And to say the truth, of all this diversity and confusion of

prescriptions, what other end and effect is there after all, but to purge

the belly? which a thousand ordinary simples will do as well; and I do

not know whether such evacuations be so much to our advantage as they

pretend, and whether nature does not require a residence of her

excrements to a certain proportion, as wine does of its lees to keep it

alive: you often see healthful men fall into vomitings and fluxes of the

belly by some extrinsic accident, and make a great evacuation of

excrements, without any preceding need, or any following benefit, but

rather with hurt to their constitution. ‘Tis from the great Plato, that

I lately learned, that of three sorts of motions which are natural to us,

purging is the worst, and that no man, unless he be a fool, ought to take

anything to that purpose but in the extremest necessity. Men disturb and

irritate the disease by contrary oppositions; it must be the way of

living that must gently dissolve, and bring it to its end. The violent

gripings and contest betwixt the drug and the disease are ever to our

loss, since the combat is fought within ourselves, and that the drug is

an assistant not to be trusted, being in its own nature an enemy to our

health, and by trouble having only access into our condition. Let it

alone a little; the general order of things that takes care of fleas and

moles, also takes care of men, if they will have the same patience that

fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself. ‘Tis to much purpose we cry

out “Bihore,”--[A term used by the Languedoc waggoners to hasten their

horses]--‘tis a way to make us hoarse, but not to hasten the matter.

‘Tis a proud and uncompassionate order: our fears, our despair displease

and stop it from, instead of inviting it to, our relief; it owes its

course to the disease, as well as to health; and will not suffer itself

to be corrupted in favour of the one to the prejudice of the other’s

right, for it would then fall into disorder. Let us, in God’s name,

follow it; it leads those that follow, and those who will not follow, it

drags along, both their fury and physic together. Order a purge for your

brain, it will there be much better employed than upon your stomach.

One asking a Lacedaemonian what had made him live so long, he made

answer, “the ignorance of physic”; and the Emperor Adrian continually

exclaimed as he was dying, that the crowd of physicians had killed him.

A bad wrestler turned physician: “Courage,” says Diogenes to him; “thou

hast done well, for now thou will throw those who have formerly thrown

thee.” But they have this advantage, according to Nicocles, that the sun

gives light to their success and the earth covers their failures. And,

besides, they have a very advantageous way of making use of all sorts of

events: for what fortune, nature, or any other cause (of which the number

is infinite), products of good and healthful in us, it is the privilege

of physic to attribute to itself; all the happy successes that happen to

the patient, must be thence derived; the accidents that have cured me,

and a thousand others, who do not employ physicians, physicians usurp to

themselves: and as to ill accidents, they either absolutely disown them,

in laying the fault upon the patient, by such frivolous reasons as they

are never at a loss for; as “he lay with his arms out of bed,” or “he was

disturbed with the rattling of a coach:”

“Rhedarum transitus arcto

Vicorum inflexu:”

[“The passage of the wheels in the narrow

turning of the street”--Juvenal, iii. 236.]

or “somebody had set open the casement,” or “he had lain upon his left

side,” or “he had some disagreeable fancies in his head”: in sum, a word,

a dream, or a look, seems to them excuse sufficient wherewith to palliate

their own errors: or, if they so please, they even make use of our

growing worse, and do their business in this way which can never fail

them: which is by buzzing us in the ear, when the disease is more

inflamed by their medicaments, that it had been much worse but for those

remedies; he, whom from an ordinary cold they have thrown into a double

tertian-ague, had but for them been in a continued fever. They do not

much care what mischief they do, since it turns to their own profit.

In earnest, they have reason to require a very favourable belief from

their patients; and, indeed, it ought to be a very easy one, to swallow

things so hard to be believed. Plato said very well, that physicians

were the only men who might lie at pleasure, since our health depends

upon the vanity and falsity of their promises.

AEsop, a most excellent author, and of whom few men discover all the

graces, pleasantly represents to us the tyrannical authority physicians

usurp over poor creatures, weakened and subdued by sickness and fear,

when he tells us, that a sick person, being asked by his physician what

operation he found of the potion he had given him: “I have sweated very

much,” says the sick man. “That’s good,” says the physician. Another

time, having asked how he felt himself after his physic: “I have been

very cold, and have had a great shivering upon me,” said he. “That is

good,” replied the physician. After the third potion, he asked him again

how he did: “Why, I find myself swollen and puffed up,” said he, “as if

I had a dropsy.”--“That is very well,” said the physician. One of his

servants coming presently after to inquire how he felt himself, “Truly,

friend,” said he, “with being too well I am about to die.”

There was a more just law in Egypt, by which the physician, for the three

first days, was to take charge of his patient at the patient’s own risk

and cost; but, those three days being past, it was to be at his own. For

what reason is it that their patron, AEsculapius, should be struck with

thunder for restoring Hippolitus from death to life:

“Nam Pater omnipotens, aliquem indignatus ab umbris

Mortalem infernis ad lumina surgere vitae,

Ipse repertorem medicinae talis, et artis

Fulmine Phoebigenam Stygias detrusit ad undas;”

[“Then the Almighty Father, offended that any mortal should rise to

the light of life from the infernal shades, struck the son of

Phoebus with his forked lightning to the Stygian lake.”

--AEneid, vii. 770.]

and his followers be pardoned, who send so many souls from life to death?

A physician, boasting to Nicocles that his art was of great authority:

“It is so, indeed,” said Nicocles, “that can with impunity kill so many

people.”

As to what remains, had I been of their counsel, I would have rendered my

discipline more sacred and mysterious; they begun well, but they have not

ended so. It was a good beginning to make gods and demons the authors of

their science, and to have used a peculiar way of speaking and writing,

notwithstanding that philosophy concludes it folly to persuade a man to

his own good by an unintelligible way: “Ut si quis medicus imperet, ut

sumat:”

“Terrigenam, herbigradam, domiportam, sanguine cassam.”

[“Describing it by the epithets of an animal trailing with its slime

over the herbage, without blood or bones, and carrying its house

upon its back, meaning simply a snail.”--Coste]

It was a good rule in their art, and that accompanies all other vain,

fantastic, and supernatural arts, that the patient’s belief should

prepossess them with good hope and assurance of their effects and

operation: a rule they hold to that degree, as to maintain that the most

inexpert and ignorant physician is more proper for a patient who has

confidence in him, than the most learned and experienced whom he is not

so acquainted with. Nay, even the very choice of most of their drugs is

in some sort mysterious and divine; the left foot of a tortoise, the

urine of a lizard, the dung of an elephant, the liver of a mole, blood

drawn from under the right wing of a white pigeon; and for us who have

the stone (so scornfully they use us in our miseries) the excrement of

rats beaten to powder, and such like trash and fooleries which rather

carry a face of magical enchantment than of any solid science. I omit

the odd number of their pills, the destination of certain days and feasts

of the year, the superstition of gathering their simples at certain

hours, and that so austere and very wise countenance and carriage which

Pliny himself so much derides. But they have, as I said, failed in that

they have not added to this fine beginning the making their meetings and

consultations more religious and secret, where no profane person should

have admission, no more than in the secret ceremonies of AEsculapius; for

by the reason of this it falls out that their irresolution, the weakness

of their arguments, divinations and foundations, the sharpness of their

disputes, full of hatred, jealousy, and self-consideration, coming to be

discovered by every one, a man must be marvellously blind not to see that

he runs a very great hazard in their hands. Who ever saw one physician

approve of another’s prescription, without taking something away, or

adding something to it? by which they sufficiently betray their tricks,

and make it manifest to us that they therein more consider their own

reputation, and consequently their profit, than their patient’s interest.

He was a much wiser man of their tribe, who of old gave it as a rule,

that only one physician should undertake a sick person; for if he do

nothing to purpose, one single man’s default can bring no great scandal

upon the art of medicine; and, on the contrary, the glory will be great

if he happen to have success; whereas, when there are many, they at every

turn bring a disrepute upon their calling, forasmuch as they oftener do

hurt than good. They ought to be satisfied with the perpetual

disagreement which is found in the opinions of the principal masters and

ancient authors of this science, which is only known to men well read,

without discovering to the vulgar the controversies and various judgments

which they still nourish and continue amongst themselves.

Will you have one example of the ancient controversy in physic?

Herophilus lodges the original cause of all diseases in the humours;

Erasistratus, in the blood of the arteries; Asclepiades, in the invisible

atoms of the pores; Alcmaeon, in the exuberance or defect of our bodily

strength; Diocles, in the inequality of the elements of which the body is

composed, and in the quality of the air we breathe; Strato, in the

abundance, crudity, and corruption of the nourishment we take; and

Hippocrates lodges it in the spirits. There is a certain friend of

theirs,--[Celsus, Preface to the First Book.]--whom they know better

than I, who declares upon this subject, “that the most important science

in practice amongst us, as that which is intrusted with our health and

conservation, is, by ill luck, the most uncertain, the most perplexed,

and agitated with the greatest mutations.” There is no great danger in

our mistaking the height of the sun, or the fraction of some astronomical

supputation; but here, where our whole being is concerned, ‘tis not

wisdom to abandon ourselves to the mercy of the agitation of so many

contrary winds.

Before the Peloponnesian war there was no great talk of this science.

Hippocrates brought it into repute; whatever he established, Chrysippus

overthrew; after that, Erasistratus, Aristotle’s grandson, overthrew what

Chrysippus had written; after these, the Empirics started up, who took a

quite contrary way to the ancients in the management of this art; when

the credit of these began a little to decay, Herophilus set another sort

of practice on foot, which Asclepiades in turn stood up against, and

overthrew; then, in their turn, the opinions first of Themiso, and then

of Musa, and after that those of Vectius Valens, a physician famous

through the intelligence he had with Messalina, came in vogue; the empire

of physic in Nero’s time was established in Thessalus, who abolished and

condemned all that had been held till his time; this man’s doctrine was

refuted by Crinas of Marseilles, who first brought all medicinal

operations under the Ephemerides and motions of the stars, and reduced

eating, sleeping, and drinking to hours that were most pleasing to

Mercury and the moon; his authority was soon after supplanted by

Charinus, a physician of the same city of Marseilles, a man who not only

controverted all the ancient methods of physic, but moreover the usage of

hot baths, that had been generally and for so many ages in common use; he

made men bathe in cold water, even in winter, and plunged his sick

patients in the natural waters of streams. No Roman till Pliny’s time

had ever vouchsafed to practise physic; that office was only performed

by Greeks and foreigners, as ‘tis now amongst us French, by those who

sputter Latin; for, as a very great physician says, we do not easily

accept the medicine we understand, no more than we do the drugs we

ourselves gather. If the nations whence we fetch our guaiacum,

sarsaparilla, and China wood, have physicians, how great a value must we

imagine, by the same recommendation of strangeness, rarity, and dear

purchase, do they set upon our cabbage and parsley? for who would dare

to contemn things so far fetched, and sought out at the hazard of so long

and dangerous a voyage?

Since these ancient mutations in physic, there have been infinite others

down to our own times, and, for the most part, mutations entire and

universal, as those, for example, produced by Paracelsus, Fioravanti, and

Argentier; for they, as I am told, not only alter one recipe, but the

whole contexture and rules of the body of physic, accusing all others of

ignorance and imposition who have practised before them. At this rate,

in what a condition the poor patient must be, I leave you to judge.

If we were even assured that, when they make a mistake, that mistake of

theirs would do us no harm, though it did us no good, it were a

reasonable bargain to venture the making ourselves better without any

danger of being made worse. AEsop tells a story, that one who had bought

a Morisco slave, believing that his black complexion had arrived by

accident and the ill usage of his former master, caused him to enter with

great care into a course of baths and potions: it happened that the Moor

was nothing amended in his tawny complexion, but he wholly lost his

former health. How often do we see physicians impute the death of their

patients to one another? I remember that some years ago there was an

epidemical disease, very dangerous and for the most part mortal, that

raged in the towns about us: the storm being over which had swept away an

infinite number of men, one of the most famous physicians of all the

country, presently after published a book upon that subject, wherein,

upon better thoughts, he confesses that the letting blood in that disease

was the principal cause of so many mishaps. Moreover, their authors hold

that there is no physic that has not something hurtful in it. And if

even those of the best operation in some measure offend us, what must

those do that are totally misapplied? For my own part, though there were

nothing else in the case, I am of opinion, that to those who loathe the

taste of physic, it must needs be a dangerous and prejudicial endeavour

to force it down at so incommodious a time, and with so much aversion,

and believe that it marvellously distempers a sick person at a time when

he has so much need of repose. And more over, if we but consider the

occasions upon which they usually ground the cause of our diseases, they

are so light and nice, that I thence conclude a very little error in the

dispensation of their drugs may do a great deal of mischief. Now, if the

mistake of a physician be so dangerous, we are in but a scurvy condition;

for it is almost impossible but he must often fall into those mistakes:

he had need of too many parts, considerations, and circumstances, rightly

to level his design: he must know the sick person’s complexion, his

temperament, his humours, inclinations, actions, nay, his very thoughts

and imaginations; he must be assured of the external circumstances, of

the nature of the place, the quality of the air and season, the situation

of the planets, and their influences: he must know in the disease, the

causes, prognostics, affections, and critical days; in the drugs, the

weight, the power of working, the country, figure, age, and dispensation,

and he must know how rightly to proportion and mix them together, to

beget a just and perfect symmetry; wherein if there be the least error,

if amongst so many springs there be but any one out of order, ‘tis enough

to destroy us. God knows with how great difficulty most of these things

are to be understood: for (for example) how shall the physician find out

the true sign of the disease, every disease being capable of an infinite

number of indications? How many doubts and controversies have they

amongst themselves upon the interpretation of urines? otherwise, whence

should the continual debates we see amongst them about the knowledge of

the disease proceed? how could we excuse the error they so oft fall into,

of taking fox for marten? In the diseases I have had, though there were

ever so little difficulty in the case, I never found three of one

opinion: which I instance, because I love to introduce examples wherein I

am myself concerned.

A gentleman at Paris was lately cut for the stone by order of the

physicians, in whose bladder, being accordingly so cut, there was found

no more stone than in the palm of his hand; and in the same place a

bishop, who was my particular friend, having been earnestly pressed by

the majority of the physicians whom he consulted, to suffer himself to be

cut, to which also, upon their word, I used my interest to persuade him,

when he was dead and opened, it appeared that he had no malady but in the

kidneys. They are least excusable for any error in this disease, by

reason that it is in some sort palpable; and ‘tis thence that I conclude

surgery to be much more certain, by reason that it sees and feels what it

does, and so goes less upon conjecture; whereas the physicians have no

‘speculum matricis’, by which to examine our brains, lungs, and liver.

Even the very promises of physic are incredible in themselves; for,

having to provide against divers and contrary accidents that often

afflict us at one and the same time, and that have almost a necessary

relation, as the heat of the liver and the coldness of the stomach, they

will needs persuade us, that of their ingredients one will heat the

stomach and the other will cool the liver: one has its commission to go

directly to the kidneys, nay, even to the bladder, without scattering its

operations by the way, and is to retain its power and virtue through all

those turns and meanders, even to the place to the service of which it is

designed, by its own occult property this will dry-the brain; that will

moisten the lungs. Of all this bundle of things having mixed up a

potion, is it not a kind of madness to imagine or to hope that these

differing virtues should separate themselves from one another in this

mixture and confusion, to perform so many various errands? I should very

much fear that they would either lose or change their tickets, and

disturb one another’s quarters. And who can imagine but that, in this

liquid confusion, these faculties must corrupt, confound, and spoil one

another? And is not the danger still more when the making up of this

medicine is entrusted to the skill and fidelity of still another, to

whose mercy we again abandon our lives?

As we have doublet and breeches-makers, distinct trades, to clothe us,

and are so much the better fitted, seeing that each of them meddles only

with his own business, and has less to trouble his head with than the

tailor who undertakes all; and as in matter of diet, great persons, for

their better convenience, and to the end they may be better served, have

cooks for the different offices, this for soups and potages, that for

roasting, instead of which if one cook should undertake the whole

service, he could not so well perform it; so also as to the cure of our

maladies. The Egyptians had reason to reject this general trade of

physician, and to divide the profession: to each disease, to each part of

the body, its particular workman; for that part was more properly and

with less confusion cared for, seeing the person looked to nothing else.

Ours are not aware that he who provides for all, provides for nothing;

and that the entire government of this microcosm is more than they are

able to undertake. Whilst they were afraid of stopping a dysentery, lest

they should put the patient into a fever, they killed me a friend,

--[Estienne de la Boetie.]--who was worth more than the whole of them.

They counterpoise their own divinations with the present evils; and

because they will not cure the brain to the prejudice of the stomach,

they injure both with their dissentient and tumultuary drugs.

As to the variety and weakness of the rationale of this art, they are

more manifest in it than in any other art; aperitive medicines are proper

for a man subject to the stone, by reason that opening and dilating the

passages they help forward the slimy matter whereof gravel and stone are

engendered, and convey that downward which begins to harden and gather in

the reins; aperitive things are dangerous for a man subject to the stone,

by reason that, opening and dilating the passages, they help forward the

matter proper to create the gravel toward the reins, which by their own

propension being apt to seize it, ‘tis not to be imagined but that a

great deal of what has been conveyed thither must remain behind;

moreover, if the medicine happen to meet with anything too large to be

carried through all the narrow passages it must pass to be expelled, that

obstruction, whatever it is, being stirred by these aperitive things and

thrown into those narrow passages, coming to stop them, will occasion a

certain and most painful death. They have the like uniformity in the

counsels they give us for the regimen of life: it is good to make water

often; for we experimentally see that, in letting it lie long in the

bladder, we give it time to settle the sediment, which will concrete into

a stone; it is good not to make water often, for the heavy excrements it

carries along with it will not be voided without violence, as we see by

experience that a torrent that runs with force washes the ground it rolls

over much cleaner than the course of a slow and tardy stream; so, it is

good to have often to do with women, for that opens the passages and

helps to evacuate gravel; it is also very ill to have often to do with

women, because it heats, tires, and weakens the reins. It is good to

bathe frequently in hot water, forasmuch as that relaxes and mollifies

the places where the gravel and stone lie; it is also ill by reason that

this application of external heat helps the reins to bake, harden, and

petrify the matter so disposed. For those who are taking baths it is

most healthful. To eat little at night, to the end that the waters they

are to drink the next morning may have a better operation upon an empty

stomach; on the other hand, it is better to eat little at dinner, that it

hinder not the operation of the waters, while it is not yet perfect, and

not to oppress the stomach so soon after the other labour, but leave the

office of digestion to the night, which will much better perform it than

the day, when the body and soul are in perpetual moving and action. Thus

do they juggle and trifle in all their discourses at our expense; and

they could not give me one proposition against which I should not know

how to raise a contrary of equal force. Let them, then, no longer

exclaim against those who in this trouble of sickness suffer themselves

to be gently guided by their own appetite and the advice of nature, and

commit themselves to the common fortune.

I have seen in my travels almost all the famous baths of Christendom, and

for some years past have begun to make use of them myself: for I look

upon bathing as generally wholesome, and believe that we suffer no little

inconveniences in our health by having left off the custom that was

generally observed, in former times, almost by all nations, and is yet in

many, of bathing every day; and I cannot imagine but that we are much the

worse by, having our limbs crusted and our pores stopped with dirt. And

as to the drinking of them, fortune has in the first place rendered them

not at all unacceptable to my taste; and secondly, they are natural and

simple, which at least carry no danger with them, though they may do us

no good, of which the infinite crowd of people of all sorts and

complexions who repair thither I take to be a sufficient warranty; and

although I have not there observed any extraordinary and miraculous

effects, but that on the contrary, having more narrowly than ordinary

inquired into it, I have found all the reports of such operations that

have been spread abroad in those places ill-grounded and false, and those

that believe them (as people are willing to be gulled in what they

desire) deceived in them, yet I have seldom known any who have been made

worse by those waters, and a man cannot honestly deny but that they beget

a better appetite, help digestion, and do in some sort revive us, if we

do not go too late and in too weak a condition, which I would dissuade

every one from doing. They have not the virtue to raise men from

desperate and inveterate diseases, but they may help some light

indisposition, or prevent some threatening alteration. He who does not

bring along with him so much cheerfulness as to enjoy the pleasure of the

company he will there meet, and of the walks and exercises to which the

amenity of those places invite us, will doubtless lose the best and

surest part of their effect. For this reason I have hitherto chosen to

go to those of the most pleasant situation, where there was the best

conveniency of lodging, provision, and company, as the baths of Bagneres

in France, those of Plombieres on the frontiers of Germany and Lorraine,

those of Baden in Switzerland, those of Lucca in Tuscany, and especially

those of Della Villa, which I have the most and at various seasons

frequented.

Every nation has particular opinions touching their use, and particular

rules and methods in using them; and all of them, according to what I

have seen, almost with like effect. Drinking them is not at all received

in Germany; the Germans bathe for all diseases, and will lie dabbling in

the water almost from sun to sun; in Italy, where they drink nine days,

they bathe at least thirty, and commonly drink the water mixed with some

other drugs to make it work the better. Here we are ordered to walk to

digest it; there we are kept in bed after taking it till it be wrought

off, our stomachs and feet having continually hot cloths applied to them

all the while; and as the Germans have a particular practice generally to

use cupping and scarification in the bath, so the Italians have their

‘doccie’, which are certain little streams of this hot water brought

through pipes, and with these bathe an hour in the morning, and as much

in the afternoon, for a month together, either the head, stomach, or any

other part where the evil lies. There are infinite other varieties of

customs in every country, or rather there is no manner of resemblance to

one another. By this you may see that this little part of physic to

which I have only submitted, though the least depending upon art of all

others, has yet a great share of the confusion and uncertainty everywhere

else manifest in the profession.

The poets put what they would say with greater emphasis and grace;

witness these two epigrams:

“Alcon hesterno signum Jovis attigit: ille,

Quamvis marmoreus, vim patitur medici.

Ecce hodie, jussus transferri ex aeede vetusta,

Effertur, quamvis sit Deus atque lapis.”

[“Alcon yesterday touched Jove’s statue; he, although marble,

suffers the force of the physician: to-day ordered to be transferred

from the old temple, where it stood, it is carried out, although it

be a god and a stone.”--Ausonius, Ep., 74.]

and the other:

“Lotus nobiscum est, hilaris coenavit; et idem

Inventus mane est mortuus Andragoras.

Tam subitae mortis causam, Faustine, requiris?

In somnis medicum viderat Hermocratem:”

[“Andragoras bathed with us, supped gaily, and in the morning the

same was found dead. Dost thou ask, Faustinus, the cause of this so

sudden death? In his dreams he had seen the physician Hermocrates.”

--Martial, vi. 53.]

upon which I will relate two stories.

The Baron de Caupene in Chalosse and I have betwixt us the advowson of a

benefice of great extent, at the foot of our mountains, called Lahontan.

It is with the inhabitants of this angle, as ‘tis said of those of the

Val d’Angrougne; they lived a peculiar sort of life, their fashions,

clothes, and manners distinct from other people; ruled and governed by

certain particular laws and usages, received from father to son, to which

they submitted, without other constraint than the reverence to custom.

This little state had continued from all antiquity in so happy a

condition, that no neighbouring judge was ever put to the trouble of

inquiring into their doings; no advocate was ever retained to give them

counsel, no stranger ever called in to compose their differences; nor was

ever any of them seen to go a-begging. They avoided all alliances and

traffic with the outer world, that they might not corrupt the purity of

their own government; till, as they say, one of them, in the memory of

man, having a mind spurred on with a noble ambition, took it into his

head, to bring his name into credit and reputation, to make one of his

sons something more than ordinary, and having put him to learn to write

in a neighbouring town, made him at last a brave village notary. This

fellow, having acquired such dignity, began to disdain their ancient

customs, and to buzz into the people’s ears the pomp of the other parts

of the nation; the first prank he played was to advise a friend of his,

whom somebody had offended by sawing off the horns of one of his goats,

to make his complaint to the royal judges thereabout, and so he went on

from one to another, till he had spoiled and confounded all. In the tail

of this corruption, they say, there happened another, and of worse

consequence, by means of a physician, who, falling in love with one of

their daughters, had a mind to marry her and to live amongst them. This

man first of all began to teach them the names of fevers, colds, and

imposthumes; the seat of the heart, liver, and intestines, a science till

then utterly unknown to them; and instead of garlic, with which they were

wont to cure all manner of diseases, how painful or extreme soever, he

taught them, though it were but for a cough or any little cold, to take

strange mixtures, and began to make a trade not only of their health, but

of their lives. They swear till then they never perceived the evening

air to be offensive to the head; that to drink when they were hot was

hurtful, and that the winds of autumn were more unwholesome than those of

spring; that, since this use of physic, they find themselves oppressed

with a legion of unaccustomed diseases, and that they perceive a general

decay in their ancient vigour, and their lives are cut shorter by the

half. This is the first of my stories.

The other is, that before I was afflicted with the stone, hearing that

the blood of a he-goat was with many in very great esteem, and looked

upon as a celestial manna rained down upon these latter ages for the good

and preservation of the lives of men, and having heard it spoken of by

men of understanding for an admirable drug, and of infallible operation;

I, who have ever thought myself subject to all the accidents that can

befall other men, had a mind, in my perfect health, to furnish myself

with this miracle, and therefore gave order to have a goat fed at home

according to the recipe: for he must be taken in the hottest month of all

summer, and must only have aperitive herbs given him to eat, and white

wine to drink. I came home by chance the very day he was to be killed;

and some one came and told me that the cook had found two or three great

balls in his paunch, that rattled against one another amongst what he had

eaten. I was curious to have all his entrails brought before me, where,

having caused the skin that enclosed them to be cut, there tumbled out

three great lumps, as light as sponges, so that they appeared to be

hollow, but as to the rest, hard and firm without, and spotted and mixed

all over with various dead colours; one was perfectly round, and of the

bigness of an ordinary ball; the other two something less, of an

imperfect roundness, as seeming not to be arrived at their, full growth.

I find, by inquiry of people accustomed to open these animals, that it is

a rare and unusual accident. ‘Tis likely these are stones of the same

nature with ours and if so, it must needs be a very vain hope in

those who have the stone, to extract their cure from the blood of a beast

that was himself about to die of the same disease. For to say that the

blood does not participate of this contagion, and does not thence alter

its wonted virtue, it is rather to be believed that nothing is engendered

in a body but by the conspiracy and communication of all the parts: the

whole mass works together, though one part contributes more to the work

than another, according to the diversity of operations; wherefore it is

very likely that there was some petrifying quality in all the parts of

this goat. It was not so much for fear of the future, and for myself,

that I was curious in this experiment, but because it falls out in mine,

as it does in many other families, that the women store up such little

trumperies for the service of the people, using the same recipe in fifty

several diseases, and such a recipe as they will not take themselves, and

yet triumph when they happen to be successful.

As to what remains, I honour physicians, not according to the precept

for their necessity (for to this passage may be opposed another of the

prophet reproving King Asa for having recourse to a physician), but for

themselves, having known many very good men of that profession, and most

worthy to be beloved. I do not attack them; ‘tis their art I inveigh

against, and do not much blame them for making their advantage of our

folly, for most men do the same. Many callings, both of greater and of

less dignity than theirs, have no other foundation or support than public

abuse. When I am sick I send for them if they be near, only to have

their company, and pay them as others do. I give them leave to command

me to keep myself warm, because I naturally love to do it, and to appoint

leeks or lettuce for my broth; to order me white wine or claret; and so

as to all other things, which are indifferent to my palate and custom.

I know very well that I do nothing for them in so doing, because

sharpness and strangeness are incidents of the very essence of physic.

Lycurgus ordered wine for the sick Spartans. Why? because they

abominated the drinking it when they were well; as a gentleman, a

neighbour of mine, takes it as an excellent medicine in his fever,

because naturally he mortally hates the taste of it. How many do we see

amongst them of my humour, who despise taking physic themselves, are men

of a liberal diet, and live a quite contrary sort of life to what they

prescribe others? What is this but flatly to abuse our simplicity? for

their own lives and health are no less dear to them than ours are to us,

and consequently they would accommodate their practice to their rules, if

they did not themselves know how false these are.

‘Tis the fear of death and of pain, impatience of disease, and a violent

and indiscreet desire of a present cure, that so blind us: ‘tis pure

cowardice that makes our belief so pliable and easy to be imposed upon:

and yet most men do not so much believe as they acquiesce and permit; for

I hear them find fault and complain as well as we; but they resolve at

last, “What should I do then?” As if impatience were of itself a better

remedy than patience. Is there any one of those who have suffered

themselves to be persuaded into this miserable subjection, who does not

equally surrender himself to all sorts of impostures? who does not give

up himself to the mercy of whoever has the impudence to promise him a

cure? The Babylonians carried their sick into the public square; the

physician was the people: every one who passed by being in humanity and

civility obliged to inquire of their condition, gave some advice

according to his own experience. We do little better; there is not so

simple a woman, whose gossips and drenches we do not make use of: and

according to my humour, if I were to take physic, I would sooner choose

to take theirs than any other, because at least, if they do no good, they

will do no harm. What Homer and Plato said of the Egyptians, that they

were all physicians, may be said of all nations; there is not a man

amongst any of them who does not boast of some rare recipe, and who will

not venture it upon his neighbour, if he will let him. I was the other

day in a company where one, I know not who, of my fraternity brought us

intelligence of a new sort of pills made up of a hundred and odd

ingredients: it made us very merry, and was a singular consolation, for

what rock could withstand so great a battery? And yet I hear from those

who have made trial of it, that the least atom of gravel deigned not to

stir fort.

I cannot take my hand from the paper before I have added a word

concerning the assurance they give us of the certainty of their drugs,

from the experiments they have made.

The greatest part, I should say above two-thirds of the medicinal

virtues, consist in the quintessence or occult property of simples,

of which we can have no other instruction than use and custom; for

quintessence is no other than a quality of which we cannot by our reason

find out the cause. In such proofs, those they pretend to have acquired

by the inspiration of some daemon, I am content to receive (for I meddle

not with miracles); and also the proofs which are drawn from things that,

upon some other account, often fall into use amongst us; as if in the

wool, wherewith we are wont to clothe ourselves, there has accidentally

some occult desiccative property been found out of curing kibed heels, or

as if in the radish we eat for food there has been found out some

aperitive operation. Galen reports, that a man happened to be cured of a

leprosy by drinking wine out of a vessel into which a viper had crept by

chance. In this example we find the means and a very likely guide and

conduct to this experience, as we also do in those that physicians

pretend to have been directed to by the example of some beasts. But in

most of their other experiments wherein they affirm they have been

conducted by fortune, and to have had no other guide than chance, I find

the progress of this information incredible. Suppose man looking round

about him upon the infinite number of things, plants, animals, metals;

I do not know where he would begin his trial; and though his first fancy

should fix him upon an elk’s horn, wherein there must be a very pliant

and easy belief, he will yet find himself as perplexed in his second

operation. There are so many maladies and so many circumstances

presented to him, that before he can attain the certainty of the point to

which the perfection of his experience should arrive, human sense will be

at the end of its lesson: and before he can, amongst this infinity of

things, find out what this horn is; amongst so many diseases, what is

epilepsy; the many complexions in a melancholy person; the many seasons

in winter; the many nations in the French; the many ages in age; the many

celestial mutations in the conjunction of Venus and Saturn; the many

parts in man’s body, nay, in a finger; and being, in all this, directed

neither by argument, conjecture, example, nor divine inspirations, but

merely by the sole motion of fortune, it must be by a perfectly

artificial, regular and methodical fortune. And after the cure is

performed, how can he assure himself that it was not because the disease

had arrived at its period or an effect of chance? or the operation of

something else that he had eaten, drunk, or touched that day? or by

virtue of his grandmother’s prayers? And, moreover, had this experiment

been perfect, how many times was it repeated, and this long bead-roll of

haps, and concurrences strung anew by chance to conclude a certain rule?

And when the rule is concluded, by whom, I pray you? Of so many

millions, there are but three men who take upon them to record their

experiments: must fortune needs just hit one of these? What if another,

and a hundred others, have made contrary experiments? We might,

peradventure, have some light in this, were all the judgments and

arguments of men known to us; but that three witnesses, three doctors,

should lord it over all mankind, is against reason: it were necessary

that human nature should have deputed and chosen them out, and that they

were declared our comptrollers by express procuration:

“TO MADAME DE DURAS.

--[Marguerite de Grammont, widow of Jean de Durfort, Seigneur de

Duras, who was killed near Leghorn, leaving no posterity. Montaigne

seems to have been on terms of considerable intimacy with her, and

to have tendered her some very wholesome and frank advice in regard

to her relations with Henry IV.]--

“MADAME,--The last time you honoured me with a visit, you found me at work

upon this chapter, and as these trifles may one day fall into your hands,

I would also that they testify in how great honour the author will take

any favour you shall please to show them. You will there find the same

air and mien you have observed in his conversation; and though I could

have borrowed some better or more favourable garb than my own, I would

not have done it: for I require nothing more of these writings, but to

present me to your memory such as I naturally am. The same conditions

and faculties you have been pleased to frequent and receive with much

more honour and courtesy than they deserve, I would put together (but

without alteration or change) in one solid body, that may peradventure

continue some years, or some days, after I am gone; where you may find

them again when you shall please to refresh your memory, without putting

you to any greater trouble; neither are they worth it. I desire you

should continue the favour of your friendship to me, by the same

qualities by which it was acquired.

“I am not at all ambitious that any one should love and esteem me more

dead than living. The humour of Tiberius is ridiculous, but yet common,

who was more solicitous to extend his renown to posterity than to render

himself acceptable to men of his own time. If I were one of those to

whom the world could owe commendation, I would give out of it one-half to

have the other in hand; let their praises come quick and crowding about

me, more thick than long, more full than durable; and let them cease, in

God’s name, with my own knowledge of them, and when the sweet sound can

no longer pierce my ears. It were an idle humour to essay, now that I am

about to forsake the commerce of men, to offer myself to them by a new

recommendation. I make no account of the goods I could not employ in the

service of my life. Such as I am, I will be elsewhere than in paper: my

art and industry have been ever directed to render myself good for

something; my studies, to teach me to do, and not to write. I have made

it my whole business to frame my life: this has been my trade and my

work; I am less a writer of books than anything else. I have coveted

understanding for the service of my present and real conveniences, and

not to lay up a stock for my posterity. He who has anything of value in

him, let him make it appear in his conduct, in his ordinary discourses,

in his courtships, and his quarrels: in play, in bed, at table, in the

management of his affairs, in his economics. Those whom I see make good

books in ill breeches, should first have mended their breeches, if they

would have been ruled by me. Ask a Spartan whether he had rather be a

good orator or a good soldier: and if I was asked the same question, I

would rather choose to be a good cook, had I not one already to serve me.

My God! Madame, how should I hate such a recommendation of being a

clever fellow at writing, and an ass and an inanity in everything else!

Yet I had rather be a fool both here and there than to have made so ill a

choice wherein to employ my talent. And I am so far from expecting to

gain any new reputation by these follies, that I shall think I come off

pretty well if I lose nothing by them of that little I had before. For

besides that this dead and mute painting will take from my natural being,

it has no resemblance to my better condition, but is much lapsed from my

former vigour and cheerfulness, growing faded and withered: I am towards

the bottom of the barrel, which begins to taste of the lees.

“As to the rest, Madame, I should not have dared to make so bold with the

mysteries of physic, considering the esteem that you and so many others

have of it, had I not had encouragement from their own authors. I think

there are of these among the old Latin writers but two, Pliny and Celsus

if these ever fall into your hands, you will find that they speak much

more rudely of their art than I do; I but pinch it, they cut its throat.

Pliny, amongst other things, twits them with this, that when they are at

the end of their rope, they have a pretty device to save themselves, by

recommending their patients, whom they have teased and tormented with

their drugs and diets to no purpose, some to vows and miracles, others to

the hot baths. (Be not angry, Madame; he speaks not of those in our

parts, which are under the protection of your house, and all Gramontins.)

They have a third way of saving their own credit, of ridding their hands

of us and securing themselves from the reproaches we might cast in their

teeth of our little amendment, when they have had us so long in their

hands that they have not one more invention left wherewith to amuse us,

which is to send us to the better air of some other country. This,

Madame, is enough; I hope you will give me leave to return to my

discourse, from which I have so far digressed, the better to divert you.”

It was, I think, Pericles, who being asked how he did: “You may judge,”

says he, “by these,” showing some little scrolls of parchment he had tied

about his neck and arms. By which he would infer that he must needs be

very sick when he was reduced to a necessity of having recourse to such

idle and vain fopperies, and of suffering himself to be so equipped.

I dare not promise but that I may one day be so much a fool as to commit

my life and death to the mercy and government of physicians; I may fall

into such a frenzy; I dare not be responsible for my future constancy:

but then, if any one ask me how I do, I may also answer, as Pericles did,

“You may judge by this,” shewing my hand clutching six drachms of opium.

It will be a very evident sign of a violent sickness: my judgment will be

very much out of order; if once fear and impatience get such an advantage

over me, it may very well be concluded that there is a dreadful fever in

my mind.

I have taken the pains to plead this cause, which I understand

indifferently, a little to back and support the natural aversion to drugs

and the practice of physic I have derived from my ancestors, to the end

it may not be a mere stupid and inconsiderate aversion, but have a little

more form; and also, that they who shall see me so obstinate in my

resolution against all exhortations and menaces that shall be given me,

when my infirmity shall press hardest upon me, may not think ‘tis mere

obstinacy in me; or any one so ill-natured as to judge it to be any

motive of glory: for it would be a strange ambition to seek to gain

honour by an action my gardener or my groom can perform as well as I.

Certainly, I have not a heart so tumorous and windy, that I should

exchange so solid a pleasure as health for an airy and imaginary

pleasure: glory, even that of the Four Sons of Aymon, is too dear bought

by a man of my humour, if it cost him three swinging fits of the stone.

Give me health, in God’s name! Such as love physic, may also have good,

great, and convincing considerations; I do not hate opinions contrary to

my own: I am so, far from being angry to see a discrepancy betwixt mine

and other men’s judgments, and from rendering myself unfit for the

society of men, from being of another sense and party than mine, that on

the contrary (the most general way that nature has followed being

variety, and more in souls than bodies, forasmuch as they are of a more

supple substance, and more susceptible of forms) I find it much more rare

to see our humours and designs jump and agree. And there never were, in

the world, two opinions alike, no more than two hairs, or two grains:

their most universal quality is diversity.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

I am towards the bottom of the barrel

Accusing all others of ignorance and imposition

Affection towards their husbands, (not) until they have lost them

Anything of value in him, let him make it appear in his conduct

As if impatience were of itself a better remedy than patience

Assurance they give us of the certainty of their drugs

At least, if they do no good, they will do no harm

Attribute to itself; all the happy successes that happen

Best part of a captain to know how to make use of occasions

Burnt and roasted for opinions taken upon trust from others

Commit themselves to the common fortune

Crafty humility that springs from presumption

Did not approve all sorts of means to obtain a victory

Disease had arrived at its period or an effect of chance?

Dissentient and tumultuary drugs

Do not much blame them for making their advantage of our folly

Doctors: more felicity and duration in their own lives?

Doctrine much more intricate and fantastic than the thing itself

Drugs being in its own nature an enemy to our health

Even the very promises of physic are incredible in themselves

Fathers conceal their affection from their children

He who provides for all, provides for nothing

Health depends upon the vanity and falsity of their promises

Health is altered and corrupted by their frequent prescriptions

Health to be worth purchasing by all the most painful cauteries

Homer: The only words that have motion and action

I dare not promise but that I may one day be so much a fool

I see no people so soon sick as those who take physic

Indiscreet desire of a present cure, that so blind us

Intended to get a new husband than to lament the old

Let it alone a little

Life should be cut off in the sound and living part

Live a quite contrary sort of life to what they prescribe others

Live, not so long as they please, but as long as they ought

Llaying the fault upon the patient, by such frivolous reasons

Long a voyage I should at last run myself into some disadvantage

Making their advantage of our folly, for most men do the same

Man may with less trouble adapt himself to entire abstinence

Man runs a very great hazard in their hands (of physicians)

Mark of singular good nature to preserve old age

Men must embark, and not deliberate, upon high enterprises

Mercenaries who would receive any (pay)

Moderation is a virtue that gives more work than suffering

More valued a victory obtained by counsel than by force

Most men do not so much believe as they acquiesce and permit

Never any man knew so much, and spake so little

No danger with them, though they may do us no good

No other foundation or support than public abuse

No physic that has not something hurtful in it

Noble and rich, where examples of virtue are rarely lodged

Obstinacy is the sister of constancy

Order a purge for your brain, it will there be much better

Ordinances it (Medicine) foists upon us

Passion has a more absolute command over us than reason

Pay very strict usury who did not in due time pay the principal

People are willing to be gulled in what they desire

Physician’s “help”, which is very often an obstacle

Physicians are not content to deal only with the sick

Physicians fear men should at any time escape their authority

Physicians were the only men who might lie at pleasure

Physicians: earth covers their failures

Plato said of the Egyptians, that they were all physicians

Pure cowardice that makes our belief so pliable

Recommendation of strangeness, rarity, and dear purchase

Send us to the better air of some other country

Should first have mended their breeches

Smile upon us whilst we are alive

So austere and very wise countenance and carriage (of physicians)

So much are men enslaved to their miserable being

Solon said that eating was physic against the malady hunger

Strangely suspect all this merchandise: medical care

Studies, to teach me to do, and not to write

Such a recipe as they will not take themselves

That he could neither read nor swim

The Babylonians carried their sick into the public square

They (good women) are not by the dozen, as every one knows

They have not one more invention left wherewith to amuse us

They juggle and trifle in all their discourses at our expense

They never loved them till dead

Tis in some sort a kind of dying to avoid the pain of living wel

Tis not the number of men, but the number of good men

Tis there she talks plain French

To be, not to seem

To keep me from dying is not in your power

Two opinions alike, no more than two hairs

Tyrannical authority physicians usurp over poor creatures

Venture it upon his neighbour, if he will let him

Venture the making ourselves better without any danger

We confess our ignorance in many things

We do not easily accept the medicine we understand

What are become of all our brave philosophical precepts?

What we have not seen, we are forced to receive from other hands

Whatever was not ordinary diet, was instead of a drug

Whimpering is offensive to the living and vain to the dead

Who does not boast of some rare recipe

Who ever saw one physician approve of another’s prescription

Willingly give them leave to laugh after we are dead

With being too well I am about to die

Wont to give others their life, and not to receive it

You may indeed make me die an ill death

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazlitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 14.

I. Of Profit and Honesty.

II. Of Repentance.

III. Of Three Commerces.

IV. Of Diversion.

ESSAYS OF MONTAIGNE

BOOK THE THIRD

CHAPTER I

OF PROFIT AND HONESTY

No man is free from speaking foolish things; but the worst on’t is, when

a man labours to play the fool:

“Nae iste magno conatu magnas nugas dixerit.”

[“Truly he, with a great effort will shortly say a mighty trifle.”

---Terence, Heaut., act iii., s. 4.]

This does not concern me; mine slip from me with as little care as they

are of little value, and ‘tis the better for them. I would presently

part with them for what they are worth, and neither buy nor sell them,

but as they weigh. I speak on paper, as I do to the first person I meet;

and that this is true, observe what follows.

To whom ought not treachery to be hateful, when Tiberius refused it in a

thing of so great importance to him? He had word sent him from Germany

that if he thought fit, they would rid him of Arminius by poison: this

was the most potent enemy the Romans had, who had defeated them so

ignominiously under Varus, and who alone prevented their aggrandisement

in those parts.

He returned answer, “that the people of Rome were wont to revenge

themselves of their enemies by open ways, and with their swords in their

hands, and not clandestinely and by fraud”: wherein he quitted the

profitable for the honest. You will tell me that he was a braggadocio; I

believe so too: and ‘tis no great miracle in men of his profession. But

the acknowledgment of virtue is not less valid in the mouth of him who

hates it, forasmuch as truth forces it from him, and if he will not

inwardly receive it, he at least puts it on for a decoration.

Our outward and inward structure is full of imperfection; but there is

nothing useless in nature, not even inutility itself; nothing has

insinuated itself into this universe that has not therein some fit and

proper place. Our being is cemented with sickly qualities: ambition,

jealousy, envy, revenge, superstition, and despair have so natural a

possession in us, that its image is discerned in beasts; nay, and

cruelty, so unnatural a vice; for even in the midst of compassion we feel

within, I know not what tart-sweet titillation of ill-natured pleasure in

seeing others suffer; and the children feel it:

“Suave mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis,

E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem:”

[“It is sweet, when the winds disturb the waters of the vast sea, to

witness from land the peril of other persons.”--Lucretius, ii. I.]

of the seeds of which qualities, whoever should divest man, would destroy

the fundamental conditions of human life. Likewise, in all governments

there are necessary offices, not only abject, but vicious also. Vices

there help to make up the seam in our piecing, as poisons are useful for

the conservation of health. If they become excusable because they are of

use to us, and that the common necessity covers their true qualities, we

are to resign this part to the strongest and boldest citizens, who

sacrifice their honour and conscience, as others of old sacrificed their

lives, for the good of their country: we, who are weaker, take upon us

parts both that are more easy and less hazardous. The public weal

requires that men should betray, and lie, and massacre; let us leave this

commission to men who are more obedient and more supple.

In earnest, I have often been troubled to see judges, by fraud and false

hopes of favour or pardon, allure a criminal to confess his fact, and

therein to make use of cozenage and impudence. It would become justice,

and Plato himself, who countenances this manner of proceeding, to furnish

me with other means more suitable to my own liking: this is a malicious

kind of justice, and I look upon it as no less wounded by itself than by

others. I said not long since to some company in discourse, that I

should hardly be drawn to betray my prince for a particular man, who

should be much ashamed to betray any particular man for my prince; and I

do not only hate deceiving myself, but that any one should deceive

through me; I will neither afford matter nor occasion to any such thing.

In the little I have had to mediate betwixt our princes--[Between the

King of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV., and the Duc de Guise. See De

Thou, De Vita Sua, iii. 9.]--in the divisions and subdivisions by which

we are at this time torn to pieces, I have been very careful that they

should neither be deceived in me nor deceive others by me. People of

that kind of trading are very reserved, and pretend to be the most

moderate imaginable and nearest to the opinions of those with whom they

have to do; I expose myself in my stiff opinion, and after a method the

most my own; a tender negotiator, a novice, who had rather fail in the

affair than be wanting to myself. And yet it has been hitherto with so

good luck (for fortune has doubtless the best share in it), that few

things have passed from hand to hand with less suspicion or more favour

and privacy. I have a free and open way that easily insinuates itself

and obtains belief with those with whom I am to deal at the first

meeting. Sincerity and pure truth, in what age soever, pass for current;

and besides, the liberty and freedom of a man who treats without any

interest of his own is never hateful or suspected, and he may very well

make use of the answer of Hyperides to the Athenians, who complained of

his blunt way of speaking: “Messieurs, do not consider whether or no I am

free, but whether I am so without a bribe, or without any advantage to my

own affairs.” My liberty of speaking has also easily cleared me from all

suspicion of dissembling by its vehemency, leaving nothing unsaid, how

home and bitter soever (so that I could have said no worse behind their

backs), and in that it carried along with it a manifest show of

simplicity and indifference. I pretend to no other fruit by acting than

to act, and add to it no long arguments or propositions; every action

plays its own game, win if it can.

As to the rest, I am not swayed by any passion, either of love or hatred,

towards the great, nor has my will captivated either by particular injury

or obligation. I look upon our kings with an affection simply loyal and

respectful, neither prompted nor restrained by any private interest, and

I love myself for it. Nor does the general and just cause attract me

otherwise than with moderation, and without heat. I am not subject to

those penetrating and close compacts and engagements. Anger and hatred

are beyond the duty of justice; and are passions only useful to those who

do not keep themselves strictly to their duty by simple reason:

“Utatur motu animi, qui uti ratione non potest.”

[“He may employ his passion, who can make no use of his reason.”

--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 25.]

All legitimate intentions are temperate and equable of themselves; if

otherwise, they degenerate into seditious and unlawful. This is it which

makes me walk everywhere with my head erect, my face and my heart open.

In truth, and I am not afraid to confess it, I should easily, in case of

need, hold up one candle to St. Michael and another to his dragon, like

the old woman; I will follow the right side even to the fire, but

exclusively, if I can. Let Montaigne be overwhelmed in the public ruin

if need be; but if there be no need, I should think myself obliged to

fortune to save me, and I will make use of all the length of line my duty

allows for his preservation. Was it not Atticus who, being of the just

but losing side, preserved himself by his moderation in that universal

shipwreck of the world, amongst so many mutations and diversities? For

private man, as he was, it is more easy; and in such kind of work, I

think a man may justly not be ambitious to offer and insinuate himself.

For a man, indeed, to be wavering and irresolute, to keep his affection

unmoved and without inclination in the troubles of his country and public

divisions, I neither think it handsome nor honest:

“Ea non media, sed nulla via est, velut eventum

exspectantium, quo fortunae consilia sua applicent.”

[“That is not a middle way, but no way, to await events, by which

they refer their resolutions to fortune.”--Livy, xxxii. 21.]

This may be allowed in our neighbours’ affairs; and thus Gelo, the tyrant

of Syracuse, suspended his inclination in the war betwixt the Greeks and

barbarians, keeping a resident ambassador with presents at Delphos, to

watch and see which way fortune would incline, and then take fit occasion

to fall in with the victors. It would be a kind of treason to proceed

after this manner in our own domestic affairs, wherein a man must of

necessity be of the one side or the other; though for a man who has no

office or express command to call him out, to sit still I hold it more

excusable (and yet I do not excuse myself upon these terms) than in

foreign expeditions, to which, however, according to our laws, no man is

pressed against his will. And yet even those who wholly engage

themselves in such a war may behave themselves with such temper and

moderation, that the storm may fly over their heads without doing them

any harm. Had we not reason to hope such an issue in the person of the

late Bishop of Orleans, the Sieur de Morvilliers?

[An able negotiator, who, though protected by the Guises, and

strongly supporting them, was yet very far from persecuting the

Reformists. He died 1577.]

And I know, amongst those who behave themselves most bravely in the

present war, some whose manners are so gentle, obliging, and just, that

they will certainly stand firm, whatever event Heaven is preparing for

us. I am of opinion that it properly belongs to kings only to quarrel

with kings; and I laugh at those spirits who, out of lightness of heart,

lend themselves to so disproportioned disputes; for a man has never the

more particular quarrel with a prince, by marching openly and boldly

against him for his own honour and according to his duty; if he does not

love such a person, he does better, he esteems him. And notably the

cause of the laws and of the ancient government of a kingdom, has this

always annexed to it, that even those who, for their own private

interest, invade them, excuse, if they do not honour, the defenders.

But we are not, as we nowadays do, to call peevishness and inward

discontent, that spring from private interest and passion, duty, nor a

treacherous and malicious conduct, courage; they call their proneness to

mischief and violence zeal; ‘tis not the cause, but their interest, that

inflames them; they kindle and begin a war, not because it is just, but

because it is war.

A man may very well behave himself commodiously and loyally too amongst

those of the adverse party; carry yourself, if not with the same equal

affection (for that is capable of different measure), at least with an

affection moderate, well tempered, and such as shall not so engage you to

one party, that it may demand all you are able to do for that side,

content yourself with a moderate proportion of their, favour and

goodwill; and to swim in troubled waters without fishing in them.

The other way, of offering a man’s self and the utmost service he is able

to do, both to one party and the other, has still less of prudence in it

than conscience. Does not he to whom you betray another, to whom you

were as welcome as to himself, know that you will at another time do as

much for him? He holds you for a villain; and in the meantime hears what

you will say, gathers intelligence from you, and works his own ends out

of your disloyalty; double-dealing men are useful for bringing in, but we

must have a care they carry out as little as is possible.

I say nothing to one party that I may not, upon occasion, say to the

other, with a little alteration of accent; and report nothing but things

either indifferent or known, or what is of common consequence. I cannot

permit myself, for any consideration, to tell them a lie. What is

intrusted to my secrecy, I religiously conceal; but I take as few trusts

of that nature upon me as I can. The secrets of princes are a

troublesome burthen to such as are not interested in them. I very

willingly bargain that they trust me with little, but confidently rely

upon what I tell them. I have ever known more than I desired. One open

way of speaking introduces another open way of speaking, and draws out

discoveries, like wine and love. Philippides, in my opinion, answered

King Lysimachus very discreetly, who, asking him what of his estate he

should bestow upon him? “What you will,” said he, “provided it be none

of your secrets.” I see every one is displeased if the bottom of the

affair be concealed from him wherein he is employed, or that there be any

reservation in the thing; for my part, I am content to know no more of

the business than what they would have me employ myself in, nor desire

that my knowledge should exceed or restrict what I have to say. If I

must serve for an instrument of deceit, let it be at least with a safe

conscience: I will not be reputed a servant either so affectionate or so

loyal as to be fit to betray any one: he who is unfaithful to himself, is

excusably so to his master. But they are princes who do not accept men

by halves, and despise limited and conditional services: I cannot help

it: I frankly tell them how far I can go; for a slave I should not be,

but to reason, and I can hardly submit even to that. And they also are

to blame to exact from a freeman the same subjection and obligation to

their service that they do from him they have made and bought, or whose

fortune particularly and expressly depends upon theirs. The laws have

delivered me from a great anxiety; they have chosen a side for me, and

given me a master; all other superiority and obligation ought to be

relative to that, and cut, off from all other. Yet this is not to say,

that if my affection should otherwise incline me, my hand should

presently obey it; the will and desire are a law to themselves; but

actions must receive commission from the public appointment.

All this proceeding of mine is a little dissonant from the ordinary

forms; it would produce no great effects, nor be of any long duration;

innocence itself could not, in this age of ours, either negotiate without

dissimulation, or traffic without lying; and, indeed, public employments

are by no means for my palate: what my profession requires, I perform

after the most private manner that I can. Being young, I was engaged up

to the ears in business, and it succeeded well; but I disengaged myself

in good time. I have often since avoided meddling in it, rarely

accepted, and never asked it; keeping my back still turned to ambition;

but if not like rowers who so advance backward, yet so, at the same time,

that I am less obliged to my resolution than to my good fortune, that I

was not wholly embarked in it. For there are ways less displeasing to my

taste, and more suitable to my ability, by which, if she had formerly

called me to the public service, and my own advancement towards the

world’s opinion, I know I should, in spite of all my own arguments to the

contrary, have pursued them. Such as commonly say, in opposition to what

I profess, that what I call freedom, simplicity, and plainness in my

manners, is art and subtlety, and rather prudence than goodness, industry

than nature, good sense than good luck, do me more honour than disgrace:

but, certainly, they make my subtlety too subtle; and whoever has

followed me close, and pryed narrowly into me, I will give him the

victory, if he does not confess that there is no rule in their school

that could match this natural motion, and maintain an appearance of

liberty and licence, so equal and inflexible, through so many various and

crooked paths, and that all their wit and endeavour could never have led

them through. The way of truth is one and simple; that of particular

profit, and the commodity of affairs a man is entrusted with, is double,

unequal, and casual. I have often seen these counterfeit and artificial

liberties practised, but, for the most part, without success; they relish

of AEsop’s ass who, in emulation of the dog, obligingly clapped his two

fore-feet upon his master’s shoulders; but as many caresses as the dog

had for such an expression of kindness, twice so many blows with a cudgel

had the poor ass for his compliment:

“Id maxime quemque decet, quod est cujusque suum maxime.”

[“That best becomes every man which belongs most to him;”

--Cicero, De Offic., i. 31.]

I will not deprive deceit of its due; that were but ill to understand the

world: I know it has often been of great use, and that it maintains and

supplies most men’s employment. There are vices that are lawful, as

there are many actions, either good or excusable, that are not lawful in

themselves.

The justice which in itself is natural and universal is otherwise and

more nobly ordered than that other justice which is special, national,

and constrained to the ends of government,

“Veri juris germanaeque justitiae solidam et expressam

effigiem nullam tenemus; umbra et imaginibus utimur;”

[“We retain no solid and express portraiture of true right and

germane justice; we have only the shadow and image of it.”

--Cicero, De Offic., iii. 17.]

insomuch that the sage Dandamis, hearing the lives of Socrates,

Pythagoras, and Diogenes read, judged them to be great men every way,

excepting that they were too much subjected to the reverence of the laws,

which, to second and authorise, true virtue must abate very much of its

original vigour; many vicious actions are introduced, not only by their

permission, but by their advice:

“Ex senatus consultis plebisquescitis scelera exercentur.”

[“Crimes are committed by the decrees of the Senate and the

popular assembly.”--Seneca, Ep., 95.]

I follow the common phrase that distinguishes betwixt profitable and

honest things, so as to call some natural actions, that are not only

profitable but necessary, dishonest and foul.

But let us proceed in our examples of treachery two pretenders to the

kingdom of Thrace--[Rhescuporis and Cotys. Tacitus, Annal., ii. 65]--

were fallen into dispute about their title; the emperor hindered them

from proceeding to blows: but one of them, under colour of bringing

things to a friendly issue by an interview, having invited his competitor

to an entertainment in his own house, imprisoned and killed him. Justice

required that the Romans should have satisfaction for this offence; but

there was a difficulty in obtaining it by ordinary ways; what, therefore,

they could not do legitimately, without war and without danger, they

resolved to do by treachery; and what they could not honestly do, they

did profitably. For which end, one Pomponius Flaccus was found to be a

fit instrument. This man, by dissembled words and assurances, having

drawn the other into his toils, instead of the honour and favour he had

promised him, sent him bound hand and foot to Rome. Here one traitor

betrayed another, contrary to common custom: for they are full of

mistrust, and ‘tis hard to overreach them in their own art: witness the

sad experience we have lately had.--[Montaigne here probably refers to

the feigned reconciliation between Catherine de Medici and Henri, Duc de

Guise, in 1588.]

Let who will be Pomponius Flaccus, and there are enough who would: for my

part, both my word and my faith are, like all the rest, parts of this

common body: their best effect is the public service; this I take for

presupposed. But should one command me to take charge of the courts of

law and lawsuits, I should make answer, that I understood it not; or the

place of a leader of pioneers, I would say, that I was called to a more

honourable employment; so likewise, he that would employ me to lie,

betray, and forswear myself, though not to assassinate or to poison, for

some notable service, I should say, “If I have robbed or stolen anything

from any man, send me rather to the galleys.” For it is permissible in a

man of honour to say, as the Lacedaemonians did,--[Plutarch, Difference

between a Flatterer and a Friend, c. 21.]--having been defeated by

Antipater, when just upon concluding an agreement: “You may impose as

heavy and ruinous taxes upon us as you please, but to command us to do

shameful and dishonest things, you will lose your time, for it is to no

purpose.” Every one ought to make the same vow to himself that the kings

of Egypt made their judges solemnly swear, that they would not do

anything contrary to their consciences, though never so much commanded to

it by themselves. In such commissions there is evident mark of ignominy

and condemnation; and he who gives it at the same time accuses you, and

gives it, if you understand it right, for a burden and a punishment.

As much as the public affairs are bettered by your exploit, so much are

your own the worse, and the better you behave yourself in it, ‘tis so

much the worse for yourself; and it will be no new thing, nor,

peradventure, without some colour of justice, if the same person ruin

you who set you on work.

If treachery can be in any case excusable, it must be only so when it is

practised to chastise and betray treachery. There are examples enough of

treacheries, not only rejected, but chastised and punished by those in

favour of whom they were undertaken. Who is ignorant of Fabricius

sentence against the physician of Pyrrhus?

But this we also find recorded, that some persons have commanded a thing,

who afterward have severely avenged the execution of it upon him they had

employed, rejecting the reputation of so unbridled an authority, and

disowning so abandoned and base a servitude and obedience. Jaropelk,

Duke of Russia, tampered with a gentleman of Hungary to betray Boleslaus,

king of Poland, either by killing him, or by giving the Russians

opportunity to do him some notable mischief. This worthy went ably to

work: he was more assiduous than before in the service of that king, so

that he obtained the honour to be of his council, and one of the chiefest

in his trust. With these advantages, and taking an opportune occasion of

his master’s absence, he betrayed Vislicza, a great and rich city, to the

Russians, which was entirely sacked and burned, and not only all the

inhabitants of both sexes, young and old, put to the sword, but moreover

a great number of neighbouring gentry, whom he had drawn thither to that

end. Jaropelk, his revenge being thus satisfied and his anger appeased,

which was not, indeed, without pretence (for Boleslaus had highly

offended him, and after the same manner), and sated with the fruit of

this treachery, coming to consider the fulness of it, with a sound

judgment and clear from passion, looked upon what had been done with so

much horror and remorse that he caused the eyes to be bored out and the

tongue and shameful parts to be cut off of him who had performed it.

Antigonus persuaded the Argyraspides to betray Eumenes, their general,

his adversary, into his hands; but after he had caused him, so delivered,

to be slain, he would himself be the commissioner of the divine justice

for the punishment of so detestable a crime, and committed them into the

hands of the governor of the province, with express command, by whatever

means, to destroy and bring them all to an evil end, so that of that

great number of men, not so much as one ever returned again into

Macedonia: the better he had been served, the more wickedly he judged it

to be, and meriting greater punishment.

The slave who betrayed the place where his master, P. Sulpicius, lay

concealed, was, according to the promise of Sylla’s proscription,

manumitted for his pains; but according to the promise of the public

justice, which was free from any such engagement, he was thrown headlong

from the Tarpeian rock.

Our King Clovis, instead of the arms of gold he had promised them, caused

three of Cararie’s servants to be hanged after they had betrayed their

master to him, though he had debauched them to it: he hanged them with

the purse of their reward about their necks; after having satisfied his

second and special faith, he satisfied the general and first.

Mohammed II. having resolved to rid himself of his brother, out of

jealousy of state, according to the practice of the Ottoman family, he

employed one of his officers in the execution, who, pouring a quantity of

water too fast into him, choked him. This being done, to expiate the

murder, he delivered the murderer into the hands of the mother of him he

had so caused to be put to death, for they were only brothers by the

father’s side; she, in his presence, ripped up the murderer’s bosom, and

with her own hands rifled his breast for his heart, tore it out, and

threw it to the dogs. And even to the worst people it is the sweetest

thing imaginable, having once gained their end by a vicious action, to

foist, in all security, into it some show of virtue and justice, as by

way of compensation and conscientious correction; to which may be added,

that they look upon the ministers of such horrid crimes as upon men who

reproach them with them, and think by their deaths to erase the memory

and testimony of such proceedings.

Or if, perhaps, you are rewarded, not to frustrate the public necessity

for that extreme and desperate remedy, he who does it cannot for all

that, if he be not such himself, but look upon you as an accursed and

execrable fellow, and conclude you a greater traitor than he does,

against whom you are so: for he tries the malignity of your disposition

by your own hands, where he cannot possibly be deceived, you having no

object of preceding hatred to move you to such an act; but he employs you

as they do condemned malefactors in executions of justice, an office as

necessary as dishonourable. Besides the baseness of such commissions,

there is, moreover, a prostitution of conscience. Seeing that the

daughter of Sejanus could not be put to death by the law of Rome, because

she was a virgin, she was, to make it lawful, first ravished by the

hangman and then strangled: not only his hand but his soul is slave to

the public convenience.

When Amurath I., more grievously to punish his subjects who had taken

part in the parricide rebellion of his son, ordained that their nearest

kindred should assist in the execution, I find it very handsome in some

of them to have rather chosen to be unjustly thought guilty of the

parricide of another than to serve justice by a parricide of their own.

And where I have seen, at the taking of some little fort by assault in my

time, some rascals who, to save their own lives, would consent to hang

their friends and companions, I have looked upon them to be of worse

condition than those who were hanged. ‘Tis said, that Witold, Prince of

Lithuania, introduced into the nation the practice that the criminal

condemned to death should with his own hand execute the sentence,

thinking it strange that a third person, innocent of the fault, should be

made guilty of homicide.

A prince, when by some urgent circumstance or some impetuous and

unforeseen accident that very much concerns his state, compelled to

forfeit his word and break his faith, or otherwise forced from his

ordinary duty, ought to attribute this necessity to a lash of the divine

rod: vice it is not, for he has given up his own reason to a more

universal and more powerful reason; but certainly ‘tis a misfortune: so

that if any one should ask me what remedy? “None,” say I, “if he were

really racked between these two extremes: ‘sed videat, ne quoeratur

latebya perjurio’, he must do it: but if he did it without regret, if it

did not weigh on him to do it, ‘tis a sign his conscience is in a sorry

condition.” If there be a person to be found of so tender a conscience

as to think no cure whatever worth so important a remedy, I shall like

him never the worse; he could not more excusably or more decently perish.

We cannot do all we would, so that we must often, as the last anchorage,

commit the protection of our vessels to the simple conduct of heaven.

To what more just necessity does he reserve himself? What is less

possible for him to do than what he cannot do but at the expense of his

faith and honour, things that, perhaps, ought to be dearer to him than

his own safety, or even the safety of his people. Though he should, with

folded arms, only call God to his assistance, has he not reason to hope

that the divine goodness will not refuse the favour of an extraordinary

arm to just and pure hands? These are dangerous examples, rare and

sickly exceptions to our natural rules: we must yield to them, but with

great moderation and circumspection: no private utility is of such

importance that we should upon that account strain our consciences to

such a degree: the public may be, when very manifest and of very great

concern.

Timoleon made a timely expiation for his strange exploit by the tears he

shed, calling to mind that it was with a fraternal hand that he had slain

the tyrant; and it justly pricked his conscience that he had been

necessitated to purchase the public utility at so great a price as the

violation of his private morality. Even the Senate itself, by his means

delivered from slavery, durst not positively determine of so high a fact,

and divided into two so important and contrary aspects; but the

Syracusans, sending at the same time to the Corinthians to solicit their

protection, and to require of them a captain fit to re-establish their

city in its former dignity and to clear Sicily of several little tyrants

by whom it was oppressed, they deputed Timoleon for that service, with

this cunning declaration; “that according as he should behave himself

well or ill in his employment, their sentence should incline either to

favour the deliverer of his country, or to disfavour the murderer of his

brother.” This fantastic conclusion carries along with it some excuse,

by reason of the danger of the example, and the importance of so strange

an action: and they did well to discharge their own judgment of it, and

to refer it to others who were not so much concerned. But Timoleon’s

comportment in this expedition soon made his cause more clear, so

worthily and virtuously he demeaned himself upon all occasions; and the

good fortune that accompanied him in the difficulties he had to overcome

in this noble employment, seemed to be strewed in his way by the gods,

favourably conspiring for his justification.

The end of this matter is excusable, if any can be so; but the profit of

the augmentation of the public revenue, that served the Roman Senate for

a pretence to the foul conclusion I am going to relate, is not sufficient

to warrant any such injustice.

Certain cities had redeemed themselves and their liberty by money, by the

order and consent of the Senate, out of the hands of L. Sylla: the

business coming again in question, the Senate condemned them to be

taxable as they were before, and that the money they had disbursed for

their redemption should be lost to them. Civil war often produces such

villainous examples; that we punish private men for confiding in us when

we were public ministers: and the self-same magistrate makes another man

pay the penalty of his change that has nothing to do with it; the

pedagogue whips his scholar for his docility; and the guide beats the

blind man whom he leads by the hand; a horrid image of justice.

There are rules in philosophy that are both false and weak. The example

that is proposed to us for preferring private utility before faith given,

has not weight enough by the circumstances they put to it; robbers have

seized you, and after having made you swear to pay them a certain sum of

money, dismiss you. ‘Tis not well done to say, that an honest man can be

quit of his oath without payment, being out of their hands. ‘Tis no such

thing: what fear has once made me willing to do, I am obliged to do it

when I am no longer in fear; and though that fear only prevailed with my

tongue without forcing my will, yet am I bound to keep my word. For my

part, when my tongue has sometimes inconsiderately said something that I

did not think, I have made a conscience of disowning it: otherwise, by

degrees, we shall abolish all the right another derives from our promises

and oaths:

“Quasi vero forti viro vis possit adhiberi.”

[“As though a man of true courage could be compelled.”

--Cicero, De Offic., iii. 30.]

And ‘tis only lawful, upon the account of private interest, to excuse

breach of promise, when we have promised something that is unlawful and

wicked in itself; for the right of virtue ought to take place of the

right of any obligation of ours.

I have formerly placed Epaminondas in the first rank of excellent men,

and do not repent it. How high did he stretch the consideration of his

own particular duty? he who never killed a man whom he had overcome; who,

for the inestimable benefit of restoring the liberty of his country, made

conscience of killing a tyrant or his accomplices without due form of

justice: and who concluded him to be a wicked man, how good a citizen

soever otherwise, who amongst his enemies in battle spared not his friend

and his guest. This was a soul of a rich composition: he married

goodness and humanity, nay, even the tenderest and most delicate in the

whole school of philosophy, to the roughest and most violent human

actions. Was it nature or art that had intenerated that great courage of

his, so full, so obstinate against pain and death and poverty, to such an

extreme degree of sweetness and compassion? Dreadful in arms and blood,

he overran and subdued a nation invincible by all others but by him

alone; and yet in the heat of an encounter, could turn aside from his

friend and guest. Certainly he was fit to command in war who could so

rein himself with the curb of good nature, in the height and heat of his

fury, a fury inflamed and foaming with blood and slaughter. ‘Tis a

miracle to be able to mix any image of justice with such violent actions:

and it was only possible for such a steadfastness of mind as that of

Epaminondas therein to mix sweetness and the facility of the gentlest

manners and purest innocence. And whereas one told the Mamertini that

statutes were of no efficacy against armed men; and another told the

tribune of the people that the time of justice and of war were distinct

things; and a third said that the noise of arms deafened the voice of

laws, this man was not precluded from listening to the laws of civility

and pure courtesy. Had he not borrowed from his enemies the custom of

sacrificing to the Muses when he went to war, that they might by their

sweetness and gaiety soften his martial and rigorous fury? Let us not

fear, by the example of so great a master, to believe that there is

something unlawful, even against an enemy, and that the common concern

ought not to require all things of all men, against private interest:

“Manente memoria, etiam in dissidio publicorum

foederum, privati juris:”

[“The memory of private right remaining even amid

public dissensions.”--Livy, xxv. 18.]

“Et nulla potentia vires

Praestandi, ne quid peccet amicus, habet;”

[“No power on earth can sanction treachery against a friend.”

--Ovid, De Ponto, i. 7, 37.]

and that all things are not lawful to an honest man for the service of

his prince, the laws, or the general quarrel:

“Non enim patria praestat omnibus officiis....

et ipsi conducit pios habere cives in parentes.”

[“The duty to one’s country does not supersede all other duties.

The country itself requires that its citizens should act piously

toward their parents.”--Cicero, De Offic., iii. 23.]

Tis an instruction proper for the time wherein we live: we need not

harden our courage with these arms of steel; ‘tis enough that our

shoulders are inured to them: ‘tis enough to dip our pens in ink without

dipping them in blood. If it be grandeur of courage, and the effect of a

rare and singular virtue, to contemn friendship, private obligations, a

man’s word and relationship, for the common good and obedience to the

magistrate, ‘tis certainly sufficient to excuse us, that ‘tis a grandeur

that can have no place in the grandeur of Epaminondas’ courage.

I abominate those mad exhortations of this other discomposed soul,

“Dum tela micant, non vos pietatis imago

Ulla, nec adversa conspecti fronte parentes

Commoveant; vultus gladio turbate verendos.”

[“While swords glitter, let no idea of piety, nor the face even of a

father presented to you, move you: mutilate with your sword those

venerable features “--Lucan, vii. 320.]

Let us deprive wicked, bloody, and treacherous natures of such a pretence

of reason: let us set aside this guilty and extravagant justice, and

stick to more human imitations. How great things can time and example

do! In an encounter of the civil war against Cinna, one of Pompey’s

soldiers having unawares killed his brother, who was of the contrary

party, he immediately for shame and sorrow killed himself: and some years

after, in another civil war of the same people, a soldier demanded a

reward of his officer for having killed his brother.

A man but ill proves the honour and beauty of an action by its utility:

and very erroneously concludes that every one is obliged to it, and that

it becomes every one to do it, if it be of utility:

“Omnia non pariter rerum sunt omnibus apta.”

[“All things are not equally fit for all men.”

--Propertius, iii. 9, 7.]

Let us take that which is most necessary and profitable for human

society; it will be marriage; and yet the council of the saints find the

contrary much better, excluding from it the most venerable vocation of

man: as we design those horses for stallions of which we have the least

esteem.

CHAPTER II

OF REPENTANCE

Others form man; I only report him: and represent a particular one, ill

fashioned enough, and whom, if I had to model him anew, I should

certainly make something else than what he is but that’s past recalling.

Now, though the features of my picture alter and change, ‘tis not,

however, unlike: the world eternally turns round; all things therein are

incessantly moving, the earth, the rocks of Caucasus, and the pyramids of

Egypt, both by the public motion and their own. Even constancy itself is

no other but a slower and more languishing motion. I cannot fix my

object; ‘tis always tottering and reeling by a natural giddiness; I take

it as it is at the instant I consider it; I do not paint its being, I

paint its passage; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the

people say, from seven to seven years, but from day to day, from minute

to minute, I must accommodate my history to the hour: I may presently

change, not only by fortune, but also by intention. ‘Tis a counterpart

of various and changeable accidents, and of irresolute imaginations, and,

as it falls out, sometimes contrary: whether it be that I am then another

self, or that I take subjects by other circumstances and considerations:

so it is that I may peradventure contradict myself, but, as Demades said,

I never contradict the truth. Could my soul once take footing, I would

not essay but resolve: but it is always learning and making trial.

I propose a life ordinary and without lustre: ‘tis all one; all moral

philosophy may as well be applied to a common and private life, as to one

of richer composition: every man carries the entire form of human

condition. Authors communicate themselves to the people by some especial

and extrinsic mark; I, the first of any, by my universal being; as Michel

de Montaigne, not as a grammarian, a poet, or a lawyer. If the world

find fault that I speak too much of myself, I find fault that they do not

so much as think of themselves. But is it reason that, being so

particular in my way of living, I should pretend to recommend myself to

the public knowledge? And is it also reason that I should produce to the

world, where art and handling have so much credit and authority, crude

and simple effects of nature, and of a weak nature to boot? Is it not to

build a wall without stone or brick, or some such thing, to write books

without learning and without art? The fancies of music are carried on by

art; mine by chance. I have this, at least, according to discipline,

that never any man treated of a subject he better understood and knew

than I what I have undertaken, and that in this I am the most

understanding man alive: secondly, that never any man penetrated farther

into his matter, nor better and more distinctly sifted the parts and

sequences of it, nor ever more exactly and fully arrived at the end he

proposed to himself. To perfect it, I need bring nothing but fidelity to

the work; and that is there, and the most pure and sincere that is

anywhere to be found. I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much

as I dare; and I dare a little the more, as I grow older; for, methinks,

custom allows to age more liberty of prating, and more indiscretion of

talking of a man’s self. That cannot fall out here, which I often see

elsewhere, that the work and the artificer contradict one another:

“Can a man of such sober conversation have written so foolish a book?”

Or “Do so learned writings proceed from a man of so weak conversation?”

He who talks at a very ordinary rate, and writes rare matter, ‘tis to say

that his capacity is borrowed and not his own. A learned man is not

learned in all things: but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout,

even to ignorance itself; here my book and I go hand in hand together.

Elsewhere men may commend or censure the work, without reference to the

workman; here they cannot: who touches the one, touches the other. He

who shall judge of it without knowing him, will more wrong himself than

me; he who does know him, gives me all the satisfaction I desire. I

shall be happy beyond my desert, if I can obtain only thus much from the

public approbation, as to make men of understanding perceive that I was

capable of profiting by knowledge, had I had it; and that I deserved to

have been assisted by a better memory.

Be pleased here to excuse what I often repeat, that I very rarely repent,

and that my conscience is satisfied with itself, not as the conscience of

an angel, or that of a horse, but as the conscience of a man; always

adding this clause, not one of ceremony, but a true and real submission,

that I speak inquiring and doubting, purely and simply referring myself

to the common and accepted beliefs for the resolution. I do not teach; I

only relate.

There is no vice that is absolutely a vice which does not offend, and

that a sound judgment does not accuse; for there is in it so manifest a

deformity and inconvenience, that peradventure they are in the right who

say that it is chiefly begotten by stupidity and ignorance: so hard is it

to imagine that a man can know without abhorring it. Malice sucks up the

greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself. Vice leaves

repentance in the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always

scratching and lacerating itself: for reason effaces all other grief and

sorrows, but it begets that of repentance, which is so much the more

grievous, by reason it springs within, as the cold and heat of fevers are

more sharp than those that only strike upon the outward skin. I hold for

vices (but every one according to its proportion), not only those which

reason and nature condemn, but those also which the opinion of men,

though false and erroneous, have made such, if authorised by law and

custom.

There is likewise no virtue which does not rejoice a well-descended

nature: there is a kind of, I know not what, congratulation in well-doing

that gives us an inward satisfaction, and a generous boldness that

accompanies a good conscience: a soul daringly vicious may, peradventure,

arm itself with security, but it cannot supply itself with this

complacency and satisfaction. ‘Tis no little satisfaction to feel a

man’s self preserved from the contagion of so depraved an age, and to say

to himself: “Whoever could penetrate into my soul would not there find me

guilty either of the affliction or ruin of any one, or of revenge or

envy, or any offence against the public laws, or of innovation or

disturbance, or failure of my word; and though the licence of the time

permits and teaches every one so to do, yet have I not plundered any

Frenchman’s goods, or taken his money, and have lived upon what is my

own, in war as well as in peace; neither have I set any man to work

without paying him his hire.” These testimonies of a good conscience

please, and this natural rejoicing is very beneficial to us, and the only

reward that we can never fail of.

To ground the recompense of virtuous actions upon the approbation of

others is too uncertain and unsafe a foundation, especially in so corrupt

and ignorant an age as this, wherein the good opinion of the vulgar is

injurious: upon whom do you rely to show you what is recommendable? God

defend me from being an honest man, according to the descriptions of

honour I daily see every one make of himself:

“Quae fuerant vitia, mores sunt.”

[“What before had been vices are now manners.”--Seneca, Ep., 39.]

Some of my friends have at times schooled and scolded me with great

sincerity and plainness, either of their own voluntary motion, or by me

entreated to it as to an office, which to a well-composed soul surpasses

not only in utility, but in kindness, all other offices of friendship: I

have always received them with the most open arms, both of courtesy and

acknowledgment; but to say the truth, I have often found so much false

measure, both in their reproaches and praises, that I had not done much

amiss, rather to have done ill, than to have done well according to their

notions. We, who live private lives, not exposed to any other view than

our own, ought chiefly to have settled a pattern within ourselves by

which to try our actions: and according to that, sometimes to encourage

and sometimes to correct ourselves. I have my laws and my judicature to

judge of myself, and apply myself more to these than to any other rules:

I do, indeed, restrain my actions according to others; but extend them

not by any other rule than my own. You yourself only know if you are

cowardly and cruel, loyal and devout: others see you not, and only guess

at you by uncertain conjectures, and do not so much see your nature as

your art; rely not therefore upon their opinions, but stick to your own:

“Tuo tibi judicio est utendum.... Virtutis et vitiorum grave ipsius

conscientiae pondus est: qua sublata, jacent omnia.”

[“Thou must employ thy own judgment upon thyself; great is the

weight of thy own conscience in the discovery of virtues and vices:

which taken away, all things are lost.”

--Cicero, De Nat. Dei, iii. 35; Tusc. Quaes., i. 25.]

But the saying that repentance immediately follows the sin seems not to

have respect to sin in its high estate, which is lodged in us as in its

own proper habitation. One may disown and retract the vices that

surprise us, and to which we are hurried by passions; but those which by

a long habit are rooted in a strong and vigorous will are not subject to

contradiction. Repentance is no other but a recanting of the will and an

opposition to our fancies, which lead us which way they please. It makes

this person disown his former virtue and continency:

“Quae mens est hodie, cur eadem non puero fait?

Vel cur his animis incolumes non redeunt genae?”

[“What my mind is, why was it not the same, when I was a boy? or

why do not the cheeks return to these feelings?”

--Horace, Od., v. 10, 7.]

‘Tis an exact life that maintains itself in due order in private. Every

one may juggle his part, and represent an honest man upon the stage: but

within, and in his own bosom, where all may do as they list, where all is

concealed, to be regular, there’s the point. The next degree is to be so

in his house, and in his ordinary actions, for which we are accountable

to none, and where there is no study nor artifice. And therefore Bias,

setting forth the excellent state of a private family, says: “of which a

the master is the same within, by his own virtue and temper, that he is

abroad, for fear of the laws and report of men.” And it was a worthy

saying of Julius Drusus, to the masons who offered him, for three

thousand crowns, to put his house in such a posture that his neighbours

should no longer have the same inspection into it as before; “I will give

you,” said he, “six thousand to make it so that everybody may see into

every room.” ‘Tis honourably recorded of Agesilaus, that he used in his

journeys always to take up his lodgings in temples, to the end that the

people and the gods themselves might pry into his most private actions.

Such a one has been a miracle to the world, in whom neither his wife nor

servant has ever seen anything so much as remarkable; few men have been

admired by their own domestics; no one was ever a prophet, not merely in

his own house, but in his own country, says the experience of histories:

--[No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre, said Marshal Catinat]--‘tis

the same in things of nought, and in this low example the image of a

greater is to be seen. In my country of Gascony, they look upon it as a

drollery to see me in print; the further off I am read from my own home,

the better I am esteemed. I purchase printers in Guienne; elsewhere they

purchase me. Upon this it is that they lay their foundation who conceal

themselves present and living, to obtain a name when they are dead and

absent. I had rather have a great deal less in hand, and do not expose

myself to the world upon any other account than my present share; when I

leave it I quit the rest. See this functionary whom the people escort in

state, with wonder and applause, to his very door; he puts off the

pageant with his robe, and falls so much the lower by how much he was

higher exalted: in himself within, all is tumult and degraded. And

though all should be regular there, it will require a vivid and

well-chosen judgment to perceive it in these low and private actions; to

which may be added, that order is a dull, sombre virtue. To enter a

breach, conduct an embassy, govern a people, are actions of renown; to

reprehend, laugh, sell, pay, love, hate, and gently and justly converse

with a man’s own family and with himself; not to relax, not to give a

man’s self the lie, is more rare and hard, and less remarkable. By which

means, retired lives, whatever is said to the contrary, undergo duties of

as great or greater difficulty than the others do; and private men, says

Aristotle,’ serve virtue more painfully and highly than those in

authority do: we prepare ourselves for eminent occasions, more out of

glory than conscience. The shortest way to arrive at glory, would be to

do that for conscience which we do for glory: and the virtue of Alexander

appears to me of much less vigour in his great theatre, than that of

Socrates in his mean and obscure employment. I can easily conceive

Socrates in the place of Alexander, but Alexander in that of Socrates, I

cannot. Who shall ask the one what he can do, he will answer, “Subdue

the world”: and who shall put the same question to the other, he will

say, “Carry on human life conformably with its natural condition”; a much

more general, weighty, and legitimate science than the other.--[Montaigne

added here, “To do for the world that for which he came into the world,”

but he afterwards erased these words from the manuscript.--Naigeon.]

The virtue of the soul does not consist in flying high, but in walking

orderly; its grandeur does not exercise itself in grandeur, but in

mediocrity. As they who judge and try us within, make no great account

of the lustre of our public actions, and see they are only streaks and

rays of clear water springing from a slimy and muddy bottom so, likewise,

they who judge of us by this gallant outward appearance, in like manner

conclude of our internal constitution; and cannot couple common

faculties, and like their own, with the other faculties that astonish

them, and are so far out of their sight. Therefore it is that we give

such savage forms to demons: and who does not give Tamerlane great

eyebrows, wide nostrils, a dreadful visage, and a prodigious stature,

according to the imagination he has conceived by the report of his name?

Had any one formerly brought me to Erasmus, I should hardly have believed

but that all was adage and apothegm he spoke to his man or his hostess.

We much more aptly imagine an artisan upon his close-stool, or upon his

wife, than a great president venerable by his port and sufficiency: we

fancy that they, from their high tribunals, will not abase themselves so

much as to live. As vicious souls are often incited by some foreign

impulse to do well, so are virtuous souls to do ill; they are therefore

to be judged by their settled state, when they are at home, whenever that

may be; and, at all events, when they are nearer repose, and in their

native station.

Natural inclinations are much assisted and fortified by education; but

they seldom alter and overcome their institution: a thousand natures of

my time have escaped towards virtue or vice, through a quite contrary

discipline:

“Sic ubi, desuetae silvis, in carcere clausae

Mansuevere ferx, et vultus posuere minaces,

Atque hominem didicere pati, si torrida parvus

Venit in ora cruor, redeunt rabiesque fororque,

Admonitaeque tument gustato sanguine fauces

Fervet, et a trepido vix abstinet ira magistro;”

[“So savage beasts, when shut up in cages and grown unaccustomed to

the woods, have become tame, and have laid aside their fierce looks,

and submit to the rule of man; if again a slight taste of blood

comes into their mouths, their rage and fury return, their jaws are

erected by thirst of blood, and their anger scarcely abstains from

their trembling masters.”--Lucan, iv. 237.]

these original qualities are not to be rooted out; they may be covered

and concealed. The Latin tongue is as it were natural to me; I

understand it better than French; but I have not been used to speak it,

nor hardly to write it, these forty years. Unless upon extreme and

sudden emotions which I have fallen into twice or thrice in my life, and

once seeing my father in perfect health fall upon me in a swoon, I have

always uttered from the bottom of my heart my first words in Latin;

nature deafened, and forcibly expressing itself, in spite of so long a

discontinuation; and this example is said of many others.

They who in my time have attempted to correct the manners of the world by

new opinions, reform seeming vices; but the essential vices they leave as

they were, if indeed they do not augment them, and augmentation is

therein to be feared; we defer all other well doing upon the account of

these external reformations, of less cost and greater show, and thereby

expiate good cheap, for the other natural, consubstantial, and intestine

vices. Look a little into our experience: there is no man, if he listen

to himself, who does not in himself discover a particular and governing

form of his own, that jostles his education, and wrestles with the

tempest of passions that are contrary to it. For my part, I seldom find

myself agitated with surprises; I always find myself in my place, as

heavy and unwieldy bodies do; if I am not at home, I am always near at

hand; my dissipations do not transport me very far; there is nothing

strange or extreme in the case; and yet I have sound and vigorous turns.

The true condemnation, and which touches the common practice of men, is

that their very retirement itself is full of filth and corruption; the

idea of their reformation composed, their repentance sick and faulty,

very nearly as much as their sin. Some, either from having been linked

to vice by a natural propension or long practice, cannot see its

deformity. Others (of which constitution I am) do indeed feel the weight

of vice, but they counterbalance it with pleasure, or some other

occasion; and suffer and lend themselves to it for a certain price, but

viciously and basely. Yet there might, haply, be imagined so vast a

disproportion of measure, where with justice the pleasure might excuse

the sin, as we say of utility; not only if accidental and out of sin, as

in thefts, but in the very exercise of sin, or in the enjoyment of women,

where the temptation is violent, and, ‘tis said, sometimes not to be

overcome.

Being the other day at Armaignac, on the estate of a kinsman of mine, I

there saw a peasant who was by every one nicknamed the thief. He thus

related the story of his life: that, being born a beggar, and finding

that he should not be able, so as to be clear of indigence, to get his

living by the sweat of his brow, he resolved to turn thief, and by means

of his strength of body had exercised this trade all the time of his

youth in great security; for he ever made his harvest and vintage in

other men’s grounds, but a great way off, and in so great quantities,

that it was not to be imagined one man could have carried away so much in

one night upon his shoulders; and, moreover, he was careful equally to

divide and distribute the mischief he did, that the loss was of less

importance to every particular man. He is now grown old, and rich for a

man of his condition, thanks to his trade, which he openly confesses to

every one. And to make his peace with God, he says, that he is daily

ready by good offices to make satisfaction to the successors of those he

has robbed, and if he do not finish (for to do it all at once he is not

able), he will then leave it in charge to his heirs to perform the rest,

proportionably to the wrong he himself only knows he has done to each.

By this description, true or false, this man looks upon theft as a

dishonest action, and hates it, but less than poverty, and simply

repents; but to the extent he has thus recompensed he repents not. This

is not that habit which incorporates us into vice, and conforms even our

understanding itself to it; nor is it that impetuous whirlwind that by

gusts troubles and blinds our souls, and for the time precipitates us,

judgment and all, into the power of vice.

I customarily do what I do thoroughly and make but one step on’t; I have

rarely any movement that hides itself and steals away from my reason, and

that does not proceed in the matter by the consent of all my faculties,

without division or intestine sedition; my judgment is to have all the

blame or all the praise; and the blame it once has, it has always; for

almost from my infancy it has ever been one: the same inclination, the

same turn, the same force; and as to universal opinions, I fixed myself

from my childhood in the place where I resolved to stick. There are some

sins that are impetuous, prompt, and sudden; let us set them aside: but

in these other sins so often repeated, deliberated, and contrived,

whether sins of complexion or sins of profession and vocation, I cannot

conceive that they should have so long been settled in the same

resolution, unless the reason and conscience of him who has them, be

constant to have them; and the repentance he boasts to be inspired with

on a sudden, is very hard for me to imagine or form. I follow not the

opinion of the Pythagorean sect, “that men take up a new soul when they

repair to the images of the gods to receive their oracles,” unless he

mean that it must needs be extrinsic, new, and lent for the time; our own

showing so little sign of purification and cleanness, fit for such an

office.

They act quite contrary to the stoical precepts, who do indeed command us

to correct the imperfections and vices we know ourselves guilty of, but

forbid us therefore to disturb the repose of our souls: these make us

believe that they have great grief and remorse within: but of amendment,

correction, or interruption, they make nothing appear. It cannot be a

cure if the malady be not wholly discharged; if repentance were laid upon

the scale of the balance, it would weigh down sin. I find no quality so

easy to counterfeit as devotion, if men do not conform their manners and

life to the profession; its essence is abstruse and occult; the

appearance easy and ostentatious.

For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may

condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire

reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but

I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being

dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular,

and conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better;

and repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power;

sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and

regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no

more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving

those of another to be so. If to conceive and wish a nobler way of

acting than that we have should produce a repentance of our own, we must

then repent us of our most innocent actions, forasmuch as we may well

suppose that in a more excellent nature they would have been carried on

with greater dignity and perfection; and we would that ours were so.

When I reflect upon the deportment of my youth, with that of my old age,

I find that I have commonly behaved myself with equal order in both

according to what I understand: this is all that my resistance can do.

I do not flatter myself; in the same circumstances I should do the same

things. It is not a patch, but rather an universal tincture, with which

I am stained. I know no repentance, superficial, half-way, and

ceremonious; it must sting me all over before I can call it so, and must

prick my bowels as deeply and universally as God sees into me.

As to business, many excellent opportunities have escaped me for want of

good management; and yet my deliberations were sound enough, according to

the occurrences presented to me: ‘tis their way to choose always the

easiest and safest course. I find that, in my former resolves, I have

proceeded with discretion, according to my own rule, and according to the

state of the subject proposed, and should do the same a thousand years

hence in like occasions; I do not consider what it is now, but what it

was then, when I deliberated on it: the force of all counsel consists in

the time; occasions and things eternally shift and change. I have in my

life committed some important errors, not for want of good understanding,

but for want of good luck. There are secret, and not to be foreseen,

parts in matters we have in hand, especially in the nature of men; mute

conditions, that make no show, unknown sometimes even to the possessors

themselves, that spring and start up by incidental occasions; if my

prudence could not penetrate into nor foresee them, I blame it not: ‘tis

commissioned no further than its own limits; if the event be too hard for

me, and take the side I have refused, there is no remedy; I do not blame

myself, I accuse my fortune, and not my work; this cannot be called

repentance.

Phocion, having given the Athenians an advice that was not followed, and

the affair nevertheless succeeding contrary to his opinion, some one said

to him, “Well, Phocion, art thou content that matters go so well?”--“I am

very well content,” replied he, “that this has happened so well, but I do

not repent that I counselled the other.” When any of my friends address

themselves to me for advice, I give it candidly and clearly, without

sticking, as almost all other men do, at the hazard of the thing’s

falling out contrary to my opinion, and that I may be reproached for my

counsel; I am very indifferent as to that, for the fault will be theirs

for having consulted me, and I could not refuse them that office.

--[We may give advice to others, says Rochefoucauld, but we cannot

supply them with the wit to profit by it.]

I, for my own part, can rarely blame any one but myself for my oversights

and misfortunes, for indeed I seldom solicit the advice of another,

if not by honour of ceremony, or excepting where I stand in need of

information, special science, or as to matter of fact. But in things

wherein I stand in need of nothing but judgment, other men’s reasons may

serve to fortify my own, but have little power to dissuade me; I hear

them all with civility and patience; but, to my recollection, I never

made use of any but my own. With me, they are but flies and atoms, that

confound and distract my will; I lay no great stress upon my opinions;

but I lay as little upon those of others, and fortune rewards me

accordingly: if I receive but little advice, I also give but little. I

am seldom consulted, and still more seldom believed, and know no concern,

either public or private, that has been mended or bettered by my advice.

Even they whom fortune had in some sort tied to my direction, have more

willingly suffered themselves to be governed by any other counsels than

mine. And as a man who am as jealous of my repose as of my authority,

I am better pleased that it should be so; in leaving me there, they

humour what I profess, which is to settle and wholly contain myself

within myself. I take a pleasure in being uninterested in other men’s

affairs, and disengaged from being their warranty, and responsible for

what they do.

In all affairs that are past, be it how it will, I have very little

regret; for this imagination puts me out of my pain, that they were so to

fall out they are in the great revolution of the world, and in the chain

of stoical ‘causes: your fancy cannot, by wish and imagination, move one

tittle, but that the great current of things will not reverse both the

past and the future.

As to the rest, I abominate that incidental repentance which old age

brings along with it. He, who said of old, that he was obliged to his

age for having weaned him from pleasure, was of another opinion than I

am; I can never think myself beholden to impotency for any good it can do

to me:

“Nec tam aversa unquam videbitur ab opere suo providentia,

ut debilitas inter optima inventa sit.”

[“Nor can Providence ever seem so averse to her own work, that

debility should be found to be amongst the best things.”

--Quintilian, Instit. Orat., v. 12.]

Our appetites are rare in old age; a profound satiety seizes us after the

act; in this I see nothing of conscience; chagrin and weakness imprint in

us a drowsy and rheumatic virtue. We must not suffer ourselves to be so

wholly carried away by natural alterations as to suffer our judgments to

be imposed upon by them. Youth and pleasure have not formerly so far

prevailed with me, that I did not well enough discern the face of vice in

pleasure; neither does the distaste that years have brought me, so far

prevail with me now, that I cannot discern pleasure in vice. Now that I

am no more in my flourishing age, I judge as well of these things as if I

were.

[“Old though I am, for ladies’ love unfit,

The power of beauty I remember yet.”--Chaucer.]

I, who narrowly and strictly examine it, find my reason the very same it

was in my most licentious age, except, perhaps, that ‘tis weaker and more

decayed by being grown older; and I find that the pleasure it refuses me

upon the account of my bodily health, it would no more refuse now, in

consideration of the health of my soul, than at any time heretofore.

I do not repute it the more valiant for not being able to combat; my

temptations are so broken and mortified, that they are not worth its

opposition; holding but out my hands, I repel them. Should one present

the old concupiscence before it, I fear it would have less power to

resist it than heretofore; I do not discern that in itself it judges

anything otherwise now than it formerly did, nor that it has acquired any

new light: wherefore, if there be convalescence, ‘tis an enchanted one.

Miserable kind of remedy, to owe one’s health to one’s disease! Tis not

that our misfortune should perform this office, but the good fortune of

our judgment. I am not to be made to do anything by persecutions and

afflictions, but to curse them: that is, for people who cannot be roused

but by a whip. My reason is much more free in prosperity, and much more

distracted, and put to’t to digest pains than pleasures: I see best in a

clear sky; health admonishes me more cheerfully, and to better purpose,

than sickness. I did all that in me lay to reform and regulate myself

from pleasures, at a time when I had health and vigour to enjoy them;

I should be ashamed and envious that the misery and misfortune of my old

age should have credit over my good healthful, sprightly, and vigorous

years, and that men should estimate me, not by what I have been, but by

what I have ceased to be.

In my opinion, ‘tis the happy living, and not (as Antisthenes’ said) the

happy dying, in which human felicity consists. I have not made it my

business to make a monstrous addition of a philosopher’s tail to the head

and body of a libertine; nor would I have this wretched remainder give

the lie to the pleasant, sound, and long part of my life: I would present

myself uniformly throughout. Were I to live my life over again, I should

live it just as I have lived it; I neither complain of the past, nor do I

fear the future; and if I am not much deceived, I am the same within that

I am without. ‘Tis one main obligation I have to my fortune, that the

succession of my bodily estate has been carried on according to the

natural seasons; I have seen the grass, the blossom, and the fruit, and

now see the withering; happily, however, because naturally. I bear the

infirmities I have the better, because they came not till I had reason to

expect them, and because also they make me with greater pleasure remember

that long felicity of my past life. My wisdom may have been just the

same in both ages, but it was more active, and of better grace whilst

young and sprightly, than now it is when broken, peevish, and uneasy.

I repudiate, then, these casual and painful reformations. God must touch

our hearts; our consciences must amend of themselves, by the aid of our

reason, and not by the decay of our appetites; pleasure is, in itself,

neither pale nor discoloured, to be discerned by dim and decayed eyes.

We ought to love temperance for itself, and because God has commanded

that and chastity; but that which we are reduced to by catarrhs, and for

which I am indebted to the stone, is neither chastity nor temperance; a

man cannot boast that he despises and resists pleasure if he cannot see

it, if he knows not what it is, and cannot discern its graces, its force,

and most alluring beauties; I know both the one and the other, and may

therefore the better say it. But; methinks, our souls in old age are

subject to more troublesome maladies and imperfections than in youth;

I said the same when young and when I was reproached with the want of a

beard; and I say so now that my grey hairs give me some authority. We

call the difficulty of our humours and the disrelish of present things

wisdom; but, in truth, we do not so much forsake vices as we change them,

and in my opinion, for worse. Besides a foolish and feeble pride, an

impertinent prating, froward and insociable humours, superstition, and a

ridiculous desire of riches when we have lost the use of them, I find

there more envy, injustice, and malice. Age imprints more wrinkles in

the mind than it does on the face; and souls are never, or very rarely

seen, that, in growing old, do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all

together, both towards his perfection and decay. In observing the wisdom

of Socrates, and many circumstances of his condemnation, I should dare to

believe that he in some sort himself purposely, by collusion, contributed

to it, seeing that, at the age of seventy years, he might fear to suffer

the lofty motions of his mind to be cramped and his wonted lustre

obscured. What strange metamorphoses do I see age every day make in many

of my acquaintance! ‘Tis a potent malady, and that naturally and

imperceptibly steals into us; a vast provision of study and great

precaution are required to evade the imperfections it loads us with, or

at least to weaken their progress. I find that, notwithstanding all my

entrenchments, it gets foot by foot upon me: I make the best resistance I

can, but I do not know to what at last it will reduce me. But fall out

what will, I am content the world may know, when I am fallen, from what I

fell.

CHAPTER III

OF THREE COMMERCES

We must not rivet ourselves so fast to our humours and complexions: our

chiefest sufficiency is to know how to apply ourselves to divers

employments. ‘Tis to be, but not to live, to keep a man’s self tied and

bound by necessity to one only course; those are the bravest souls that

have in them the most variety and pliancy. Of this here is an honourable

testimony of the elder Cato:

“Huic versatile ingenium sic pariter ad omnia fuit,

ut natum ad id unum diceres, quodcumque ageret.”