A generous heart ought not to belie its own thoughts

A man may play the fool in everything else, but not in poetry

Against my trifles you could say no more than I myself have said

Agitated betwixt hope and fear

All defence shows a face of war

Almanacs

An advantage in judgment we yield to none

Any old government better than change and alteration

Anything becomes foul when commended by the multitude

Appetite runs after that it has not

Armed parties (the true school of treason, inhumanity, robbery)

Authority to be dissected by the vain fancies of men

Authority which a graceful presence and a majestic mien beget

Be on which side you will, you have as fair a game to play

Beauty of stature is the only beauty of men

Believing Heaven concerned at our ordinary actions

Better at speaking than writing. Motion and action animate word

Caesar’s choice of death: “the shortest”

Ceremony forbids us to express by words things that are lawful

Content: more easily found in want than in abundance

Curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge

Defence allures attempt, and defiance provokes an enemy

Desire of riches is more sharpened by their use than by the need

Difficulty gives all things their estimation

Doubt whether those (old writings) we have be not the worst

Doubtful ills plague us worst

Endeavouring to be brief, I become obscure

Engaged in the avenues of old age, being already past forty

Every government has a god at the head of it

Executions rather whet than dull the edge of vices

Fear of the fall more fevers me than the fall itself

Folly to hazard that upon the uncertainty of augmenting it.

For who ever thought he wanted sense?

Fortune rules in all things

Gentleman would play the fool to make a show of defence

Happen to do anything commendable, I attribute it to fortune

Having too good an opinion of our own worth

He should discern in himself, as well as in others

He who is only a good man that men may know it

How many worthy men have we known to survive their reputation

Humble out of pride

I am very glad to find the way beaten before me by others

I find myself here fettered by the laws of ceremony

I have no mind to die, but I have no objection to be dead

I have not a wit supple enough to evade a sudden question

I have nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment

I would be rich of myself, and not by borrowing

Ill luck is good for something

Imitating other men’s natures, thou layest aside thy own

Immoderate either seeking or evading glory or reputation

Impunity pass with us for justice

It is not for outward show that the soul is to play its part

Knowledge of others, wherein the honour consists

Lessen the just value of things that I possess

License of judgments is a great disturbance to great affairs

Lose what I have a particular care to lock safe up

Loses more by defending his vineyard than if he gave it up.

More brave men been lost in occasions of little moment

More solicitous that men speak of us, than how they speak

My affection alters, my judgment does not

No way found to tranquillity that is good in common

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself

Not conceiving things otherwise than by this outward bark

Not for any profit, but for the honour of honesty itself

Nothing is more confident than a bad poet

Nothing that so poisons as flattery

Obedience is never pure nor calm in him who reasons and disputes

Occasions of the least lustre are ever the most dangerous

Of the fleeting years each steals something from me

Office of magnanimity openly and professedly to love and hate

Old age: applaud the past and condemn the present

One may be humble out of pride

Our will is more obstinate by being opposed

Overvalue things, because they are foreign, absent

Philopoemen: paying the penalty of my ugliness.

Pleasing all: a mark that can never be aimed at or hit

Poets

Possession begets a contempt of what it holds and rules

Prolong his life also prolonged and augmented his pain

Regret so honourable a post, where necessity must make them bold

Sense: no one who is not contented with his share

Setting too great a value upon ourselves

Setting too little a value upon others

She who only refuses, because ‘tis forbidden, consents

Short of the foremost, but before the last

Souls that are regular and strong of themselves are rare

Suicide: a morsel that is to be swallowed without chewing

Take all things at the worst, and to resolve to bear that worst

The age we live in produces but very indifferent things

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it

The satiety of living, inclines a man to desire to die

There is no reason that has not its contrary

They do not see my heart, they see but my countenance

Those who can please and hug themselves in what they do

Tis far beyond not fearing death to taste and relish it

To forbid us anything is to make us have a mind to’t

Voice and determination of the rabble, the mother of ignorance

Vulgar reports and opinions that drive us on

We believe we do not believe

We consider our death as a very great thing

We have not the thousandth part of ancient writings

We have taught the ladies to blush

We set too much value upon ourselves

Were more ambitious of a great reputation than of a good one

What a man says should be what he thinks

What he did by nature and accident, he cannot do by design

What is more accidental than reputation?

What, shall so much knowledge be lost

Wiser who only know what is needful for them to know

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazlitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 12.

XVIII. Of giving the lie.

XIX. Of liberty of conscience.

XX. That we taste nothing pure.

XXI. Against idleness.

XXII. Of Posting.

XXIII. Of ill means employed to a good end.

XXIV. Of the Roman grandeur.

XXV. Not to counterfeit being sick.

XXVI. Of thumbs.

XXVII. Cowardice the mother of cruelty.

XXVIII. All things have their season.

XXIX. Of virtue.

XXX. Of a monstrous child.

XXXI. Of anger.

CHAPTER XVIII

OF GIVING THE LIE

Well, but some one will say to me, this design of making a man’s self the

subject of his writing, were indeed excusable in rare and famous men, who

by their reputation had given others a curiosity to be fully informed of

them. It is most true, I confess and know very well, that a mechanic

will scarce lift his eyes from his work to look at an ordinary man,

whereas a man will forsake his business and his shop to stare at an

eminent person when he comes into a town. It misbecomes any other to

give his own character, but him who has qualities worthy of imitation,

and whose life and opinions may serve for example: Caesar and Xenophon

had a just and solid foundation whereon to found their narrations, the

greatness of their own performances; and were to be wished that we had

the journals of Alexander the Great, the commentaries that Augustus,

Cato, Sylla, Brutus, and others left of their actions; of such persons

men love and contemplate the very statues even in copper and marble.

This remonstrance is very true; but it very little concerns me:

“Non recito cuiquam, nisi amicis, idque coactus;

Non ubivis, coramve quibuslibet, in medio qui

Scripta foro recitant, sunt multi, quique lavantes.”

[“I repeat my poems only to my friends, and when bound to do so;

not before every one and everywhere; there are plenty of reciters

in the open market-place and at the baths.”--Horace, sat. i. 4, 73.]

I do not here form a statue to erect in the great square of a city, in a

church, or any public place:

“Non equidem hoc studeo, bullatis ut mihi nugis,

Pagina turgescat......

Secreti loquimur:”

[“I study not to make my pages swell with empty trifles;

you and I are talking in private.”--Persius, Sat., v. 19.]

‘tis for some corner of a library, or to entertain a neighbour,

a kinsman, a friend, who has a mind to renew his acquaintance and

familiarity with me in this image of myself. Others have been encouraged

to speak of themselves, because they found the subject worthy and rich;

I, on the contrary, am the bolder, by reason the subject is so poor and

sterile that I cannot be suspected of ostentation. I judge freely of the

actions of others; I give little of my own to judge of, because they are

nothing: I do not find so much good in myself, that I cannot tell it

without blushing.

What contentment would it not be to me to hear any one thus relate to me

the manners, faces, countenances, the ordinary words and fortunes of my

ancestors? how attentively should I listen to it! In earnest, it would

be evil nature to despise so much as the pictures of our friends and

predecessors, the fashion of their clothes and arms. I preserve their

writing, seal, and a particular sword they wore, and have not thrown the

long staves my father used to carry in his hand, out of my closet.

“Paterna vestis, et annulus, tanto charior est

posteris, quanto erga parentes major affectus.”

[“A father’s garment and ring is by so much dearer to his posterity,

as there is the greater affection towards parents.”

--St. Aug., De Civat. Dei, i. 13.]

If my posterity, nevertheless, shall be of another mind, I shall be

avenged on them; for they cannot care less for me than I shall then do

for them. All the traffic that I have in this with the public is, that I

borrow their utensils of writing, which are more easy and most at hand;

and in recompense shall, peradventure, keep a pound of butter in the

market from melting in the sun:--[Montaigne semi-seriously speculates on

the possibility of his MS. being used to wrap up butter.]

“Ne toga cordyllis, ne penula desit olivis;

Et laxas scombris saepe dabo tunicas;”

[“Let not wrappers be wanting to tunny-fish, nor olives;

and I shall supply loose coverings to mackerel.”

--Martial, xiii. I, I.]

And though nobody should read me, have I wasted time in entertaining

myself so many idle hours in so pleasing and useful thoughts? In

moulding this figure upon myself, I have been so often constrained to

temper and compose myself in a right posture, that the copy is truly

taken, and has in some sort formed itself; painting myself for others,

I represent myself in a better colouring than my own natural complexion.

I have no more made my book than my book has made me: ‘tis a book

consubstantial with the author, of a peculiar design, a parcel of my

life, and whose business is not designed for others, as that of all other

books is. In giving myself so continual and so exact an account of

myself, have I lost my time? For they who sometimes cursorily survey

themselves only, do not so strictly examine themselves, nor penetrate so

deep, as he who makes it his business, his study, and his employment, who

intends a lasting record, with all his fidelity, and with all his force:

The most delicious pleasures digested within, avoid leaving any trace of

themselves, and avoid the sight not only of the people, but of any other

person. How often has this work diverted me from troublesome thoughts?

and all that are frivolous should be reputed so. Nature has presented us

with a large faculty of entertaining ourselves alone; and often calls us

to it, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but chiefly

and mostly to ourselves. That I may habituate my fancy even to meditate

in some method and to some end, and to keep it from losing itself and

roving at random, ‘tis but to give to body and to record all the little

thoughts that present themselves to it. I give ear to my whimsies,

because I am to record them. It often falls out, that being displeased

at some action that civility and reason will not permit me openly to

reprove, I here disgorge myself, not without design of public

instruction: and also these poetical lashes,

“Zon zur l’oeil, ion sur le groin,

Zon zur le dos du Sagoin,”

[“A slap on his eye, a slap on his snout, a slap on Sagoin’s

back.”--Marot. Fripelippes, Valet de Marot a Sagoin.]

imprint themselves better upon paper than upon the flesh. What if I

listen to books a little more attentively than ordinary, since I watch if

I can purloin anything that may adorn or support my own? I have not at

all studied to make a book; but I have in some sort studied because I had

made it; if it be studying to scratch and pinch now one author, and then

another, either by the head or foot, not with any design to form opinions

from them, but to assist, second, and fortify those I already have

embraced. But whom shall we believe in the report he makes of himself in

so corrupt an age? considering there are so few, if, any at all, whom we

can believe when speaking of others, where there is less interest to lie.

The first thing done in the corruption of manners is banishing truth;

for, as Pindar says, to be true is the beginning of a great virtue, and

the first article that Plato requires in the governor of his Republic.

The truth of these days is not that which really is, but what every man

persuades another man to believe; as we generally give the name of money

not only to pieces of the dust alloy, but even to the false also, if they

will pass. Our nation has long been reproached with this vice; for

Salvianus of Marseilles, who lived in the time of the Emperor

Valentinian, says that lying and forswearing themselves is with the

French not a vice, but a way of speaking. He who would enhance this

testimony, might say that it is now a virtue in them; men form and

fashion themselves to it as to an exercise of honour; for dissimulation

is one of the most notable qualities of this age.

I have often considered whence this custom that we so religiously observe

should spring, of being more highly offended with the reproach of a vice

so familiar to us than with any other, and that it should be the highest

insult that can in words be done us to reproach us with a lie. Upon

examination, I find that it is natural most to defend the defects with

which we are most tainted. It seems as if by resenting and being moved

at the accusation, we in some sort acquit ourselves of the fault; though

we have it in effect, we condemn it in outward appearance. May it not

also be that this reproach seems to imply cowardice and feebleness of

heart? of which can there be a more manifest sign than to eat a man’s own

words--nay, to lie against a man’s own knowledge? Lying is a base vice;

a vice that one of the ancients portrays in the most odious colours when

he says, “that it is to manifest a contempt of God, and withal a fear of

men.” It is not possible more fully to represent the horror, baseness,

and irregularity of it; for what can a man imagine more hateful and

contemptible than to be a coward towards men, and valiant against his

Maker? Our intelligence being by no other way communicable to one

another but by a particular word, he who falsifies that betrays public

society. ‘Tis the only way by which we communicate our thoughts and

wills; ‘tis the interpreter of the soul, and if it deceive us, we no

longer know nor have further tie upon one another; if that deceive us, it

breaks all our correspondence, and dissolves all the ties of government.

Certain nations of the newly discovered Indies (I need not give them

names, seeing they are no more; for, by wonderful and unheardof example,

the desolation of that conquest has extended to the utter abolition of

names and the ancient knowledge of places) offered to their gods human

blood, but only such as was drawn from the tongue and ears, to expiate

for the sin of lying, as well heard as pronounced. That good fellow of

Greece--[Plutarch, Life of Lysander, c. 4.]--said that children are

amused with toys and men with words.

As to our diverse usages of giving the lie, and the laws of honour in

that case, and the alteration they have received, I defer saying what I

know of them to another time, and shall learn, if I can, in the

meanwhile, at what time the custom took beginning of so exactly weighing

and measuring words, and of making our honour interested in them; for it

is easy to judge that it was not anciently amongst the Romans and Greeks.

And it has often seemed to me strange to see them rail at and give one

another the lie without any quarrel. Their laws of duty steered some

other course than ours. Caesar is sometimes called thief, and sometimes

drunkard, to his teeth. We see the liberty of invective they practised

upon one another, I mean the greatest chiefs of war of both nations,

where words are only revenged with words, and do not proceed any farther.

CHAPTER XIX

OF LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE

‘Tis usual to see good intentions, if carried on without moderation, push

men on to very vicious effects. In this dispute which has at this time

engaged France in a civil war, the better and the soundest cause no doubt

is that which maintains the ancient religion and government of the

kingdom. Nevertheless, amongst the good men of that party (for I do not

speak of those who only make a pretence of it, either to execute their

own particular revenges or to gratify their avarice, or to conciliate the

favour of princes, but of those who engage in the quarrel out of true

zeal to religion and a holy desire to maintain the peace and government

of their country), of these, I say, we see many whom passion transports

beyond the bounds of reason, and sometimes inspires with counsels that

are unjust and violent, and, moreover, rash.

It is certain that in those first times, when our religion began to gain

authority with the laws, zeal armed many against all sorts of pagan

books, by which the learned suffered an exceeding great loss, a disorder

that I conceive to have done more prejudice to letters than all the

flames of the barbarians. Of this Cornelius Tacitus is a very good

testimony; for though the Emperor Tacitus, his kinsman, had, by express

order, furnished all the libraries in the world with it, nevertheless one

entire copy could not escape the curious examination of those who desired

to abolish it for only five or six idle clauses that were contrary to our

belief.

They had also the trick easily to lend undue praises to all the emperors

who made for us, and universally to condemn all the actions of those who

were adversaries, as is evidently manifest in the Emperor Julian,

surnamed the Apostate,

[The character of the Emperor Julian was censured, when Montaigne

was at Rome in 1581, by the Master of the Sacred Palace, who,

however, as Montaigne tells us in his journal (ii. 35), referred it

to his conscience to alter what he should think in bad taste. This

Montaigne did not do, and this chapter supplied Voltaire with the

greater part of the praises he bestowed upon the Emperor.--Leclerc.]

who was, in truth, a very great and rare man, a man in whose soul

philosophy was imprinted in the best characters, by which he professed to

govern all his actions; and, in truth, there is no sort of virtue of

which he has not left behind him very notable examples: in chastity (of

which the whole of his life gave manifest proof) we read the same of him

that was said of Alexander and Scipio, that being in the flower of his

age, for he was slain by the Parthians at one-and-thirty, of a great many

very beautiful captives, he would not so much as look upon one. As to

his justice, he took himself the pains to hear the parties, and although

he would out of curiosity inquire what religion they were of,

nevertheless, the antipathy he had to ours never gave any counterpoise to

the balance. He made himself several good laws, and repealed a great

part of the subsidies and taxes levied by his predecessors.

We have two good historians who were eyewitnesses of his actions: one of

whom, Marcellinus, in several places of his history sharply reproves an

edict of his whereby he interdicted all Christian rhetoricians and

grammarians to keep school or to teach, and says he could wish that act

of his had been buried in silence: it is probable that had he done any

more severe thing against us, he, so affectionate as he was to our party,

would not have passed it over in silence. He was indeed sharp against

us, but yet no cruel enemy; for our own people tell this story of him,

that one day, walking about the city of Chalcedon, Maris, bishop of the

place; was so bold as to tell him that he was impious, and an enemy to

Christ, at which, they say, he was no further moved than to reply,

“Go, poor wretch, and lament the loss of thy eyes,” to which the bishop

replied again, “I thank Jesus Christ for taking away my sight, that I may

not see thy impudent visage,” affecting in that, they say, a

philosophical patience. But this action of his bears no comparison to

the cruelty that he is said to have exercised against us. “He was,” says

Eutropius, my other witness, “an enemy to Christianity, but without

putting his hand to blood.” And, to return to his justice, there is

nothing in that whereof he can be accused, the severity excepted he

practised in the beginning of his reign against those who had followed

the party of Constantius, his predecessor. As to his sobriety, he lived

always a soldier-like life; and observed a diet and routine, like one

that prepared and inured himself to the austerities of war. His

vigilance was such, that he divided the night into three or four parts,

of which the least was dedicated to sleep; the rest was spent either in

visiting the state of his army and guards in person, or in study; for

amongst other rare qualities, he was very excellent in all sorts of

learning. ‘Tis said of Alexander the Great, that being in bed, for fear

lest sleep should divert him from his thoughts and studies, he had always

a basin set by his bedside, and held one of his hands out with a ball of

copper in it, to the end, that, beginning to fall asleep, and his fingers

leaving their hold, the ball by falling into the basin, might awake him.

But the other had his soul so bent upon what he had a mind to do, and so

little disturbed with fumes by reason of his singular abstinence, that he

had no need of any such invention. As to his military experience, he was

excellent in all the qualities of a great captain, as it was likely he

should, being almost all his life in a continual exercise of war, and

most of that time with us in France, against the Germans and Franks: we

hardly read of any man who ever saw more dangers, or who made more

frequent proofs of his personal valour.

His death has something in it parallel with that of Epaminondas, for he

was wounded with an arrow, and tried to pull it out, and had done so, but

that, being edged, it cut and disabled his hand. He incessantly called

out that they should carry him again into the heat of the battle, to

encourage his soldiers, who very bravely disputed the fight without him,

till night parted the armies. He stood obliged to his philosophy for the

singular contempt he had for his life and all human things. He had a

firm belief of the immortality of souls.

In matter of religion he was wrong throughout, and was surnamed the

Apostate for having relinquished ours: nevertheless, the opinion seems to

me more probable, that he had never thoroughly embraced it, but had

dissembled out of obedience to the laws, till he came to the empire.

He was in his own so superstitious, that he was laughed at for it by

those of his own time, of the same opinion, who jeeringly said, that had

he got the victory over the Parthians, he had destroyed the breed of oxen

in the world to supply his sacrifices. He was, moreover, besotted with

the art of divination, and gave authority to all sorts of predictions.

He said, amongst other things at his death, that he was obliged to the

gods, and thanked them, in that they would not cut him off by surprise,

having long before advertised him of the place and hour of his death, nor

by a mean and unmanly death, more becoming lazy and delicate people; nor

by a death that was languishing, long, and painful; and that they had

thought him worthy to die after that noble manner, in the progress of his

victories, in the flower of his glory. He had a vision like that of

Marcus Brutus, that first threatened him in Gaul, and afterward appeared

to him in Persia just before his death. These words that some make him

say when he felt himself wounded: “Thou hast overcome, Nazarene”; or as

others, “Content thyself, Nazarene”; would hardly have been omitted, had

they been believed, by my witnesses, who, being present in the army, have

set down to the least motions and words of his end; no more than certain

other miracles that are reported about it.

And to return to my subject, he long nourished, says Marcellinus,

paganism in his heart; but all his army being Christians, he durst not

own it. But in the end, seeing himself strong enough to dare to discover

himself, he caused the temples of the gods to be thrown open, and did his

uttermost to set on foot and to encourage idolatry. Which the better to

effect, having at Constantinople found the people disunited, and also the

prelates of the church divided amongst themselves, having convened them

all before him, he earnestly admonished them to calm those civil

dissensions, and that every one might freely, and without fear, follow

his own religion. Which he the more sedulously solicited, in hope that

this licence would augment the schisms and factions of their division,

and hinder the people from reuniting, and consequently fortifying

themselves against him by their unanimous intelligence and concord;

having experienced by the cruelty of some Christians, that there is no

beast in the world so much to be feared by man as man; these are very

nearly his words.

Wherein this is very worthy of consideration, that the Emperor Julian

made use of the same receipt of liberty of conscience to inflame the

civil dissensions that our kings do to extinguish them. So that a man

may say on one side, that to give the people the reins to entertain every

man his own opinion, is to scatter and sow division, and, as it were, to

lend a hand to augment it, there being no legal impediment or restraint

to stop or hinder their career; but, on the other side, a man may also

say, that to give the people the reins to entertain every man his own

opinion, is to mollify and appease them by facility and toleration, and

to dull the point which is whetted and made sharper by singularity,

novelty, and difficulty: and I think it is better for the honour of the

devotion of our kings, that not having been able to do what they would,

they have made a show of being willing to do what they could.

CHAPTER XX

THAT WE TASTE NOTHING PURE

The feebleness of our condition is such that things cannot, in their

natural simplicity and purity, fall into our use; the elements that we

enjoy are changed, and so ‘tis with metals; and gold must be debased with

some other matter to fit it for our service. Neither has virtue, so

simple as that which Aristo, Pyrrho, and also the Stoics, made the end of

life; nor the Cyrenaic and Aristippic pleasure, been without mixture

useful to it. Of the pleasure and goods that we enjoy, there is not one

exempt from some mixture of ill and inconvenience:

“Medio de fonte leporum,

Surgit amari aliquid, quod in ipsis fioribus angat.”

[“From the very fountain of our pleasure, something rises that is

bitter, which even in flowers destroys.”--Lucretius, iv. 1130.]

Our extremest pleasure has some sort of groaning and complaining in it;

would you not say that it is dying of pain? Nay, when we frame the image

of it in its full excellence, we stuff it with sickly and painful

epithets and qualities, languor, softness, feebleness, faintness,

‘morbidezza’: a great testimony of their consanguinity and

consubstantiality. The most profound joy has more of severity than

gaiety, in it. The highest and fullest contentment offers more of the

grave than of the merry:

“Ipsa felicitas, se nisi temperat, premit.”

[“Even felicity, unless it moderate itself, oppresses?”

--Seneca, Ep. 74.]

Pleasure chews and grinds us; according to the old Greek verse, which

says that the gods sell us all the goods they give us; that is to say,

that they give us nothing pure and perfect, and that we do not purchase

but at the price of some evil.

Labour and pleasure, very unlike in nature, associate, nevertheless,

by I know not what natural conjunction. Socrates says, that some god

tried to mix in one mass and to confound pain and pleasure, but not being

able to do it; he bethought him at least to couple them by the tail.

Metrodorus said, that in sorrow there is some mixture of pleasure. I

know not whether or no he intended anything else by that saying; but for

my part, I am of opinion that there is design, consent, and complacency

in giving a man’s self up to melancholy. I say, that besides ambition,

which may also have a stroke in the business, there is some shadow of

delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very

lap of melancholy. Are there not some constitutions that feed upon it?

“Est quaedam flere voluptas;”

[“‘Tis a certain kind of pleasure to weep.”

--Ovid, Trist., iv. 3, 27.]

and one Attalus in Seneca says, that the memory of our lost friends is as

grateful to us, as bitterness in wine, when too old, is to the palate:

“Minister vetuli, puer, Falerni

Inger’ mi calices amariores”--

[“Boy, when you pour out old Falernian wine, the bitterest put

into my bowl.”--Catullus, xxvii. I.]

and as apples that have a sweet tartness.

Nature discovers this confusion to us; painters hold that the same

motions and grimaces of the face that serve for weeping; serve for

laughter too; and indeed, before the one or the other be finished, do but

observe the painter’s manner of handling, and you will be in doubt to

which of the two the design tends; and the extreme of laughter does at

last bring tears:

“Nullum sine auctoramento malum est.”

[“No evil is without its compensation.”--Seneca, Ep., 69.]

When I imagine man abounding with all the conveniences that are to be

desired (let us put the case that all his members were always seized with

a pleasure like that of generation, in its most excessive height) I feel

him melting under the weight of his delight, and see him utterly unable

to support so pure, so continual, and so universal a pleasure. Indeed,

he is running away whilst he is there, and naturally makes haste to

escape, as from a place where he cannot stand firm, and where he is

afraid of sinking.

When I religiously confess myself to myself, I find that the best virtue

I have has in it some tincture of vice; and I am afraid that Plato, in

his purest virtue (I, who am as sincere and loyal a lover of virtue of

that stamp as any other whatever), if he had listened and laid his ear

close to himself and he did so no doubt--would have heard some jarring

note of human mixture, but faint and only perceptible to himself. Man is

wholly and throughout but patch and motley. Even the laws of justice

themselves cannot subsist without mixture of injustice; insomuch that

Plato says, they undertake to cut off the hydra’s head, who pretend to

clear the law of all inconveniences:

“Omne magnum exemplum habet aliquid ex iniquo,

quod contra singulos utilitate publics rependitur,”

[“Every great example has in it some mixture of injustice, which

recompenses the wrong done to particular men by the public utility.”

--Annals, xiv. 44.]

says Tacitus.

It is likewise true, that for the use of life and the service of public

commerce, there may be some excesses in the purity and perspicacity of

our minds; that penetrating light has in it too much of subtlety and

curiosity: we must a little stupefy and blunt them to render them more

obedient to example and practice, and a little veil and obscure them, the

better to proportion them to this dark and earthly life. And therefore

common and less speculative souls are found to be more proper for and

more successful in the management of affairs, and the elevated and

exquisite opinions of philosophy unfit for business. This sharp vivacity

of soul, and the supple and restless volubility attending it, disturb our

negotiations. We are to manage human enterprises more superficially and

roughly, and leave a great part to fortune; it is not necessary to

examine affairs with so much subtlety and so deep: a man loses himself in

the consideration of many contrary lustres, and so many various forms:

“Volutantibus res inter se pugnantes, obtorpuerunt.... animi.”

[“Whilst they considered of things so indifferent in themselves,

they were astonished, and knew not what to do.”--Livy, xxxii. 20.]

‘Tis what the ancients say of Simonides, that by reason his imagination

suggested to him, upon the question King Hiero had put to him--[What God

was.--Cicero, De Nat. Deor., i. 22.]--(to answer which he had had many

days for thought), several sharp and subtle considerations, whilst he

doubted which was the most likely, he totally despaired of the truth.

He who dives into and in his inquisition comprehends all circumstances

and consequences, hinders his election: a little engine well handled is

sufficient for executions, whether of less or greater weight. The best

managers are those who can worst give account how they are so; while the

greatest talkers, for the most part, do nothing to purpose; I know one of

this sort of men, and a most excellent discourser upon all sorts of good

husbandry, who has miserably let a hundred thousand livres yearly revenue

slip through his hands; I know another who talks, who better advises than

any man of his counsel, and there is not in the world a fairer show of

soul and understanding than he has; nevertheless, when he comes to the

test, his servants find him quite another thing; not to make any mention

of his misfortunes.

CHAPTER XXI

AGAINST IDLENESS

The Emperor Vespasian, being sick of the disease whereof he died, did not

for all that neglect to inquire after the state of the empire, and even

in bed continually despatched very many affairs of great consequence; for

which, being reproved by his physician, as a thing prejudicial to his

health, “An emperor,” said he, “must die standing.” A fine saying, in my

opinion, and worthy a great prince. The Emperor Adrian since made use of

the same words, and kings should be often put in mind of them, to make

them know that the great office conferred upon them of the command of so

many men, is not an employment of ease; and that there is nothing can so

justly disgust a subject, and make him unwilling to expose himself to

labour and danger for the service of his prince, than to see him, in the

meantime, devoted to his ease and frivolous amusement, and to be

solicitous of his preservation who so much neglects that of his people.

Whoever will take upon him to maintain that ‘tis better for a prince to

carry on his wars by others, than in his own person, fortune will furnish

him with examples enough of those whose lieutenants have brought great

enterprises to a happy issue, and of those also whose presence has done

more hurt than good: but no virtuous and valiant prince can with patience

endure so dishonourable councils. Under colour of saving his head, like

the statue of a saint, for the happiness of his kingdom, they degrade him

from and declare him incapable of his office, which is military

throughout: I know one--[Probably Henry IV.]--who had much rather be

beaten, than to sleep whilst another fights for him; and who never

without jealousy heard of any brave thing done even by his own officers

in his absence. And Soliman I. said, with very good reason, in my

opinion, that victories obtained without the master were never complete.

Much more would he have said that that master ought to blush for shame,

to pretend to any share in the honour, having contributed nothing to the

work, but his voice and thought; nor even so much as these, considering

that in such work as that, the direction and command that deserve honour

are only such as are given upon the spot, and in the heat of the

business. No pilot performs his office by standing still. The princes

of the Ottoman family, the chiefest in the world in military fortune,

have warmly embraced this opinion, and Bajazet II., with his son, who

swerved from it, spending their time in science and other retired

employments, gave great blows to their empire; and Amurath III., now

reigning, following their example, begins to find the same. Was it not

Edward III., King of England, who said this of our Charles V.: “There

never was king who so seldom put on his armour, and yet never king who

gave me so much to do.” He had reason to think it strange, as an effect

of chance more than of reason. And let those seek out some other to join

with them than me, who will reckon the Kings of Castile and Portugal

amongst the warlike and magnanimous conquerors, because at the distance

of twelve hundred leagues from their lazy abode, by the conduct of their

captains, they made themselves masters of both Indies; of which it has to

be known if they would have had even the courage to go and in person

enjoy them.

The Emperor Julian said yet further, that a philosopher and a brave man

ought not so much as to breathe; that is to say, not to allow any more to

bodily necessities than what we cannot refuse; keeping the soul and body

still intent and busy about honourable, great, and virtuous things. He

was ashamed if any one in public saw him spit, or sweat (which is said by

some, also, of the Lacedaemonian young men, and which Xenophon says of

the Persian), forasmuch as he conceived that exercise, continual labour,

and sobriety, ought to have dried up all those superfluities. What

Seneca says will not be unfit for this place; which is, that the ancient

Romans kept their youth always standing, and taught them nothing that

they were to learn sitting.

‘Tis a generous desire to wish to die usefully and like a man, but the

effect lies not so much in our resolution as in our good fortune; a

thousand have proposed to themselves in battle, either to overcome or to

die, who have failed both in the one and the other, wounds and

imprisonment crossing their design and compelling them to live against

their will. There are diseases that overthrow even our desires, and our

knowledge. Fortune ought not to second the vanity of the Roman legions,

who bound themselves by oath, either to overcome or die:

“Victor, Marce Fabi, revertar ex acie: si fallo, Jovem patrem,

Gradivumque Martem aliosque iratos invoco deos.”

[“I will return, Marcus Fabius, a conqueror, from the fight:

and if I fail, I invoke Father Jove, Mars Gradivus, and the

other angry gods.”--Livy, ii. 45.]

The Portuguese say that in a certain place of their conquest of the

Indies, they met with soldiers who had condemned themselves, with

horrible execrations, to enter into no other composition but either to

cause themselves to be slain, or to remain victorious; and had their

heads and beards shaved in token of this vow. ‘Tis to much purpose for

us to hazard ourselves and to be obstinate: it seems as if blows avoided

those who present themselves too briskly to them, and do not willingly

fall upon those who too willingly seek them, and so defeat them of their

design. Such there have been, who, after having tried all ways, not

having been able with all their endeavour to obtain the favour of dying

by the hand of the enemy, have been constrained, to make good their

resolution of bringing home the honour of victory or of losing their

lives, to kill themselves even in the heat of battle. Of which there are

other examples, but this is one: Philistus, general of the naval army of

Dionysius the younger against the Syracusans, presented them battle which

was sharply disputed, their forces being equal: in this engagement, he

had the better at the first, through his own valour: but the Syracusans

drawing about his gally to environ him, after having done great things in

his own person to disengage himself and hoping for no relief, with his

own hand he took away the life he had so liberally, and in vain, exposed

to the enemy.

Mule Moloch, king of Fez, who lately won against Sebastian, king of

Portugal, the battle so famous for the death of three kings, and for the

transmission of that great kingdom to the crown of Castile, was extremely

sick when the Portuguese entered in an hostile manner into his dominions;

and from that day forward grew worse and worse, still drawing nearer to

and foreseeing his end; yet never did man better employ his own

sufficiency more vigorously and bravely than he did upon this occasion.

He found himself too weak to undergo the pomp and ceremony of entering.

into his camp, which after their manner is very magnificent, and

therefore resigned that honour to his brother; but this was all of the

office of a general that he resigned; all the rest of greatest utility

and necessity he most, exactly and gloriously performed in his own

person; his body lying upon a couch, but his judgment and courage upright

and firm to his last gasp, and in some sort beyond it. He might have

wasted his enemy, indiscreetly advanced into his dominions, without

striking a blow; and it was a very unhappy occurrence, that for want of a

little life or somebody to substitute in the conduct of this war and the

affairs of a troubled state, he was compelled to seek a doubtful and

bloody victory, having another by a better and surer way already in his

hands. Notwithstanding, he wonderfully managed the continuance of his

sickness in consuming the enemy, and in drawing them far from the

assistance of the navy and the ports they had on the coast of Africa,

even till the last day of his life, which he designedly reserved for this

great battle. He arranged his battalions in a circular form, environing

the Portuguese army on every side, which round circle coming to close in

and to draw up close together, not only hindered them in the conflict

(which was very sharp through the valour of the young invading king),

considering that they had every way to present a front, but prevented

their flight after the defeat, so that finding all passages possessed and

shut up by the enemy, they were constrained to close up together again:

“Coacerventurque non solum caede, sed etiam fuga,”

[“Piled up not only in slaughter but in flight.”]

and there they were slain in heaps upon one another, leaving to the

conqueror a very bloody and entire victory. Dying, he caused himself to

be carried and hurried from place to place where most need was, and

passing along the files, encouraged the captains and soldiers one after

another; but a corner of his main battalions being broken, he was not to

be held from mounting on horseback with his sword in his hand; he did his

utmost to break from those about him, and to rush into the thickest of

the battle, they all the while withholding him, some by the bridle, some

by his robe, and others by his stirrups. This last effort totally

overwhelmed the little life he had left; they again laid him upon his

bed; but coming to himself, and starting as it were out of his swoon, all

other faculties failing, to give his people notice that they were to

conceal his death the most necessary command he had then to give, that

his soldiers might not be discouraged (with the news) he expired with his

finger upon his mouth, the ordinary sign of keeping silence. Who ever

lived so long and so far into death? whoever died so erect, or more like

a man?

The most extreme degree of courageously treating death, and the most

natural, is to look upon it not only without astonishment but without

care, continuing the wonted course of life even into it, as Cato did,

who entertained himself in study, and went to sleep, having a violent and

bloody death in his heart, and the weapon in his hand with which he was

resolved to despatch himself.

CHAPTER XXII

OF POSTING

I have been none of the least able in this exercise, which is proper for

men of my pitch, well-knit and short; but I give it over; it shakes us

too much to continue it long. I was at this moment reading, that King

Cyrus, the better to have news brought him from all parts of the empire,

which was of a vast extent, caused it to be tried how far a horse could

go in a day without baiting, and at that distance appointed men, whose

business it was to have horses always in readiness, to mount those who

were despatched to him; and some say, that this swift way of posting is

equal to that of the flight of cranes.

Caesar says, that Lucius Vibullius Rufus, being in great haste to carry

intelligence to Pompey, rode night and day, still taking fresh horses for

the greater diligence and speed; and he himself, as Suetonius reports,

travelled a hundred miles a day in a hired coach; but he was a furious

courier, for where the rivers stopped his way he passed them by swimming,

without turning out of his way to look for either bridge or ford.

Tiberius Nero, going to see his brother Drusus, who was sick in Germany,

travelled two hundred miles in four-and-twenty hours, having three

coaches. In the war of the Romans against King Antiochus, T. Sempronius

Gracchus, says Livy:

“Per dispositos equos prope incredibili celeritate

ab Amphissa tertio die Pellam pervenit.”

[“By pre-arranged relays of horses, he, with an almost incredible

speed, rode in three days from Amphissa to Pella.”

--Livy, xxxvii. 7.]

And it appears that they were established posts, and not horses purposely

laid in upon this occasion.

Cecina’s invention to send back news to his family was much more quick,

for he took swallows along with him from home, and turned them out

towards their nests when he would send back any news; setting a mark of

some colour upon them to signify his meaning, according to what he and

his people had before agreed upon.

At the theatre at Rome masters of families carried pigeons in their

bosoms to which they tied letters when they had a mind to send any orders

to their people at home; and the pigeons were trained up to bring back an

answer. D. Brutus made use of the same device when besieged in Modena,

and others elsewhere have done the same.

In Peru they rode post upon men, who took them upon their shoulders in a

certain kind of litters made for that purpose, and ran with such agility

that, in their full speed, the first couriers transferred their load to

the second without making any stop.

I understand that the Wallachians, the grand Signior’s couriers, perform

wonderful journeys, by reason they have liberty to dismount the first

person they meet upon the road, giving him their own tired horses; and

that to preserve themselves from being weary, they gird themselves

straight about the middle with a broad girdle; but I could never find

any benefit from this.

CHAPTER XXIII

OF ILL MEANS EMPLOYED TO A GOOD END

There is wonderful relation and correspondence in this universal

government of the works of nature, which very well makes it appear that

it is neither accidental nor carried on by divers masters. The diseases

and conditions of our bodies are, in like manner, manifest in states and

governments; kingdoms and republics are founded, flourish, and decay with

age as we do. We are subject to a repletion of humours, useless and

dangerous: whether of those that are good (for even those the physicians

are afraid of; and seeing we have nothing in us that is stable, they say

that a too brisk and vigorous perfection of health must be abated by art,

lest our nature, unable to rest in any certain condition, and not having

whither to rise to mend itself, make too sudden and too disorderly a

retreat; and therefore prescribe wrestlers to purge and bleed, to qualify

that superabundant health), or else a repletion of evil humours, which is

the ordinary cause of sickness. States are very often sick of the like

repletion, and various sorts of purgations have commonly been applied.

Some times a great multitude of families are turned out to clear the

country, who seek out new abodes elsewhere and encroach upon others.

After this manner our ancient Franks came from the remotest part of

Germany to seize upon Gaul, and to drive thence the first inhabitants;

so was that infinite deluge of men made up who came into Italy under the

conduct of Brennus and others; so the Goths and Vandals, and also the

people who now possess Greece, left their native country to go settle

elsewhere, where they might have more room; and there are scarce two or

three little corners in the world that have not felt the effect of such

removals. The Romans by this means erected their colonies; for,

perceiving their city to grow immeasurably populous, they eased it of the

most unnecessary people, and sent them to inhabit and cultivate the lands

conquered by them; sometimes also they purposely maintained wars with

some of their enemies, not only to keep their own men in action, for fear

lest idleness, the mother of corruption, should bring upon them some

worse inconvenience:

“Et patimur longae pacis mala; saevior armis

Luxuria incumbit.”

[“And we suffer the ills of a long peace; luxury is more pernicious

than war.”--Juvenal, vi. 291.]

but also to serve for a blood-letting to their Republic, and a little to

evaporate the too vehement heat of their youth, to prune and clear the

branches from the stock too luxuriant in wood; and to this end it was

that they maintained so long a war with Carthage.

In the treaty of Bretigny, Edward III., king of England, would not, in

the general peace he then made with our king, comprehend the controversy

about the Duchy of Brittany, that he might have a place wherein to

discharge himself of his soldiers, and that the vast number of English he

had brought over to serve him in his expedition here might not return

back into England. And this also was one reason why our King Philip

consented to send his son John upon a foreign expedition, that he might

take along with him a great number of hot young men who were then in his

pay.

There--are many in our times who talk at this rate, wishing that

this hot emotion that is now amongst us might discharge itself in some

neighbouring war, for fear lest all the peccant humours that now reign in

this politic body of ours may diffuse themselves farther, keep the fever

still in the height, and at last cause our total ruin; and, in truth, a

foreign is much more supportable than a civil war, but I do not believe

that God will favour so unjust a design as to offend and quarrel with

others for our own advantage:

“Nil mihi tam valde placeat, Rhamnusia virgo,

Quod temere invitis suscipiatur heris.”

[“Rhamnusian virgin, let nothing ever so greatly please me which is

taken without justice from the unwilling owners”

--Catullus, lxviii. 77.]

And yet the weakness of our condition often pushes us upon the necessity

of making use of ill means to a good end. Lycurgus, the most perfect

legislator that ever was, virtuous and invented this very unjust practice

of making the helots, who were their slaves, drunk by force, to the end

that the Spartans, seeing them so lost and buried in wine, might abhor

the excess of this vice. And yet those were still more to blame who of

old gave leave that criminals, to what sort of death soever condemned,

should be cut up alive by the physicians, that they might make a true

discovery of our inward parts, and build their art upon greater

certainty; for, if we must run into excesses, it is more excusable to do

it for the health of the soul than that of the body; as the Romans

trained up the people to valour and the contempt of dangers and death by

those furious spectacles of gladiators and fencers, who, having to fight

it out to the last, cut, mangled, and killed one another in their

presence:

“Quid vesani aliud sibi vult ars impia ludi,

Quid mortes juvenum, quid sanguine pasta voluptas?”

[“What other end does the impious art of the gladiators propose to

itself, what the slaughter of young men, what pleasure fed with

blood.”--Prudentius, Contra Symmachum, ii. 643.]

and this custom continued till the Emperor Theodosius’ time:

“Arripe dilatam tua, dux, in tempora famam,

Quodque patris superest, successor laudis habeto

Nullus in urbe cadat, cujus sit poena voluptas....

Jam solis contenta feris, infamis arena

Nulla cruentatis homicidia ludat in armis.”

[“Prince, take the honours delayed for thy reign, and be successor

to thy fathers; henceforth let none at Rome be slain for sport. Let

beasts’ blood stain the infamous arena, and no more homicides be

there acted.”--Prudentius, Contra Symmachum, ii. 643.]

It was, in truth, a wonderful example, and of great advantage for the

training up the people, to see every day before their eyes a hundred; two

hundred, nay, a thousand couples of men armed against one another, cut

one another to pieces with so great a constancy of courage, that they

were never heard to utter so much as one syllable of weakness or

commiseration; never seen to turn their backs, nor so much as to make one

cowardly step to evade a blow, but rather exposed their necks to the

adversary’s sword and presented themselves to receive the stroke; and

many of them, when wounded to death, have sent to ask the spectators if

they were satisfied with their behaviour, before they lay down to die

upon the place. It was not enough for them to fight and to die bravely,

but cheerfully too; insomuch that they were hissed and cursed if they

made any hesitation about receiving their death. The very girls

themselves set them on:

“Consurgit ad ictus,

Et, quoties victor ferrum jugulo inserit, illa

Delicias ait esse suas, pectusque jacentis

Virgo modesta jubet converso pollice rumpi.”

[“The modest virgin is so delighted with the sport, that she

applauds the blow, and when the victor bathes his sword in his

fellow’s throat, she says it is her pleasure, and with turned thumb

orders him to rip up the bosom of the prostrate victim.”

--Prudentius, Contra Symmachum, ii. 617.]

The first Romans only condemned criminals to this example: but they

afterwards employed innocent slaves in the work, and even freemen too,

who sold themselves to this purpose, nay, moreover, senators and knights

of Rome, and also women:

“Nunc caput in mortem vendunt, et funus arena,

Atque hostem sibi quisque parat, cum bella quiescunt.”

[“They sell themselves to death and the circus, and, since the wars

are ceased, each for himself a foe prepares.”

--Manilius, Astron., iv. 225.]

“Hos inter fremitus novosque lusus....

Stat sexus rudis insciusque ferri,

Et pugnas capit improbus viriles;”

[“Amidst these tumults and new sports, the tender sex, unskilled in

arms, immodestly engaged in manly fights.”

--Statius, Sylv., i. 6, 51.]

which I should think strange and incredible, if we were not accustomed

every day to see in our own wars many thousands of men of other nations,

for money to stake their blood and their lives in quarrels wherein they

have no manner of concern.

CHAPTER XXIV

OF THE ROMAN GRANDEUR

I will only say a word or two of this infinite argument, to show the

simplicity of those who compare the pitiful greatness of these times with

that of Rome. In the seventh book of Cicero’s Familiar Epistles (and let

the grammarians put out that surname of familiar if they please, for in

truth it is not very suitable; and they who, instead of familiar, have

substituted “ad Familiares,” may gather something to justify them for so

doing out of what Suetonius says in the Life of Caesar, that there was a

volume of letters of his “ad Familiares “) there is one directed to

Caesar, then in Gaul, wherein Cicero repeats these words, which were in

the end of another letter that Caesar had written to him: “As to what

concerns Marcus Furius, whom you have recommended to me, I will make him

king of Gaul, and if you would have me advance any other friend of yours

send him to me.” It was no new thing for a simple citizen of Rome, as

Caesar then was, to dispose of kingdoms, for he took away that of King

Deiotarus from him to give it to a gentleman of the city of Pergamus,

called Mithridates; and they who wrote his Life record several cities

sold by him; and Suetonius says, that he had once from King Ptolemy three

millions and six hundred thousand crowns, which was very like selling him

his own kingdom:

“Tot Galatae, tot Pontus, tot Lydia, nummis.”

[“So much for Galatia, so much for Pontus,

so much for Lydia.”--Claudius in Eutrop., i. 203.]

Marcus Antonius said, that the greatness of the people of Rome was not

so much seen in what they took, as in what they gave; and, indeed, some

ages before Antonius, they had dethroned one amongst the rest with so

wonderful authority, that in all the Roman history I have not observed

anything that more denotes the height of their power. Antiochus

possessed all Egypt, and was, moreover, ready to conquer Cyprus and other

appendages of that empire: when being upon the progress of his victories,

C. Popilius came to him from the Senate, and at their first meeting

refused to take him by the hand, till he had first read his letters,

which after the king had read, and told him he would consider of them,

Popilius made a circle about him with his cane, saying:--“Return me an

answer, that I may carry it back to the Senate, before thou stirrest out

of this circle.” Antiochus, astonished at the roughness of so positive

a command, after a little pause, replied, “I will obey the Senate’s

command.” Then Popilius saluted him as friend of the Roman people.

To have renounced claim to so great a monarchy, and a course of such

successful fortune, from the effects of three lines in writing! Truly

he had reason, as he afterwards did, to send the Senate word by his

ambassadors, that he had received their order with the same respect as if

it had come from the immortal gods.

All the kingdoms that Augustus gained by the right of war, he either

restored to those who had lost them or presented them to strangers. And

Tacitus, in reference to this, speaking of Cogidunus, king of England,

gives us, by a marvellous touch, an instance of that infinite power: the

Romans, says he, were from all antiquity accustomed to leave the kings

they had subdued in possession of their kingdoms under their authority.

“Ut haberent instruments servitutis et reges.”

[“That they might have even kings to be their slaves.”

--Livy, xlv. 13.]

‘Tis probable that Solyman, whom we have seen make a gift of Hungary and

other principalities, had therein more respect to this consideration than

to that he was wont to allege, viz., that he was glutted and overcharged

with so many monarchies and so much dominion, as his own valour and that

of his ancestors had acquired.

CHAPTER XXV

NOT TO COUNTERFEIT BEING SICK

There is an epigram in Martial, and one of the very good ones--for he has

of all sorts--where he pleasantly tells the story of Caelius, who, to

avoid making his court to some great men of Rome, to wait their rising,

and to attend them abroad, pretended to have the gout; and the better to

colour this anointed his legs, and had them lapped up in a great many

swathings, and perfectly counterfeited both the gesture and countenance

of a gouty person; till in the end, Fortune did him the kindness to make

him one indeed:

“Quantum curs potest et ars doloris

Desiit fingere Caelius podagram.”

[“How great is the power of counterfeiting pain: Caelius has ceased

to feign the gout; he has got it.”--Martial, Ep., vii. 39, 8.]

I think I have read somewhere in Appian a story like this, of one who to

escape the proscriptions of the triumvirs of Rome, and the better to be

concealed from the discovery of those who pursued him, having hidden

himself in a disguise, would yet add this invention, to counterfeit

having but one eye; but when he came to have a little more liberty, and

went to take off the plaster he had a great while worn over his eye, he

found he had totally lost the sight of it indeed, and that it was

absolutely gone. ‘Tis possible that the action of sight was dulled from

having been so long without exercise, and that the optic power was wholly

retired into the other eye: for we evidently perceive that the eye we

keep shut sends some part of its virtue to its fellow, so that it will

swell and grow bigger; and so inaction, with the heat of ligatures and,

plasters, might very well have brought some gouty humour upon the

counterfeiter in Martial.

Reading in Froissart the vow of a troop of young English gentlemen, to

keep their left eyes bound up till they had arrived in France and

performed some notable exploit upon us, I have often been tickled with

this thought, that it might have befallen them as it did those others,

and they might have returned with but an eye a-piece to their mistresses,

for whose sakes they had made this ridiculous vow.

Mothers have reason to rebuke their children when they counterfeit having

but one eye, squinting, lameness, or any other personal defect; for,

besides that their bodies being then so tender, may be subject to take an

ill bent, fortune, I know not how, sometimes seems to delight in taking

us at our word; and I have heard several examples related of people who

have become really sick, by only feigning to be so. I have always used,

whether on horseback or on foot, to carry a stick in my hand, and even to

affect doing it with an elegant air; many have threatened that this fancy

would one day be turned into necessity: if so, I should be the first of

my family to have the gout.

But let us a little lengthen this chapter, and add another anecdote

concerning blindness. Pliny reports of one who, dreaming he was blind,

found himself so indeed in the morning without any preceding infirmity in

his eyes. The force of imagination might assist in this case, as I have

said elsewhere, and Pliny seems to be of the same opinion; but it is more

likely that the motions which the body felt within, of which physicians,

if they please, may find out the cause, taking away his sight, were the

occasion of his dream.

Let us add another story, not very improper for this subject, which

Seneca relates in one of his epistles: “You know,” says he, writing to

Lucilius, “that Harpaste, my wife’s fool, is thrown upon me as an

hereditary charge, for I have naturally an aversion to those monsters;

and if I have a mind to laugh at a fool, I need not seek him far; I can

laugh at myself. This fool has suddenly lost her sight: I tell you a

strange, but a very true thing she is not sensible that she is blind, but

eternally importunes her keeper to take her abroad, because she says the

house is dark. That what we laugh at in her, I pray you to believe,

happens to every one of us: no one knows himself to be avaricious or

grasping; and, again, the blind call for a guide, while we stray of our

own accord. I am not ambitious, we say; but a man cannot live otherwise

at Rome; I am not wasteful, but the city requires a great outlay; ‘tis

not my fault if I am choleric--if I have not yet established any certain

course of life: ‘tis the fault of youth. Let us not seek our disease out

of ourselves; ‘tis in us, and planted in our bowels; and the mere fact

that we do not perceive ourselves to be sick, renders us more hard to be

cured. If we do not betimes begin to see to ourselves, when shall we

have provided for so many wounds and evils wherewith we abound? And yet

we have a most sweet and charming medicine in philosophy; for of all the

rest we are sensible of no pleasure till after the cure: this pleases and

heals at once.” This is what Seneca says, that has carried me from my

subject, but there is advantage in the change.

CHAPTER XXVI

OF THUMBS

Tacitus reports, that amongst certain barbarian kings their manner was,

when they would make a firm obligation, to join their right hands close

to one another, and intertwist their thumbs; and when, by force of

straining the blood, it appeared in the ends, they lightly pricked them

with some sharp instrument, and mutually sucked them.

Physicians say that the thumbs are the master fingers of the hand, and

that their Latin etymology is derived from “pollere.” The Greeks called

them ‘Avtixeip’, as who should say, another hand. And it seems that the

Latins also sometimes take it in this sense for the whole hand:

“Sed nec vocibus excitata blandis,

Molli pollici nec rogata, surgit.”

[“Neither to be excited by soft words or by the thumb.”

--Mart., xii. 98, 8.]

It was at Rome a signification of favour to depress and turn in the

thumbs:

“Fautor utroque tuum laudabit pollice ludum:”

[“Thy patron will applaud thy sport with both thumbs”

--Horace.]

and of disfavour to elevate and thrust them outward:

“Converso pollice vulgi,

Quemlibet occidunt populariter.”

[“The populace, with inverted thumbs, kill all that

come before them.”--Juvenal, iii. 36]

The Romans exempted from war all such as were maimed in the thumbs, as

having no more sufficient strength to hold their weapons. Augustus

confiscated the estate of a Roman knight who had maliciously cut off the

thumbs of two young children he had, to excuse them from going into the

armies; and, before him, the Senate, in the time of the Italic war, had

condemned Caius Vatienus to perpetual imprisonment, and confiscated all

his goods, for having purposely cut off the thumb of his left hand, to

exempt himself from that expedition. Some one, I have forgotten who,

having won a naval battle, cut off the thumbs of all his vanquished

enemies, to render them incapable of fighting and of handling the oar.

The Athenians also caused the thumbs of the AEginatans to be cut off,

to deprive them of the superiority in the art of navigation.

In Lacedaemon, pedagogues chastised their scholars by biting their

thumbs.

CHAPTER XXVII

COWARDICE THE MOTHER OF CRUELTY

I have often heard it said that cowardice is the mother of cruelty; and I

have found by experience that malicious and inhuman animosity and

fierceness are usually accompanied with feminine weakness. I have seen

the most cruel people, and upon frivolous occasions, apt to cry.

Alexander, the tyrant of Pheres, durst not be a spectator of tragedies in

the theatre, for fear lest his citizens should see him weep at the

misfortunes of Hecuba and Andromache, who himself without pity caused so

many people every day to be murdered. Is it not meanness of spirit that

renders them so pliable to all extremities? Valour, whose effect is only

to be exercised against resistance--

“Nec nisi bellantis gaudet cervice juvenci”--

[“Nor delights in killing a bull unless he resists.”

--Claudius, Ep. ad Hadrianum, v. 39.]

stops when it sees the enemy at its mercy; but pusillanimity, to say that

it was also in the game, not having dared to meddle in the first act of

danger, takes as its part the second, of blood and massacre. The murders

in victories are commonly performed by the rascality and hangers-on of an

army, and that which causes so many unheard of cruelties in domestic wars

is, that this canaille makes war in imbruing itself up to the elbows in

blood, and ripping up a body that lies prostrate at its feet, having no

sense of any other valour:

“Et lupus, et turpes instant morientibus ursi,

Et quaecunque minor nobilitate fera est:”

[“Wolves and the filthy bears, and all the baser beasts,

fall upon the dying.”--Ovid, Trist., iii. 5, 35.]

like cowardly dogs, that in the house worry and tear the skins of wild

beasts, they durst not come near in the field. What is it in these times

of ours that makes our quarrels mortal; and that, whereas our fathers had

some degrees of revenge, we now begin with the last in ours, and at the

first meeting nothing is to be said but, kill? What is this but

cowardice?

Every one is sensible that there is more bravery and disdain in subduing

an enemy, than in cutting, his throat; and in making him yield, than in

putting him to the sword: besides that the appetite of revenge is better

satisfied and pleased because its only aim is to make itself felt: And

this is the reason why we do not fall upon a beast or a stone when they

hurt us, because they are not capable of being sensible of our revenge;

and to kill a man is to save him from the injury and offence we intend

him. And as Bias cried out to a wicked fellow, “I know that sooner or

later thou wilt have thy reward, but I am afraid I shall not see it”;

--[Plutarch, on the Delay in Divine Justice, c. 2.]--and pitied the

Orchomenians that the penitence of Lyciscus for the treason committed

against them, came at a season when there was no one remaining alive of

those who had been interested in the offence, and whom the pleasure of

this penitence should affect: so revenge is to be pitied, when the person

on whom it is executed is deprived of means of suffering under it: for as

the avenger will look on to enjoy the pleasure of his revenge, so the

person on whom he takes revenge should be a spectator too, to be

afflicted and to repent. “He will repent it,” we say, and because we

have given him a pistol-shot through the head, do we imagine he will

repent? On the contrary, if we but observe, we shall find, that he makes

mouths at us in falling, and is so far from penitency, that he does not

so much as repine at us; and we do him the kindest office of life, which

is to make him die insensibly, and soon: we are afterwards to hide

ourselves, and to shift and fly from the officers of justice, who pursue

us, whilst he is at rest. Killing is good to frustrate an offence to

come, not to revenge one that is already past; and more an act of fear

than of bravery; of precaution than of courage; of defence than of

enterprise. It is manifest that by it we lose both the true end of

revenge and the care of our reputation; we are afraid, if he lives he

will do us another injury as great as the first; ‘tis not out of

animosity to him, but care of thyself, that thou gettest rid of him.

In the kingdom of Narsingah this expedient would be useless to us, where

not only soldiers, but tradesmen also, end their differences by the

sword. The king never denies the field to any who wish to fight; and

when they are persons of quality; he looks on, rewarding the victor with

a chain of gold,--for which any one who pleases may fight with him again,

so that, by having come off from one combat, he has engaged himself in

many.

If we thought by virtue to be always masters of our enemies, and to

triumph over them at pleasure, we should be sorry they should escape from

us as they do, by dying: but we have a mind to conquer, more with safety

than honour, and, in our quarrel, more pursue the end than the glory.

Asnius Pollio, who, as being a worthy man, was the less to be excused,

committed a like, error, when, having written a libel against Plancus, he

forbore to publish it till he was dead; which is to bite one’s thumb at a

blind man, to rail at one who is deaf, to wound a man who has no feeling,

rather than to run the hazard of his resentment. And it was also said of

him that it was only for hobgoblins to wrestle with the dead.

He who stays to see the author die, whose writings he intends to

question, what does he say but that he is weak in his aggressiveness?

It was told to Aristotle that some one had spoken ill of him: “Let him

do more,” said he; “let him whip me too, provided I am not there.”

Our fathers contented themselves with revenging an insult with the lie,

the lie with a box of the ear, and so forward; they were valiant enough

not to fear their adversaries, living and provoked we tremble for fear so

soon as we see them on foot. And that this is so, does not our noble

practice of these days, equally to prosecute to death both him that has

offended us and him we have offended, make it out? ‘Tis also a kind

of cowardice that has introduced the custom of having seconds, thirds,

and fourths in our duels; they were formerly duels; they are now

skirmishes, rencontres, and battles. Solitude was, doubtless, terrible

to those who were the first inventors of this practice:

“Quum in se cuique minimum fiduciae esset,”

for naturally any company whatever is consolatory in danger. Third

persons were formerly called in to prevent disorder and foul play only,

and to be witness of the fortune of the combat; but now they have brought

it to this pass that the witnesses themselves engage; whoever is invited

cannot handsomely stand by as an idle spectator, for fear of being

suspected either of want of affection or of courage. Besides the

injustice and unworthiness of such an action, of engaging other strength

and valour in the protection of your honour than your own, I conceive it

a disadvantage to a brave man, and who wholly relies upon himself, to

shuffle his fortune with that of a second; every one runs hazard enough

himself without hazarding for another, and has enough to do to assure

himself in his own valour for the defence of his life, without intrusting

a thing so dear in a third man’s hand. For, if it be not expressly

agreed upon before to the contrary, ‘tis a combined party of all four,

and if your second be killed, you have two to deal withal, with good

reason; and to say that it is foul play, it is so indeed, as it is, well

armed, to attack a man who has but the hilt of a broken sword in his

hand, or, clear and untouched, a man who is desperately wounded: but if

these be advantages you have got by fighting, you may make use of them

without reproach. The disparity and inequality are only weighed and

considered from the condition of the combatants when they began; as to

the rest, you must take your chance: and though you had, alone, three

enemies upon you at once, your two companions being killed, you have no

more wrong done you, than I should do in a battle, by running a man

through whom I should see engaged with one of our own men, with the like

advantage. The nature of society will have it so that where there is

troop against troop, as where our Duke of Orleans challenged Henry, king

of England, a hundred against a hundred; three hundred against as many,

as the Argians against the Lacedaemonians; three to three, as the Horatii

against the Curiatii, the multitude on either side is considered but as

one single man: the hazard, wherever there is company, being confused and

mixed.

I have a domestic interest in this discourse; for my brother, the Sieur

de Mattecoulom, was at Rome asked by a gentleman with whom he had no

great acquaintance, and who was a defendant challenged by another, to be

his second; in this duel he found himself matched with a gentleman much

better known to him. (I would fain have an explanation of these rules of

honour, which so often shock and confound those of reason.) After having

despatched his man, seeing the two principals still on foot and sound, he

ran in to disengage his friend. What could he do less? should he have

stood still, and if chance would have ordered it so, have seen him he was

come thither to defend killed before his face? what he had hitherto done

helped not the business; the quarrel was yet undecided. The courtesy

that you can, and certainly ought to shew to your enemy, when you have

reduced him to an ill condition and have a great advantage over him, I do

not see how you can do it, where the interest of another is concerned,

where you are only called in as an assistant, and the quarrel is none of

yours: he could neither be just nor courteous, at the hazard of him he

was there to serve. And he was therefore enlarged from the prisons of

Italy at the speedy and solemn request of our king. Indiscreet nation!

we are not content to make our vices and follies known to the world by

report only, but we must go into foreign countries, there to show them

what fools we are. Put three Frenchmen into the deserts of Libya, they

will not live a month together without fighting; so that you would say

this peregrination were a thing purposely designed to give foreigners the

pleasure of our tragedies, and, for the most part, to such as rejoice and

laugh at our miseries. We go into Italy to learn to fence, and exercise

the art at the expense of our lives before we have learned it; and yet,

by the rule of discipline, we should put the theory before the practice.

We discover ourselves to be but learners:

“Primitae juvenum miserae, bellique futuri

Dura rudimenta.”

[“Wretched the elementary trials of youth, and hard the

rudiments of approaching war.”--Virgil, AEneid, xi. 156.]

I know that fencing is an art very useful to its end (in a duel betwixt

two princes, cousin-germans, in Spain, the elder, says Livy, by his skill

and dexterity in arms, easily overcoming the greater and more awkward

strength of the younger), and of which the knowledge, as I experimentally

know, has inspired some with courage above their natural measure; but

this is not properly valour, because it supports itself upon address, and

is founded upon something besides itself. The honour of combat consists

in the jealousy of courage, and not of skill; and therefore I have known

a friend of mine, famed as a great master in this exercise, in his

quarrels make choice of such arms as might deprive him of this advantage

and that wholly depended upon fortune and assurance, that they might not

attribute his victory rather to his skill in fencing than his valour.

When I was young, gentlemen avoided the reputation of good fencers as

injurious to them, and learned to fence with all imaginable privacy as a

trade of subtlety, derogating from true and natural valour:

“Non schivar non parar, non ritirarsi,

Voglion costor, ne qui destrezza ha parte;

Non danno i colpi or finti, or pieni, or scarsi!

Toglie l’ira a il furor l’uso de l’arte.

Odi le spade orribilmente utarsi

A mezzo il ferro; il pie d’orma non parte,

Sempre a il pie fermo, a la man sempre in moto;

Ne scende taglio in van, ne punta a voto.”

[“They neither shrank, nor vantage sought of ground,

They travers’d not, nor skipt from part to part,

Their blows were neither false, nor feigned found:

In fight, their rage would let them use no art.

Their swords together clash with dreadful sound,

Their feet stand fast, and neither stir nor start,

They move their hands, steadfast their feet remain.

Nor blow nor foin they strook, or thrust in vain.”

--Tasso, Gierus. Lib., c. 12, st. 55, Fairfax’s translation.]

Butts, tilting, and barriers, the feint of warlike fights, were the

exercises of our forefathers: this other exercise is so much the less

noble, as it only respects a private end; that teaches us to destroy one

another against law and justice, and that every way always produces very

ill effects. It is much more worthy and more becoming to exercise

ourselves in things that strengthen than that weaken our government and

that tend to the public safety and common glory. The consul, Publius

Rutilius, was the first who taught the soldiers to handle their arms

with skill, and joined art with valour, not for the rise of private

quarrel, but for war and the quarrels of the people of Rome; a popular

and civil defence. And besides the example of Caesar, who commanded his

men to shoot chiefly at the face of Pompey’s soldiers in the battle of

Pharsalia, a thousand other commanders have also bethought them to invent

new forms of weapons and new ways of striking and defending, according as

occasion should require.

But as Philopoemen condemned wrestling, wherein he excelled, because the

preparatives that were therein employed were differing from those that

appertain to military discipline, to which alone he conceived men of

honour ought wholly to apply themselves; so it seems to me that this

address to which we form our limbs, those writhings and motions young men

are taught in this new school, are not only of no use, but rather

contrary and hurtful to the practice of fight in battle; and also our

people commonly make use of particular weapons, and peculiarly designed

for duel; and I have seen, when it has been disapproved, that a gentleman

challenged to fight with rapier and poignard appeared in the array of a

man-at-arms, and that another should take his cloak instead of his

poignard. It is worthy of consideration that Laches in Plato, speaking

of learning to fence after our manner, says that he never knew any great

soldier come out of that school, especially the masters of it: and,

indeed, as to them, our experience tells as much. As to the rest, we may

at least conclude that they are qualities of no relation or

correspondence; and in the education of the children of his government,

Plato interdicts the art of boxing, introduced by Amycus and Epeius, and

that of wrestling, by Antaeus and Cercyo, because they have another end

than to render youth fit for the service of war and contribute nothing to

it. But I see that I have somewhat strayed from my theme.

The Emperor Mauricius, being advertised by dreams and several

prognostics, that one Phocas, an obscure soldier, should kill him,

questioned his son-in-law, Philip, who this Phocas was, and what were his

nature, qualities, and manners; and so soon as Philip, amongst other

things, had told him that he was cowardly and timorous, the emperor

immediately concluded then that he was a murderer and cruel. What is it

that makes tyrants so sanguinary? ‘Tis only the solicitude for their own

safety, and that their faint hearts can furnish them with no other means

of securing themselves than in exterminating those who may hurt them,

even so much as women, for fear of a scratch:

“Cuncta ferit, dum cuncta timer.”

[“He strikes at all who fears all.”

--Claudius, in Eutrop., i. 182.]

The first cruelties are exercised for themselves thence springs the fear

of a just revenge, which afterwards produces a series of new cruelties,

to obliterate one another. Philip, king of Macedon, who had so much to

do with the people of Rome, agitated with the horror of so many murders

committed by his order, and doubting of being able to keep himself secure

from so many families, at divers times mortally injured and offended by

him, resolved to seize all the children of those he had caused to be

slain, to despatch them daily one after another, and so to establish his

own repose.

Fine matter is never impertinent, however placed; and therefore I, who

more consider the weight and utility of what I deliver than its order and

connection, need not fear in this place to bring in an excellent story,

though it be a little by-the-by; for when they are rich in their own

native beauty, and are able to justify themselves, the least end of a

hair will serve to draw them into my discourse.

Amongst others condemned by Philip, had been one Herodicus, prince of

Thessaly; he had, moreover, after him caused his two sons-in-law to be

put to death, each leaving a son very young behind him. Theoxena and

Archo were their two widows. Theoxena, though highly courted to it,

could not be persuaded to marry again: Archo married Poris, the greatest

man among the AEnians, and by him had a great many children, whom she,

dying, left at a very tender age. Theoxena, moved with a maternal

charity towards her nephews, that she might have them under her own eyes

and in her own protection, married Poris: when presently comes a

proclamation of the king’s edict. This brave-spirited mother, suspecting

the cruelty of Philip, and afraid of the insolence of the soldiers

towards these charming and tender children was so bold as to declare hat

she would rather kill them with her own hands than deliver them. Poris,

startled at this protestation, promised her to steal them away, and to

transport them to Athens, and there commit them to the custody of some

faithful friends of his. They took, therefore, the opportunity of an

annual feast which was celebrated at AEnia in honour of AEneas, and

thither they went. Having appeared by day at the public ceremonies and

banquet, they stole the night following into a vessel laid ready for the

purpose, to escape away by sea. The wind proved contrary, and finding

themselves in the morning within sight of the land whence they had

launched overnight, and being pursued by the guards of the port, Poris

perceiving this, laboured all he could to make the mariners do their

utmost to escape from the pursuers. But Theoxena, frantic with affection

and revenge, in pursuance of her former resolution, prepared both weapons

and poison, and exposing them before them; “Go to, my children,” said

she, “death is now the only means of your defence and liberty, and shall

administer occasion to the gods to exercise their sacred justice: these

sharp swords, and these full cups, will open you the way into it;

courage, fear nothing! And thou, my son, who art the eldest, take this

steel into thy hand, that thou mayest the more bravely die.” The

children having on one side so powerful a counsellor, and the enemy at

their throats on the other, run all of them eagerly upon what was next to

hand; and, half dead, were thrown into the sea. Theoxena, proud of

having so gloriously provided for the safety of her children, clasping

her arms with great affection about her husband’s neck. “Let us, my

friend,” said she, “follow these boys, and enjoy the same sepulchre they

do”; and so, having embraced, they threw themselves headlong into the

sea; so that the ship was carried--back without the owners into the

harbour.

Tyrants, at once both to kill and to make their anger felt, have employed

their capacity to invent the most lingering deaths. They will have their

enemies despatched, but not so fast that they may not have leisure to

taste their vengeance. And therein they are mightily perplexed; for if

the torments they inflict are violent, they are short; if long, they are

not then so painful as they desire; and thus plague themselves in choice

of the greatest cruelty. Of this we have a thousand examples in

antiquity, and I know not whether we, unawares, do not retain some traces

of this barbarity.

All that exceeds a simple death appears to me absolute cruelty. Our

justice cannot expect that he, whom the fear of dying by being beheaded

or hanged will not restrain, should be any more awed by the imagination

of a languishing fire, pincers, or the wheel. And I know not, in the

meantime, whether we do not throw them into despair; for in what

condition can be the soul of a man, expecting four-and-twenty hours

together to be broken upon a wheel, or after the old way, nailed to a

cross? Josephus relates that in the time of the war the Romans made in

Judaea, happening to pass by where they had three days before crucified

certain Jews, he amongst them knew three of his own friends, and obtained

the favour of having them taken down, of whom two, he says, died; the

third lived a great while after.

Chalcondylas, a writer of good credit, in the records he has left behind

him of things that happened in his time, and near him, tells us, as of

the most excessive torment, of that the Emperor Mohammed very often

practised, of cutting off men in the middle by the diaphragm with one

blow of a scimitar, whence it followed that they died as it were two

deaths at once; and both the one part, says he, and the other, were seen

to stir and strive a great while after in very great torment. I do not

think there was any great suffering in this motion the torments that are

the most dreadful to look on are not always the greatest to endure; and I

find those that other historians relate to have been practised by him

upon the Epirot lords, are more horrid and cruel, where they were

condemned to be flayed alive piecemeal, after so malicious a manner that

they continued fifteen days in that misery.

And these other two: Croesus, having caused a gentleman, the favourite of

his brother Pantaleon, to be seized, carried him into a fuller’s shop,

where he caused him to be scratched and carded with the cards and combs

belonging to that trade, till he died. George Sechel, chief commander of

the peasants of Poland, who committed so many mischiefs under the title

of the Crusade, being defeated in battle and taken bu the Vayvode of

Transylvania, was three days bound naked upon the rack exposed to all

sorts of torments that any one could contrive against him: during which

time many other prisoners were kept fasting; in the end, he living and

looking on, they made his beloved brother Lucat, for whom alone he

entreated, taking on himself the blame of all their evil actions drink

his blood, and caused twenty of his most favoured captains to feed upon

him, tearing his flesh in pieces with their teeth, and swallowing the

morsels. The remainder of his body and his bowels, so soon as he was

dead, were boiled, and others of his followers compelled to eat them.

CHAPTER XXVIII

ALL THINGS HAVE THEIR SEASON

Such as compare Cato the Censor with the younger Cato, who killed

himself, compare two beautiful natures, much resembling one another.

The first acquired his reputation several ways, and excels in military

exploits and the utility of his public employments; but the virtue of the

younger, besides that it were blasphemy to compare any to it in vigour,

was much more pure and unblemished. For who could absolve that of the

Censor from envy and ambition, having dared to attack the honour of

Scipio, a man in goodness and all other excellent qualities infinitely

beyond him or any other of his time?

That which they, report of him, amongst other things, that in his extreme

old age he put himself upon learning the Greek tongue with so greedy an

appetite, as if to quench a long thirst, does not seem to me to make much

for his honour; it being properly what we call falling into second

childhood. All things have their seasons, even good ones, and I may say

my Paternoster out of time; as they accused T. Quintus Flaminius, that

being general of an army, he was seen praying apart in the time of a

battle that he won.

“Imponit finem sapiens et rebus honestis.”

[“The wise man limits even honest things.”--Juvenal, vi. 444]

Eudemonidas, seeing Xenocrates when very old, still very intent upon his

school lectures: “When will this man be wise,” said he, “if he is yet

learning?” And Philopaemen, to those who extolled King Ptolemy for every

day inuring his person to the exercise of arms: “It is not,” said he,

“commendable in a king of his age to exercise himself in these things; he

ought now really to employ them.” The young are to make their

preparations, the old to enjoy them, say the sages: and the greatest vice

they observe in us is that our desires incessantly grow young again; we

are always re-beginning to live.

Our studies and desires should sometime be sensible of age; yet we have

one foot in the grave and still our appetites and pursuits spring every

day anew within us:

“Tu secanda marmora

Locas sub ipsum funus, et, sepulcri

Immemor, struis domos.”

[“You against the time of death have marble cut for use, and,

forgetful of the tomb, build houses.”--Horace, Od., ii. 18, 17.]

The longest of my designs is not of above a year’s extent; I think of

nothing now but ending; rid myself of all new hopes and enterprises; take

my last leave of every place I depart from, and every day dispossess

myself of what I have.

“Olim jam nec perit quicquam mihi, nec acquiritur....

plus superest viatici quam viae.”

[“Henceforward I will neither lose, nor expect to get: I have more

wherewith to defray my journey, than I have way to go.” (Or):

“Hitherto nothing of me has been lost or gained; more remains to pay

the way than there is way.”--Seneca, Ep., 77. (The sense seems to

be that so far he had met his expenses, but that for the future he

was likely to have more than he required.)]

“Vixi, et, quem dederat cursum fortuna, peregi.”

[“I have lived and finished the career Fortune placed before me.”

--AEneid, iv. 653.]

‘Tis indeed the only comfort I find in my old age, that it mortifies in

me several cares and desires wherewith my life has been disturbed; the

care how the world goes, the care of riches, of grandeur, of knowledge,

of health, of myself. There are men who are learning to speak at a time

when they should learn to be silent for ever. A man may always study,

but he must not always go to school what a contemptible thing is an old

Abecedarian!--[Seneca, Ep. 36]

“Diversos diversa juvant; non omnibus annis

Omnia conveniunt.”

[“Various things delight various men; all things are not

for all ages.”--Gall., Eleg., i. 104.]

If we must study, let us study what is suitable to our present condition,

that we may answer as he did, who being asked to what end he studied in

his decrepit age, “that I may go out better,” said he, “and at greater

ease.” Such a study was that of the younger Cato, feeling his end

approach, and which he met with in Plato’s Discourse of the Eternity of

the Soul: not, as we are to believe, that he was not long before

furnished with all sorts of provision for such a departure; for of

assurance, an established will and instruction, he had more than Plato

had in all his writings; his knowledge and courage were in this respect

above philosophy; he applied himself to this study, not for the service

of his death; but, as a man whose sleeps were never disturbed in the

importance of such a deliberation, he also, without choice or change,

continued his studies with the other accustomary actions of his life.

The night that he was denied the praetorship he spent in play; that

wherein he was to die he spent in reading. The loss either of life

or of office was all one to him.

CHAPTER XXIX

OF VIRTUE

I find by experience, that there is a good deal to be said betwixt the

flights and emotions of the soul or a resolute and constant habit; and

very well perceive that there is nothing we may not do, nay, even to the

surpassing the Divinity itself, says a certain person, forasmuch as it is

more to render a man’s self impassible by his own study and industry,

than to be so by his natural condition; and even to be able to conjoin to

man’s imbecility and frailty a God-like resolution and assurance; but it

is by fits and starts; and in the lives of those heroes of times past

there are sometimes miraculous impulses, and that seem infinitely to

exceed our natural force; but they are indeed only impulses: and ‘tis

hard to believe, that these so elevated qualities in a man can so

thoroughly tinct and imbue the soul that they should become ordinary,

and, as it were, natural in him. It accidentally happens even to us,

who are but abortive births of men, sometimes to launch our souls, when

roused by the discourses or examples of others, much beyond their

ordinary stretch; but ‘tis a kind of passion which pushes and agitates

them, and in some sort ravishes them from themselves: but, this

perturbation once overcome, we see that they insensibly flag and slacken

of themselves, if not to the lowest degree, at least so as to be no more

the same; insomuch as that upon every trivial occasion, the losing of a

bird, or the breaking, of a glass, we suffer ourselves to be moved little

less than one of the common people. I am of opinion, that order,

moderation, and constancy excepted, all things are to be done by a man

that is very imperfect and defective in general. Therefore it is, say

the Sages, that to make a right judgment of a man, you are chiefly to pry

into his common actions, and surprise him in his everyday habit.

Pyrrho, he who erected so pleasant a knowledge upon ignorance,

endeavoured, as all the rest who were really philosophers did, to make

his life correspond with his doctrine. And because he maintained the

imbecility of human judgment to be so extreme as to be incapable of any

choice or inclination, and would have it perpetually wavering and

suspended, considering and receiving all things as indifferent, ‘tis

said, that he always comforted himself after the same manner and

countenance: if he had begun a discourse, he would always end what he had

to say, though the person he was speaking to had gone away: if he walked,

he never stopped for any impediment that stood in his way, being

preserved from precipices, collision with carts, and other like

accidents, by the care of his friends: for, to fear or to avoid anything,

had been to shock his own propositions, which deprived the senses

themselves of all election and certainty. Sometimes he suffered incision

and cauteries with so great constancy as never to be seen so much as to

wince. ‘Tis something to bring the soul to these imaginations; ‘tis more

to join the effects, and yet not impossible; but to conjoin them with

such perseverance and constancy as to make them habitual, is certainly,

in attempts so remote from the common usage, almost incredible to be

done. Therefore it was, that being sometime taken in his house sharply

scolding with his sister, and being reproached that he therein

transgressed his own rules of indifference: “What!” said he, “must this

bit of a woman also serve for a testimony to my rules?” Another time,

being seen to defend himself against a dog: “It is,” said he, “very hard

totally to put off man; and we must endeavour and force ourselves to

resist and encounter things, first by effects, but at least by reason and

argument.”

About seven or eight years since, a husbandman yet living, but two

leagues from my house, having long been tormented with his wife’s

jealousy, coming one day home from his work, and she welcoming him with

her accustomed railing, entered into so great fury that with a sickle he

had yet in his hand, he totally cut off all those parts that she was

jealous of and threw them in her face. And, ‘tis said that a young

gentleman of our nation, brisk and amorous, having by his perseverance at

last mollified the heart of a fair mistress, enraged, that upon the point

of fruition he found himself unable to perform, and that,

“Nec viriliter

Iners senile penis extulit caput.”

[(The 19th or 20th century translators leave this phrase

untranslated and with no explanation. D.W.)

--Tibullus, Priap. Carm., 84.]

as soon as ever he came home he deprived himself of the rebellious

member, and sent it to his mistress, a cruel and bloody victim for the

expiation of his offence. If this had been done upon mature

consideration, and upon the account of religion, as the priests of Cybele

did, what should we say of so high an action?

A few days since, at Bergerac, five leagues from my house, up the river

Dordogne, a woman having overnight been beaten and abused by her husband,

a choleric ill-conditioned fellow, resolved to escape from his ill-usage

at the price of her life; and going so soon as she was up the next

morning to visit her neighbours, as she was wont to do, and having let

some words fall in recommendation of her affairs, she took a sister of

hers by the hand, and led her to the bridge; whither being come, and

having taken leave of her, in jest as it were, without any manner of

alteration in her countenance, she threw herself headlong from the top

into the river, and was there drowned. That which is the most remarkable

in this is, that this resolution was a whole night forming in her head.

It is quite another thing with the Indian women for it being the custom

there for the men to have many wives, and the best beloved of them to

kill herself at her husband’s decease, every one of them makes it the

business of her whole life to obtain this privilege and gain this

advantage over her companions; and the good offices they do their

husbands aim at no other recompense but to be preferred in accompanying

him in death:

“Ubi mortifero jacta est fax ultima lecto,

Uxorum fusis stat pia turba comis

Et certamen habent lethi, quae viva sequatur

Conjugium: pudor est non licuisse mori.

Ardent victrices, et flammae pectora praebent,

Imponuntque suis ora perusta viris.”

[“For when they threw the torch on the funeral bed, the pious wives

with hair dishevelled, stand around striving, which, living, shall

accompany her spouse; and are ashamed that they may not die; they

who are preferred expose their breasts to the flame, and they lay

their scorched lips on those of their husbands.”

--Propertius, iii. 13, 17.]

A certain author of our times reports that he has seen in those Oriental

nations this custom in practice, that not only the wives bury themselves

with their husbands, but even the slaves he has enjoyed also; which is

done after this manner: The husband being dead, the widow may if she will

(but few will) demand two or three months’ respite wherein to order her

affairs. The day being come, she mounts on horseback, dressed as fine as

at her wedding, and with a cheerful countenance says she is going to

sleep with her spouse, holding a looking-glass in her left hand and an

arrow in the other. Being thus conducted in pomp, accompanied with her

kindred and friends and a great concourse of people in great joy, she is

at last brought to the public place appointed for such spectacles: this

is a great space, in the midst of which is a pit full of wood, and

adjoining to it a mount raised four or five steps, upon which she is

brought and served with a magnificent repast; which being done, she falls

to dancing and singing, and gives order, when she thinks fit, to kindle

the fire. This being done, she descends, and taking the nearest of her

husband’s relations by the hand, they walk to the river close by, where

she strips herself stark naked, and having distributed her clothes and

jewels to her friends, plunges herself into the water, as if there to

cleanse herself from her sins; coming out thence, she wraps herself in a

yellow linen of five-and-twenty ells long, and again giving her hand to

this kinsman of her husband’s, they return back to the mount, where she

makes a speech to the people, and recommends her children to them, if she

have any. Betwixt the pit and the mount there is commonly a curtain

drawn to screen the burning furnace from their sight, which some of them,

to manifest the greater courage, forbid. Having ended what she has to

say, a woman presents her with a vessel of oil, wherewith to anoint her

head and her whole body, which when done with she throws into the fire,

and in an instant precipitates herself after. Immediately, the people

throw a good many billets and logs upon her that she may not be long in

dying, and convert all their joy into sorrow and mourning. If they are

persons of meaner condition, the body of the defunct is carried to the

place of sepulture, and there placed sitting, the widow kneeling before

him, embracing the dead body; and they continue in this posture whilst

the people build a wall about them, which so soon as it is raised to the

height of the woman’s shoulders, one of her relations comes behind her,

and taking hold of her head, twists her neck; so soon as she is dead, the

wall is presently raised up, and closed, and there they remain entombed.

There was, in this same country, something like this in their

gymnosophists; for not by constraint of others nor by the impetuosity of

a sudden humour, but by the express profession of their order, their

custom was, as soon as they arrived at a certain age, or that they saw

themselves threatened by any disease, to cause a funeral pile to be

erected for them, and on the top a stately bed, where, after having

joyfully feasted their friends and acquaintance, they laid them down with

so great resolution, that fire being applied to it, they were never seen

to stir either hand or foot; and after this manner, one of them, Calanus

by name; expired in the presence of the whole army of Alexander the

Great. And he was neither reputed holy nor happy amongst them who did

not thus destroy himself, dismissing his soul purged and purified by the

fire, after having consumed all that was earthly and mortal. This

constant premeditation of the whole life is that which makes the wonder.

Amongst our other controversies, that of ‘Fatum’ has also crept in; and

to tie things to come, and even our own wills, to a certain and

inevitable necessity, we are yet upon this argument of time past:

“Since God foresees that all things shall so fall out, as doubtless He

does, it must then necessarily follow, that they must so fall out”: to

which our masters reply: “that the seeing anything come to pass, as we

do, and as God Himself also does (for all things being present with him,

He rather sees, than foresees), is not to compel an event: that is, we

see because things do fall out, but things do not fall out because we

see: events cause knowledge, but knowledge does not cause events. That

which we see happen, does happen; but it might have happened otherwise:

and God, in the catalogue of the causes of events which He has in His

prescience, has also those which we call accidental and voluntary,

depending upon the liberty. He has given our free will, and knows that

we do amiss because we would do so.”

I have seen a great many commanders encourage their soldiers with this

fatal necessity; for if our time be limited to a certain hour, neither

the enemies’ shot nor our own boldness, nor our flight and cowardice,

can either shorten or prolong our lives. This is easily said, but see

who will be so easily persuaded; and if it be so that a strong and lively

faith draws along with it actions of the same kind, certainly this faith

we so much brag of, is very light in this age of ours, unless the

contempt it has of works makes it disdain their company. So it is, that

to this very purpose the Sire de Joinville, as credible a witness as any

other whatever, tells us of the Bedouins, a nation amongst the Saracens,

with whom the king St. Louis had to do in the Holy Land, that they, in

their religion, so firmly believed the number of every man’s days to be

from all eternity prefixed and set down by an inevitable decree, that

they went naked to the wars, excepting a Turkish sword, and their bodies

only covered with a white linen cloth: and for the greatest curse they

could invent when they were angry, this was always in their mouths:

“Accursed be thou, as he that arms himself for fear of death.” This is a

testimony of faith very much beyond ours. And of this sort is that also

that two friars of Florence gave in our fathers’ days. Being engaged in

some controversy of learning, they agreed to go both of them into the

fire in the sight of all the people, each for the verification of his

argument, and all things were already prepared, and the thing just upon

the point of execution, when it was interrupted by an unexpected

accident.--[7th April 1498. Savonarola issued the challenge. After many

delays from demands and counter-demands by each side as to the details of

the fire, both parties found that they had important business to transact

in another county--both just barely escaped assassination at the hands of

the disappointed spectators. D.W.]

A young Turkish lord, having performed a notable exploit in his own

person in the sight of both armies, that of Amurath and that of Huniades,

ready to join battle, being asked by Amurath, what in such tender and

inexperienced years (for it was his first sally into arms) had inspired

him with so brave a courage, replied, that his chief tutor for valour was

a hare. “For being,” said he, “one day a hunting, I found a hare

sitting, and though I had a brace of excellent greyhounds with me, yet

methought it would be best for sureness to make use of my bow; for she

sat very fair. I then fell to letting fly my arrows, and shot forty that

I had in my quiver, not only without hurting, but without starting her

from her form. At last I slipped my dogs after her, but to no more

purpose than I had shot: by which I understood that she had been secured

by her destiny; and, that neither darts nor swords can wound without the

permission of fate, which we can neither hasten nor defer.” This story

may serve, by the way, to let us see how flexible our reason is to all

sorts of images.

A person of great years, name, dignity, and learning boasted to me that

he had been induced to a certain very important change in his faith by a

strange and whimsical incitation, and one otherwise so inadequate, that I

thought it much stronger, taken the contrary way: he called it a miracle,

and so I look upon it, but in a different sense. The Turkish historians

say, that the persuasion those of their nation have imprinted in them of

the fatal and unalterable prescription of their days, manifestly conduces

to the giving them great assurance in dangers. And I know a great prince

who makes very fortunate use of it, whether it be that he really believes

it, or that he makes it his excuse for so wonderfully hazarding himself:

let us hope Fortune may not be too soon weary of her favour to him.

There has not happened in our memory a more admirable effect of

resolution than in those two who conspired the death of the Prince of

Orange.

[The first of these was Jehan de Jaureguy, who wounded the Prince

18th March 1582; the second, by whom the Prince was killed 10th July

1584., was Balthazar Gerard.]

‘Tis marvellous how the second who executed it, could ever be persuaded

into an attempt, wherein his companion, who had done his utmost, had had

so ill success; and after the same method, and with the same arms, to go

attack a lord, armed with so recent a late lesson of distrust, powerful

in followers and bodily strength, in his own hall, amidst his guards, and

in a city wholly at his devotion. Assuredly, he employed a very resolute

arm and a courage enflamed with furious passion. A poignard is surer for

striking home; but by reason that more motion and force of hand is

required than with a pistol, the blow is more subject to be put by or

hindered. That this man did not run to a certain death, I make no great

doubt; for the hopes any one could flatter him withal, could not find

place in any sober understanding, and the conduct of his exploit

sufficiently manifests that he had no want of that, no more than of

courage. The motives of so powerful a persuasion may be diverse, for our

fancy does what it will, both with itself and us. The execution that was

done near Orleans--[The murder of the Duke of Guise by Poltrot.]--was

nothing like this; there was in this more of chance than vigour; the

wound was not mortal, if fortune had not made it so, and to attempt to

shoot on horseback, and at a great distance, by one whose body was in

motion from the motion of his horse, was the attempt of a man who had

rather miss his blow than fail of saving himself. This was apparent from

what followed; for he was so astonished and stupefied with the thought of

so high an execution, that he totally lost his judgment both to find his

way to flight and to govern his tongue. What needed he to have done more

than to fly back to his friends across the river? ‘Tis what I have done

in less dangers, and that I think of very little hazard, how broad soever

the river may be, provided your horse have easy going in, and that you

see on the other side easy landing according to the stream. The other,

--[Balthazar Gerard.]--when they pronounced his dreadful sentence,

“I was prepared for this,” said he, “beforehand, and I will make you

wonder at my patience.”

The Assassins, a nation bordering upon Phoenicia,

[Or in Egypt, Syria, and Persia. Derivation of ‘assassin’ is from

Hassan-ben-Saba, one of their early leaders, and they had an

existence for some centuries. They are classed among the secret

societies of the Middle Ages. D.W.]

are reputed amongst the Mohammedans a people of very great devotion and

purity of manners. They hold that the nearest way to gain Paradise is to

kill some one of a contrary religion; which is the reason they have often

been seen, being but one or two, and without armour, to attempt against

powerful enemies, at the price of a certain death and without any

consideration of their own danger. So was our Raymond, Count of Tripoli,

assassinated (which word is derived from their name) in the heart of his

city,--[in 1151]--during our enterprises of the Holy War: and likewise

Conrad, Marquis of Monteferrat, the murderers at their execution bearing

themselves with great pride and glory that they had performed so brave an

exploit.

CHAPTER XXX.

OF A MONSTROUS CHILD

This story shall go by itself; for I will leave it to physicians to

discourse of. Two days ago I saw a child that two men and a nurse, who

said they were the father, the uncle, and the aunt of it, carried about

to get money by showing it, by reason it was so strange a creature. It

was, as to all the rest, of a common form, and could stand upon its feet;

could go and gabble much like other children of the same age; it had

never as yet taken any other nourishment but from the nurse’s breasts,

and what, in my presence, they tried to put into the mouth of it, it only

chewed a little and spat it out again without swallowing; the cry of it

seemed indeed a little odd and particular, and it was just fourteen

months old. Under the breast it was joined to another child, but without

a head, and which had the spine of the back without motion, the rest

entire; for though it had one arm shorter than the other, it had been

broken by accident at their birth; they were joined breast to breast, and

as if a lesser child sought to throw its arms about the neck of one

something bigger. The juncture and thickness of the place where they

were conjoined was not above four fingers, or thereabouts, so that if you

thrust up the imperfect child you might see the navel of the other below

it, and the joining was betwixt the paps and the navel. The navel of the

imperfect child could not be seen, but all the rest of the belly, so that

all that was not joined of the imperfect one, as arms, buttocks, thighs,

and legs, hung dangling upon the other, and might reach to the mid-leg.

The nurse, moreover, told us that it urined at both bodies, and that the

members of the other were nourished, sensible, and in the same plight

with that she gave suck to, excepting that they were shorter and less.

This double body and several limbs relating to one head might be

interpreted a favourable prognostic to the king,--[Henry III.]--of

maintaining these various parts of our state under the union of his laws;

but lest the event should prove otherwise, ‘tis better to let it alone,

for in things already past there needs no divination,

“Ut quum facts sunt, tum ad conjecturam

aliqui interpretatione revocentur;”

[“So as when they are come to pass, they may then by some

interpretation be recalled to conjecture”

--Cicero, De Divin., ii. 31.]

as ‘tis said of Epimenides, that he always prophesied backward.

I have just seen a herdsman in Medoc, of about thirty years of age, who

has no sign of any genital parts; he has three holes by which he

incessantly voids his water; he is bearded, has desire, and seeks contact

with women.

Those that we call monsters are not so to God, who sees in the immensity

of His work the infinite forms that He has comprehended therein; and it

is to be believed that this figure which astonishes us has relation to

some other figure of the same kind unknown to man. From His all wisdom

nothing but good, common; and regular proceeds; but we do not discern the

disposition and relation:

“Quod crebro videt, non miratur, etiamsi,

cur fiat, nescit. Quod ante non vidit, id,

si evenerit, ostentum esse censet.”

[“What he often sees he does not admire, though he be ignorant how

it comes to pass. When a thing happens he never saw before, he

thinks that it is a portent.”--Cicero, De Divin., ii. 22.]

Whatever falls out contrary to custom we say is contrary to nature, but

nothing, whatever it be, is contrary to her. Let, therefore, this

universal and natural reason expel the error and astonishment that

novelty brings along with it.

CHAPTER XXXI

OF ANGER

Plutarch is admirable throughout, but especially where he judges of human

actions. What fine things does he say in the comparison of Lycurgus and

Numa upon the subject of our great folly in abandoning children to the

care and government of their fathers? The most of our civil governments,

as Aristotle says, “leave, after the manner of the Cyclopes, to every one

the ordering of their wives and children, according to their own foolish

and indiscreet fancy; and the Lacedaemonian and Cretan are almost the

only governments that have committed the education of children to the

laws. Who does not see that in a state all depends upon their nurture

and bringing up? and yet they are left to the mercy of parents, let them

be as foolish and ill-conditioned as they may, without any manner of

discretion.”

Amongst other things, how often have I, as I have passed along our

streets, had a good mind to get up a farce, to revenge the poor boys whom

I have seen hided, knocked down, and miserably beaten by some father or

mother, when in their fury and mad with rage? You shall see them come

out with fire and fury sparkling in their eyes:

“Rabie jecur incendente, feruntur,

Praecipites; ut saxa jugis abrupta, quibus mons

Subtrahitur, clivoque latus pendente recedit,”

[“They are headlong borne with burning fury as great stones torn

from the mountains, by which the steep sides are left naked and

bare.”--Juvenal, Sat., vi. 647.]

(and according to Hippocrates, the most dangerous maladies are they that

disfigure the countenance), with a roaring and terrible voice, very often

against those that are but newly come from nurse, and there they are

lamed and spoiled with blows, whilst our justice takes no cognisance of

it, as if these maims and dislocations were not executed upon members of

our commonwealth:

“Gratum est, quod patria; civem populoque dedisti,

Si facis, ut patrix sit idoneus, utilis agris,

Utilis et bellorum et pacis rebus agendis.”

[“It is well when to thy country and the people thou hast given a

citizen, provided thou make fit for his country’s service; useful to

till the earth, useful in affairs of war and peace”

--Juvenal, Sat., xiv. 70.]

There is no passion that so much transports men from their right judgment

as anger. No one would demur upon punishing a judge with death who

should condemn a criminal on the account of his own choler; why, then,

should fathers and pedagogues be any more allowed to whip and chastise

children in their anger? ‘Tis then no longer correction, but revenge.

Chastisement is instead of physic to children; and would we endure a

physician who should be animated against and enraged at his patient?

We ourselves, to do well, should never lay a hand upon our servants

whilst our anger lasts. When the pulse beats, and we feel emotion in

ourselves, let us defer the business; things will indeed appear otherwise

to us when we are calm and cool. ‘Tis passion that then commands, ‘tis

passion that speaks, and not we. Faults seen through passion appear much

greater to us than they really are, as bodies do when seen through a

mist. He who is hungry uses meat; but he who will make use of

chastisement should have neither hunger nor thirst to it. And, moreover,

chastisements that are inflicted with weight and discretion are much

better received and with greater benefit by him who suffers; otherwise,

he will not think himself justly condemned by a man transported with

anger and fury, and will allege his master’s excessive passion, his

inflamed countenance, his unwonted oaths, his emotion and precipitous

rashness, for his own justification:

“Ora tument ira, nigrescunt sanguine venae,

Lumina Gorgoneo saevius igne micant.”

[“Their faces swell, their veins grow black with rage, and their

eyes sparkle with Gorgonian fire.”--Ovid, De Art. Amandi, iii. 503.]

Suetonius reports that Caius Rabirius having been condemned by Caesar,

the thing that most prevailed upon the people (to whom he had appealed)

to determine the cause in his favour, was the animosity and vehemence

that Caesar had manifested in that sentence.