“No one wakes who has once fallen into the cold sleep of death.”

--Lucretius, iii. 942]

Julius Canus, a noble Roman, of singular constancy and virtue, having

been condemned to die by that worthless fellow Caligula, besides many

marvellous testimonies that he gave of his resolution, as he was just

going to receive the stroke of the executioner, was asked by a

philosopher, a friend of his: “Well, Canus, whereabout is your soul now?

what is she doing? What are you thinking of?”--“I was thinking,” replied

the other, “to keep myself ready, and the faculties of my mind full

settled and fixed, to try if in this short and quick instant of death, I

could perceive the motion of the soul when she parts from the body, and

whether she has any sentiment at the separation, that I may after come

again if I can, to acquaint my friends with it.” This man philosophises

not unto death only, but in death itself. What a strange assurance was

this, and what bravery of courage, to desire his death should be a lesson

to him, and to have leisure to think of other things in so great an

affair:

“Jus hoc animi morientis habebat.”

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

And yet I fancy, there is a certain way of making it familiar to us, and

in some sort of making trial what it is. We may gain experience, if not

entire and perfect, yet such, at least, as shall not be totally useless

to us, and that may render us more confident and more assured. If we

cannot overtake it, we may approach it and view it, and if we do not

advance so far as the fort, we may at least discover and make ourselves

acquainted with the avenues. It is not without reason that we are taught

to consider sleep as a resemblance of death: with how great facility do

we pass from waking to sleeping, and with how little concern do we lose

the knowledge of light and of ourselves. Peradventure, the faculty of

sleeping would seem useless and contrary to nature, since it deprives us

of all action and sentiment, were it not that by it nature instructs us

that she has equally made us to die as to live; and in life presents to

us the eternal state she reserves for us after it, to accustom us to it

and to take from us the fear of it. But such as have by violent accident

fallen into a swoon, and in it have lost all sense, these, methinks, have

been very near seeing the true and natural face of death; for as to the

moment of the passage, it is not to be feared that it brings with it any

pain or displeasure, forasmuch as we can have no feeling without leisure;

our sufferings require time, which in death is so short, and so

precipitous, that it must necessarily be insensible. They are the

approaches that we are to fear, and these may fall within the limits of

experience.

Many things seem greater by imagination than they are in effect; I have

passed a good part of my life in a perfect and entire health; I say, not

only entire, but, moreover, sprightly and wanton. This state, so full of

verdure, jollity, and vigour, made the consideration of sickness so

formidable to me, that when I came to experience it, I found the attacks

faint and easy in comparison with what I had apprehended. Of this I have

daily experience; if I am under the shelter of a warm room, in a stormy

and tempestuous night, I wonder how people can live abroad, and am

afflicted for those who are out in the fields: if I am there myself, I do

not wish to be anywhere else. This one thing of being always shut up in

a chamber I fancied insupportable: but I was presently inured to be so

imprisoned a week, nay a month together, in a very weak, disordered, and

sad condition; and I have found that, in the time of my health, I much

more pitied the sick, than I think myself to be pitied when I am so, and

that the force of my imagination enhances near one-half of the essence

and reality of the thing. I hope that when I come to die I shall find it

the same, and that, after all, it is not worth the pains I take, so much

preparation and so much assistance as I call in, to undergo the stroke.

But, at all events, we cannot give ourselves too much advantage.

In the time of our third or second troubles (I do not well remember

which), going one day abroad to take the air, about a league from my own

house, which is seated in the very centre of all the bustle and mischief

of the late civil wars in France; thinking myself in all security and so

near to my retreat that I stood in need of no better equipage, I had

taken a horse that went very easy upon his pace, but was not very strong.

Being upon my return home, a sudden occasion falling out to make use of

this horse in a kind of service that he was not accustomed to, one of my

train, a lusty, tall fellow, mounted upon a strong German horse, that had

a very ill mouth, fresh and vigorous, to play the brave and set on ahead

of his fellows, comes thundering full speed in the very track where I

was, rushing like a Colossus upon the little man and the little horse,

with such a career of strength and weight, that he turned us both over

and over, topsy-turvy with our heels in the air: so that there lay the

horse overthrown and stunned with the fall, and I ten or twelve paces

from him stretched out at length, with my face all battered and broken,

my sword which I had had in my hand, above ten paces beyond that, and my

belt broken all to pieces, without motion or sense any more than a stock.

‘Twas the only swoon I was ever in till that hour in my life. Those who

were with me, after having used all the means they could to bring me to

myself, concluding me dead, took me up in their arms, and carried me with

very much difficulty home to my house, which was about half a French

league from thence. On the way, having been for more than two hours

given over for a dead man, I began to move and to fetch my breath; for so

great abundance of blood was fallen into my stomach, that nature had need

to rouse her forces to discharge it. They then raised me upon my feet,

where I threw off a whole bucket of clots of blood, as this I did also

several times by the way. This gave me so much ease, that I began to

recover a little life, but so leisurely and by so small advances, that my

first sentiments were much nearer the approaches of death than life:

“Perche, dubbiosa ancor del suo ritorno,

Non s’assicura attonita la mente.”

[“For the soul, doubtful as to its return, could not compose itself”

--Tasso, Gierus. Lib., xii. 74.]

The remembrance of this accident, which is very well imprinted in my

memory, so naturally representing to me the image and idea of death, has

in some sort reconciled me to that untoward adventure. When I first

began to open my eyes, it was with so perplexed, so weak and dead a

sight, that I could yet distinguish nothing but only discern the light:

“Come quel ch’or apre, or’chiude

Gli occhi, mezzo tra’l sonno e l’esser desto.”

[“As a man that now opens, now shuts his eyes, between sleep

and waking.”--Tasso, Gierus. Lib., viii., 26.]

As to the functions of the soul, they advanced with the same pace and

measure with those of the body. I saw myself all bloody, my doublet

being stained all over with the blood I had vomited. The first thought

that came into my mind was that I had a harquebuss shot in my head, and

indeed, at the time there were a great many fired round about us.

Methought my life but just hung upon my, lips: and I shut my eyes, to

help, methought, to thrust it out, and took a pleasure in languishing and

letting myself go. It was an imagination that only superficially floated

upon my soul, as tender and weak as all the rest, but really, not only

exempt from anything displeasing, but mixed with that sweetness that

people feel when they glide into a slumber.

I believe it is the very same condition those people are in, whom we see

swoon with weakness in the agony of death we pity them without cause,

supposing them agitated with grievous dolours, or that their souls suffer

under painful thoughts. It has ever been my belief, contrary to the

opinion of many, and particularly of La Boetie, that those whom we see so

subdued and stupefied at the approaches of their end, or oppressed with

the length of the disease, or by accident of an apoplexy or falling

sickness,

“Vi morbi saepe coactus

Ante oculos aliquis nostros, ut fulminis ictu,

Concidit, et spumas agit; ingemit, et tremit artus;

Desipit, extentat nervos, torquetur, anhelat,

Inconstanter, et in jactando membra fatigat;”

[“Often, compelled by the force of disease, some one as

thunderstruck falls under our eyes, and foams, groans, and trembles,

stretches, twists, breathes irregularly, and in paroxysms wears out

his strength.”--Lucretius, iii. 485.]

or hurt in the head, whom we hear to mutter, and by fits to utter

grievous groans; though we gather from these signs by which it seems as

if they had some remains of consciousness, and that there are movements

of the body; I have always believed, I say, both the body and the soul

benumbed and asleep,

“Vivit, et est vitae nescius ipse suae,”

[“He lives, and does not know that he is alive.”

--Ovid, Trist., i. 3, 12.]

and could not believe that in so great a stupefaction of the members and

so great a defection of the senses, the soul could maintain any force

within to take cognisance of herself, and that, therefore, they had no

tormenting reflections to make them consider and be sensible of the

misery of their condition, and consequently were not much to be pitied.

I can, for my part, think of no state so insupportable and dreadful, as

to have the soul vivid and afflicted, without means to declare itself; as

one should say of such as are sent to execution with their tongues first

cut out (were it not that in this kind of dying, the most silent seems to

me the most graceful, if accompanied with a grave and constant

countenance); or if those miserable prisoners, who fall into the hands of

the base hangman soldiers of this age, by whom they are tormented with

all sorts of inhuman usage to compel them to some excessive and

impossible ransom; kept, in the meantime, in such condition and place,

where they have no means of expressing or signifying their thoughts and

their misery. The poets have feigned some gods who favour the

deliverance of such as suffer under a languishing death:

“Hunc ego Diti

Sacrum jussa fero, teque isto corpore solvo.”

[“I bidden offer this sacred thing to Pluto, and from that body

dismiss thee.”--AEneid, iv. 782.]

both the interrupted words, and the short and irregular answers one gets

from them sometimes, by bawling and keeping a clutter about them; or the

motions which seem to yield some consent to what we would have them do,

are no testimony, nevertheless, that they live, an entire life at least.

So it happens to us in the yawning of sleep, before it has fully

possessed us, to perceive, as in a dream, what is done about us, and to

follow the last things that are said with a perplexed and uncertain

hearing which seems but to touch upon the borders of the soul; and to

make answers to the last words that have been spoken to us, which have

more in them of chance than sense.

Now seeing I have in effect tried it, I have no doubt but I have hitherto

made a right judgment; for first, being in a swoon, I laboured to rip

open the buttons of my doublet with my nails, for my sword was gone; and

yet I felt nothing in my imagination that hurt me; for we have many

motions in us that do not proceed from our direction;

“Semianimesque micant digiti, ferrumque retractant;”

[“Half-dead fingers grope about, and grasp again the sword.”

--AEneid, x. 396.]

so falling people extend their arms before them by a natural impulse,

which prompts our limbs to offices and motions without any commission

from our reason.

“Falciferos memorant currus abscindere membra . . .

Ut tremere in terra videatur ab artubus id quod

Decidit abscissum; cum mens tamen atque hominis vis

Mobilitate mali, non quit sentire dolorem.”

[“They relate that scythe-bearing chariots mow off limbs, so that

they quiver on the ground; and yet the mind of him from whom the

limb is taken by the swiftness of the blow feels no pain.”

--Lucretius, iii. 642.]

My stomach was so oppressed with the coagulated blood, that my hands

moved to that part, of their own voluntary motion, as they frequently do

to the part that itches, without being directed by our will. There are

several animals, and even men, in whom one may perceive the muscles to

stir and tremble after they are dead. Every one experimentally knows

that there are some members which grow stiff and flag without his leave.

Now, those passions which only touch the outward bark of us, cannot be

said to be ours: to make them so, there must be a concurrence of the

whole man; and the pains which are felt by the hand or the foot while

we are sleeping, are none of ours.

As I drew near my own house, where the alarm of my fall was already got

before me, and my family were come out to meet me, with the hubbub usual

in such cases, not only did I make some little answer to some questions

which were asked me; but they moreover tell me, that I was sufficiently

collected to order them to bring a horse to my wife whom on the road,

I saw struggling and tiring herself which is hilly and rugged. This

should seem to proceed from a soul its functions; but it was nothing so

with me. I knew not what I said or did, and they were nothing but idle

thoughts in the clouds, that were stirred up by the senses of the eyes

and ears, and proceeded not from me. I knew not for all that, whence I

came or whither I went, neither was I capable to weigh and consider what

was said to me: these were light effects, that the senses produced of

themselves as of custom; what the soul contributed was in a dream,

lightly touched, licked and bedewed by the soft impression of the senses.

Notwithstanding, my condition was, in truth, very easy and quiet; I had

no affliction upon me, either for others or myself; it was an extreme

languor and weakness, without any manner of pain. I saw my own house,

but knew it not. When they had put me to bed I found an inexpressible

sweetness in that repose; for I had been desperately tugged and lugged by

those poor people who had taken the pains to carry me upon their arms a

very great and a very rough way, and had in so doing all quite tired out

themselves, twice or thrice one after another. They offered me several

remedies, but I would take none, certainly believing that I was mortally

wounded in the head. And, in earnest, it had been a very happy death,

for the weakness of my understanding deprived me of the faculty of

discerning, and that of my body of the sense of feeling; I was suffering

myself to glide away so sweetly and after so soft and easy a manner, that

I scarce find any other action less troublesome than that was. But when

I came again to myself and to resume my faculties:

“Ut tandem sensus convaluere mei,”

[“When at length my lost senses again returned.”

--Ovid, Trist., i. 3, 14.]

which was two or three hours after, I felt myself on a sudden involved in

terrible pain, having my limbs battered and ground with my fall, and was.

so ill for two or three nights after, that I thought I was once more

dying again, but a more painful death, having concluded myself as good as

dead before, and to this hour am sensible of the bruises of that terrible

shock. I will not here omit, that the last thing I could make them beat

into my head, was the memory of this accident, and I had it over and over

again repeated to me, whither I was going, from whence I came, and at

what time of the day this mischance befell me, before I could comprehend

it. As to the manner of my fall, that was concealed from me in favour to

him who had been the occasion, and other flim-flams were invented. But a

long time after, and the very next day that my memory began to return and

to represent to me the state wherein I was, at the instant that I

perceived this horse coming full drive upon me (for I had seen him at my

heels, and gave myself for gone, but this thought had been so sudden,

that fear had had no leisure to introduce itself) it seemed to me like a

flash of lightning that had pierced my soul, and that I came from the

other world.

This long story of so light an accident would appear vain enough, were it

not for the knowledge I have gained by it for my own use; for I do really

find, that to get acquainted with death, needs no more but nearly to

approach it. Every one, as Pliny says, is a good doctrine to himself,

provided he be capable of discovering himself near at hand. Here, this

is not my doctrine, ‘tis my study; and is not the lesson of another, but

my own; and if I communicate it, it ought not to be ill taken, for that

which is of use to me, may also, peradventure, be useful to another. As

to the rest, I spoil nothing, I make use of nothing but my own; and if I

play the fool, ‘tis at my own expense, and nobody else is concerned in’t;

for ‘tis a folly that will die with me, and that no one is to inherit.

We hear but of two or three of the ancients, who have beaten this path,

and yet I cannot say if it was after this manner, knowing no more of them

but their names. No one since has followed the track: ‘tis a rugged

road, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain,

as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate

internal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble

motions; ‘tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us

from the common and most recommended employments of the world. ‘Tis now

many years since that my thoughts have had no other aim and level than

myself, and that I have only pried into and studied myself: or, if I

study any other thing, ‘tis to apply it to or rather in myself. And yet

I do not think it a fault, if, as others do by other much less profitable

sciences, I communicate what I have learned in this, though I am not very

well pleased with my own progress. There is no description so difficult,

nor doubtless of so great utility, as that of a man’s self: and withal, a

man must curl his hair and set out and adjust himself, to appear in

public: now I am perpetually tricking myself out, for I am eternally upon

my own description. Custom has made all speaking of a man’s self

vicious, and positively interdicts it, in hatred to the boasting that

seems inseparable from the testimony men give of themselves:

“In vitium ducit culpae fuga.”

[“The avoiding a mere fault often leads us into a greater.”

Or: “The escape from a fault leads into a vice”

--Horace, De Arte Poetics, verse 31.]