but it remains to be seen whether, as Ptolemy was therein formerly

deceived upon the foundation of his reason, it were not very foolish to

trust now in what these people say? And whether it is not more likely

that this great body, which we call the world, is not quite another

thing than what we imagine.

Plato says that it changes countenance in all respects; that the

heavens, the stars, and the sun, have all of them sometimes motions

retrograde to what we see, changing east into west The Egyptian priests

told Herodotus that from the time of their first king, which was eleven

thousand and odd years since (and they showed him the effigies of all

their kings in statues taken from the life), the sun had four times

altered his course; that the sea and the earth did alternately change

into one another; that the beginning of the world is undetermined;

Aristotle and Cicero both say the same; and some amongst us are of

opinion that it has been from all eternity, is mortal, and renewed again

by several vicissitudes; calling Solomon and Isaiah to witness; to evade

those oppositions, that God has once been a creator without a creature;

that he has had nothing to do, that he got rid of that idleness by

putting his hand to this work; and that consequently he is subject to

change. In the most famous of the Greek schools the world is taken for a

god, made by another god greater than he, and composed of a body, and a

soul fixed in his centre, and dilating himself by musical numbers to

his circumference; divine, infinitely happy, and infinitely great,

infinitely wise and eternal; in him are other gods, the sea, the earth,

the stars, who entertain one another with an harmonious and perpetual

agitation and divine dance, sometimes meeting, sometimes retiring from

one another; concealing and discovering themselves; changing their

order, one while before, and another behind. Heraclitus was positive

that the world was composed of fire; and, by the order of destiny,

was one day to be enflamed and consumed in fire, and then to be again

renewed. And Apuleius says of men: _Sigillatim mortales, cunctim

perpetui._ “That they are mortal in particular, and immortal in

general.” Alexander writ to his mother the narration of an Egyptian

priest, drawn from their monuments, testifying the antiquity of that

nation to be infinite, and comprising the birth and progress of other

countries. Cicero and Diodorus say that in their time the Chaldees kept

a register of four hundred thousand and odd years, Aristotle, Pliny,

and others, that Zoroaster flourished six thousand years before Plato’s

time. Plato says that they of the city of Sais have records in writing

of eight thousand years; and that the city of Athens was built a

thousand years before the said city of Sais; Epicurus, that at the same

time things are here in the posture we see, they are alike and in the

same manner in several other worlds; which he would have delivered with

greater assurance, had he seen the similitude and concordance of the new

discovered world of the West Indies with ours, present and past, in so

many strange examples.

In earnest, considering what is come to our knowledge from the course

of this terrestrial polity, I have often wondered to see in so vast a

distance of places and times such a concurrence of so great a number of

popular and wild opinions, and of savage manners and beliefs, which by

no means seem to proceed from our natural meditation. The human mind is

a great worker of miracles! But this relation has, moreover, I know

not what of extraordinary in it; ‘tis found to be in names, also, and a

thousand other things; for they found nations there (that, for aught we

know, never heard of us) where circumcision was in use; where there were

states and great civil governments maintained by women only, without

men; where our fasts and Lent were represented, to which was added

abstinence from women; where our crosses were several ways in repute;

here they were made use of to honour and adorn their sepultures, there

they were erected, and particularly that of St Andrew, to protect

themselves from nocturnal visions, and to lay upon the cradles of

infants against enchantments; elsewhere there was found one of wood,

of very great height, which was adored for the god of rain, and this

a great way in the interior; there was seen an express image of our

penance priests, the use of mitres, the celibacy of priests, the art

of divination by the entrails of sacrificed beasts, abstinence from all

sorts of flesh and fish in their diet, the manner of priests officiating

in a particular and not a vulgar language; and this fancy, that the

first god was driven away by a second, his younger brother; that they

were created with all sorts of necessaries and conveniences, which have

since been in a degree taken from them for their sins, their territory

changed, and their natural condition made worse; that they were of

old overwhelmed by the inundation of water from heaven; that but few

families escaped, who retired into caves on high mountains, the mouths

of which they stopped so that the waters could not get in, having shut

up, together with themselves, several sorts of animals; that when they

perceived the rain to cease they sent out dogs, which returning clean

and wet, they judged that the water was not much abated; afterwards

sending out others, and seeing them return dirty, they issued out to

repeople the world, which they found only full of serpents. In one place

we met with the belief of a day of judgment; insomuch that they were

marvellously displeased at the Spaniards for discomposing the bones of

the dead, in rifling the sepultures for riches, saying that those bones

so disordered could not easily rejoin; the traffic by exchange, and no

other way; fairs and markets for that end; dwarfs and deformed people

for the ornament of the tables of princes; the use of falconry,

according to the nature of their hawks; tyrannical subsidies; nicety in

gardens; dancing, tumbling tricks, music of instruments, coats of arms,

tennis-courts, dice and lotteries, wherein they are sometimes so eager

and hot as to stake themselves and their liberty; physic, no otherwise

than by charms; the way of writing in cypher; the belief of only one

first man, the father of all nations; the adoration of one God, who

formerly lived a man in perfect virginity, fasting, and penitence,

preaching the laws of nature, and the ceremonies of religion, and that

vanished from the world without a natural death; the theory of giants;

the custom of making themselves drunk with their beverages, and drinking

to the utmost; religious ornaments painted with bones and dead men’s

skulls; surplices, holy water sprinkled; wives and servants, who present

themselves with emulation, burnt and interred with the dead husband or

master; a law by which the eldest succeeds to all the estate, no

part being left for the younger but obedience; the custom that, upon

promotion to a certain office of great authority, the promoted is to

take upon him a new name, and to leave that which he had before; another

to strew lime upon the knee of the new-born child, with these words:

“From dust thou earnest, and to dust thou must return;” as also the art

of augury. The vain shadows of our religion, which are observable in

some of these examples, are testimonies of its dignity and divinity. It

is not only in some sort insinuated into all the infidel nations on this

side of the world, by a certain imitation, but in these barbarians

also, as by a common and supernatural inspiration; for we find there the

belief of purgatory, but of a new form; that which we give to the fire

they give to the cold, and imagine that souls are purged and punished by

the rigour of an excessive coldness. And this example puts me in mind

of another pleasant diversity; for as there were there some people who

delighted to unmuffle the ends of their instruments, and clipped off

the prepuce after the Mahometan and Jewish manner; there were others who

made so great conscience of laying it bare, that they carefully pursed

it up with little strings to keep that end from peeping into the air;

and of this other diversity, that whereas we, to honour kings and

festivals, put on the best clothes we have; in some regions, to express

their disparity and submission to their king, his subjects present

themselves before him in their vilest habits, and entering his palace,

throw some old tattered garment over their better apparel, to the end

that all the lustre and ornament may solely be in him. But to proceed:--

If nature enclose within the bounds of her ordinary progress the

beliefs, judgments, and opinions of men, as well as all other things;

if they have their revolution, their season, their birth and death, like

cabbage plants; if the heavens agitate and rule them at their pleasure,

what magisterial and permanent authority do we attribute to them? If

we experimentally see that the form of our beings depends upon the air,

upon the climate, and upon the soil, where we are bom, and not only the

colour, the stature, the complexion, and the countenances, but moreover

the very faculties of the soul itself: Et plaga codi non solum ad robor

corporum, sed etiam anirum facit: “The climate is of great efficacy,

not only to the strength of bodies, but to that of souls also,” says

Vegetius; and that the goddess who founded the city of Athens chose

to situate it in a temperature of air fit to make men prudent, as

the Egyptian priests told Solon: _Athenis tenue colum; ex quo etiam

acutiores putantur Attici; crassum Thebis; itaque pingues Thebani,

et valentes:_ “The air of Athens is subtle and thin; whence also the

Athenians are reputed to be more acute; and at Thebes more gross and

thick; wherefore the Thebans are looked upon as more heavy-witted and

more strong.” In such sort that, as fruits and animals grow different,

men are also more or less warlike, just, temperate, and docile; here

given to wine, elsewhere to theft or uncleanness; here inclined to

superstition, elsewhere to unbelief; in one place to liberty, in another

to servitude; capable of one science or of one art, dull or ingenious,

obedient or mutinous, good or bad, according as the place where they

are seated inclines them; and assume a new complexion, if removed, like

trees, which was the reason why Cyrus would not grant the Persians

leave to quit their rough and craggy country to remove to another

more pleasant and even, saying, that fertile and tender soils made

men effeminate and soft. If we see one while one art and one belief

flourish, and another while another, through some celestial influence;

such an age to produce such natures, and to incline mankind to such and

such a propension, the spirits of men one while gay and another gray,

like our fields, what becomes of all those fine prerogatives we so

soothe ourselves withal? Seeing that a wise man may be mistaken, and a

hundred men and a hundred nations, nay, that even human nature

itself, as we believe, is many ages wide in one thing or another, what

assurances have we that she should cease to be mistaken, or that in this

very age of ours she is not so?

Methinks that amongst other testimonies of our imbecility, this ought

not to be forgotten, that man cannot, by his own wish and desire, find

out what he wants; that not in fruition only, but in imagination and

wish, we cannot agree about what we would have to satisfy and content

us. Let us leave it to our own thought to cut out and make up at

pleasure; it cannot so much as covet what is proper for it, and satisfy

itself:--

Quid enim ratione timemus,

Aut cupimus? Quid tain dextro pede concipis, ut te

Conatus non poniteat, votique peracti?

“For what, with reason, do we speak or shun,

What plan, how happily soe’r begun,

That, when achieved, we do not wish undone?”

And therefore it was that Socrates only begged of the gods that they

would give him what they knew to be best for him; and the private

and public prayer of the Lacedemonians was simply for good and useful

things, referring the choice and election of them to the discretion of

the Supreme Power:--

Conjugium petimus, partumqué uxoris; at illis

Notum, qui pueri, qualisque futura sit uxor:

“We ask for Wives and children; they above

Know only, when we have them, what they’ll prove;”

and Christians pray to God, “Thy will be done,” that they may not fall

into the inconvenience the poet feigns of King Midas. He prayed to

the gods that all he touched might be turned into gold; his prayer was

heard; his wine was gold, his bread was gold, the feathers of his

bed, his shirt, his clothes, were all gold, so that he found himself

overwhelmed with the fruition of his desire, and endowed with an

intolerable benefit, and was fain to unpray his prayers.

Attonitus novitate mali, divesque, miserque,

Effugere optât opes, et, quæ modo voverat, odit.

“Astonished at the strangeness of the ill,

To be so rich, yet miserable still;

He wishes now he could his wealth evade,

And hates the thing for which before he prayed.”

To instance in myself: being young, I desired of fortune, above all

things, the order of St. Michael, which was then the utmost distinction

of honour amongst the French nobles, and very rare. She pleasantly

gratified my longing; instead of raising me, and lifting me up from my

own place to attain to it, she was much kinder to me; for she brought it

so low, and made it so cheap, that it stooped down to my shoulders, and

lower. Cleobis and Bito, Trophonius and Agamedes, having requested, the

first of their goddess, the last of their god, a recompense worthy of

their piety, had death for a reward; so differing from ours are heavenly

opinions concerning what is fit for us. God might grant us riches,

honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that

is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or

an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, _Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus

ipsa me consolata sunt._ “Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me,” he

does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly

discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it

in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand

Si consilium vis:

Permittee ipsis expendere numinibus, quid

Conveniat nobis, rebusque sit utile nostris...

Carior est illis homo quam sibi;

“If thou’lt be rul’d, to th’ gods thy fortunes trust,

Their thoughts are wise, their dispensations just.

What best may profit or delight they know,

And real good, for fancied bliss, bestow;

With eyes of pity, they our frailties scan,

More dear to them, than to himself, is man;”

for to require of him honours and commands, is to require ‘that he may

throw you into a battle, set you upon a cast at dice, or something of

the like nature, whereof the issue is to you unknown, and the fruit

doubtful.

There is no dispute so sharp and violent amongst the philosophers,

as about the question of the sovereign good of man; whence, by the

calculation of Varro, rose two hundred and eighty-eight sects. _Qui

autem de summo bono dissentit, de totâ philosophies ratione disputât._

“For whoever enters into controversy concerning the supreme good,

disputes upon the whole matter of philosophy.”

Très mihi convivæ prope dissentire videntur,

Poscentes vario mul turn divers a palato;

Quid dem? Quid non dem? Renuis tu quod jubet alter;

Quod petis, id sane est invisum acidumque duobus;

“I have three guests invited to a feast,

And all appear to have a different taste;

What shall I give them? What shall I refuse?

What one dislikes the other two shall choose;

And e’en the very dish you like the best

Is acid or insipid to the rest:”

nature should say the same to their contests and debates. Some say that

our well-being lies in virtue, others in pleasure, others in submitting

to nature; one in knowledge, another in being exempt from pain, another

in not suffering ourselves to be carried away by appearances; and this

fancy seems to have some relation to that of the ancient Pythagoras,

Nil admirari, prope res est una, Numici,

Solaque, quæ possit facere et servare beatum:

“Not to admire’s the only art I know

Can make us happy, and can keep us so;”

which is the drift of the Pyrrhonian sect; Aristotle attributes the

admiring nothing to magnanimity; and Arcesilaus said, that constancy and

a right inflexible state of judgment were the true good, and consent

and application the sin and evil; and there, it is true, in being thus

positive, and establishing a certain axiom, he quitted Pyrrhonism; for

the’ Pyrrhonians, when they say that ataraxy, which is the immobility

of judgment, is the sovereign good, do not design to speak it

affirmatively; but that the same motion of soul which makes them avoid

precipices, and take shelter from the cold, presents them such a fancy,

and makes them refuse another.

How much do I wish that, whilst I live, either some other or Justus

Lipsius, the most learned man now living, of a most polite and judicious

understanding, truly resembling my Turnebus, had both the will and

health, and leisure sufficient, carefully and conscientiously to collect

into a register, according to their divisions and classes, as many as

are to be found, of the opinions of the ancient philosophers, about the

subject of our being and manners, their controversies, the succession

and reputation of sects; with the application of the lives of the

authors and their disciples to their own precepts, in memorable

accidents, and upon exemplary occasions. What a beautiful and useful

work that would be!

As to what remains, if it be from ourselves that we are to extract the

rules of our manners, upon what a confusion do we throw ourselves! For

that which our reason advises us to, as the most likely, is generally

for every one to obey the laws of his country, as was the advice of

Socrates, inspired, as he says, by a divine counsel; and by that,

what would it say, but that our duty has no other rule but what is

accidental? Truth ought to have a like and universal visage; if man

could know equity and justice that had a body and a true being, he would

not fetter it to the conditions of this country or that; it would not be

from the whimsies of the Persians or Indians that virtue would receive

its form. There is nothing more subject to perpetual agitation than

the laws; since I was born, I have known those of the English, our

neighbours, three or four times changed, not only in matters of civil

regimen, which is the only thing wherein constancy may be dispensed

with, but in the most important subject that can be, namely, religion,

at which I am the more troubled and ashamed, because it is a nation with

whom those of my province have formerly had so great familiarity and

acquaintance, that there yet remains in my house some footsteps of our

ancient kindred; and here with us at home, I have known a thing that

was capital to become lawful; and we that hold of others are likewise,

according to the chance of war, in a possibility of being one day found

guilty of high-treason, both divine and human, should the justice of

our arms fall into the power of injustice, and, after a few years’

possession, take a quite contrary being. How could that ancient god more

clearly accuse the ignorance of human knowledge concerning the divine

Being, and give men to understand that their religion was but a thing of

their own contrivance, useful as a bond to their society, than declaring

as he did to those who came to his tripod for instruction, that every

one’s true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he

chanced to be? O God, what infinite obligation have we to the bounty

of our sovereign Creator, for having disabused our belief from these

wandering and arbitrary devotions, and for having seated it upon the

eternal foundation of his holy word? But what then will philosophers say

to us in this necessity? “That we follow the laws of our country;” that

is to say, this floating sea of the opinions of a republic, or a prince,

that will paint out justice for me in as many colours, and form it

as many ways as there are changes of passions in themselves; I cannot

suffer my judgment to be so flexible. What kind of virtue is that which

I see one day in repute, and that to-morrow shall be in none, and which

the crossing of a river makes a crime? What sort of truth can that

be, which these mountains limit to us, and make a lie to all the world

beyond them?

But they are pleasant, when, to give some certainty to the laws, they

say, that there are some firm, perpetual, and immovable, which they call

natural, that are imprinted in human kind by the condition of their own

proper being; and of these some reckon three, some four, some more, some

less; a sign that it is a mark as doubtful as the rest Now they are so

unfortunate, (for what can I call it else but misfortune that, of so

infinite a number of laws, there should not be found one at least

that fortune and the temerity of chance has suffered to be universally

received by the consent of all nations?) they are, I say, so miserable,

that of these three or four select laws, there is not so much as one

that is not contradicted and disowned, not only by one nation, but by

many. Now, the only likely sign, by which they can argue or infer some

natural laws, is the universality of approbation; for we should, without

doubt, follow with a common consent that which nature had truly ordained

us; and not only every nation, but every private man, would resent the

force and violence that any one should do him who would tempt him to

any thing contrary to this law. But let them produce me one of this

condition. Proctagoras and Aristo gave no other essence to the justice

of laws than the authority and opinion of the legislator; and that,

these laid aside, the honest and the good lost their qualities, and

remained empty names of indifferent things; Thrasymachus, in Plato,

is of opinion that there is no other right but the convenience of the

superior. There is not any thing wherein the world is so various as in

laws and customs; such a thing is abominable here which is elsewhere in

esteem, as in Lacedemon dexterity in stealing; marriages between near

relations, are capitally interdicted amongst us; they are elsewhere in

honour:--

Gentes esse ferantur,

In quibus et nato genitrix, et nata parenti

Jungitur, et pietas geminato crescit amore;

“There are some nations in the world, ‘tis said,

Where fathers daughters, sons their mothers wed;

And their affections thereby higher rise,

More firm and constant by these double ties;”

the murder of infants, the murder of fathers, the community of wives,

traffic of robberies, license in all sorts of voluptuousness; in short,

there is nothing so extreme that is not allowed by the custom of some

nation or other.

It is credible that there are natural laws for us, as we see them

in other creatures; but they are lost in us, this fine human reason

everywhere so insinuating itself to govern and command, as to shuffle

and confound the face of things, according to its own vanity and

inconstancy: _Nihil itaque amplius nostrum est; quod nostrum dico,

artis est:_ “Therefore nothing is any more truly ours; what we call ours

belongs to art.” Subjects have divers lustres and divers considerations,

and thence the diversity of opinions principally proceeds; one nation

considers a subject in one aspect, and stops there: another takes it in

a different point of view.

There is nothing of greater horror to be imagined than for a man to eat

his father; and yet the people, whose ancient custom it was so to do,

looked upon it as a testimony of piety and affection, seeking thereby to

give their progenitors the most worthy and honourable sepulture; storing

up in themselves, and as it were in their own marrow, the bodies

and relics of their fathers; and in some sort regenerating them by

transmutation into their living flesh, by means of nourishment and

digestion. It is easy to consider what a cruelty and abomination it

must have appeared to men possessed and imbued with this snperstition

to throw their fathers’ remains to the corruption of the earth, and the

nourishment of beasts and worms.

Lycurgus considered in theft the vivacity, diligence, boldness, and

dexterity of purloining any thing from our neighbours, and the benefit

that redounded to the public that every one should look more narrowly

to the conservation of what was his own; and believed that, from this

double institution of assaulting and defending, advantage was to be made

for military discipline (which was the principal science and virtue to

which he would inure that nation), of greater consideration than the

disorder and injustice of taking another man’s goods.

Dionysius, the tyrant, offered Plato a robe of the Persian fashion,

long, damasked, and perfumed; Plato refused it, saying, “That being

born a man, he would not willingly dress himself in women’s clothes;”

but Aristippus accepted it with this answer, “That no accoutrement could

corrupt a chaste courage.” His friends reproaching him with meanness of

spirit, for laying it no more to heart that Dionysius had spit in his

face, “Fishermen,” said he, “suffer themselves to be drenched with the

waves of the sea from head to foot to catch a gudgeon.” Diogenes was

washing cabbages, and seeing him pass by, “If thou couldst live on

cabbage,” said he, “thou wouldst not fawn upon a tyrant;” to whom

Aristippus replied, “And if thou knewest how to live amongst men, thou

wouldst not be washing cabbages.” Thus reason finds appearances for

divers effects; ‘tis a pot with two ears that a man may take by the

right or left:--

Bellum, o terra hospita, portas:

Bello armantur eqni; bellum hæc armenta minantur.

Sed tamen idem olim curru succedere sueti

Quadrupedes, et frena jugo concordia ferre;

Spes est pacis.

“War, war is threatened from this foreign ground

(My father cried), where warlike steeds are found.

Yet, since reclaimed, to chariots they submit,

And bend to stubborn yokes, and champ the bit,

Peace may succeed to war.”

Solon, being lectured by his friends not to shed powerless and

unprofitable tears for the death of his son, “It is for that reason that

I the more justly shed them,” said he, “because they are powerless

and unprofitable.” Socrates’s wife exasperated her grief by this

circumstance: “Oh, how unjustly do these wicked judges put him to

death!” “Why,” replied he, “hadst thou rather they should execute me

justly?” We have our ears bored; the Greeks looked upon that as a mark

of slavery. We retire in private to enjoy our wives; the Indians do it

in public. The Scythians immolated strangers in their temples; elsewhere

temples were a refuge:--

Inde furor vulgi, quod numina vicinorum

Odit quisque locus, cum solos credat habendos

Esse deos, quos ipse colit.

“Thus ‘tis the popular fury that creates

That all their neighbours’ gods each nation hates;

Each thinks its own the genuine; in a word,

The only deities to be adored.”

I have heard of a judge who, coming upon a sharp conflict betwixt

Bartolus and Aldus, and some point controverted with many contrarieties,

writ in the margin of his book, “a question for a friend;” that is to

say, that truth was there so controverted and disputed that in a like

cause he might favour which of the parties he thought fit ‘Twas only for

want of wit that he did not write “a question for a friend” throughout.

The advocates and judges of our times find bias enough in all causes

to accommodate them to what they themselves think fit. In so infinite

a science, depending upon the authority of so many opinions, and so

arbitrary a subject, it cannot be but that of necessity an extreme

confusion of judgments must arise; there is hardly any suit so clear

wherein opinions do not very much differ; what one court has determined

one way another determines quite contrary, and itself contrary to that

at another time. Of which we see very frequent examples, owing to that

practice admitted amongst us, and which is a marvellous blemish to the

ceremonious authority and lustre of our justice, of not abiding by one

sentence, but running from judge to judge, and court to court, to decide

one and the same cause.

As to the liberty of philosophical opinions concerning vice and virtue,

‘tis not necessary to be insisted upon; therein are found many opinions

that are better concealed than published to weak minds. Arcesilaus said,

“That in venery it was no matter where, or with whom, it was committed:”

_Et obsccenas voluptates, si natura requirit, non genere, aut loco, aut

ordine, sed forma, otate, jigurâ, metiendas Epicurus putat.... ne amores

quidem sanctos a sapiente alienos esse arbitrantur.... Queeramus, ad

quam usque otatem juvenes amandi sint._ “And obscene pleasures, if

nature requires them,” Epicurus thinks, “are not to be measured either

by race, kind, place, or rank, but by age, shape, and beauty.... Neither

are sacred loves thought to be foreign to wise men;... we are to

inquire till what age young men are to be loved.” These last two stoical

quotations, and the reproach that Dicæarchus threw into the teeth of

Plato himself, upon this account, show how much the soundest philosophy

indulges licenses and excesses very remote from common custom.

Laws derive their authority from possession and custom. ‘Tis dangerous

to trace them back to their beginning; they grow great, and ennoble

themselves, like our rivers, by running on; but follow them upward to

their source, ‘tis but a little spring, scarce discernable,

that swells thus, and thus fortifies itself by growing old. Do but

consult the ancient considerations that gave the first motion to this

famous torrent, so full of dignity, awe, and reverence, you will find

them so light and weak that it is no wonder if these people, who weigh

and reduce every thing to reason, and who admit nothing by authority, or

upon trust, have their judgments often very remote, and differing from

those of the public. It is no wonder if people, who take their pattern

from the first image of nature, should in most of their opinions swerve

from the common path; as, for example, few amongst them would have

approved of the strict conditions of our marriages, and most of them

have been for having wives in common, and without obligation; they would

refuse our ceremonies. Chrysippus said, “That a philosopher would make

a dozen somersaults, aye, and without his breeches, for a dozen of

olives.” That philosopher would hardly have advised Clisthenes to have

refused Hippoclides the fair Agarista his daughter, for having seen him

stand on his head upon a table. Metrocles somewhat indiscreetly broke

wind backwards while in disputation, in the presence of a great auditory

in his school, and kept himself hid in his own house for shame, till

Crates coming to visit him, and adding to his consolations and reasons

the example of his own liberty, by falling to try with him who should

sound most, cured him of that scruple, and withal drew him to his own

stoical sect, more free than that more reserved one of the Peripatetics,

of which he had been till then. That which we call decency, not to dare

to do that in public which is decent enough to do in private, the Stoics

call foppery; and to mince it, and to be so modest as to conceal and

disown what nature, custom, and our desires publish and proclaim of our

actions, they reputed a vice. The other thought it was to undervalue the

mysteries of Venus to draw them out of the private oratory, to expose

them to the view of the people; and that to bring them out from behind

the curtain was to debase them. Modesty is a thing of weight; secrecy,

reservation, and circumspection, are parts of esteem. Pleasure did

very ingeniously when, under the mask of virtue, she sued not to be

prostituted in the open streets, trodden under foot, and exposed to

the public view, wanting the dignity and convenience of her private

cabinets. Hence some say that to put down public stews is not only to

disperse fornication into all places, that was confined to one, but

moreover, by the difficulty, to incite wild and idle people to this

vice:--

Mochus es Aufidiæ, qui vir,

Scævine, fuisti:

Rivalis fuerat qui tuus, ille vir est.

Cur aliéna placet tibi, quæ tua non placet uxor?

Numquid securus non potes arrigere?

This experience diversifies itself in a thousand examples:--

Nullus in urbe fuit totâ, qui tangere vellet

Uxorem gratis, Cæciliane, tuam,

Dum licuit: sed nunc, positis custodibus, ingens

Turba fututorum est. Ingeniosus homo es.

A philosopher being taken in the very act, and asked what he was doing,

coldly replied, “I am planting man;” no more blushing to be so caught

than if they had found him planting garlic.

It is, I suppose, out of tenderness and respect to the natural modesty

of mankind that a great and religious author is of opinion that this act

is so necessarily obliged to privacy and shame that he cannot persuade

himself there could be any absolute performance in those impudent

embraces of the Cynics, but that they contented themselves to represent

lascivious gestures only, to maintain the impudence of their school’s

profession; and that, to eject what shame had withheld and restrained,

it was afterward necessary for them to withdraw into the shade. But he

had not thoroughly examined their debauches; for Diogenes, playing the

beast with himself in public, wished, in the presence of all that saw

him, that he could fill his belly by that exercise. To those who asked

him why he did not find out a more commodious place to eat in than

in the open street, he made answer, “Because I am hungry in the open

street.” The women philosophers who mixed with their sect, mixed also

with their persons, in all places, without reservation; and Hipparchia

was not received into Crates’s society, but upon condition that she

should, in all things, follow the practice and customs of his rule.

These philosophers set a great price upon virtue, and renounce all other

discipline but the moral; and yet, in all their actions, they attributed

the sovereign authority to the election of their sage, and above the

laws; and gave no other curb to voluptuousness but moderation only, and

the conservation of the liberty of others.

Heraclitus and Protagoras, forasmuch as wine seemed bitter to the sick,

and pleasant to the sound, the rudder crooked in the water, and straight

when out, and such like contrary appearances as are found in subjects,

argued thence that all subjects had, in themselves, the causes of these

appearances; and there was some bitterness in the wine which had some

sympathy with the sick man’s taste, and the rudder some bending quality

sympathizing with him that looks upon it in the water; and so of all

the rest; which is to say, that all is in all things, and, consequently,

nothing in any one; for, where all is, there is nothing.

This opinion put me in mind of the experience we have that there is

no sense or aspect of any thing, whether bitter or sweet, straight

or crooked, that the human mind does not find out in the writings it

undertakes to tumble over. Into the cleanest, purest, and most perfect

words that can possibly be, how many lies and falsities have we

suggested! What heresy has not there found ground and testimony

sufficient to make itself embraced and defended! ‘Tis for this that the

authors of such errors will never depart from proof of the testimony of

the interpretation of words. A person of dignity, who would approve to

me, by authority, the search of the philosopher’s stone, wherein he

was head over ears engaged, lately alleged to me at least five or six

passages of the Bible upon which, he said, he first founded his attempt,

for the discharge of his conscience (for he is a divine); and, in truth,

the idea was not only pleasant, but, moreover, very well accommodated to

the defence of this fine science.

By this way the reputation of divining fables is acquired. There is no

fortune-teller, if we have this authority, but, if a man will take the

pains to tumble and toss, and narrowly to peep into all the folds and

glosses of his words, he may make him, like the Sibyls, say what he

will. There are so many ways of interpretation that it will be hard but

that, either obliquely or in a direct line, an ingenious wit will

find out, in every subject, some air that will serve for his purpose;

therefore we find a cloudy and ambiguous style in so frequent and

ancient use. Let the author but make himself master of that, to busy

posterity about his predictions, which not only his own parts, but the

accidental favour of the matter itself, may do for him; and, as to

the rest, express himself, whether after a foolish or a subtle manner,

somewhat obscurely or contradictorily, ‘tis no matter;--a number of

wits, shaking and sifting him, will bring out a great many several

forms, either according to his meaning, or collateral, or contrary, to

it, which will all redound to his honour; he will see himself enriched

by the means of his disciples, like the regents of colleges by their

pupils yearly presents. This it is which has given reputation to many

things of no worth at all; that has brought several writings in vogue,

and given them the fame of containing all sorts of matter can be

desired; one and the same thing receiving a thousand and a thousand

images and various considerations; nay, as many as we please.

Is it possible that Homer could design to say all that we make him

say, and that he designed so many and so various figures, as that the

divines, law-givers, captains, philosophers, and all sorts of men

who treat of sciences, how variously and opposite soever, should

indifferently quote him, and support their arguments by his authority,

as the sovereign lord and master of all offices, works, and artisans,

and counsellor-general of all enterprises? Whoever has had occasion for

oracles and predictions has there found sufficient to serve his turn.

‘Tis a wonder how many and how admirable concurrences an intelligent

person, and a particular friend of mine, has there found out in favour

of our religion; and cannot easily be put out of the conceit that it was

Homer’s design; and yet he is as well acquainted with this author as

any man whatever of his time. And what he has found in favour of our

religion there, very many anciently have found in favour of theirs. Do

but observe how Plato is tumbled and tossed about; every one ennobling

his own opinions by applying him to himself, and making him take what

side they please. They draw him in, and engage him in all the new

opinions the world receives; and make him, according to the different

course of things, differ from himself; every one makes him disavow,

according to his own sense, the manners and customs lawful in his age,

because they are unlawful in ours; and all this with vivacity and power,

according to the force and sprightliness of the wit of the interpreter.

From the same foundation that Heraclitus and this sentence of his had,

“that all things had in them those forms that we discern,” Democritus

drew quite a contrary conclusion,--“that objects have in them nothing

that we discern in them;” and because honey is sweet to one and bitter

to another, he thence argued that it was neither sweet nor bitter. The

Pyrrhonians would say that they knew not whether it is sweet or bitter,

or whether the one or the other, or both; for these always gained

the highest point of dubitation. The Cyrenaics held that nothing was

perceptible from without, and that that only was perceptible that

inwardly touched us, as pain and pleasure; acknowledging neither sound

nor colour, but certain affections only that we receive from them; and

that man’s judgment had no other seat Protagoras believed that “what

seems true to every one, is true to every one.” The Epicureans lodged

all judgment in the senses, and in the knowledge of things, and in

pleasure. Plato would have the judgment of truth, and truth itself,

derived from opinions and the senses, to belong to the wit and

cogitation.

This discourse has put me upon the consideration of the senses, in which

lies the greatest foundation and Pro°f of our ignorance. Whatsoever is

known, is doubtless known by the faculty of the knower; for, seeing the

judgment proceeds from the operation of him that judges, ‘tis reason

that this operation be performed by his means and will, not by the

constraint of another; as it would happen if we knew things by the

power, and according to the law of their essence. Now all knowledge is

conveyed to us by the senses; they are our masters:--

Via qua munita fidei

Proxima fert humanum in pectus, templaque mentis;

“It is the surest path that faith can find

By which to enter human heart and mind.”

Science begins by them, and is resolved into them. After all, we should

know no more than a stone if we did not know there is sound, odour,

light, taste, measure, weight, softness, hardness, sharpness, colour,

smoothness, breadth, and depth; these are the platforms and principles

of the structure of all our knowledge; and, according to some, science

is nothing else but sense. He that could make me contradict the senses,

would have me by the throat; he could not make me go further back. The

senses are the beginning and the end of human knowledge:--

Invenies primis ab sensibns esse creatam

Notitiam veil; neque sensus posse refelli....

Quid majore fide porro, quam sensus, haberi Debet?

“Of truth, whate’er discoveries are made,

Are by the senses to us first conveyed;

Nor will one sense be baffled; for on what

Can we rely more safely than on that?”

Let us attribute to them the least we can, we must, however, of

necessity grant them this, that it is by their means and mediation that

all our instruction is directed. Cicero says, that Chrysippus having

attempted to extenuate the force and virtue of the senses, presented to

himself arguments and so vehement oppositions to the contrary that he

could not satisfy himself therein; whereupon Cameades, who maintained

the contrary side, boasted that he would make use of the very words and

arguments of Chrysippus to controvert and confute him, and therefore

thus cried out against him: “O miserable! thy force has destroyed thee.”

There can be nothing absurd to a greater degree than to maintain that

fire does not warm, that light does not shine, and that there is no

weight nor solidity in iron, which are things conveyed to us by the

senses; neither is there belief nor knowledge in man that can be

compared to that for certainty.

The first consideration I have upon the subject of the senses is that I

make a doubt whether or no man be furnished with all natural senses. I

see several animals who live an entire and perfect life, some without

sight, others without hearing; who knows whether to us also one, two,

three, or many other senses may not be wanting? For if any one be

wanting, our examination cannot discover the defect. ‘Tis the privilege

of the senses to be the utmost limit of our discovery; there is nothing

beyond them that can assist us in exploration, not so much as one sense

in the discovery of another:--

An poterunt oculos aures reprehendere? an aures

Tactus an hunc porro tactum sapor argnet oris?

An confutabunt nares, oculive revincent?

“Can ears the eyes, the touch the ears, correct?

Or is that touch by tasting to be check’d?

Or th’ other senses, shall the nose or eyes

Confute in their peculiar faculties?”

They all make the extremest limits of our ability:--

Seorsum cuique potestas Divisa est, sua vis cuique est,

“Each has its power distinctly and alone,

And every sense’s power is its own.”

It is impossible to make a man naturally blind conceive that he does not

see; impossible to make him desire sight, or to regret his defect; for

which reason we ought not to derive any assurance from the soul’s being

contented and satisfied with those we have; considering that it cannot

be sensible herein of its infirmity and imperfection, if there be any

such thing. It is impossible to say any thing to this blind man, either

by reasoning, argument, or similitude, that can possess his imagination

with any apprehension of light, colour, or sight; there’s nothing

remains behind that can push on the senses to evidence. Those that

are born blind, whom we hear wish they could see, it is not that they

understand what they desire; they have learned from us that they want

something; that there is something to be desired that we have, which

they can name indeed and speak of its effect and consequences; but yet

they know not what it is, nor apprehend it at all.

I have seen a gentleman of a good family who was born blind, or at least

blind from such an age that he knows not what sight is; who is so little

sensible of his defect that he makes use as we do of words proper for

seeing, and applies them after a manner wholly particular and his own.

They brought him a child to which he was god-father, which, having taken

into his arms, “Good God,” said he, “what a fine child! How beautiful

to look upon! what a pretty face it has!” He will say, like one of us,

“This room has a very fine prospect;--it is clear weather;--the sun

shines bright.” And moreover, being that hunting, tennis, and butts are

our exercises, and he has heard so, he has taken a liking to them, will

ride a-hunting, and believes he has as good share of the sport as we

have; and will express himself as angry or pleased as the best of us

all, and yet knows nothing of it but by the ear. One cries out to him,

“Here’s a hare!” when he is upon some even plain where he may safely

ride; and afterwards, when they tell him, “The hare is killed,” he will

be as overjoyed and proud of it as he hears others say they are. He will

take a tennis-ball in his left hand and strike it away with the racket;

he will shoot with a harquebuss at random, and is contented with what

his people tell him, that he is over, or wide.

Who knows whether all human kind commit not the like absurdity, for want

of some sense, and that through this default the greatest part of

the face of things is concealed from us? What do we know but that the

difficulties which we find in several works of nature proceed hence;

and that several effects of animals, which exceed our capacity, are not

produced by faculty of some sense that we are defective in? and whether

some of them have not by this means a life more full and entire than

ours? We seize an apple with all our senses; we there find redness,

smoothness, odour, and sweetness; but it may have other virtues besides

these, as to heat or binding, which no sense of ours can have any

reference unto. Is it not likely that there are sensitive faculties in

nature that are fit to judge of and to discern those which we call the

occult properties in several things, as for the loadstone to attract

iron; and that the want of such faculties is the cause that we

are ignorant of the true essence of such things? ‘Tis perhaps some

particular sense that gives cocks to understand what hour it is at

midnight, and when it grows to be towards day, and that makes them crow

accordingly; that teaches chickens, before they have any experience of

the matter, to fear a sparrow-hawk, and not a goose or a peacock, though

birds of a much larger size; that cautions them against the hostile

quality the cat has against them, and makes them not to fear a dog; to

arm themselves against the mewing, a kind of flattering voice, of the

one, and not against the barking, a shrill and threatening voice, of the

other; that teaches wasps, ants, and rats, to fall upon the best pear

and the best cheese before they have tasted them, and inspires the stag,

elephant, and serpent, with the knowledge of a certain herb proper for

their cure. There is no sense that has not a mighty dominion, and that

does not by its power introduce an infinite number of knowledges. If

we were defective in the intelligence of sounds, of harmony, and of the

voice, it would cause an unimaginable confusion in all the rest of our

science; for, besides what belongs to the proper effect of every sense,

how many arguments, consequences, and conclusions do we draw to other

things, by comparing one sense with another? Let an understanding man

imagine human nature originally produced without the sense of seeing,

and consider what ignorance and trouble such a defect would bring upon

him, what a darkness and blindness in the soul; he will then see by that

of how great importance to the knowledge of truth the privation of such

another sense, or of two or three, should we be so deprived, would be.

We have formed a truth by the consultation and concurrence of our five

senses; but perhaps we should have the consent and contribution of eight

or ten to make a certain discovery of it in its essence.

The sects that controvert the knowledge of man do it principally by the

uncertainty and weakness of our senses; for since all knowledge is

by their means and mediation conveyed unto us, if they fail in their

report, if they corrupt or alter what they bring us from without, if the

light which by them creeps into the soul be obscured in the passage,

we have nothing else to hold by. From this extreme difficulty all these

fancies proceed: “That every subject has in itself all we there find.

That it has nothing in it of what we think we there find;” and that of

the Epicureans, “That the sun is no bigger than ‘tis judged by our sight

to be:--”

Quidquid id est, nihilo fertur majore figura,

Quam nostris oculis quam cemimus, esse videtur:

“But be it what it will in our esteems,

It is no bigger than to us it seems:”

that the appearances which represent a body great to him that is near,

and less to him that is more remote, are both true:--

Nee tamen hic oculos falli concedimus hilum....

Proinde animi vitium hoc oculis adfingere noli:

“Yet that the eye’s deluded we deny;

Charge not the mind’s faults, therefore, on the eye:”

“and, resolutely, that there is no deceit in the senses; that we are to

lie at their mercy, and seek elsewhere reasons to excuse the difference

and contradictions we there find, even to the inventing of lies and

other flams, if it come to that, rather than accuse the senses.”

Timagoras vowed that, by pressing or turning his eye, he could never

perceive the light of the candle to double, and that the seeming so

proceeded from the vice of opinion, and not from the instrument. The

most absurd of all absurdities, with the Epicureans, is to deny the

force and effect of the senses:--

Proinde, quod in quoquo est his visum tempore, verum est

Et, si non potuit ratio dissolvere causam,

Cur ea, quæ fuerint juxtim quadrata, procul sint

Visa rotunda; tamen præstat rationis egentem

Beddere mendose causas utriusque figuræ,

Quam manibus manifesta suis emittere quæquam,

Et violare fidem primam, et convellere tota

Fundamenta, quibus nixatur vita salusque:

Non modo enim ratio ruat omnis, vita quoque ipsa

Concidat extemplo, nisi credere sensibus ausis,

Procipitesque locos vitare, et cætera, quæ sint

In genere hoc fugienda.

“That what we see exists I will maintain,

And if our feeble reason can’t explain

Why things seem square when they are very near,

And at a greater distance round appear;

‘Tis better yet, for him that’s at a pause,

‘T’ assign to either figure a false cause,

Than shock his faith, and the foundations rend

On which our safety and our life depend:

For reason not alone, but life and all,

Together will with sudden ruin fall;

Unless we trust our senses, nor despise

To shun the various dangers that arise.”

This so desperate and unphilosophical advice expresses only this,--that

human knowledge cannot support itself but by reason unreasonable,

foolish, and mad; but that it is yet better that man, to set a greater

value upon himself, make use of any other remedy, how fantastic soever,

than to confess his necessary ignorance--a truth so disadvantageous to

him. He cannot avoid owning that the senses are the sovereign lords

of his knowledge; but they are uncertain, and falsifiable in all

circumstances; ‘tis there that he is to fight it out to the last; and

if his just forces fail him, as they do, to supply that defect with

obstinacy, temerity, and impudence. In case what the Epicureans say

be true, viz: “that we have no knowledge if the senses’ appearances

be false;” and if that also be true which the Stoics say, “that the

appearances of the senses are so false that they can furnish us with no

manner of knowledge,” we shall conclude, to the disadvantage of these

two great dogmatical sects, that there is no science at all.

As to the error and uncertainty of the operation of the senses, every

one may furnish himself with as many examples as he pleases; so ordinary

are the faults and tricks they put upon us. In the echo of a valley the

sound of a trumpet seems to meet us, which comes from a place behind:--

Exstantesque procul medio de gurgite montes,

Classibus inter qnos liber patet exitus, idem

Apparent, et longe divolsi licet, ingens

Insula conjunctis tamen ex his ana videtur...

Et fugere ad puppim colies campique videntur,

Qnos agimns proter navim, velisque volamus....

Ubi in medio nobis equus acer obhæsit

Flamine, equi corpus transversum ferre videtur

Vis, et in adversum flumen contrudere raptim.

“And rocks i’ th’ seas that proudly raise their head,

Though far disjoined, though royal navies spread,

Their sails between; yet if from distance shown,

They seem an island all combin’d in one.

Thus ships, though driven by a prosperous gale,

Seem fix’d to sailors; those seem under sail

That ride at anchor safe; and all admire,

As they row by, to see the rocks retire.

Thus, when in rapid streams my horse hath stood,

And I look’d downward on the rolling flood;

Though he stood still, I thought he did divide

The headlong streams, and strive against the tide,

And all things seem’d to move on every side.”

Take a musket-ball under the forefinger, the middle finger being lapped

over it, it feels so like two that a man will have much ado to persuade

himself there is but one; the end of the two fingers feeling each of

them one at the same time; for that the senses are very often masters of

our reason, and constrain it to receive impressions which it judges and

knows to be false, is frequently seen. I set aside the sense of feeling,

that has its functions nearer, more lively, and substantial, that so

often, by the effects of the pains it helps the body to, subverts and

overthrows all those fine Stoical resolutions, and compels him to cry

out of his belly, who has resolutely established this doctrine in his

soul--“That the colic, and all other pains and diseases, are indifferent

things, not having the power to abate any thing of the sovereign

felicity wherein the wise man is seated by his virtue.” There is no

heart so effeminate that the rattle and sound of our drums and trumpets

will not inflame with courage; nor so sullen that the harmony of our

music will not rouse and cheer; nor so stubborn a soul that will

not feel itself struck with some reverence in considering the gloomy

vastness of our churches, the variety of ornaments, and order of our

ceremonies; and in hearing the solemn music of our organs, and the grace

and devout harmony of our voices. Even those that come in with contempt

feel a certain shivering in their hearts, and something of dread that

makes them begin to doubt their opinions. For my part I do not think

myself strong enough to hear an ode of Horace or Catullus sung by a

beautiful young mouth without emotion; and Zeno had reason to say “that

the voice was the flower of beauty.” One would once make me believe that

a certain person, whom all we Frenchmen know, had imposed upon me in

repeating some verses that he had made; that they were not the same upon

paper that they were in the air; and that my eyes would make a contrary

judgment to my ears; so great a power has pronunciation to give fashion

and value to works that are left to the efficacy and modulation of the

voice. And therefore Philoxenus was not so much to blame, hearing

one giving an ill accent to some composition of his, in spurning and

breaking certain earthen vessels of his, saying, “I break what is thine,

because thou corruptest what is mine.” To what end did those men who

have, with a firm resolution, destroyed themselves, turn away their

faces that they might not see the blow that was by themselves appointed?

And that those who, for their health, desire and command incisions to

be made, and cauteries to be applied to them, cannot endure the sight of

the preparations, instruments, and operations of the surgeon, being that

the sight is not in any way to participate in the pain? Are not these

proper examples to verify the authority the senses have over the

imagination? ‘Tis to much purpose that we know these tresses were

borrowed from a page or a lackey; that this rouge came from Spain, and

this pearl-powder from the Ocean Sea. Our sight will, nevertheless,

compel us to confess their subject more agreeable and more lovely

against all reason; for in this there is nothing of its own:--

Auferinrar cultu; gemmis, auroque teguntur

Crimina; pars minima est ipsa puella sni.

Sæpe, ubi sit quod ames, inter tarn multa requiras:

Decipit hac oculos ægide dives Amor.

“By dress we’re won; gold, gems, and rich brocades

Make up the pageant that your heart invades;

In all that glittering figure which you see,

The far least part of her own self is she;

In vain for her you love amidst such cost

You search, the mistress in such dress is lost.”

What a strange power do the poets attribute to the senses, that make

Narcissus so desperately in love with his own shadow,

Cunctaque miratur, quibus est mirabilis ipse;

Se cupit imprudens, et, qui probat, ipse probatur;

Dumque petit, petitur; pariterque accendit, et ardet:

“Admireth all; for which to be admired;

And inconsiderately himself desir’d.

The praises which he gives his beauty claim’d,

Who seeks is sought, th’ inflamer is inflam’d:”

and Pygmalion’s judgment so troubled by the impression of the sight

of his ivory statue that he loves and adores it as if it were a living

woman!

Oscnla dat, reddique putat: sequi turque, tenetque,

Et credit tactis digitos insidere membris;

Et metuit, pressos veniat ne livor in artus.

“He kisses, and believes he’s kissed again;

Seizes, and ‘twixt his arms his love doth strain,

And thinks the polish’d ivory thus held

Doth to his fingers amorous pressure yield,

And has a timorous fear, lest black and blue

Should in the parts with ardour press’d ensue.”

Put a philosopher into a cage of small thin set bars of iron, hang him

on the top of the high tower of Notre Dame at Paris; he will see, by

manifest reason, that he cannot possibly fall, and yet he will find

(unless he has been used to the plumber’s trade) that he cannot help but

the sight of the excessive height will fright and astound him; for we

have enough to do to assure ourselves in the galleries of our steeples,

if they are made with open work, although they are of stone; and some

there are that cannot endure so much as to think of it. Let there be a

beam thrown over betwixt these two towers, of breadth sufficient to

walk upon, there is no philosophical wisdom so firm that can give us the

courage to walk over it as we should do upon the ground. I have often

tried this upon our mountains in these parts; and though I am one who am

not the most subject to be afraid, I was not able to endure to look into

that infinite depth without horror and trembling, though I stood above

my length from the edge of the precipice, and could not have fallen

unless I would. Where I also observed that, what height soever the

precipice was, provided there were some tree, or some jutting out of a

rock, a little to support and divide the sight, it a little eases our

fears, and gives greater assurance; as if they were things by which in

falling we might have some relief; but that direct precipices we are

not to look upon without being giddy; _Ut despici vine vertigine

timid ocvlorum animique non possit:_ “‘To that one cannot look without

dizziness;” which is a manifest imposture of the sight. And therefore

it was that that fine philosopher put out his own eyes, to free the soul

from being diverted by them, and that he might philosophize at greater

liberty; but, by the same rule, he should have dammed up his ears,

that Theophrastus says are the most dangerous instruments about us for

receiving violent impressions to alter and disturb us; and, finally,

should have deprived himself of all his other senses, that is to say, of

his life and being; for they have all the power to command our soul and

reason: _Fit etiam sope specie quâdam, sope vocum gravitate et cantibus,

ut pettantur animi vehementius; sope etiam cura et timoré,_ “For it

often falls out that the minds are more vehemently struck by some sight,

by the quality and sound of the voice, or by singing; and ofttimes also

by grief and fear.” Physicians hold that there are certain complexions

that are agitated by the same sounds and instruments even to fury. I

have seen some who could not hear a bone gnawed under the table without

impatience; and there is scarce any man who is not disturbed at the

sharp and shrill noise that the file makes in grating upon the iron;

as also to hear chewing near them, or to hear any one speak who has an

impediment in the throat or nose, will move some people even to anger

and hatred. Of what use was that piping prompter of Gracchus, who

softened, raised, and moved his master’s voice whilst he declaimed at

Rome, if the movements and quality of the sound had not the power to

move and alter the judgments of the auditory? In earnest, there is

wonderful reason to keep such a clutter about the firmness of this fine

piece, that suffers itself to be turned and twined by the motion and

accidents of so light a wind.

The same cheat that the senses put upon our understanding they have in

turn put upon them; the soul also some times has its revenge; they lie

and contend which should most deceive one another. What we see and hear

when we are transported with passion, we neither see nor hear as it

is:--

Et solem geminum, et duplices se ostendere Thebas.

“Thebes seems two cities, and the sun two suns.”

The object that we love appears to us more beautiful than it really is;

Multimodis igitur pravas turpesque videmus

Esse in deliciis, summoque in honore vigere;

“Hence ‘tis that ugly things in fancied dress

Seem gay, look fair to lovers’ eyes, and please;”

and that we hate more ugly; to a discontented and afflicted man the

light of the day seems dark and overcast. Our senses are not only

depraved, but very often stupefied by the passions of the soul; how many

things do we see that we do not take notice of, if the mind be occupied

with other thoughts?

In rebus quoque apertis noscere possis,

Si non advertas animum, proinde esse quasi omni

Tempore semotæ fuerint, longeque remotæ:

“Nay, even in plainest things, unless the mind

Take heed, unless she sets herself to find,

The thing no more is seen, no more belov’d,

Than if the most obscure and most remov’d:”

it would appear that the soul retires within, and amuses the powers of

the senses. And so both the inside and the outside of man is full of

infirmity and falsehood.

They who have compared our lives to a dream were, perhaps, more in the

right than they were aware of. When we dream, the soul lives, works, and

exercises all its faculties, neither more nor less than when awake;

but more largely and obscurely, yet not so much, neither, that the

difference should be as great as betwixt night and the meridian

brightness of the sun, but as betwixt night and shade; there she sleeps,

here she slumbers; but, whether more or less, ‘tis still dark, and

Cimmerian darkness. We wake sleeping, and sleep waking. I do not see so

clearly in my sleep; but as to my being awake, I never found it clear

enough and free from clouds; moreover, sleep, when it is profound,

sometimes rocks even dreams themselves asleep; but our waking is never

so sprightly that it rightly purges and dissipates those whimsies, which

are waking dreams, and worse than dreams. Our reason and soul receiving

those fancies and opinions that come in dreams, and authorizing the

actions of our dreams with the like approbation that they do those of

the day, wherefore do we not doubt whether our thought, our action, is

not another sort of dreaming, and our waking a certain kind of sleep?

If the senses be our first judges, it is not ours that we are alone to

consult; for, in this faculty, beasts have as great, or greater, than

we; it is certain that some of them have the sense of hearing more quick

than man; others that of seeing, others that of feeling, others that

of touch and taste. Democritus said, that the gods and brutes had the

sensitive faculties more perfect than man. But betwixt the effects of

their senses and ours the difference is extreme. Our spittle cleanses

and dries up our wounds; it kills the serpent:--

Tantaque in his rebas distantia differitasque est,

Ut quod aliis cibus est, aliis fuat acre venenum.

Sæpe etenim serpens, hominis contacta salivà,

Disperit, ac sese mandendo conficit ipsa:

“And in those things the difference is so great

That what’s one’s poison is another’s meat;

For serpents often have been seen, ‘tis said,

When touch’d with human spittle, to go mad,

And bite themselves to death:”

what quality shall we attribute to our spittle? as it affects ourselves,

or as it affects the serpent? By which of the two senses shall we prove

the true essence that we seek for?

Pliny says there are certain sea-hares in the Indies that are poison to

us, and we to them; insomuch that, with the least touch, we kill

them. Which shall be truly poison, the man or the fish? Which shall we

believe, the fish of the man, or the man of the fish? One quality of the

air infects a man, that does the ox no harm; some other infects the ox,

but hurts not the man. Which of the two shall, in truth and nature, be

the pestilent quality? To them who have the jaundice, all things seem

yellow and paler than to us:--

Lurida præterea fiunt, quæcunque tuentur Arquati.

“Besides, whatever jaundic’d eyes do view

Looks pale as well as those, and yellow too.”

They who are troubled with the disease that the physicians call

hyposphagma--which is a suffusion of blood under the skin--see all

things red and bloody. What do we know but that these humours, which

thus alter the operations of sight, predominate in beasts, and are usual

with them? for we see some whose eyes are yellow, like us who have the

jaundice; and others of a bloody colour; ‘tis likely that the colours

of objects seem other to them than to us. Which of the two shall make

a right judgment? for it is not said that the essence of things has a

relation to man only; hardness, whiteness, depth, and sharpness, have

reference to the service and knowledge of animals as well as to us, and

nature has equally designed them for their use. When we press down

the eye, the body that we look upon we perceive to be longer and more

extended;--many beasts have their eyes so pressed down; this length,

therefore, is perhaps the true form of that body, and not that which our

eyes give it in the usual state. If we close the lower part of the eye

things appear double to us:--

Bina lucemarum fiorentia lumina flammis...

Et duplices hominum faciès, et corpora bina.

“One lamp seems double, and the men appear

Each on two bodies double heads to bear.”

If our ears be hindered, or the passage stopped with any thing, we

receive the sound quite otherwise than we usually do; animals, likewise,

who have either the ears hairy, or but a very little hole instead of an

ear, do not, consequently, hear as we do, but receive another kind of

sound. We see at festivals and theatres that, opposing a painted glass

of a certain colour to the light of the flambeaux, all things in the

place appear to us green, yellow, or violet:--

Et vulgo faciunt id lutea russaque vela,

Et ferrugina, cum, magnis intenta theatris,

Per malos vulgata trabesque, trementia pendent;

Namque ibi consessum caveai subter, et omnem

Scenai speciem, patrum, matrumque, deorumque

Inficiunt, coguntque suo volitare colore:

“Thus when pale curtains, or the deeper red,

O’er all the spacious theatre are spread,

Which mighty masts and sturdy pillars bear,

And the loose curtains wanton in the air;

Whole streams of colours from the summit flow,

The rays divide them in their passage through,

And stain the scenes, and men, and gods below:”

‘tis likely that the eyes of animals, which we see to be of divers

colours, produce the appearance of bodies the same with their eyes.

We should, therefore, to make a right judgment of the oppositions of

the senses, be first agreed with beasts, and secondly amongst ourselves;

which we by no means are, but enter into dispute every time that one

hears, sees, or tastes something otherwise than another does, and

contests, as much as upon any other thing, about the diversity of the

images that the senses represent to us. A child, by the ordinary rule of

nature, hears, sees, and talks otherwise than a man of thirty years old;

and he than one of threescore. The senses are, in some, more obscure and

dusky, and more open and quick in others. We receive things variously,

according as we are, and according as they appear to us. Those rings

which are cut out in the form of feathers, which are called _endless

feathers_, no eye can discern their size, or can keep itself from the

deception that on one side they enlarge, and on the other contract, and

come So a point, even when the ring is being turned round the finger;

yet, when you feel them, they seem all of an equal size. Now, our

perception being so uncertain and so controverted, it is no more a

wonder if we are told that we may declare that snow appears white to us;

but that to affirm that it is in its own essence really so is more

than we are able to justify; and, this foundation being shaken, all

the knowledge in the world must of necessity fall to ruin. What! do

our senses themselves hinder one another? A picture seems raised and

embossed to the sight; in the handling it seems flat to the touch.

Shall we say that musk, which delights the smell, and is offensive to

the taste, is agreeable or no? There are herbs and unguents proper for

one part o£ the body, that are hurtful to another; honey is pleasant to

the taste, but offensive to the sight. They who, to assist their lust,

used in ancient times to make use of magnifying-glasses to represent the

members they were to employ bigger, by that ocular tumidity to please

themselves the more; to which of their senses did they give the

prize,--whether to the sight, that represented the members as large and

great as they would desire, or to the feeling, which represented them

little and contemptible? Are they our senses that supply the subject

with these different conditions, and have the subjects themselves,

nevertheless, but one? As we see in the bread we eat, it is nothing but

bread, but, by being eaten, it becomes bones, blood, flesh, hair; and

nails:--

Ut cibus in membra atque artus cum diditur omnes,

Disperit,, atque aliam naturam sufficit ex se;

“As meats, diffus’d through all the members, lose

Their former state, and different things compose;”

the humidity sucked up by the root of a tree becomes trunk, leaf, and

fruit; and the air, being but one, is modulated, in a trumpet, to a

thousand sorts of sounds; are they our senses, I would fain know, that,

in like manner, form these subjects into so many divers qualities, or

have they them really such in themselves? And upon this doubt what can

we determine of their true essence? Moreover, since the accidents of

disease, of raving, or sleep, make things appear otherwise to us than

they do to the healthful, the wise, and those that are awake, is it

not likely that our right posture of health and understanding, and our

natural humours, have, also, wherewith to give a being to things

that have a relation to their own condition, and accommodate them to

themselves, as well as when they are disordered;--that health is as

capable of giving them an aspect as sickness? Why has not the temperate

a certain form of objects relative to it, as well as the intemperate?

and why may it not as well stamp it with its own character as the other?

He whose mouth is out of taste, says the wine is flat; the healthful man

commends its flavour, and the thirsty its briskness. Now, our condition

always accommodating things to itself, and transforming them according

to its own posture, we cannot know what things truly are in themselves,

seeing that nothing comes to us but what is falsified and altered by the

senses. Where the compass, the square, and the rule, are crooked, all

propositions drawn thence, and all buildings erected by those guides,

must, of necessity, be also defective; the uncertainty of our senses

renders every thing uncertain that they produce:--

Denique ut in fabricâ, si prava est régula prima,

Normaque si fallax rectis regionibus exit,

Et libella aliquâ si ex parte claudicat hilum;

Omnia mendose fieri, atque obstipa necessum est,

Prava, cubantia, prona, supina, atque absona tecta;

Jam ruere ut quædam videantux’velle, ruantque

Prodita judiciis fallacibus omnia primis;

Sic igitur ratio tibi reram prava necesse est,

Falsaque sit, falsis quæcunque ab sensibus orta est.

“But lastly, as in building, if the line

Be not exact and straight, the rule decline,

Or level false, how vain is the design!

Uneven, an ill-shap’d and tottering wall

Must rise; this part must sink, that part must fall,

Because the rules were false that fashion’d all;

Thus reason’s rules are false if all commence

And rise from failing and from erring sense.”

As to what remains, who can be fit to judge of and to determine those

differences? As we say in controversies of religion that we must have

a judge neither inclining to the one side nor the other, free from all

choice and affection, which cannot be amongst Christians, just so it

falls out in this; for if he be old he cannot judge of the sense of

old age, being himself a party in the case; if young, there is the same

exception; if healthful, sick, asleep, or awake, he is still the

same incompetent judge. We must have some one exempt from all these

propositions, as of things indifferent to him; and by this rule we must

have a judge that never was.

To judge of the appearances that we receive of subjects, we ought t

have a deciding instrument; to verify this instrument we must have

demonstration; to verify this demonstration an instrument; and here

we are round again upon the wheel, and no further advanced. Seeing

the senses cannot determine our dispute, being full of uncertainty

themselves, it must then be reason that must do it; but no reason can be

erected upon any other foundation than that of another reason; and so we

run back to all infinity. Our fancy does not apply itself to things that

are strange, but is conceived by the mediation of the senses; and the

senses do not comprehend a foreign subject, but only their own passions;

by which means fancy and appearance are no part of the subject, but only

of the passion and sufferance of sense; which passion and subject are

different things; wherefore whoever judges by appearances judges by

another thing than the subject. And to say that the passions of

the senses convey to the soul the quality of foreign subjects by

resemblance, how can the soul and understanding be assured of this

resemblance, having of itself no commerce with foreign subjects? As they

who never knew Socrates cannot, when they see his picture, say it is

like him. Now, whoever would, notwithstanding, judge by appearances, if

it be by all, it is impossible, because they hinder one another by their

contrarieties and discrepancies, as we by experience see: shall some

select appearances govern the rest? you must verify this select by

another select, the second by a third, and thus there will never be

any end to it. Finally, there is no constant existence, neither of the

objects’ being nor our own; both we, and our judgments, and all mortal

things, are evermore incessantly running and rolling; and consequently

nothing certain can be established from the one to the other, both the

judging and the judged being in a continual motion and mutation.

We have no communication with being, by reason that all human nature is

always in the middle, betwixt being bom and dying, giving but an obscure

appearance and shadow, a weak and uncertain opinion of itself; and if,

perhaps, you fix your thought to apprehend your being, it would be but

like grasping water; for the more you clutch your hand to squeeze and

hold what is in its own nature flowing, so much more you lose of what

you would grasp and hold. So, seeing that all things are subject to

pass from one change to another, reason, that there looks for a real

substance, finds itself deceived, not being able to apprehend any thing

that is subsistent and permanent, because that every thing is either

entering into being, and is not yet arrived at it, or begins to die

before it is bom. Plato said, that bodies had never any existence, but

only birth; conceiving that Homer had made the Ocean and Thetis father

and mother of the gods, to show us that all things are in a perpetual

fluctuation, motion, and variation; the opinion of all the philosophers,

as he says, before his time, Parmenides only excepted, who would not

allow things to have motion, on the power whereof he sets a mighty

value. Pythagoras was of opinion that all matter was flowing and

unstable; the Stoics, that there is no time present, and that what we

call so is nothing but the juncture and meeting of the future and the

past; Heraclitus, that never any man entered twice into the same river;

Epichar-mus, that he who borrowed money but an hour ago does not owe

it now; and that he who was invited over-night to come the next day to

dinner comes nevertheless uninvited, considering that they are no more

the same men, but are become others; and that there could not a mortal

substance be found twice in the same condition; for, by the suddenness

and quickness of the change, it one while disperses, and another

reunites; it comes and goes after such a manner that what begins to be

born never arrives to the perfection of being, forasmuch as that birth

is never finished and never stays, as being at an end, but from the seed

is evermore changing and shifting one to another; as human seed is first

in the mother’s womb made a formless embryo, after delivered thence a

sucking infant, afterwards it becomes a boy, then a youth, then a man,

and at last a decrepit old man; so that age and subsequent generation is

always destroying and spoiling that which went before:--

Mutât enira mundi naturam totius ætas,

Ex alioque alius status excipere omnia debet;

Nec manet ulla sui similis res; omnia migrant,

Omnia commutât natura, et vertere cogit.

“For time the nature of the world translates,

And from preceding gives all things new states;

Nought like itself remains, but all do range,

And nature forces every thing to change.”

“And yet we foolishly fear one kind of death, whereas we have already

passed, and do daily pass, so many others; for not only, as Heraclitus

said, the death of fire is generation of air, and the death of air

generation of water; but, moreover, we may more manifestly discern it in

ourselves; manhood dies, and passes away when age comes on; and youth is

terminated in the flower of age of a full-grown man, infancy in youth,

and the first age dies in infancy; yesterday died in to-day, and to-day

will die in to-morrow; and there is nothing that remains in the same

state, or that is always the same thing. And that it is so let this be

the proof; if we are always one and the same, how comes it to pass that

we are now pleased with one thing, and by and by with another? How

comes it to pass that we love or hate contrary things, that we praise

or condemn them? How comes it to pass that we have different affections,

and no more retain the same sentiment in the same thought? For it is not

likely that without mutation we should assume other passions; and, that

which suffers mutation does not remain the same, and if it be not the

same it is not at all; but the same that the being is does, like it,

unknowingly change and alter; becoming evermore another from another

thing; and consequently the natural senses abuse and deceive themselves,

taking that which seems for that which is, for want of well knowing

what that which is, is. But what is it then that truly is? That which is

eternal; that is to say, that never had beginning, nor never shall have

ending, and to which time can bring no mutation. For time is a mobile

thine, and that appears as in a shadow, with a matter evermore flowing

and running, without ever remaining stable and permanent; and to which

belong those words, _before and after, has been, or shall be:_ which at

the first sight, evidently show that it is not a thing that is; for it

were a great folly, and a manifest falsity, to say that that is which is

not ÿet being, or that has already ceased to be. And as to these words,

_present, instant, and now_, by which it seems that we principally

support and found the intelligence of time, reason, discovering, does

presently destroy it; for it immediately divides and splits it into the

_future and past_, being of necessity to consider it divided in two. The

same happens to nature, that is measured, as to time that measures it;

for she has nothing more subsisting and permanent than the other, but

all things are either born, bearing, or dying. So that it were sinful to

say of God, who is he only who _is, that he was, or that he shall be _;

for those are terms of declension, transmutation, and vicissitude, of

what cannot continue or remain in being; wherefore we are to conclude

that God alone is, not according to any measure of time, but according

to an immutable and an immovable eternity, not measured by time, nor

subject to any declension; before whom nothing was, and after whom

nothing shall be, either more new or more recent, but a real being, that

with one sole now fills the for ever, and that there is nothing that

truly is but he alone; without our being able to say, _he has been, or

shall be_; without beginning, and without end.” To this so religious

conclusion of a pagan I shall only add this testimony of one of the same

condition, for the close of this long and tedious discourse, which would

furnish me with endless matter: “What a vile and abject thing,” says he,

“is man, if he do not raise himself above humanity!” ‘Tis a good word

and a profitable desire, but withal absurd; for to make the handle

bigger than the hand, the cubic longer than the arm, and to hope

to stride further than our legs can reach, is both impossible and

monstrous; or that man should rise above himself and humanity; for he

cannot see but with his eyes, nor seize but with his hold. He shall

be exalted, if God will lend him an extraordinary hand; he shall exalt

himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by

suffering himself to be raised and elevated by means purely celestial.

It belongs to our Christian faith, and not to the stoical virtue, to

pretend to that divine and miraculous metamorphosis.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

A little cheese when a mind to make a feast

A word ill taken obliterates ten years’ merit

Cato said: So many servants, so many enemies

Cherish themselves most where they are most wrong

Condemn all violence in the education of a tender soul

Cruelty is the very extreme of all vices

Disguise, by their abridgments and at their own choice

Epicurus

Flatterer in your old age or in your sickness

He felt a pleasure and delight in so noble an action

He judged other men by himself

I cannot well refuse to play with my dog

I do not much lament the dead, and should envy them rather

I had rather be old a brief time, than be old before old age

I owe it rather to my fortune than my reason

Incline the history to their own fancy

It (my books) may know many things that are gone from me

Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment

Learn the theory from those who best know the practice

Loved them for our sport, like monkeys, and not as men

Motive to some vicious occasion or some prospect of profit

My books: from me hold that which I have not retained

My dog unseasonably importunes me to play

My innocence is a simple one; little vigour and no art.

Never observed any great stability in my soul to resist passions

Nothing tempts my tears but tears

Omit, as incredible, such things as they do not understand

On all occasions to contradict and oppose

Only desire to become more wise, not more learned or eloquent

Passion of dandling and caressing infants scarcely born

Perfection: but I will not buy it so dear as it costs

Plato will have nobody marry before thirty

Prudent and just man may be intemperate and inconsistent

Puerile simplicities of our children

Shelter my own weakness under these great reputations

Socrates kept a confounded scolding wife

The authors, with whom I converse

There is no recompense becomes virtue

To do well where there was danger was the proper office

To whom no one is ill who can be good?

Turks have alms and hospitals for beasts

Vices will cling together, if a man have not a care

Virtue is much strengthened by combats

Virtue refuses facility for a companion

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazlitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 11.

XIII. Of judging of the death of another.

XIV. That the mind hinders itself.

XV. That our desires are augmented by difficulty.

XVI. Of glory.

XVII. Of presumption.

CHAPTER XIII

OF JUDGING OF THE DEATH OF ANOTHER

When we judge of another’s assurance in death, which, without doubt, is

the most remarkable action of human life, we are to take heed of one

thing, which is that men very hardly believe themselves to have arrived

to that period. Few men come to die in the opinion that it is their

latest hour; and there is nothing wherein the flattery of hope more

deludes us; It never ceases to whisper in our ears, “Others have been

much sicker without dying; your condition is not so desperate as ‘tis

thought; and, at the worst, God has done other miracles.” Which happens

by reason that we set too much value upon ourselves; it seems as if the

universality of things were in some measure to suffer by our dissolution,

and that it commiserates our condition, forasmuch as our disturbed sight

represents things to itself erroneously, and that we are of opinion they

stand in as much need of us as we do of them, like people at sea, to whom

mountains, fields, cities, heaven and earth are tossed at the same rate

as they are:

“Provehimur portu, terraeque urbesque recedunt:”

[“We sail out of port, and cities and lands recede.”

--AEneid, iii. 72.]

Whoever saw old age that did not applaud the past and condemn the present

time, laying the fault of his misery and discontent upon the world and

the manners of men?

“Jamque caput quassans, grandis suspirat arator.

Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert

Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis,

Et crepat antiquum genus ut pietate repletum.”

[“Now the old ploughman, shaking his head, sighs, and compares

present times with past, often praises his parents’ happiness, and

talks of the old race as full of piety.”--Lucretius, ii. 1165.]

We will make all things go along with us; whence it follows that we

consider our death as a very great thing, and that does not so easily

pass, nor without the solemn consultation of the stars:

“Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes dens,”

[“All the gods to agitation about one man.”

--Seneca, Suasor, i. 4.]

and so much the more think it as we more value ourselves. “What, shall

so much knowledge be lost, with so much damage to the world, without a

particular concern of the destinies? Does so rare and exemplary a soul

cost no more the killing than one that is common and of no use to the

public? This life, that protects so many others, upon which so many

other lives depend, that employs so vast a number of men in his service,

that fills so many places, shall it drop off like one that hangs but by

its own simple thread? None of us lays it enough to heart that he is

but one: thence proceeded those words of Caesar to his pilot, more tumid

than the sea that threatened him:

“Italiam si coelo auctore recusas,

Me pete: sola tibi causa est haec justa timoris,

Vectorem non nosce tuum; perrumpe procellas,

Tutela secure mea.”

[“If you decline to sail to Italy under the God’s protection, trust

to mine; the only just cause you have to fear is, that you do not

know your passenger; sail on, secure in my guardianship.”

--Lucan, V. 579.]

And these:

“Credit jam digna pericula Caesar

Fatis esse suis; tantusne evertere, dixit,

Me superis labor est, parva quern puppe sedentem,

Tam magno petiere mari;”

[“Caesar now deemed these dangers worthy of his destiny: ‘What!’

said he, ‘is it for the gods so great a task to overthrow me, that

they must be fain to assail me with great seas in a poor little

bark.’”--Lucan, v. 653.]

and that idle fancy of the public, that the sun bore on his face mourning

for his death a whole year:

“Ille etiam extincto miseratus Caesare Romam,

Cum caput obscura nitidum ferrugine texit:”

[“Caesar being dead, the sun in mourning clouds, pitying Rome,

clothed himself.”--Virgil, Georg., i. 466.]

and a thousand of the like, wherewith the world suffers itself to be so

easily imposed upon, believing that our interests affect the heavens, and

that their infinity is concerned at our ordinary actions:

“Non tanta caelo societas nobiscum est, ut nostro

fato mortalis sit ille quoque siderum fulgor.”

[“There is no such alliance betwixt us and heaven, that the

brightness of the stars should be made also mortal by our death.”

--Pliny, Nat. Hist., ii. 8.]

Now, to judge of constancy and resolution in a man who does not yet

believe himself to be certainly in danger, though he really is, is not

reason; and ‘tis not enough that he die in this posture, unless he

purposely put himself into it for this effect. It commonly falls out in

most men that they set a good face upon the matter and speak with great

indifference, to acquire reputation, which they hope afterwards, living,

to enjoy. Of all whom I have seen die, fortune has disposed their

countenances and no design of theirs; and even of those who in ancient

times have made away with themselves, there is much to be considered

whether it were a sudden or a lingering death. That cruel Roman Emperor

would say of his prisoners, that he would make them feel death, and if

any one killed himself in prison, “That fellow has made an escape from

me”; he would prolong death and make it felt by torments:

“Vidimus et toto quamvis in corpore caeso

Nil anima lethale datum, moremque nefandae,

Durum saevitix, pereuntis parcere morti.”

[“We have seen in tortured bodies, amongst the wounds, none that

have been mortal, inhuman mode of dire cruelty, that means to kill,

but will not let men die.”--Lucan, iv. i. 78.]

In plain truth, it is no such great matter for a man in health and in a

temperate state of mind to resolve to kill himself; it is very easy to

play the villain before one comes to the point, insomuch that

Heliogabalus, the most effeminate man in the world, amongst his lowest

sensualities, could forecast to make himself die delicately, when he

should be forced thereto; and that his death might not give the lie to

the rest of his life, had purposely built a sumptuous tower, the front

and base of which were covered with planks enriched with gold and

precious stones, thence to precipitate himself; and also caused cords

twisted with gold and crimson silk to be made, wherewith to strangle

himself; and a sword with the blade of gold to be hammered out to fall

upon; and kept poison in vessels of emerald and topaz wherewith to poison

himself according as he should like to choose one of these ways of dying:

“Impiger. . . ad letum et fortis virtute coacta.”

[“Resolute and brave in the face of death by a forced courage.

--“Lucan, iv. 798.]

Yet in respect of this person, the effeminacy of his preparations makes

it more likely that he would have thought better on’t, had he been put to

the test. But in those who with greater resolution have determined to

despatch themselves, we must examine whether it were with one blow which

took away the leisure of feeling the effect for it is to be questioned

whether, perceiving life, by little and little, to steal away the

sentiment of the body mixing itself with that of the soul, and the means

of repenting being offered, whether, I say, constancy and obstinacy in so

dangerous an intention would have been found.

In the civil wars of Caesar, Lucius Domitius, being taken in the Abruzzi,

and thereupon poisoning himself, afterwards repented. It has happened in

our time that a certain person, being resolved to die and not having gone

deep enough at the first thrust, the sensibility of the flesh opposing

his arm, gave himself two or three wounds more, but could never prevail

upon himself to thrust home. Whilst Plautius Silvanus was upon his

trial, Urgulania, his grandmother, sent him a poniard with which, not

being able to kill himself, he made his servants cut his veins. Albucilla

in Tiberius time having, to kill himself, struck with too much

tenderness, gave his adversaries opportunity to imprison and put him to

death their own way.’ And that great leader, Demosthenes, after his rout

in Sicily, did the same; and C. Fimbria, having struck himself too

weakly, entreated his servant to despatch him. On the contrary,

Ostorius, who could not make use of his own arm, disdained to employ that

of his servant to any other use but only to hold the poniard straight and

firm; and bringing his throat to it, thrust himself through. ‘Tis, in

truth, a morsel that is to be swallowed without chewing, unless a man be

thoroughly resolved; and yet Adrian the emperor made his physician mark

and encircle on his pap the mortal place wherein he was to stab to whom

he had given orders to kill him. For this reason it was that Caesar,

being asked what death he thought to be the most desired, made answer,

“The least premeditated and the shortest.”--[Tacitus, Annals, xvi. 15]--

If Caesar dared to say it, it is no cowardice in me to believe it.”

A short death,” says Pliny, “is the sovereign good hap of human life.

“People do not much care to recognise it. No one can say that he is

resolute for death who fears to deal with it and cannot undergo it with

his eyes open: they whom we see in criminal punishments run to their

death and hasten and press their execution, do it not out of resolution,

but because they will not give them selves leisure to consider it; it

does not trouble them to be dead, but to die:

“Emodi nolo, sed me esse mortem nihil astigmia:”

[“I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead.”

--Epicharmus, apud Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 8.]

‘tis a degree of constancy to which I have experimented, that I can

arrive, like those who plunge into dangers, as into the sea, with their

eyes shut.

There is nothing, in my opinion, more illustrious in the life of

Socrates, than that he had thirty whole days wherein to ruminate upon the

sentence of his death, to have digested it all that time with a most

assured hope, without care, and without alteration, and with a series of

words and actions rather careless and indifferent than any way stirred or

discomposed by the weight of such a thought.

That Pomponius Atticus, to whom Cicero writes so often, being sick,

caused Agrippa, his son-in-law, and two or three more of his friends, to

be called to him, and told them, that having found all means practised

upon him for his recovery to be in vain, and that all he did to prolong

his life also prolonged and augmented his pain, he was resolved to put an

end both to the one and the other, desiring them to approve of his

determination, or at least not to lose their labour in endeavouring to

dissuade him. Now, having chosen to destroy himself by abstinence, his

disease was thereby cured: the remedy that he had made use of to kill

himself restored him to health. His physicians and friends, rejoicing at

so happy an event, and coming to congratulate him, found themselves very

much deceived, it being impossible for them to make him alter his

purpose, he telling them, that as he must one day die, and was now so far

on his way, he would save himself the labour of beginning another time.

This man, having surveyed death at leisure, was not only not discouraged

at its approach, but eagerly sought it; for being content that he had

engaged in the combat, he made it a point of bravery to see the end; ‘tis

far beyond not fearing death to taste and relish it.

The story of the philosopher Cleanthes is very like this: he had his gums

swollen and rotten; his physicians advised him to great abstinence:

having fasted two days, he was so much better that they pronounced him

cured, and permitted him to return to his ordinary course of diet; he, on

the contrary, already tasting some sweetness in this faintness of his,

would not be persuaded to go back, but resolved to proceed, and to finish

what he had so far advanced.

Tullius Marcellinus, a young man of Rome, having a mind to anticipate the

hour of his destiny, to be rid of a disease that was more trouble to him

than he was willing to endure, though his physicians assured him of a

certain, though not sudden, cure, called a council of his friends to

deliberate about it; of whom some, says Seneca, gave him the counsel that

out of unmanliness they would have taken themselves; others, out of

flattery, such as they thought he would best like; but a Stoic said this

to him: “Do not concern thyself, Marcellinus, as if thou didst deliberate

of a thing of importance; ‘tis no great matter to live; thy servants and

beasts live; but it is a great thing to die handsomely, wisely, and

firmly. Do but think how long thou hast done the same things, eat,

drink, and sleep, drink, sleep, and eat: we incessantly wheel in the same

circle. Not only ill and insupportable accidents, but even the satiety

of living, inclines a man to desire to die.” Marcellinus did not stand

in need of a man to advise, but of a man to assist him; his servants were

afraid to meddle in the business, but this philosopher gave them to under

stand that domestics are suspected even when it is in doubt whether the

death of the master were voluntary or no; otherwise, that it would be of

as ill example to hinder him as to kill him, forasmuch as:

“Invitum qui servat, idem facit occidenti.”

[“He who makes a man live against his will, ‘tis as cruel

as to kill him.”--Horat., De Arte Poet., 467]

He then told Marcellinus that it would not be unbecoming, as what is left

on the tables when we have eaten is given to the attendants, so, life

being ended, to distribute something to those who have been our servants.

Now Marcellinus was of a free and liberal spirit; he, therefore, divided

a certain sum of money amongst his servants, and consoled them. As to

the rest, he had no need of steel nor of blood: he resolved to go out of

this life and not to run out of it; not to escape from death, but to

essay it. And to give himself leisure to deal with it, having forsaken

all manner of nourishment, the third day following, after having caused

himself to be sprinkled with warm water, he fainted by degrees, and not

without some kind of pleasure, as he himself declared.

In fact, such as have been acquainted with these faintings, proceeding

from weakness, say that they are therein sensible of no manner of pain,

but rather feel a kind of delight, as in the passage to sleep and best.

These are studied and digested deaths.

But to the end that Cato only may furnish out the whole example of

virtue, it seems as if his good with which the leisure to confront and

struggle with death, reinforcing his destiny had put his ill one into the

hand he gave himself the blow, seeing he had courage in the danger,

instead of letting it go less. And if I had had to represent him in his

supreme station, I should have done it in the posture of tearing out his

bloody bowels, rather than with his sword in his hand, as did the

statuaries of his time, for this second murder was much more furious than

the first.

CHAPTER XIV

THAT OUR MIND HINDERS ITSELF

‘Tis a pleasant imagination to fancy a mind exactly balanced betwixt two

equal desires: for, doubtless, it can never pitch upon either, forasmuch

as the choice and application would manifest an inequality of esteem;

and were we set betwixt the bottle and the ham, with an equal appetite to

drink and eat, there would doubtless be no remedy, but we must die of

thirst and hunger. To provide against this inconvenience, the Stoics,

when they are asked whence the election in the soul of two indifferent

things proceeds, and that makes us, out of a great number of crowns,

rather take one than another, they being all alike, and there being no

reason to incline us to such a preference, make answer, that this

movement of the soul is extraordinary and irregular, entering into us

by a foreign, accidental, and fortuitous impulse. It might rather,

methinks, he said, that nothing presents itself to us wherein there is

not some difference, how little soever; and that, either by the sight or

touch, there is always some choice that, though it be imperceptibly,

tempts and attracts us; so, whoever shall presuppose a packthread equally

strong throughout, it is utterly impossible it should break; for, where

will you have the breaking to begin? and that it should break altogether

is not in nature. Whoever, also, should hereunto join the geometrical

propositions that, by the certainty of their demonstrations, conclude the

contained to be greater than the containing, the centre to be as great as

its circumference, and that find out two lines incessantly approaching

each other, which yet can never meet, and the philosopher’s stone, and

the quadrature of the circle, where the reason and the effect are so

opposite, might, peradventure, find some argument to second this bold

saying of Pliny:

“Solum certum nihil esse certi,

et homine nihil miserius ant superbius.”

[“It is only certain that there is nothing certain, and that nothing

is more miserable or more proud than man.”--Nat. Hist., ii. 7.]

CHAPTER XV

THAT OUR DESIRES ARE AUGMENTED BY DIFFICULTY

There is no reason that has not its contrary, say the wisest of the

philosophers. I was just now ruminating on the excellent saying one of

the ancients alleges for the contempt of life: “No good can bring

pleasure, unless it be that for the loss of which we are beforehand

prepared.”

“In aequo est dolor amissae rei, et timor amittendae,”

[“The grief of losing a thing, and the fear of losing it,

are equal.”--Seneca, Ep., 98.]

meaning by this that the fruition of life cannot be truly pleasant to us

if we are in fear of losing it. It might, however, be said, on the

contrary, that we hug and embrace this good so much the more earnestly,

and with so much greater affection, by how much we see it the less

assured and fear to have it taken from us: for it is evident, as fire

burns with greater fury when cold comes to mix with it, that our will is

more obstinate by being opposed:

“Si nunquam Danaen habuisset ahenea turris,

Non esses, Danae, de Jove facta parens;”

[“If a brazen tower had not held Danae, you would not, Danae, have

been made a mother by Jove.”--Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 27.]

and that there is nothing naturally so contrary to our taste as satiety

which proceeds from facility; nor anything that so much whets it as

rarity and difficulty:

“Omnium rerum voluptas ipso, quo debet fugare, periculo crescit.”

[“The pleasure of all things increases by the same danger that

should deter it.”--Seneca, De Benef., vii. 9.]

“Galla, nega; satiatur amor, nisi gaudia torquent.”

[“Galla, refuse me; love is glutted with joys that are not attended

with trouble.”--Martial, iv. 37.]

To keep love in breath, Lycurgus made a decree that the married people of

Lacedaemon should never enjoy one another but by stealth; and that it

should be as great a shame to take them in bed together as committing

with others. The difficulty of assignations, the danger of surprise, the

shame of the morning,

“Et languor, et silentium,

Et latere petitus imo Spiritus:”

[“And languor, and silence, and sighs, coming from the innermost

heart.”--Hor., Epod., xi. 9.]

these are what give the piquancy to the sauce. How many very wantonly

pleasant sports spring from the most decent and modest language of the

works on love? Pleasure itself seeks to be heightened with pain; it is

much sweeter when it smarts and has the skin rippled. The courtesan

Flora said she never lay with Pompey but that she made him wear the

prints of her teeth.--[Plutarch, Life of Pompey, c. i.]

“Quod petiere, premunt arcte, faciuntque dolorem

Corporis, et dentes inlidunt saepe labellis . . .

Et stimuli subsunt, qui instigant laedere ad ipsum,

Quodcunque est, rabies unde illae germina surgunt.”

[“What they have sought they dress closely, and cause pain; on the

lips fix the teeth, and every kiss indents: urged by latent stimulus

the part to wound”--Lucretius, i. 4.]

And so it is in everything: difficulty gives all things their estimation;

the people of the march of Ancona more readily make their vows to St.

James, and those of Galicia to Our Lady of Loreto; they make wonderful

to-do at Liege about the baths of Lucca, and in Tuscany about those of

Aspa: there are few Romans seen in the fencing school of Rome, which is

full of French. That great Cato also, as much as us, nauseated his wife

whilst she was his, and longed for her when in the possession of another.

I was fain to turn out into the paddock an old horse, as he was not to be

governed when he smelt a mare: the facility presently sated him as

towards his own, but towards strange mares, and the first that passed by

the pale of his pasture, he would again fall to his importunate neighings

and his furious heats as before. Our appetite contemns and passes by

what it has in possession, to run after that it has not:

“Transvolat in medio posita, et fugientia captat.”

[“He slights her who is close at hand, and runs after her

who flees from him.”--Horace, Sat., i. 2, 108.]

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

“Nisi to servare puellam

Incipis, incipiet desinere esse mea:”

[“Unless you begin to guard your mistress, she will soon begin

to be no longer mine.”--Ovid, Amoy., ii. 19, 47.]

to give it wholly up to us is to beget in us contempt. Want and

abundance fall into the same inconvenience:

“Tibi quod superest, mihi quod desit, dolet.”

[“Your superfluities trouble you, and what I want

troubles me.--“Terence, Phoym., i. 3, 9.]

Desire and fruition equally afflict us. The rigors of mistresses are

troublesome, but facility, to say truth, still more so; forasmuch as

discontent and anger spring from the esteem we have of the thing desired,

heat and actuate love, but satiety begets disgust; ‘tis a blunt, dull,

stupid, tired, and slothful passion:

“Si qua volet regnare diu, contemnat amantem.”

[“She who would long retain her power must use her lover ill.”

--Ovid, Amor., ii. 19, 33]

“Contemnite, amantes:

Sic hodie veniet, si qua negavit heri.”

[“Slight your mistress; she will to-day come who denied you

yesterday.--“Propertius, ii. 14, 19.]

Why did Poppea invent the use of a mask to hide the beauties of her face,

but to enhance it to her lovers? Why have they veiled, even below the

heels, those beauties that every one desires to show, and that every one

desires to see? Why do they cover with so many hindrances, one over

another, the parts where our desires and their own have their principal

seat? And to what serve those great bastion farthingales, with which our

ladies fortify their haunches, but to allure our appetite and to draw us

on by removing them farther from us?

“Et fugit ad salices, et se cupit ante videri.”

[“She flies to the osiers, and desires beforehand to be seen going.”

--Virgil, Eclog., iii. 65.]

“Interdum tunica duxit operta moram.”

[“The hidden robe has sometimes checked love.”

--Propertius, ii. 15, 6.]

To what use serves the artifice of this virgin modesty, this grave

coldness, this severe countenance, this professing to be ignorant of

things that they know better than we who instruct them in them, but to

increase in us the desire to overcome, control, and trample underfoot at

pleasure all this ceremony and all these obstacles? For there is not

only pleasure, but, moreover, glory, in conquering and debauching that

soft sweetness and that childish modesty, and to reduce a cold and

matronlike gravity to the mercy of our ardent desires: ‘tis a glory,

say they, to triumph over modesty, chastity, and temperance; and whoever

dissuades ladies from those qualities, betrays both them and himself.

We are to believe that their hearts tremble with affright, that the very

sound of our words offends the purity of their ears, that they hate us

for talking so, and only yield to our importunity by a compulsive force.

Beauty, all powerful as it is, has not wherewithal to make itself

relished without the mediation of these little arts. Look into Italy,

where there is the most and the finest beauty to be sold, how it is

necessitated to have recourse to extrinsic means and other artifices to

render itself charming, and yet, in truth, whatever it may do, being

venal and public, it remains feeble and languishing. Even so in virtue

itself, of two like effects, we notwithstanding look upon that as the

fairest and most worthy, wherein the most trouble and hazard are set

before us.

‘Tis an effect of the divine Providence to suffer the holy Church to be

afflicted, as we see it, with so many storms and troubles, by this

opposition to rouse pious souls, and to awaken them from that drowsy

lethargy wherein, by so long tranquillity, they had been immerged.

If we should lay the loss we have sustained in the number of those who

have gone astray, in the balance against the benefit we have had by being

again put in breath, and by having our zeal and strength revived by

reason of this opposition, I know not whether the utility would not

surmount the damage.

We have thought to tie the nuptial knot of our marriages more fast and

firm by having taken away all means of dissolving it, but the knot of the

will and affection is so much the more slackened and made loose, by how

much that of constraint is drawn closer; and, on the contrary, that which

kept the marriages at Rome so long in honour and inviolate, was the

liberty every one who so desired had to break them; they kept their wives

the better, because they might part with them, if they would; and, in the

full liberty of divorce, five hundred years and more passed away before

any one made use on’t.

“Quod licet, ingratum est; quod non licet, acrius urit.”

[“What you may, is displeasing; what is forbidden, whets the

appetite.--“Ovid, Amor., ii. 19.]

We might here introduce the opinion of an ancient upon this occasion,

“that executions rather whet than dull the edge of vices: that they do

not beget the care of doing well, that being the work of reason and

discipline, but only a care not to be taken in doing ill:”

“Latius excisae pestis contagia serpunt.”

[“The plague-sore being lanced, the infection spreads all the more.”

--Rutilius, Itinerar. 1, 397.]

I do not know that this is true; but I experimentally know, that never

civil government was by that means reformed; the order and regimen of

manners depend upon some other expedient.

The Greek histories make mention of the Argippians, neighbours to

Scythia, who live without either rod or stick for offence; where not only

no one attempts to attack them, but whoever can fly thither is safe, by

reason of their virtue and sanctity of life, and no one is so bold as to

lay hands upon them; and they have applications made to them to determine

the controversies that arise betwixt men of other countries. There is a

certain nation, where the enclosures of gardens and fields they would

preserve, are made only of a string of cotton; and, so fenced, is more

firm and secure than by our hedges and ditches.

“Furem signata sollicitant . . .

aperta effractarius praeterit.”

[“Things sealed, up invite a thief: the housebreaker

passes by open doors.”--Seneca, Epist., 68.]