These great and tedious debates about the best form of society, and the

most commodious rules to bind us, are debates only proper for the

exercise of our wits; as in the arts there are several subjects which

have their being in agitation and controversy, and have no life but

there. Such an idea of government might be of some value in a new world;

but we take a world already made, and formed to certain customs; we do

not beget it, as Pyrrha or Cadmus did. By what means soever we may have

the privilege to redress and reform it anew, we can hardly writhe it from

its wonted bent, but we shall break all. Solon being asked whether he

had established the best laws he could for the Athenians; “Yes,” said he,

“of those they would have received.” Varro excuses himself after the

same manner: “that if he were to begin to write of religion, he would say

what he believed; but seeing it was already received, he would write

rather according to use than nature.”

Not according to opinion, but in truth and reality, the best and most

excellent government for every nation is that under which it is

maintained: its form and essential convenience depend upon custom.

We are apt to be displeased at the present condition; but I,

nevertheless, maintain that to desire command in a few--[an oligarchy.]--

in a republic, or another sort of government in monarchy than that

already established, is both vice and folly:

“Ayme l’estat, tel que to le veois estre

S’il est royal ayme la royaute;

S’il est de peu, ou biers communaute,

Ayme l’aussi; car Dieu t’y a faict naistre.”

[“Love the government, such as you see it to be. If it be royal,

love royalty; if it is a republic of any sort, still love it; for

God himself created thee therein.”]

So wrote the good Monsieur de Pibrac, whom we have lately lost, a man of

so excellent a wit, such sound opinions, and such gentle manners. This

loss, and that at the same time we have had of Monsieur de Foix, are of

so great importance to the crown, that I do not know whether there is

another couple in France worthy to supply the places of these two Gascons

in sincerity and wisdom in the council of our kings. They were both

variously great men, and certainly, according to the age, rare and great,

each of them in his kind: but what destiny was it that placed them in

these times, men so remote from and so disproportioned to our corruption

and intestine tumults?

Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation: change only gives

form to injustice and tyranny. When any piece is loosened, it may be

proper to stay it; one may take care that the alteration and corruption

natural to all things do not carry us too far from our beginnings and

principles: but to undertake to found so great a mass anew, and to change

the foundations of so vast a building, is for them to do, who to make

clean, efface; who reform particular defects by an universal confusion,

and cure diseases by death:

“Non tam commutandarum quam evertendarum rerum cupidi.”

[“Not so desirous of changing as of overthrowing things.”

--Cicero, De Offic., ii. i.]

The world is unapt to be cured; and so impatient of anything that presses

it, that it thinks of nothing but disengaging itself at what price

soever. We see by a thousand examples, that it ordinarily cures itself

to its cost. The discharge of a present evil is no cure, if there be not

a general amendment of condition. The surgeon’s end is not only to cut

away the dead flesh; that is but the progress of his cure; he has a care,

over and above, to fill up the wound with better and more natural flesh,

and to restore the member to its due state. Whoever only proposes to

himself to remove that which offends him, falls short: for good does not

necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed, and a worse, as it

happened to Caesar’s murderers, who brought the republic to such a pass,

that they had reason to repent the meddling with the matter. The same

has since happened to several others, even down to our own times: the

French, my contemporaries, know it well enough. All great mutations

shake and disorder a state.

Whoever would look direct at a cure, and well consider of it before he

began, would be very willing to withdraw his hands from meddling in it.

Pacuvius Calavius corrected the vice of this proceeding by a notable

example. His fellow-citizens were in mutiny against their magistrates;

he being a man of great authority in the city of Capua, found means one

day to shut up the Senators in the palace; and calling the people

together in the market-place, there told them that the day was now come

wherein at full liberty they might revenge themselves on the tyrants by

whom they had been so long oppressed, and whom he had now, all alone and

unarmed, at his mercy. He then advised that they should call these out,

one by one, by lot, and should individually determine as to each, causing

whatever should be decreed to be immediately executed; with this proviso,

that they should, at the same time, depute some honest man in the place

of him who was condemned, to the end there might be no vacancy in the

Senate. They had no sooner heard the name of one senator but a great cry

of universal dislike was raised up against him. “I see,” says Pacuvius,

“that we must put him out; he is a wicked fellow; let us look out a good

one in his room.” Immediately there was a profound silence, every one

being at a stand whom to choose. But one, more impudent than the rest,

having named his man, there arose yet a greater consent of voices against

him, an hundred imperfections being laid to his charge, and as many just

reasons why he should not stand. These contradictory humours growing

hot, it fared worse with the second senator and the third, there being as

much disagreement in the election of the new, as consent in the putting

out of the old. In the end, growing weary of this bustle to no purpose,

they began, some one way and some another, to steal out of the assembly:

every one carrying back this resolution in his mind, that the oldest and

best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was, new and

untried.

Seeing how miserably we are agitated (for what have we not done!)

“Eheu! cicatricum, et sceleris pudet,

Fratrumque: quid nos dura refugimus

AEtas? quid intactum nefasti

Liquimus? Unde manus inventus

Metu Deorum continuit? quibus

Pepercit aris.”

[“Alas! our crimes and our fratricides are a shame to us! What

crime does this bad age shrink from? What wickedness have we left

undone? What youth is restrained from evil by the fear of the gods?

What altar is spared?”--Horace, Od., i. 33, 35]

I do not presently conclude,

“Ipsa si velit Salus,

Servare prorsus non potest hanc familiam;”

[“If the goddess Salus herself wish to save this family, she

absolutely cannot”--Terence, Adelph., iv. 7, 43.]

we are not, peradventure, at our last gasp. The conservation of states

is a thing that, in all likelihood, surpasses our understanding;--a civil

government is, as Plato says, a mighty and puissant thing, and hard to be

dissolved; it often continues against mortal and intestine diseases,

against the injury of unjust laws, against tyranny, the corruption and

ignorance of magistrates, the licence and sedition of the people. In all

our fortunes, we compare ourselves to what is above us, and still look

towards those who are better: but let us measure ourselves with what is

below us: there is no condition so miserable wherein a man may not find a

thousand examples that will administer consolation. ‘Tis our vice that

we more unwillingly look upon what is above, than willingly upon what is

below; and Solon was used to say, that “whoever would make a heap of all

the ills together, there is no one who would not rather choose to bear

away the ills he has than to come to an equal division with all other men

from that heap, and take his share.” Our government is, indeed, very

sick, but there have been others more sick without dying. The gods play

at ball with us and bandy us every way:

“Enimvero Dii nos homines quasi pilas habent.”

The stars fatally destined the state of Rome for an example of what they

could do in this kind: in it are comprised all the forms and adventures

that concern a state: all that order or disorder, good or evil fortune,

can do. Who, then, can despair of his condition, seeing the shocks and

commotions wherewith Rome was tumbled and tossed, and yet withstood them

all? If the extent of dominion be the health of a state (which I by no

means think it is, and Isocrates pleases me when he instructs Nicocles

not to envy princes who have large dominions, but those who know how to

preserve those which have fallen into their hands), that of Rome was

never so sound, as when it was most sick. The worst of her forms was the

most fortunate; one can hardly discern any image of government under the

first emperors; it is the most horrible and tumultuous confusion that can

be imagined; it endured it, notwithstanding, and therein continued,

preserving not a monarchy limited within its own bounds, but so many

nations so differing, so remote, so disaffected, so confusedly commanded,

and so unjustly conquered:

“Nec gentibus ullis

Commodat in populum, terra pelagique potentem,

Invidiam fortuna suam.”

[“Fortune never gave it to any nation to satisfy its hatred against

the people, masters of the seas and of the earth.”--Lucan, i. 32.]

Everything that totters does not fall. The contexture of so great a body

holds by more nails than one; it holds even by its antiquity, like old

buildings, from which the foundations are worn away by time, without

rough-cast or mortar, which yet live and support themselves by their own

weight:

“Nec jam validis radicibus haerens,

Pondere tuta suo est.”

Moreover, it is not rightly to go to work, to examine only the flank and

the foss, to judge of the security of a place; we must observe which way

approaches can be made to it, and in what condition the assailant is: few

vessels sink with their own weight, and without some exterior violence.

Now, let us everyway cast our eyes; everything about us totters; in all

the great states, both of Christendom and elsewhere, that are known to

us, if you will but look, you will there see evident menace of alteration

and ruin:

“Et sua sunt illis incommoda; parque per omnes

Tempestas.”

[“They all share in the mischief; the tempest rages

everywhere.”--AEneid, ii.]

Astrologers may very well, as they do, warn us of great revolutions and

imminent mutations: their prophecies are present and palpable, they need

not go to heaven to foretell this. There is not only consolation to be

extracted from this universal combination of ills and menaces, but,

moreover, some hopes of the continuation of our state, forasmuch as,

naturally, nothing falls where all falls: universal sickness is

particular health: conformity is antagonistic to dissolution. For my

part, I despair not, and fancy that I discover ways to save us:

“Deus haec fortasse benigna

Reducet in sedem vice.”

[“The deity will perchance by a favourable turn restore us to our

former position.”--Horace, Epod., xiii. 7.]

Who knows but that God will have it happen, as in human bodies that purge

and restore themselves to a better state by long and grievous maladies,

which render them more entire and perfect health than that they took from

them? That which weighs the most with me is, that in reckoning the

symptoms of our ill, I see as many natural ones, and that Heaven sends

us, and properly its own, as of those that our disorder and human

imprudence contribute to it. The very stars seem to declare that we have

already continued long enough, and beyond the ordinary term. This also

afflicts me, that the mischief which nearest threatens us, is not an

alteration in the entire and solid mass, but its dissipation and

divulsion, which is the most extreme of our fears.

I, moreover, fear, in these fantasies of mine, the treachery of my

memory, lest, by inadvertence, it should make me write the same thing

twice. I hate to examine myself, and never review, but very unwillingly,

what has once escaped my pen. I here set down nothing new. These are

common thoughts, and having, peradventure, conceived them an hundred

times, I am afraid I have set them down somewhere else already.

Repetition is everywhere troublesome, though it were in Homer; but ‘tis

ruinous in things that have only a superficial and transitory show. I do

not love over-insisting, even in the most profitable things, as in

Seneca; and the usage of his stoical school displeases me, to repeat,

upon every subject, at full length and width the principles and

presuppositions that serve in general, and always to realledge anew

common and universal reasons.

My memory grows cruelly worse every day:

“Pocula Lethaeos ut si ducentia somnos,

Arente fauce traxerim;”

[“As if my dry throat had drunk seducing cups of Lethaean

oblivion.”--Horace, Epod., xiv. 3.]

I must be fain for the time to come (for hitherto, thanks be to God,

nothing has happened much amiss), whereas others seek time and

opportunity to think of what they have to say, to avoid all preparation,

for fear of tying myself to some obligation upon which I must insist. To

be tied and bound to a thing puts me quite out, and to depend upon so

weak an instrument as my memory. I never read this following story that

I am not offended at it with a personal and natural resentment:

Lyncestes, accused of conspiracy against Alexander, the day that he was

brought out before the army, according to the custom, to be heard as to

what he could say for himself, had learned a studied speech, of which,

hesitating and stammering, he pronounced some words. Whilst growing more

and more perplexed, whilst struggling with his memory, and trying to

recollect what he had to say, the soldiers nearest to him charged their

pikes against him and killed him, looking upon him as convict; his

confusion and silence served them for a confession; for having had so

much leisure to prepare himself in prison, they concluded that it was not

his memory that failed him, but that his conscience tied up his tongue

and stopped his mouth. And, truly, well said; the place, the assembly,

the expectation, astound a man, even when he has but the ambition to

speak well; what can a man do when ‘tis an harangue upon which his life

depends?

For my part, the very being tied to what I am to say is enough to loose

me from it. When I wholly commit and refer myself to my memory, I lay so

much stress upon it that it sinks under me: it grows dismayed with the

burden. So much as I trust to it, so much do I put myself out of my own

power, even to the finding it difficult to keep my own countenance; and

have been sometimes very much put to it to conceal the slavery wherein I

was engaged; whereas my design is to manifest, in speaking, a perfect

calmness both of face and accent, and casual and unpremeditated motions,

as rising from present occasions, choosing rather to say nothing to

purpose than to show that I came prepared to speak well, a thing

especially unbecoming a man of my profession, and of too great obligation

on him who cannot retain much. The preparation begets a great deal more

expectation than it will satisfy. A man often strips himself to his

doublet to leap no farther than he would have done in his gown:

“Nihil est his, qui placere volunt, turn adversarium,

quam expectatio.”

[“Nothing is so adverse to those who make it their business to

please as expectation”--Cicero, Acad., ii. 4]

It is recorded of the orator Curio, that when he proposed the division of

his oration into three or four parts, or three or four arguments or

reasons, it often happened either that he forgot some one, or added one

or two more. I have always avoided falling into this inconvenience,

having ever hated these promises and prescriptions, not only out of

distrust of my memory, but also because this method relishes too much of

the artist:

“Simpliciora militares decent.”

[“Simplicity becomes warriors.”--Quintilian, Instit. Orat., xi. I.]

‘Tis enough that I have promised to myself never again to take upon me

to speak in a place of respect, for as to speaking, when a man reads his

speech, besides that it is very absurd, it is a mighty disadvantage to

those who naturally could give it a grace by action; and to rely upon the

mercy of my present invention, I would much less do it; ‘tis heavy and

perplexed, and such as would never furnish me in sudden and important

necessities.

Permit, reader, this essay its course also, and this third sitting to

finish the rest of my picture: I add, but I correct not. First, because

I conceive that a man having once parted with his labours to the world,

he has no further right to them; let him do better if he can, in some new

undertaking, but not adulterate what he has already sold. Of such

dealers nothing should be bought till after they are dead. Let them well

consider what they do before they, produce it to the light who hastens

them? My book is always the same, saving that upon every new edition

(that the buyer may not go away quite empty) I take the liberty to add

(as ‘tis but an ill jointed marqueterie) some supernumerary emblem; it is

but overweight, that does not disfigure the primitive form of the essays,

but, by a little artful subtlety, gives a kind of particular value to

every one of those that follow. Thence, however, will easily happen some

transposition of chronology, my stories taking place according to their

opportuneness, not always according to their age.

Secondly, because as to what concerns myself, I fear to lose by change:

my understanding does not always go forward, it goes backward too. I do

not much less suspect my fancies for being the second or the third, than

for being the first, or present, or past; we often correct ourselves as

foolishly as we do others. I am grown older by a great many years since

my first publications, which were in the year 1580; but I very much doubt

whether I am grown an inch the wiser. I now, and I anon, are two several

persons; but whether better, I cannot determine. It were a fine thing to

be old, if we only travelled towards improvement; but ‘tis a drunken,

stumbling, reeling, infirm motion: like that of reeds, which the air

casually waves to and fro at pleasure. Antiochus had in his youth

strongly written in favour of the Academy; in his old age he wrote as

much against it; would not, which of these two soever I should follow, be

still Antiochus? After having established the uncertainty, to go about

to establish the certainty of human opinions, was it not to establish

doubt, and not certainty, and to promise, that had he had yet another age

to live, he would be always upon terms of altering his judgment, not so

much for the better, as for something else?

The public favour has given me a little more confidence than I expected;

but what I ‘most fear is, lest I should glut the world with my writings;

I had rather, of the two, pique my reader than tire him, as a learned man

of my time has done. Praise is always pleasing, let it come from whom,

or upon what account it will; yet ought a man to understand why he is

commended, that he may know how to keep up the same reputation still:

imperfections themselves may get commendation. The vulgar and common

estimation is seldom happy in hitting; and I am much mistaken if, amongst

the writings of my time, the worst are not those which have most gained

the popular applause. For my part, I return my thanks to those

good-natured men who are pleased to take my weak endeavours in good part;

the faults of the workmanship are nowhere so apparent as in a matter

which of itself has no recommendation. Blame not me, reader, for those

that slip in here by the fancy or inadvertency of others; every hand,

every artisan, contribute their own materials; I neither concern myself

with orthography (and only care to have it after the old way) nor

pointing, being very inexpert both in the one and the other. Where they

wholly break the sense, I am very little concerned, for they at least

discharge me; but where they substitute a false one, as they so often do,

and wrest me to their conception, they ruin me. When the sentence,

nevertheless, is not strong enough for my proportion, a civil person

ought to reject it as spurious, and none of mine. Whoever shall know how

lazy I am, and how indulgent to my own humour, will easily believe that I

had rather write as many more essays, than be tied to revise these over

again for so childish a correction.

I said elsewhere, that being planted in the very centre of this new

religion, I am not only deprived of any great familiarity with men of

other kind of manners than my own, and of other opinions, by which they

hold together, as by a tie that supersedes all other obligations; but

moreover I do not live without danger, amongst men to whom all things are

equally lawful, and of whom the most part cannot offend the laws more

than they have already done; from which the extremist degree of licence

proceeds. All the particular being summed up together, I do not find one

man of my country, who pays so dear for the defence of our laws both in

loss and damages (as the lawyers say) as myself; and some there are who

vapour and brag of their zeal and constancy, that if things were justly

weighed, do much less than I. My house, as one that has ever been open

and free to all comers, and civil to all (for I could never persuade

myself to make it a garrison of war, war being a thing that I prefer to

see as remote as may be), has sufficiently merited popular kindness, and

so that it would be a hard matter justly to insult over me upon my own

dunghill; and I look upon it as a wonderful and exemplary thing that it

yet continues a virgin from blood and plunder during so long a storm, and

so many neighbouring revolutions and tumults. For to confess the truth,

it had been possible enough for a man of my complexion to have shaken

hands with any one constant and continued form whatever; but the contrary

invasions and incursions, alternations and vicissitudes of fortune round

about me, have hitherto more exasperated than calmed and mollified the

temper of the country, and involved me, over and over again, with

invincible difficulties and dangers.

I escape, ‘tis true, but am troubled that it is more by chance, and

something of my own prudence, than by justice; and am not satisfied to be

out of the protection of the laws, and under any other safeguard than

theirs. As matters stand, I live, above one half, by the favour of

others, which is an untoward obligation. I do not like to owe my safety

either to the generosity or affection of great persons, who allow me my

legality and my liberty, or to the obliging manners of my predecessors,

or my own: for what if I were another kind of man? If my deportment, and

the frankness of my conversation or relationship, oblige my neighbours,

‘tis that that they should acquit themselves of obligation in only

permitting me to live, and they may say, “We allow him the free liberty

of having divine service read in his own private chapel, when it is

interdicted in all churches round about, and allow him the use of his

goods and his life, as one who protects our wives and cattle in time of

need.” For my house has for many descents shared in the reputation of

Lycurgus the Athenian, who was the general depository and guardian of the

purses of his fellow-citizens. Now I am clearly of opinion that a man

should live by right and by authority, and not either by recompense or

favour. How many gallant men have rather chosen to lose their lives than

to be debtors for them? I hate to subject myself to any sort of

obligation, but above all, to that which binds me by the duty of honour.

I think nothing so dear as what has been given me, and this because my

will lies at pawn under the title of gratitude, and more willingly accept

of services that are to be sold; I feel that for the last I give nothing

but money, but for the other I give myself.

The knot that binds me by the laws of courtesy binds me more than that of

civil constraint; I am much more at ease when bound by a scrivener, than

by myself. Is it not reason that my conscience should be much more

engaged when men simply rely upon it? In a bond, my faith owes nothing,

because it has nothing lent it; let them trust to the security they have

taken without me. I had much rather break the wall of a prison and the

laws themselves than my own word. I am nice, even to superstition, in

keeping my promises, and, therefore, upon all occasions have a care to

make them uncertain and conditional. To those of no great moment, I add

the jealousy of my own rule, to make them weight; it wracks and oppresses

me with its own interest. Even in actions wholly my own and free, if I

once say a thing, I conceive that I have bound myself, and that

delivering it to the knowledge of another, I have positively enjoined it

my own performance. Methinks I promise it, if I but say it: and

therefore am not apt to say much of that kind. The sentence that I pass

upon myself is more severe than that of a judge, who only considers the

common obligation; but my conscience looks upon it with a more severe and

penetrating eye. I lag in those duties to which I should be compelled if

I did not go:

“Hoc ipsum ita justum est, quod recte fit, si est voluntarium.”

[“This itself is so far just, that it is rightly done, if it is

voluntary.”--Cicero, De Offic., i. 9.]

If the action has not some splendour of liberty, it has neither grace nor

honour:

“Quod vos jus cogit, vix voluntate impetrent:”

[“That which the laws compel us to do, we scarcely do with a will.”

--Terence, Adelph., iii. 3, 44.]

where necessity draws me, I love to let my will take its own course:

“Quia quicquid imperio cogitur, exigenti magis,

quam praestanti, acceptum refertur.”

[“For whatever is compelled by power, is more imputed to him that

exacts than to him that performs.”--Valerius Maximus, ii. 2, 6.]

I know some who follow this rule, even to injustice; who will sooner give

than restore, sooner lend than pay, and will do them the least good to

whom they are most obliged. I don’t go so far as that, but I’m not far

off.

I so much love to disengage and disobligate myself, that I have sometimes

looked upon ingratitudes, affronts, and indignities which I have received

from those to whom either by nature or accident I was bound in some way

of friendship, as an advantage to me; taking this occasion of their

ill-usage, for an acquaintance and discharge of so much of my debt. And

though I still continue to pay them all the external offices of public

reason, I, notwithstanding, find a great saving in doing that upon the

account of justice which I did upon the score of affection, and am a

little eased of the attention and solicitude of my inward will:

“Est prudentis sustinere, ut currum, sic impetum benevolentia;”

[“‘Tis the part of a wise man to keep a curbing hand upon the

impetus of friendship, as upon that of his horse.”

--Cicero, De Amicit., c. 17.]

‘tis in me, too urging and pressing where I take; at least, for a man who

loves not to be strained at all. And this husbanding my friendship

serves me for a sort of consolation in the imperfections of those in whom

I am concerned. I am very sorry they are not such as I could wish they

were, but then I also am spared somewhat of my application and engagement

towards them. I approve of a man who is the less fond of his child for

having a scald head, or for being crooked; and not only when he is

ill-conditioned, but also when he is of unhappy disposition, and imperfect

in his limbs (God himself has abated so much from his value and natural

estimation), provided he carry himself in this coldness of affection with

moderation and exact justice: proximity, with me, lessens not defects,

but rather aggravates them.

After all, according to what I understand in the science of benefit and

acknowledgment, which is a subtle science, and of great use, I know no

person whatever more free and less indebted than I am at this hour. What

I do owe is simply to foreign obligations and benefits; as to anything

else, no man is more absolutely clear:

“Nec sunt mihi nota potentum

Munera.”

[“The gifts of great men are unknown to me.”--AEneid, xii. 529.]

Princes give me a great deal if they take nothing from me; and do me good

enough if they do me no harm; that’s all I ask from them. O how am I

obliged to God, that he has been pleased I should immediately receive

from his bounty all I have, and specially reserved all my obligation to

himself. How earnestly do I beg of his holy compassion that I may never

owe essential thanks to any one. O happy liberty wherein I have thus far

lived. May it continue with me to the last. I endeavour to have no

express need of any one:

“In me omnis spec est mihi.”

[“All my hope is in myself.”--Terence, Adelph., iii. 5, 9.]

‘Tis what every one may do in himself, but more easily they whom God has

placed in a condition exempt from natural and urgent necessities. It is

a wretched and dangerous thing to depend upon others; we ourselves, in

whom is ever the most just and safest dependence, are not sufficiently

sure.

I have nothing mine but myself, and yet the possession is, in part,

defective and borrowed. I fortify myself both in courage, which is the

strongest assistant, and also in fortune, therein wherewith to satisfy

myself, though everything else should forsake me. Hippias of Elis not

only furnished himself with knowledge, that he might, at need, cheerfully

retire from all other company to enjoy the Muses: nor only with the

knowledge of philosophy, to teach his soul to be contented with itself,

and bravely to subsist without outward conveniences, when fate would have

it so; he was, moreover, so careful as to learn to cook, to shave

himself, to make his own clothes, his own shoes and drawers, to provide

for all his necessities in himself, and to wean himself from the

assistance of others. A man more freely and cheerfully enjoys borrowed

conveniences, when it is not an enjoyment forced and constrained by need;

and when he has, in his own will and fortune, the means to live without

them. I know myself very well; but ‘tis hard for me to imagine any so

pure liberality of any one towards me, any so frank and free hospitality,

that would not appear to me discreditable, tyrannical, and tainted with

reproach, if necessity had reduced me to it. As giving is an ambitious

and authoritative quality, so is accepting a quality of submission;

witness the insulting and quarrelsome refusal that Bajazet made of the

presents that Tamerlane sent him; and those that were offered on the part

of the Emperor Solyman to the Emperor of Calicut, so angered him, that he

not only rudely rejected them, saying that neither he nor any of his

predecessors had ever been wont to take, and that it was their office to

give; but, moreover, caused the ambassadors sent with the gifts to be put

into a dungeon. When Thetis, says Aristotle, flatters Jupiter, when the

Lacedaemonians flatter the Athenians, they do not put them in mind of the

good they have done them, which is always odious, but of the benefits

they have received from them. Such as I see so frequently employ every

one in their affairs, and thrust themselves into so much obligation,

would never do it, did they but relish as I do the sweetness of a pure

liberty, and did they but weigh, as wise: men should, the burden of

obligation: ‘tis sometimes, peradventure, fully paid, but ‘tis never

dissolved. ‘Tis a miserable slavery to a man who loves to be at full

liberty in all reapects. Such as know me, both above and below me in

station, are able to say whether they have ever known a man less

importuning, soliciting, entreating, and pressing upon others than I.

If I am so, and a degree beyond all modern example, ‘tis no great wonder,

so many parts of my manners contributing to it: a little natural pride,

an impatience at being refused, the moderation of my desires and designs,

my incapacity for business, and my most beloved qualities, idleness and

freedom; by all these together I have conceived a mortal hatred to being

obliged to any other, or by any other than myself. I leave no stone

unturned, to do without it, rather than employ the bounty of another in

any light or important occasion or necessity whatever. My friends

strangely trouble me when they ask me to ask a third person; and I think

it costs me little less to disengage him who is indebted to me, by making

use of him, than to engage myself to him who owes me nothing. These

conditions being removed, and provided they require of me nothing if any

great trouble or care (for I have declared mortal war against all care),

I am very ready to do every one the best service I can. I have been very

willing to seek occasion to do people a good turn, and to attach them to

me; and methinks there is no more agreeable employment for our means.

But I have yet more avoided receiving than sought occasions of giving,

and moreover, according to Aristotle, it is more easy., My fortune has

allowed me but little to do others good withal, and the little it can

afford, is put into a pretty close hand. Had I been born a great person,

I should have been ambitious to have made myself beloved, not to make

myself feared or admired: shall I more plainly express it? I should more

have endeavoured to please than to profit others. Cyrus very wisely, and

by the mouth of a great captain, and still greater philosopher, prefers

his bounty and benefits much before his valour and warlike conquests;

and the elder Scipio, wherever he would raise himself in esteem, sets a

higher value upon his affability and humanity, than on his prowess and

victories, and has always this glorious saying in his mouth: “That he has

given his enemies as much occasion to love him as his friends.” I will

then say, that if a man must, of necessity, owe something, it ought to be

by a more legitimate title than that whereof I am speaking, to which the

necessity of this miserable war compels me; and not in so great a debt as

that of my total preservation both of life and fortune: it overwhelms me.

I have a thousand times gone to bed in my own house with an apprehension

that I should be betrayed and murdered that very night; compounding with

fortune, that it might be without terror and with quick despatch; and,

after my Paternoster, I have cried out,

“Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit!”

[“Shall impious soldiers have these new-ploughed grounds?”

--Virgil, Ecl., i. 71.]

What remedy? ‘tis the place of my birth, and that of most of my

ancestors; they have here fixed their affection and name. We inure

ourselves to whatever we are accustomed to; and in so miserable a

condition as ours is, custom is a great bounty of nature, which benumbs

out senses to the sufferance of many evils. A civil war has this with it

worse than other wars have, to make us stand sentinels in our own houses.

“Quam miserum, porta vitam muroque tueri,

Vixque suae tutum viribus esse domus!”

[“‘Tis miserable to protect one’s life by doors and walls, and to be

scarcely safe in one’s own house.”--Ovid, Trist., iv. I, 69.]

‘Tis a grievous extremity for a man to be jostled even in his own house

and domestic repose. The country where I live is always the first in

arms and the last that lays them down, and where there is never an

absolute peace:

“Tunc quoque, cum pax est, trepidant formidine belli....

Quoties Romam fortuna lacessit;

Hac iter est bellis.... Melius, Fortuna, dedisses

Orbe sub Eco sedem, gelidaque sub Arcto,

Errantesque domos.”

[“Even when there’s peace, there is here still the dear of war when

Fortune troubles peace, this is ever the way by which war passes.”

--Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 67.]

[“We might have lived happier in the remote East or in the icy

North, or among the wandering tribes.”--Lucan, i. 255.]

I sometimes extract the means to fortify myself against these

considerations from indifference and indolence, which, in some sort,

bring us on to resolution. It often befalls me to imagine and expect

mortal dangers with a kind of delight: I stupidly plunge myself headlong

into death, without considering or taking a view of it, as into a deep

and obscure abyss which swallows me up at one leap, and involves me in an

instant in a profound sleep, without any sense of pain. And in these

short and violent deaths, the consequence that I foresee administers more

consolation to me than the effect does fear. They say, that as life is

not better for being long, so death is better for being not long. I do

not so much evade being dead, as I enter into confidence with dying. I

wrap and shroud myself into the storm that is to blind and carry me away

with the fury of a sudden and insensible attack. Moreover, if it should

fall out that, as some gardeners say, roses and violets spring more

odoriferous near garlic and onions, by reason that the last suck and

imbibe all the ill odour of the earth; so, if these depraved natures

should also attract all the malignity of my air and climate, and render

it so much better and purer by their vicinity, I should not lose all.

That cannot be: but there may be something in this, that goodness is more

beautiful and attractive when it is rare; and that contrariety and

diversity fortify and consolidate well-doing within itself, and inflame

it by the jealousy of opposition and by glory. Thieves and robbers, of

their special favour, have no particular spite at me; no more have I to

them: I should have my hands too full. Like consciences are lodged under

several sorts of robes; like cruelty, disloyalty, rapine; and so much the

worse, and more falsely, when the more secure and concealed under colour

of the laws. I less hate an open professed injury than one that is

treacherous; an enemy in arms, than an enemy in a gown. Our fever has

seized upon a body that is not much the worse for it; there was fire

before, and now ‘tis broken out into a flame; the noise is greater, not

the evil. I ordinarily answer such as ask me the reason of my travels,

“That I know very well what I fly from, but not what I seek.” If they

tell me that there may be as little soundness amongst foreigners, and

that their manners are no better than ours: I first reply, that it is

hard to be believed;

“Tam multa: scelerum facies!”

[“There are so many forms of crime.”--Virgil, Georg., i. 506.]

secondly, that it is always gain to change an ill condition for one that

is uncertain; and that the ills of others ought not to afflict us so much

as our own.

I will not here omit, that I never mutiny so much against France, that I

am not perfectly friends with Paris; that city has ever had my heart from

my infancy, and it has fallen out, as of excellent things, that the more

beautiful cities I have seen since, the more the beauty of this still

wins upon my affection. I love her for herself, and more in her own

native being, than in all the pomp of foreign and acquired

embellishments. I love her tenderly, even to her warts and blemishes.

I am a Frenchman only through this great city, great in people, great in

the felicity of her situation; but, above all, great and incomparable in

variety and diversity of commodities: the glory of France, and one of the

most noble ornaments of the world. May God drive our divisions far from

her. Entire and united, I think her sufficiently defended from all other

violences. I give her caution that, of all sorts of people, those will

be the worst that shall set her in discord; I have no fear for her, but

of herself, and, certainly, I have as much fear for her as for any other

part of the kingdom. Whilst she shall continue, I shall never want a

retreat, where I may stand at bay, sufficient to make me amends for

parting with any other retreat.

Not because Socrates has said so, but because it is in truth my own

humour, and peradventure not without some excess, I look upon all men as

my compatriots, and embrace a Polander as a Frenchman, preferring the

universal and common tie to all national ties whatever. I am not much

taken with the sweetness of a native air: acquaintance wholly new and

wholly my own appear to me full as good as the other common and

fortuitous ones with Four neighbours: friendships that are purely of our

own acquiring ordinarily carry it above those to which the communication

of climate or of blood oblige us. Nature has placed us in the world free

and unbound; we imprison ourselves in certain straits, like the kings of

Persia, who obliged themselves to drink no other water but that of the

river Choaspes, foolishly quitted claim to their right in all other

streams, and, so far as concerned themselves, dried up all the other

rivers of the world. What Socrates did towards his end, to look upon a

sentence of banishment as worse than a sentence of death against him, I

shall, I think, never be either so decrepid or so strictly habituated to

my own country to be of that opinion. These celestial lives have images

enough that I embrace more by esteem than affection; and they have some

also so elevated and extraordinary that I cannot embrace them so much as

by esteem, forasmuch as I cannot conceive them. That fancy was singular

in a man who thought the whole world his city; it is true that he

disdained travel, and had hardly ever set his foot out of the Attic

territories. What say you to his complaint of the money his friends

offered to save his life, and that he refused to come out of prison by

the mediation of others, in order not to disobey the laws in a time when

they were otherwise so corrupt? These examples are of the first kind for

me; of the second, there are others that I could find out in the same

person: many of these rare examples surpass the force of my action, but

some of them, moreover, surpass the force of my judgment.

Besides these reasons, travel is in my opinion a very profitable

exercise; the soul is there continually employed in observing new and

unknown things, and I do not know, as I have often said a better school

wherein to model life than by incessantly exposing to it the diversity

of so many other lives, fancies, and usances, and by making it relish a

perpetual variety of forms of human nature. The body is, therein,

neither idle nor overwrought; and that moderate agitation puts it in

breath. I can keep on horseback, tormented with the stone as I am,

without alighting or being weary, eight or ten hours together:

“Vires ultra sorternque senectae.”

[“Beyond the strength and lot of age.”--AEneid, vi. 114.]

No season is enemy to me but the parching heat of a scorching sun; for

the umbrellas made use of in Italy, ever since the time of the ancient

Romans, more burden a man’s arm than they relieve his head. I would fain

know how it was that the Persians, so long ago and in the infancy of

luxury, made ventilators where they wanted them, and planted shades, as

Xenophon reports they did. I love rain, and to dabble in the dirt, as

well as ducks do. The change of air and climate never touches me; every

sky is alike; I am only troubled with inward alterations which I breed

within myself, and those are not so frequent in travel. I am hard to be

got out, but being once upon the road, I hold out as well as the best.

I take as much pains in little as in great attempts, and am as solicitous

to equip myself for a short journey, if but to visit a neighbour, as for

the longest voyage. I have learned to travel after the Spanish fashion,

and to make but one stage of a great many miles; and in excessive heats

I always travel by night, from sun set to sunrise. The other method of

baiting by the way, in haste and hurry to gobble up a dinner, is,

especially in short days, very inconvenient. My horses perform the

better; never any horse tired under me that was able to hold out the

first day’s journey. I water them at every brook I meet, and have only a

care they have so much way to go before I come to my inn, as will digest

the water in their bellies. My unwillingness to rise in a morning gives

my servants leisure to dine at their ease before they set out; for my own

part, I never eat too late; my appetite comes to me in eating, and not

else; I am never hungry but at table.

Some of my friends blame me for continuing this travelling humour, being

married and old. But they are out in’t; ‘tis the best time to leave a

man’s house, when he has put it into a way of continuing without him, and

settled such order as corresponds with its former government. ‘Tis much

greater imprudence to abandon it to a less faithful housekeeper, and who

will be less solicitous to look after your affairs.

The most useful and honourable knowledge and employment for the mother of

a family is the science of good housewifery. I see some that are

covetous indeed, but very few that are good managers. ‘Tis the supreme

quality of a woman, which a man ought to seek before any other, as the

only dowry that must ruin or preserve our houses. Let men say what they

will, according to the experience I have learned, I require in married

women the economical virtue above all other virtues; I put my wife to’t,

as a concern of her own, leaving her, by my absence, the whole government

of my affairs. I see, and am vexed to see, in several families I know,

Monsieur about noon come home all jaded and ruffled about his affairs,

when Madame is still dressing her hair and tricking up herself, forsooth,

in her closet: this is for queens to do, and that’s a question, too: ‘tis

ridiculous and unjust that the laziness of our wives should be maintained

with our sweat and labour. No man, so far as in me lie, shall have a

clearer, a more quiet and free fruition of his estate than I. If the

husband bring matter, nature herself will that the wife find the form.

As to the duties of conjugal friendship, that some think to be impaired

by these absences, I am quite of another opinion. It is, on the

contrary, an intelligence that easily cools by a too frequent and

assiduous companionship. Every strange woman appears charming, and we

all find by experience that being continually together is not so pleasing

as to part for a time and meet again. These interruptions fill me with

fresh affection towards my family, and render my house more pleasant to

me. Change warms my appetite to the one and then to the other. I know

that the arms of friendship are long enough to reach from the one end of

the world to the other, and especially this, where there is a continual

communication of offices that rouse the obligation and remembrance. The

Stoics say that there is so great connection and relation amongst the

sages, that he who dines in France nourishes his companion in Egypt; and

that whoever does but hold out his finger, in what part of the world

soever, all the sages upon the habitable earth feel themselves assisted

by it. Fruition and possession principally appertain to the imagination;

it more fervently and constantly embraces what it is in quest of, than

what we hold in our arms. Cast up your daily amusements; you will find

that you are most absent from your friend when he is present with you;

his presence relaxes your attention, and gives you liberty to absent

yourself at every turn and upon every occasion. When I am away at Rome,

I keep and govern my house, and the conveniences I there left; see my

walls rise, my trees shoot, and my revenue increase or decrease, very

near as well as when I am there:

“Ante oculos errat domus, errat forma locorum.”

[“My house and the forms of places float before my eyes”

--Ovid, Trist, iii. 4, 57.]

If we enjoy nothing but what we touch, we may say farewell to the money

in our chests, and to our sons when they are gone a hunting. We will

have them nearer to us: is the garden, or half a day’s journey from home,

far? What is ten leagues: far or near? If near, what is eleven, twelve,

or thirteen, and so by degrees. In earnest, if there be a woman who can

tell her husband what step ends the near and what step begins the remote,

I would advise her to stop between;

“Excludat jurgia finis . . . .

Utor permisso; caudaeque pilos ut equinae

Paulatim vello, et demo unum, demo etiam unum

Dum cadat elusus ratione ruentis acervi:”

[“Let the end shut out all disputes . . . . I use what is

permitted; I pluck out the hairs of the horse’s tail one by one;

while I thus outwit my opponent.”--Horace, Ep., ii, I, 38, 45]

and let them boldly call philosophy to their assistance; in whose teeth

it may be cast that, seeing it neither discerns the one nor the other end

of the joint, betwixt the too much and the little, the long and the

short, the light and the heavy, the near and the remote; that seeing it

discovers neither the beginning nor the end, it must needs judge very

uncertainly of the middle:

“Rerum natura nullam nobis dedit cognitionem finium.”

[“Nature has green to us no knowledge of the end of things.”

--Cicero, Acad., ii. 29.]

Are they not still wives and friends to the dead who are not at the end

of this but in the other world? We embrace not only the absent, but

those who have been, and those who are not yet. We do not promise in

marriage to be continually twisted and linked together, like some little

animals that we see, or, like the bewitched folks of Karenty,--[Karantia,

a town in the isle of Rugen. See Saxo-Grammaticus, Hist. of Denmark,

book xiv.]--tied together like dogs; and a wife ought not to be so

greedily enamoured of her husband’s foreparts, that she cannot endure to

see him turn his back, if occasion be. But may not this saying of that

excellent painter of woman’s humours be here introduced, to show the

reason of their complaints?

“Uxor, si cesses, aut to amare cogitat,

Aut tete amari, aut potare, aut animo obsequi;

Et tibi bene esse soli, cum sibi sit male;”

[“Your wife, if you loiter, thinks that you love or are beloved; or

that you are drinking or following your inclination; and that it is

well for you when it is ill for her (all the pleasure is yours and

hers all the care).”

--Terence, Adelph., act i., sc. I, v. 7.]

or may it not be, that of itself opposition and contradiction entertain

and nourish them, and that they sufficiently accommodate themselves,

provided they incommodate you?

In true friendship, wherein I am perfect, I more give myself to my

friend, than I endeavour to attract him to me. I am not only better

pleased in doing him service than if he conferred a benefit upon me,

but, moreover, had rather he should do himself good than me, and he most

obliges me when he does so; and if absence be either more pleasant or

convenient for him, ‘tis also more acceptable to me than his presence;

neither is it properly absence, when we can write to one another: I have

sometimes made good use of our separation from one another: we better

filled and further extended the possession of life in being parted.

He--[La Boetie.]--lived, enjoyed, and saw for me, and I for him, as

fully as if he had himself been there; one part of us remained idle, and

we were too much blended in one another when we were together; the

distance of place rendered the conjunction of our wills more rich. This

insatiable desire of personal presence a little implies weakness in the

fruition of souls.

As to what concerns age, which is alleged against me, ‘tis quite

contrary; ‘tis for youth to subject itself to common opinions, and to

curb itself to please others; it has wherewithal to please both the

people and itself; we have but too much ado to please ourselves alone.

As natural conveniences fail, let us supply them with those that are

artificial. ‘Tis injustice to excuse youth for pursuing its pleasures,

and to forbid old men to seek them. When young, I concealed my wanton

passions with prudence; now I am old, I chase away melancholy by debauch.

And thus do the platonic laws forbid men to travel till forty or fifty

years old, so that travel might be more useful and instructive in so

mature an age. I should sooner subscribe to the second article of the

same Laws, which forbids it after threescore.

“But, at such an age, you will never return from so long a journey.”

What care I for that? I neither undertake it to return, nor to finish it

my business is only to keep myself in motion, whilst motion pleases me;

I only walk for the walk’s sake. They who run after a benefit or a hare,

run not; they only run who run at base, and to exercise their running.

My design is divisible throughout: it is not grounded upon any great

hopes: every day concludes my expectation: and the journey of my life is

carried on after the same manner. And yet I have seen places enough a

great way off, where I could have wished to have stayed. And why not,

if Chrysippus, Cleanthes, Diogenes, Zeno, Antipater, so many sages of the

sourest sect, readily abandoned their country, without occasion of

complaint, and only for the enjoyment of another air. In earnest, that

which most displeases me in all my travels is, that I cannot resolve to

settle my abode where I should best like, but that I must always propose

to myself to return, to accommodate myself to the common humour.

If I feared to die in any other place than that of my birth; if I thought

I should die more uneasily remote from my own family, I should hardly go

out of France; I should not, without fear, step out of my parish; I feel

death always pinching me by the throat or by the back. But I am

otherwise constituted; ‘tis in all places alike to me. Yet, might I have

my choice, I think I should rather choose to die on horseback than in

bed; out of my own house, and far from my own people. There is more

heartbreaking than consolation in taking leave of one’s friends; I am

willing to omit that civility, for that, of all the offices of

friendship, is the only one that is unpleasant; and I could, with all my

heart, dispense with that great and eternal farewell. If there be any

convenience in so many standers-by, it brings an hundred inconveniences

along with it. I have seen many dying miserably surrounded with all this

train: ‘tis a crowd that chokes them. ‘Tis against duty, and is a

testimony of little kindness and little care, to permit you to die in

repose; one torments your eyes, another your ears, another your tongue;

you have neither sense nor member that is not worried by them. Your

heart is wounded with compassion to hear the mourning of friends, and,

perhaps with anger, to hear the counterfeit condolings of pretenders.

Who ever has been delicate and sensitive, when well, is much more so when

ill. In such a necessity, a gentle hand is required, accommodated to his

sentiment, to scratch him just in the place where he itches, otherwise

scratch him not at all. If we stand in need of a wise woman--[midwife,

Fr. ‘sage femme’.]--to bring us into the world, we have much more need

of a still wiser man to help us out of it. Such a one, and a friend to

boot, a man ought to purchase at any cost for such an occasion. I am not

yet arrived to that pitch of disdainful vigour that is fortified in

itself, that nothing can assist or disturb; I am of a lower form; I

endeavour to hide myself, and to escape from this passage, not by fear,

but by art. I do not intend in this act of dying to make proof and show

of my constancy. For whom should I do it? all the right and interest I

have in reputation will then cease. I content myself with a death

involved within itself, quiet, solitary, and all my own, suitable to my

retired and private life; quite contrary to the Roman superstition, where

a man was looked upon as unhappy who died without speaking, and who had

not his nearest relations to close his eyes. I have enough to do to

comfort myself, without having to console others; thoughts enough in my

head, not to need that circumstances should possess me with new; and

matter enough to occupy me without borrowing. This affair is out of the

part of society; ‘tis the act of one single person. Let us live and be

merry amongst our friends; let us go repine and die amongst strangers; a

man may find those, for his money, who will shift his pillow and rub his

feet, and will trouble him no more than he would have them; who will

present to him an indifferent countenance, and suffer him to govern

himself, and to complain according to his own method.

I wean myself daily by my reason from this childish and inhuman humour,

of desiring by our sufferings to move the compassion and mourning of our

friends: we stretch our own incommodities beyond their just extent when

we extract tears from others; and the constancy which we commend in every

one in supporting his adverse fortune, we accuse and reproach in our

friends when the evil is our own; we are not satisfied that they should

be sensible of our condition only, unless they be, moreover, afflicted.

A man should diffuse joy, but, as much as he can, smother grief. He who

makes himself lamented without reason is a man not to be lamented when

there shall be real cause: to be always complaining is the way never to

be lamented; by making himself always in so pitiful a taking, he is never

commiserated by any. He who makes himself out dead when he is alive, is

subject to be thought living when he is dying. I have seen some who have

taken it ill when they have been told that they looked well, and that

their pulse was good; restrain their smiles, because they betrayed a

recovery, and be angry, at their health because it was not to be

lamented: and, which is a great deal more, these were not women.

I describe my infirmities, such as they really are, at most, and avoid

all expressions of evil prognostic and composed exclamations. If not

mirth, at least a temperate countenance in the standers-by, is proper in

the presence of a wise sick man: he does not quarrel with health, for,

seeing himself in a contrary condition, he is pleased to contemplate it

sound and entire in others, and at least to enjoy it for company: he does

not, for feeling himself melt away, abandon all living thoughts, nor

avoid ordinary discourse. I would study sickness whilst I am well; when

it has seized me, it will make its impression real enough, without the

help of my imagination. We prepare ourselves beforehand for the journeys

we undertake, and resolve upon them; we leave the appointment of the hour

when to take horse to the company, and in their favour defer it.

I find this unexpected advantage in the publication of my manners, that

it in some sort serves me for a rule. I have, at times, some

consideration of not betraying the history of my life: this public

declaration obliges me to keep my way, and not to give the lie to the

image I have drawn of my qualities, commonly less deformed and

contradictory than consists with the malignity and infirmity of the

judgments of this age. The uniformity and simplicity of my manners

produce a face of easy interpretation; but because the fashion is a

little new and not in use, it gives too great opportunity to slander.

Yet so it is, that whoever would fairly assail me, I think I so

sufficiently assist his purpose in my known and avowed imperfections,

that he may that way satisfy his ill-nature without fighting with the

wind. If I myself, to anticipate accusation and discovery, confess

enough to frustrate his malice, as he conceives, ‘tis but reason that he

make use of his right of amplification, and to wire-draw my vices as far

as he can; attack has its rights beyond justice; and let him make the

roots of those errors I have laid open to him shoot up into trees: let

him make his use, not only of those I am really affected with, but also

of those that only threaten me; injurious vices, both in quality and

number; let him cudgel me that way. I should willingly follow the

example of the philosopher Bion: Antigonus being about to reproach him

with the meanness of his birth, he presently cut him short with this

declaration: “I am,” said he, “the son of a slave, a butcher, and

branded, and of a strumpet my father married in the lowest of his

fortune; both of them were whipped for offences they had committed. An

orator bought me, when a child, and finding me a pretty and hopeful boy,

bred me up, and when he died left me all his estate, which I have

transported into this city of Athens, and here settled myself to the

study of philosophy. Let the historians never trouble themselves with

inquiring about me: I will tell them about it.” A free and generous

confession enervates reproach and disarms slander. So it is that, one

thing with another, I fancy men as often commend as undervalue me beyond

reason; as, methinks also, from my childhood, in rank and degree of

honour, they have given me a place rather above than below my right.

I should find myself more at ease in a country where these degrees were

either regulated or not regarded. Amongst men, when an altercation about

the precedence either of walking or sitting exceeds three replies, ‘tis

reputed uncivil. I never stick at giving or taking place out of rule, to

avoid the trouble of such ceremony; and never any man had a mind to go

before me, but I permitted him to do it.

Besides this profit I make of writing of myself, I have also hoped for

this other advantage, that if it should fall out that my humour should

please or jump with those of some honest man before I die, he would then

desire and seek to be acquainted with me. I have given him a great deal

of made-way; for all that he could have, in many years, acquired by close

familiarity, he has seen in three days in this memorial, and more surely

and exactly. A pleasant fancy: many things that I would not confess to

any one in particular, I deliver to the public, and send my best friends

to a bookseller’s shop, there to inform themselves concerning my most

secret thoughts;

“Excutienda damus praecordia.”

[“We give our hearts to be examined.”--Persius, V. 22.]

Did I, by good direction, know where to seek any one proper for my

conversation, I should certainly go a great way to find him out: for the

sweetness of suitable and agreeable company cannot; in my opinion, be

bought too dear. O what a thing is a true friend! how true is that old

saying, that the use of a friend is more pleasing and necessary than the

elements of water and fire!

To return to my subject: there is, then, no great harm in dying privately

and far from home; we conceive ourselves obliged to retire for natural

actions less unseemly and less terrible than this. But, moreover, such

as are reduced to spin out a long languishing life, ought not, perhaps,

to wish to trouble a great family with their continual miseries;

therefore the Indians, in a certain province, thought it just to knock a

man on the head when reduced to such a necessity; and in another of their

provinces, they all forsook him to shift for himself as well as he could.

To whom do they not, at last, become tedious and insupportable? the

ordinary offices of fife do not go that length. You teach your best

friends to be cruel perforce; hardening wife and children by long use

neither to regard nor to lament your sufferings. The groans of the stone

are grown so familiar to my people, that nobody takes any notice of them.

And though we should extract some pleasure from their conversation (which

does not always happen, by reason of the disparity of conditions, which

easily begets contempt or envy toward any one whatever), is it not too

much to make abuse of this half a lifetime? The more I should see them

constrain themselves out of affection to be serviceable to me, the more I

should be sorry for their pains. We have liberty to lean, but not to lay

our whole weight upon others, so as to prop ourselves by their ruin; like

him who caused little children’s throats to be cut to make use of their

blood for the cure of a disease he had, or that other, who was

continually supplied with tender young girls to keep his old limbs warm

in the night, and to mix the sweetness of their breath with his, sour and

stinking. I should readily advise Venice as a retreat in this decline of

life. Decrepitude is a solitary quality. I am sociable even to excess,

yet I think it reasonable that I should now withdraw my troubles from the

sight of the world and keep them to myself. Let me shrink and draw up

myself in my own shell, like a tortoise, and learn to see men without

hanging upon them. I should endanger them in so slippery a passage: ‘tis

time to turn my back to company.

“But, in these travels, you will be taken ill in some wretched place,

where nothing can be had to relieve you.” I always carry most things

necessary about me; and besides, we cannot evade Fortune if she once

resolves to attack us. I need nothing extraordinary when I am sick.

I will not be beholden to my bolus to do that for me which nature cannot.

At the very beginning of my fevers and sicknesses that cast me down,

whilst still entire, and but little, disordered in health, I reconcile

myself to Almighty God by the last Christian, offices, and find myself by

so doing less oppressed and more easy, and have got, methinks, so much

the better of my disease. And I have yet less need of a notary or

counsellor than of a physician. What I have not settled of my affairs

when I was in health, let no one expect I should do it when I am sick.

What I will do for the service of death is always done; I durst not so

much as one day defer it; and if nothing be done, ‘tis as much as to say

either that doubt hindered my choice (and sometimes ‘tis well chosen not

to choose), or that I was positively resolved not to do anything at all.

I write my book for few men and for few years. Had it been matter of

duration, I should have put it into firmer language. According to the

continual variation that ours has been subject to, up to this day, who

can expect that its present form should be in use fifty years hence?

It slips every day through our fingers, and since I was born, it is

altered above one-half. We say that it is now perfect; and every age

says the same of its own. I shall hardly trust to that, so long as it

varies and changes as it does. ‘Tis for good and useful writings to

rivet it to them, and its reputation will go according to the fortune of

our state. For which reason I am not afraid to insert in it several

private articles, which will spend their use amongst the men that are now

living, and that concern the particular knowledge of some who will see

further into them than every common reader. I will not, after all, as I

often hear dead men spoken of, that men should say of me: “He judged, he

lived so and so; he would have done this or that; could he have spoken

when he was dying, he would have said so or so, and have given this thing

or t’other; I knew him better than any.” Now, as much as decency

permits, I here discover my inclinations and affections; but I do more

willingly and freely by word of mouth to any one who desires to be

informed. So it is that in these memoirs, if any one observe, he will

find that I have either told or designed to tell all; what I cannot

express, I point out with my finger:

“Verum animo satis haec vestigia parva sagaci

Sunt, per quae possis cognoscere caetera tute”

[“By these footsteps a sagacious mind many easily find all other

matters (are sufficient to enable one to learn the rest well.)”

--Lucretius, i. 403.]

I leave nothing to be desired or to be guessed at concerning me. If

people must be talking of me, I would have it to be justly and truly; I

would come again, with all my heart, from the other world to give any one

the lie who should report me other than I was, though he did it to honour

me. I perceive that people represent, even living men, quite another

thing than what they really are; and had I not stoutly defended a friend

whom I have lost,--[De la Boetie.]--they would have torn him into a

thousand contrary pieces.

To conclude the account of my poor humours, I confess that in my travels

I seldom reach my inn but that it comes into my mind to consider whether

I could there be sick and dying at my ease. I desire to be lodged in

some private part of the house, remote from all noise, ill scents, and

smoke. I endeavour to flatter death by these frivolous circumstances;

or, to say better, to discharge myself from all other incumbrances, that

I may have nothing to do, nor be troubled with anything but that which

will lie heavy enough upon me without any other load. I would have my

death share in the ease and conveniences of my life; ‘tis a great part of

it, and of great importance, and I hope it will not in the future

contradict the past. Death has some forms that are more easy than

others, and receives divers qualities, according to every one’s fancy.

Amongst the natural deaths, that which proceeds from weakness and stupor

I think the most favourable; amongst those that are violent, I can worse

endure to think of a precipice than of the fall of a house that will

crush me in a moment, and of a wound with a sword than of a harquebus

shot; I should rather have chosen to poison myself with Socrates, than

stab myself with Cato. And, though it, be all one, yet my imagination

makes as great a difference as betwixt death and life, betwixt throwing

myself into a burning furnace and plunging into the channel of a river:

so idly does our fear more concern itself in the means than the effect.

It is but an instant, ‘tis true, but withal an instant of such weight,

that I would willingly give a great many days of my life to pass it over

after my own fashion. Since every one’s imagination renders it more or

less terrible, and since every one has some choice amongst the several

forms of dying, let us try a little further to find some one that is

wholly clear from all offence. Might not one render it even voluptuous,

like the Commoyientes of Antony and Cleopatra? I set aside the brave and

exemplary efforts produced by philosophy and religion; but, amongst men

of little mark there have been found some, such as Petronius and

Tigellinus at Rome, condemned to despatch themselves, who have, as it

were, rocked death asleep with the delicacy of their preparations; they

have made it slip and steal away in the height of their accustomed

diversions amongst girls and good fellows; not a word of consolation, no

mention of making a will, no ambitious affectation of constancy, no talk

of their future condition; amongst sports, feastings, wit, and mirth,

common and indifferent discourses, music, and amorous verses. Were it

not possible for us to imitate this resolution after a more decent

manner? Since there are deaths that are good for fools, deaths good for

the wise, let us find out such as are fit for those who are betwixt both.

My imagination suggests to me one that is easy, and, since we must die,

to be desired. The Roman tyrants thought they did, in a manner, give a

criminal life when they gave him the choice of his death. But was not

Theophrastus, that so delicate, so modest, and so wise a philosopher,

compelled by reason, when he durst say this verse, translated by Cicero:

“Vitam regit fortuna, non sapientia?”

[“Fortune, not wisdom, sways human life.”

--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., V. 31.]

Fortune assists the facility of the bargain of my life, having placed it

in such a condition that for the future it can be neither advantage nor

hindrance to those who are concerned in me; ‘tis a condition that I would

have accepted at any time of my life; but in this occasion of trussing up

my baggage, I am particularly pleased that in dying I shall neither do

them good nor harm. She has so ordered it, by a cunning compensation,

that they who may pretend to any considerable advantage by my death will,

at the same time, sustain a material inconvenience. Death sometimes is

more grievous to us, in that it is grievous to others, and interests us

in their interest as much as in our own, and sometimes more.

In this conveniency of lodging that I desire, I mix nothing of pomp and

amplitude--I hate it rather; but a certain plain neatness, which is

oftenest found in places where there is less of art, and that Nature has

adorned with some grace that is all her own:

“Non ampliter, sea munditer convivium.”

[“To eat not largely, but cleanly.”--Nepos, Life of Atticus, c. 13]

“Plus salis quam sumptus.”

[“Rather enough than costly (More wit than cost)”--Nonius, xi. 19.]

And besides, ‘tis for those whose affairs compel them to travel in the

depth of winter through the Grisons country to be surprised upon the way

with great inconveniences. I, who, for the most part, travel for my

pleasure, do not order my affairs so ill. If the way be foul on my right

hand, I turn on my left; if I find myself unfit to ride, I stay where I

am; and, so doing, in earnest I see nothing that is not as pleasant and

commodious as my own house. ‘Tis true that I always find superfluity

superfluous, and observe a kind of trouble even in abundance itself.

Have I left anything behind me unseen, I go back to see it; ‘tis still on

my way; I trace no certain line, either straight or crooked.--[Rousseau

has translated this passage in his Emile, book v.]--Do I not find in the

place to which I go what was reported to me--as it often falls out that

the judgments of others do not jump with mine, and that I have found

their reports for the most part false--I never complain of losing my

labour: I have, at least, informed myself that what was told me was not

true.

I have a constitution of body as free, and a palate as indifferent, as

any man living: the diversity of manners of several nations only affects

me in the pleasure of variety: every usage has its reason. Let the plate

and dishes be pewter, wood, or earth; my meat be boiled or roasted; let

them give me butter or oil, of nuts or olives, hot or cold, ‘tis all one

to me; and so indifferent, that growing old, I accuse this generous

faculty, and would wish that delicacy and choice should correct the

indiscretion of my appetite, and sometimes soothe my stomach. When I

have been abroad out of France and that people, out of courtesy, have

asked me if I would be served after the French manner, I laughed at the

question, and always frequented tables the most filled with foreigners.

I am ashamed to see our countrymen besotted with this foolish humour of

quarrelling with forms contrary to their own; they seem to be out of

their element when out of their own village: wherever they go, they keep

to their own fashions and abominate those of strangers. Do they meet

with a compatriot in Hungary? O the happy chance! They are henceforward

inseparable; they cling together, and their whole discourse is to condemn

the barbarous manners they see about them. Why barbarous, because they

are not French? And those have made the best use of their travels who

have observed most to speak against. Most of them go for no other end

but to come back again; they proceed in their travel with vast gravity

and circumspection, with a silent and incommunicable prudence, preserving

themselves from the contagion of an unknown air. What I am saying of

them puts me in mind of something like it I have at times observed in

some of our young courtiers; they will not mix with any but men of their

own sort, and look upon us as men of another world, with disdain or pity.

Put them upon any discourse but the intrigues of the court, and they are

utterly at a loss; as very owls and novices to us as we are to them.

‘Tis truly said that a well-bred man is a compound man. I, on the

contrary, travel very much sated with our own fashions; I do not look for

Gascons in Sicily; I have left enough of them at home; I rather seek for

Greeks and Persians; they are the men I endeavour to be acquainted with

and the men I study; ‘tis there that I bestow and employ myself. And

which is more, I fancy that I have met but with few customs that are not

as good as our own; I have not, I confess, travelled very far; scarce out

of the sight of the vanes of my own house.

As to the rest, most of the accidental company a man falls into upon the

road beget him more trouble than pleasure; I waive them as much as I

civilly can, especially now that age seems in some sort to privilege and

sequester me from the common forms. You suffer for others or others

suffer for you; both of them inconveniences of importance enough, but the

latter appears to me the greater. ‘Tis a rare fortune, but of

inestimable solace; to have a worthy man, one of a sound judgment and of

manners conformable to your own, who takes a delight to bear you company.

I have been at an infinite loss for such upon my travels. But such a

companion should be chosen and acquired from your first setting out.

There can be no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so

much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind, that it does not grieve

me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to communicate it to:

“Si cum hac exceptione detur sapientia,

ut illam inclusam teneam, nec enuntiem, rejiciam.”

[“If wisdom be conferred with this reservation, that I must keep it

to myself, and not communicate it to others, I would none of it.”

--Seneca, Ep., 6.]

This other has strained it one note higher:

“Si contigerit ea vita sapienti, ut ommum rerum afliuentibus copiis,

quamvis omnia, quae cognitione digna sunt, summo otio secum ipse

consideret et contempletur, tamen, si solitudo tanta sit, ut hominem

videre non possit, excedat a vita.”

[“If such a condition of life should happen to a wise man, that in

the greatest plenty of all conveniences he might, at the most

undisturbed leisure, consider and contemplate all things worth the

knowing, yet if his solitude be such that he must not see a man, let

him depart from life.”--Cicero, De Offic., i. 43.]

Architas pleases me when he says, “that it would be unpleasant, even in

heaven itself, to wander in those great and divine celestial bodies

without a companion. But yet ‘tis much better to be alone than in

foolish and troublesome company. Aristippus loved to live as a stranger

in all places:

“Me si fata meis paterentur ducere vitam

Auspiciis,”

[“If the fates would let me live in my own way.”--AEneid, iv. 340.]

I should choose to pass away the greatest part of my life on horseback:

“Visere gestiens,

Qua pane debacchentur ignes,

Qua nebula, pluviique rores.”

[“Visit the regions where the sun burns, where are the thick

rain-clouds and the frosts.”--Horace, Od., iii. 3, 54.]

“Have you not more easy diversions at home? What do you there want? Is

not your house situated in a sweet and healthful air, sufficiently

furnished, and more than sufficiently large? Has not the royal majesty

been more than once there entertained with all its train? Are there not

more below your family in good ease than there are above it in eminence?

Is there any local, extraordinary, indigestible thought that afflicts

you?”

“Qua to nunc coquat, et vexet sub pectore fixa.”

[“That may now worry you, and vex, fixed in your breast.”

--Cicero, De Senect, c. 1, Ex Ennio.]

“Where do you think to live without disturbance?”

“Nunquam simpliciter Fortuna indulget.”

[“Fortune is never simply complaisant (unmixed).”

--Quintus Curtius, iv. 14]

You see, then, it is only you that trouble yourself; you will everywhere

follow yourself, and everywhere complain; for there is no satisfaction

here below, but either for brutish or for divine souls. He who, on so

just an occasion, has no contentment, where will he think to find it?

How many thousands of men terminate their wishes in such a condition as

yours? Do but reform yourself; for that is wholly in your own power!

whereas you have no other right but patience towards fortune:

“Nulla placida quies est, nisi quam ratio composuit.”

[“There is no tranquillity but that which reason has conferred.”

--Seneca, Ep., 56.]

I see the reason of this advice, and see it perfectly well; but he might

sooner have done, and more pertinently, in bidding me in one word be

wise; that resolution is beyond wisdom; ‘tis her precise work and

product. Thus the physician keeps preaching to a poor languishing

patient to “be cheerful”; but he would advise him a little more

discreetly in bidding him “be well.” For my part, I am but a man of the

common sort. ‘Tis a wholesome precept, certain and easy to be

understood, “Be content with what you have,” that is to say, with reason:

and yet to follow this advice is no more in the power of the wise men of

the world than in me. ‘Tis a common saying, but of a terrible extent:

what does it not comprehend? All things fall under discretion and

qualification. I know very well that, to take it by the letter, this

pleasure of travelling is a testimony of uneasiness and irresolution,

and, in sooth, these two are our governing and predominating qualities.

Yes, I confess, I see nothing, not so much as in a dream, in a wish,

whereon I could set up my rest: variety only, and the possession of

diversity, can satisfy me; that is, if anything can. In travelling, it

pleases me that I may stay where I like, without inconvenience, and that

I have a place wherein commodiously to divert myself. I love a private

life, because ‘tis my own choice that I love it, not by any dissenting

from or dislike of public life, which, peradventure, is as much according

to my complexion. I serve my prince more cheerfully because it is by the

free election of my own judgment and reason, without any particular

obligation; and that I am not reduced and constrained so to do for being

rejected or disliked by the other party; and so of all the rest. I hate

the morsels that necessity carves me; any commodity upon which I had only

to depend would have me by the throat;

“Alter remus aquas, alter mihi radat arenas;”

[“Let me have one oar in the water, and with the other rake the

shore.”--Propertius, iii. 3, 23.]

one cord will never hold me fast enough. You will say, there is vanity

in this way of living. But where is there not? All these fine precepts

are vanity, and all wisdom is vanity:

“Dominus novit cogitationes sapientum, quoniam vanae sunt.”

[“The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.”

--Ps. xciii. II; or I Cor. iii. 20.]

These exquisite subtleties are only fit for sermons; they are discourses

that will send us all saddled into the other world. Life is a material

and corporal motion, an action imperfect and irregular of its own proper

essence; I make it my business to serve it according to itself:

“Quisque suos patimur manes.”

[“We each of us suffer our own particular demon.”--AEneid, vi. 743.]

“Sic est faciendum, ut contra naturam universam nihil contendamus;

ea tamen conservata propriam sequamur.”

[“We must so order it as by no means to contend against universal

nature; but yet, that rule being observed, to follow our own.”

--Cicero, De Offcc., i. 31.]

To what end are these elevated points of philosophy, upon which no human

being can rely? and those rules that exceed both our use and force?

I see often that we have theories of life set before us which neither the

proposer nor those who hear him have any hope, nor, which is more, any

inclination to follow. Of the same sheet of paper whereon the judge has

but just written a sentence against an adulterer, he steals a piece

whereon to write a love-letter to his companion’s wife. She whom you

have but just now illicitly embraced will presently, even in your

hearing, more loudly inveigh against the same fault in her companion than

a Portia would do;--[The chaste daughter of Cato of Utica.]--and men

there are who will condemn others to death for crimes that they

themselves do not repute so much as faults. I have, in my youth, seen a

man of good rank with one hand present to the people verses that excelled

both in wit and debauchery, and with the other, at the same time, the

most ripe and pugnacious theological reformation that the world has been

treated withal these many years. And so men proceed; we let the laws and

precepts follow their way; ourselves keep another course, not only from

debauchery of manners, but ofttimes by judgment and contrary opinion. Do

but hear a philosophical lecture; the invention, eloquence, pertinency

immediately strike upon your mind and move you; there is nothing that

touches or stings your conscience; ‘tis not to this they address

themselves. Is not this true? It made Aristo say, that neither a bath

nor a lecture did aught unless it scoured and made men clean. One may

stop at the skin; but it is after the marrow is picked out as, after we

have swallowed good wine out of a fine cup, we examine the designs and

workmanship. In all the courts of ancient philosophy, this is to be

found, that the same teacher publishes rules of temperance and at the

same time lessons in love and wantonness; Xenophon, in the very bosom of

Clinias, wrote against the Aristippic virtue. ‘Tis not that there is any

miraculous conversion in it that makes them thus wavering; ‘tis that

Solon represents himself, sometimes in his own person, and sometimes in

that of a legislator; one while he speaks for the crowd, and another for

himself; taking the free and natural rules for his own share, feeling

assured of a firm and entire health:

“Curentur dubii medicis majoribus aegri.”

[“Desperate maladies require the best doctors.”

--Juvenal, xiii. 124.]

Antisthenes allows a sage to love, and to do whatever he thinks

convenient, without regard to the laws, forasmuch as he is better advised

than they, and has a greater knowledge of virtue. His disciple Diogenes

said, that “men to perturbations were to oppose reason: to fortune,

courage: to the laws, nature.” For tender stomachs, constrained and

artificial recipes must be prescribed: good and strong stomachs serve

themselves simply with the prescriptions of their own natural appetite;

after this manner do our physicians proceed, who eat melons and drink

iced wines, whilst they confine their patients to syrups and sops.

“I know not,” said the courtezan Lais, “what they may talk of books,

wisdom, and philosophy; but these men knock as often at my door as any

others.” At the same rate that our licence carries us beyond what is

lawful and allowed, men have, often beyond universal reason, stretched

the precepts and rules of our life:

“Nemo satis credit tantum delinquere, quantum

Permittas.”

[“No one thinks he has done ill to the full extent of what he may.”

--Juvenal, xiv. 233.]

It were to be wished that there was more proportion betwixt the command

and the obedience; and the mark seems to be unjust to which one cannot

attain. There is no so good man, who so squares all his thoughts and

actions to the laws, that he is not faulty enough to deserve hanging ten

times in his life; and he may well be such a one, as it were great

injustice and great harm to punish and ruin:

“Ole, quid ad te

De cute quid faciat ille vel ille sua?”

[“Olus, what is it to thee what he or she does with their skin?”

--Martial, vii. 9, I.]

and such an one there may be, who has no way offended the laws, who,

nevertheless, would not deserve the character of a virtuous man, and whom

philosophy would justly condemn to be whipped; so unequal and perplexed

is this relation. We are so far from being good men, according to the

laws of God, that we cannot be so according to our own human wisdom never

yet arrived at the duties it had itself prescribed; and could it arrive

there, it would still prescribe to itself others beyond, to which it

would ever aspire and pretend; so great an enemy to consistency is our

human condition. Man enjoins himself to be necessarily in fault: he is

not very discreet to cut out his own duty by the measure of another being

than his own. To whom does he prescribe that which he does not expect

any one should perform? is he unjust in not doing what it is impossible

for him to do? The laws which condemn us not to be able, condemn us for

not being able.

At the worst, this difform liberty of presenting ourselves two several

ways, the actions after one manner and the reasoning after another, may

be allowed to those who only speak of things; but it cannot be allowed to

those who speak of themselves, as I do: I must march my pen as I do my

feet. Common life ought to have relation to the other lives: the virtue

of Cato was vigorous beyond the reason of the age he lived in; and for a

man who made it his business to govern others, a man dedicated to the

public service, it might be called a justice, if not unjust, at least

vain and out of season. Even my own manners, which differ not above an

inch from those current amongst us, render me, nevertheless, a little

rough and unsociable at my age. I know not whether it be without reason

that I am disgusted with the world I frequent; but I know very well that

it would be without reason, should I complain of its being disgusted with

me, seeing I am so with it. The virtue that is assigned to the affairs

of the world is a virtue of many wavings, corners, and elbows, to join

and adapt itself to human frailty, mixed and artificial, not straight,

clear, constant, nor purely innocent. Our annals to this very day

reproach one of our kings for suffering himself too simply to be carried

away by the conscientious persuasions of his confessor: affairs of state

have bolder precepts;

“Exeat aula,

Qui vult esse pius.”

[“Let him who will be pious retire from the court.”

--Lucan, viii. 493]

I formerly tried to employ in the service of public affairs opinions and

rules of living, as rough, new, unpolished or unpolluted, as they were

either born with me, or brought away from my education, and wherewith I

serve my own turn, if not so commodiously, at least securely, in my own

particular concerns: a scholastic and novice virtue; but I have found

them unapt and dangerous. He who goes into a crowd must now go one way

and then another, keep his elbows close, retire or advance, and quit the

straight way, according to what he encounters; and must live not so much

according to his own method as to that of others; not according to what

he proposes to himself, but according to what is proposed to him,

according to the time, according to the men, according to the occasions.

Plato says, that whoever escapes from the world’s handling with clean

breeches, escapes by miracle: and says withal, that when he appoints his

philosopher the head of a government, he does not mean a corrupt one like

that of Athens, and much less such a one as this of ours, wherein wisdom

itself would be to seek. A good herb, transplanted into a soil contrary

to its own nature, much sooner conforms itself to the soil than it

reforms the soil to it. I found that if I had wholly to apply myself to

such employments, it would require a great deal of change and new

modelling in me before I could be any way fit for it: And though I could

so far prevail upon myself (and why might I not with time and diligence

work such a feat), I would not do it. The little trial I have had of

public employment has been so much disgust to me; I feel at times

temptations toward ambition rising in my soul, but I obstinately oppose

them:

“At tu, Catulle, obstinatus obdura.”

[“But thou, Catullus, be obstinately firm.”--Catullus, viii. 19.]

I am seldom called to it, and as seldom offer myself uncalled; liberty

and laziness, the qualities most predominant in me, are qualities

diametrically contrary to that trade. We cannot well distinguish the

faculties of men; they have divisions and limits hard and delicate to

choose; to conclude from the discreet conduct of a private life a

capacity for the management of public affairs is to conclude ill; a man

may govern himself well who cannot govern others so, and compose Essays

who could not work effects: men there may be who can order a siege well,

who would ill marshal a battle; who can speak well in private, who would

ill harangue a people or a prince; nay, ‘tis peradventure rather a

testimony in him who can do the one that he cannot do the other, than

otherwise. I find that elevated souls are not much more proper for mean

things than mean souls are for high ones. Could it be imagined that

Socrates should have administered occasion of laughter, at the expense of

his own reputation, to the Athenians for: having never been able to sum

up the votes of his tribe, to deliver it to the council? Truly, the

veneration I have for the perfections of this great man deserves that his

fortune should furnish, for the excuse of my principal imperfections, so

magnificent an example. Our sufficiency is cut out into small parcels;

mine has no latitude, and is also very contemptible in number.

Saturninus, to those who had conferred upon him the command in chief:

“Companions,” said he, “you have lost a good captain, to make of him a

bad general.”

Whoever boasts, in so sick a time as this, to employ a true and sincere

virtue in the world’s service, either knows not what it is, opinions

growing corrupt with manners (and, in truth, to hear them describe it, to

hear the most of them glorify themselves in their deportments, and lay

down their rules; instead of painting virtue, they paint pure vice and

injustice, and so represent it false in the education of princes); or if

he does know it, boasts unjustly and let him say what he will, does a

thousand things of which his own conscience must necessarily accuse him.

I should willingly take Seneca’s word on the experience he made upon the

like occasion, provided he would deal sincerely with me. The most

honourable mark of goodness in such a necessity is freely to confess both

one’s own faults and those of others; with the power of its virtue to

stay one’s inclination towards evil; unwillingly to follow this

propension; to hope better, to desire better. I perceive that in these

divisions wherein we are involved in France, every one labours to defend

his cause; but even the very best of them with dissimulation and

disguise: he who would write roundly of the true state of the quarrel,

would write rashly and wrongly. The most just party is at best but a

member of a decayed and worm-eaten body; but of such a body, the member

that is least affected calls itself sound, and with good reason,

forasmuch as our qualities have no title but in comparison; civil

innocence is measured according to times and places. Imagine this in

Xenophon, related as a fine commendation of Agesilaus: that, being

entreated by a neighbouring prince with whom he had formerly had war, to

permit him to pass through his country, he granted his request, giving

him free passage through Peloponnesus; and not only did not imprison or

poison him, being at his mercy, but courteously received him according to

the obligation of his promise, without doing him the least injury or

offence. To such ideas as theirs this were an act of no especial note;

elsewhere and in another age, the frankness and unanimity of such an

action would be thought wonderful; our monkeyish capets

[Capets, so called from their short capes, were the students of

Montaigne College at Paris, and were held in great contempt.]

would have laughed at it, so little does the Spartan innocence resemble

that of France. We are not without virtuous men, but ‘tis according to

our notions of virtue. Whoever has his manners established in regularity

above the standard of the age he lives in, let him either wrest or blunt

his rules, or, which I would rather advise him to, let him retire, and

not meddle with us at all. What will he get by it?

“Egregium sanctumque virum si cerno, bimembri

Hoc monstrum puero, et miranti jam sub aratro

Piscibus inventis, et foetae comparo mulae.”

[“If I see an exemplary and good man, I liken it to a two-headed

boy, or a fish turned up by the plough, or a teeming mule.”

--Juvenal, xiii. 64.]

One may regret better times, but cannot fly from the present; we may wish

for other magistrates, but we must, notwithstanding, obey those we have;

and, peradventure, ‘tis more laudable to obey the bad than the good. So

long as the image of the ancient and received laws of this monarchy shall

shine in any corner of the kingdom, there will I be. If they

unfortunately happen to thwart and contradict one another, so as to

produce two parts, of doubtful and difficult choice, I will willingly

choose to withdraw and escape the tempest; in the meantime nature or the

hazards of war may lend me a helping hand. Betwixt Caesar and Pompey,

I should frankly have declared myself; but, as amongst the three robbers

who came after,--[Octavius, Mark Antony, and Lepidus.]--a man must have

been necessitated either to hide himself, or have gone along with the

current of the time, which I think one may fairly do when reason no

longer guides:

“Quo diversus abis?”

[“Whither dost thou run wandering?”--AEneid, v. 166.]

This medley is a little from my theme; I go out of my way; but ‘tis

rather by licence than oversight; my fancies follow one another, but

sometimes at a great distance, and look towards one another, but ‘tis

with an oblique glance. I have read a dialogue of Plato,--[The

Phaedrus.]--of the like motley and fantastic composition, the beginning

about love, and all the rest to the end about rhetoric; they fear not

these variations, and have a marvellous grace in letting themselves be

carried away at the pleasure of the wind, or at least to seem as if they

were. The titles of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole

matter; they often denote it by some mark only, as these others, Andria,

Eunuchus; or these, Sylla, Cicero, Toyquatus. I love a poetic progress,

by leaps and skips; ‘tis an art, as Plato says, light, nimble, demoniac.

There are pieces in Plutarch where he forgets his theme; where the

proposition of his argument is only found by incidence, stuffed and half

stifled in foreign matter. Observe his footsteps in the Daemon of

Socrates. O God! how beautiful are these frolicsome sallies, those

variations and digressions, and all the more when they seem most

fortuitous and careless. ‘Tis the indiligent reader who loses my

subject, and not I; there will always be found some word or other in a

corner that is to the purpose, though it lie very close. I ramble

indiscreetly and tumultuously; my style and my wit wander at the same

rate. He must fool it a little who would not be deemed wholly a fool,

say both the precepts, and, still more, the examples of our masters. A

thousand poets flag and languish after a prosaic manner; but the best old

prose (and I strew it here up and down indifferently for verse) shines

throughout with the lustre, vigour, and boldness of poetry, and not

without some air of its fury. And certainly prose ought to have the

pre-eminence in speaking. The poet, says Plato, seated upon the muses

tripod, pours out with fury whatever comes into his mouth, like the pipe

of a fountain, without considering and weighing it; and things escape him

of various colours, of contrary substance, and with an irregular torrent.

Plato himself is throughout poetical; and the old theology, as the

learned tell us, is all poetry; and the first philosophy is the original

language of the gods. I would have my matter distinguish itself; it

sufficiently shows where it changes, where it concludes, where it begins,

and where it rejoins, without interlacing it with words of connection

introduced for the relief of weak or negligent ears, and without

explaining myself. Who is he that had not rather not be read at all than

after a drowsy or cursory manner?

“Nihil est tam utile, quod intransitu prosit.”

[“Nothing is so useful as that which is cursorily so.”

--Seneca, Ep., 2.]

If to take books in hand were to learn them: to look upon them were to

consider them: and to run these slightly over were to grasp them, I were

then to blame to make myself out so ignorant as I say I am. Seeing I

cannot fix the attention of my reader by the weight of what I write,

‘manco male’, if I should chance to do it by my intricacies. “Nay, but

he will afterwards repent that he ever perplexed himself about it.”

‘Tis very true, but he will yet be there perplexed. And, besides, there

are some humours in which comprehension produces disdain; who will think

better of me for not understanding what I say, and will conclude the

depth of my sense by its obscurity; which, to speak in good sooth, I

mortally hate, and would avoid it if I could. Aristotle boasts somewhere

in his writings that he affected it: a vicious affectation. The frequent

breaks into chapters that I made my method in the beginning of my book,

having since seemed to me to dissolve the attention before it was raised,

as making it disdain to settle itself to so little, I, upon that account,

have made them longer, such as require proposition and assigned leisure.

In such an employment, to whom you will not give an hour you give

nothing; and you do nothing for him for whom you only do it whilst you

are doing something else. To which may be added that I have,

peradventure, some particular obligation to speak only by halves, to

speak confusedly and discordantly. I am therefore angry at this

trouble-feast reason, and its extravagant projects that worry one’s life,

and its opinions, so fine and subtle, though they be all true, I think

too dear bought and too inconvenient. On the contrary, I make it my

business to bring vanity itself in repute, and folly too, if it produce

me any pleasure; and let myself follow my own natural inclinations,

without carrying too strict a hand upon them.

I have seen elsewhere houses in ruins, and statues both of gods and men:

these are men still. ‘Tis all true; and yet, for all that, I cannot so

often revisit the tomb of that so great and so puissant city,--[Rome]--

that I do not admire and reverence it. The care of the dead is

recommended to us; now, I have been bred up from my infancy with these

dead; I had knowledge of the affairs of Rome long before I had any of

those of my own house; I knew the Capitol and its plan before I knew the

Louvre, and the Tiber before I knew the Seine. The qualities and

fortunes of Lucullus, Metellus, and Scipio have ever run more in my head

than those of any of my own country; they are all dead; so is my father

as absolutely dead as they, and is removed as far from me and life in

eighteen years as they are in sixteen hundred: whose memory,

nevertheless, friendship and society, I do not cease to embrace and

utilise with a perfect and lively union. Nay, of my own inclination, I

pay more service to the dead; they can no longer help themselves, and

therefore, methinks, the more require my assistance: ‘tis there that

gratitude appears in its full lustre. The benefit is not so generously

bestowed, where there is retrogradation and reflection. Arcesilaus,

going to visit Ctesibius, who was sick, and finding him in a very poor

condition, very finely conveyed some money under his pillow, and, by

concealing it from him, acquitted him, moreover, from the acknowledgment

due to such a benefit. Such as have merited from me friendship and

gratitude have never lost these by being no more; I have better and more

carefully paid them when gone and ignorant of what I did; I speak most

affectionately of my friends when they can no longer know it. I have had

a hundred quarrels in defending Pompey and for the cause of Brutus; this

acquaintance yet continues betwixt us; we have no other hold even on

present things but by fancy. Finding myself of no use to this age, I

throw myself back upon that other, and am so enamoured of it, that the

free, just, and flourishing state of that ancient Rome (for I neither

love it in its birth nor its old age) interests and impassionates me;

and therefore I cannot so often revisit the sites of their streets and

houses, and those ruins profound even to the Antipodes, that I am not

interested in them. Is it by nature, or through error of fancy, that the

sight of places which we know to have been frequented and inhabited by

persons whose memories are recommended in story, moves us in some sort

more than to hear a recital of their--acts or to read their writings?

“Tanta vis admonitionis inest in locis....Et id quidem in hac urbe

infinitum; quacumque enim ingredimur, in aliquam historiam vestigium

ponimus.”

[“So great a power of reminiscence resides in places; and that truly

in this city infinite, for which way soever we go, we find the

traces of some story.”--Cicero, De Fin., v. I, 2.]

It pleases me to consider their face, bearing, and vestments: I pronounce

those great names betwixt my teeth, and make them ring in my ears:

“Ego illos veneror, et tantis nominibus semper assurgo.”

[“I reverence them, and always rise to so great names.”

--Seneca, Ep., 64.]

Of things that are in some part great and admirable, I admire even the

common parts: I could wish to see them in familiar relations, walk, and

sup. It were ingratitude to contemn the relics and images of so many

worthy and valiant men as I have seen live and die, and who, by their

example, give us so many good instructions, knew we how to follow them.

And, moreover, this very Rome that we now see, deserves to be beloved, so

long and by so many titles allied to our crown; the only common and

universal city; the sovereign magistrate that commands there is equally

acknowledged elsewhere ‘tis the metropolitan city of all the Christian

nations the Spaniard and Frenchman is there at home: to be a prince of

that state, there needs no more but to be of Christendom wheresoever.

There is no place upon earth that heaven has embraced with such an

influence and constancy of favour; her very ruins are grand and glorious,

“Laudandis pretiosior ruinis.”

[“More precious from her glorious ruins.”

--Sidonius Apollinaris, Carm., xxiii.; Narba, v. 62.]

she yet in her very tomb retains the marks and images of empire:

“Ut palam sit, uno in loco gaudentis opus esse naturx.”

[“That it may be manifest that there is in one place the work of

rejoicing nature.”--Pliny, Nat. Hist., iii. 5.]

Some would blame and be angry at themselves to perceive themselves

tickled with so vain a pleasure our humours are never too vain that are

pleasant let them be what they may, if they constantly content a man of

common understanding, I could not have the heart to blame him.

I am very much obliged to Fortune, in that, to this very hour, she has

offered me no outrage beyond what I was well able to bear. Is it not her

custom to let those live in quiet by whom she is not importuned?

“Quanto quisque sibi plum negaverit,

A diis plum feret: nil cupientium

Nudus castra peto . . . .

Multa petentibus

Desunt multa.”

[“The more each man denies himself, the more the gods give him.

Poor as I am, I seek the company of those who ask nothing; they who

desire much will be deficient in much.”

--Horace, Od., iii. 16,21,42.]

If she continue her favour, she will dismiss me very well satisfied:

“Nihil supra

Deos lacesso.”

[“I trouble the gods no farther.”--Horace, Od., ii. 18, 11.]

But beware a shock: there are a thousand who perish in the port.

I easily comfort myself for what shall here happen when I shall be gone,

present things trouble me enough:

“Fortunae caetera mando.”

[“I leave the rest to fortune.”--Ovid, Metam., ii. 140.]

Besides, I have not that strong obligation that they say ties men to the

future, by the issue that succeeds to their name and honour; and

peradventure, ought less to covet them, if they are to be so much

desired. I am but too much tied to the world, and to this life, of

myself: I am content to be in Fortune’s power by circumstances properly

necessary to my being, without otherwise enlarging her jurisdiction over

me; and have never thought that to be without children was a defect that

ought to render life less complete or less contented: a sterile vocation

has its conveniences too. Children are of the number of things that are

not so much to be desired, especially now that it would be so hard to

make them good:

“Bona jam nec nasci licet, ita corrupta Bunt semina;”

[“Nothing good can be born now, the seed is so corrupt.”

--Tertullian, De Pudicita.]

and yet they are justly to be lamented by such as lose them when they

have them.

He who left me my house in charge, foretold that I was like to ruin it,

considering my humour so little inclined to look after household affairs.

But he was mistaken; for I am in the same condition now as when I first

entered into it, or rather somewhat better; and yet without office or any

place of profit.

As to the rest, if Fortune has never done me any violent or extraordinary

injury, neither has she done me any particular favour; whatever we derive

from her bounty, was there above a hundred years before my time: I have,

as to my own particular, no essential and solid good, that I stand

indebted for to her liberality. She has, indeed, done me some airy

favours, honorary and titular favours, without substance, and those in

truth she has not granted, but offered me, who, God knows, am all

material, and who take nothing but what is real, and indeed massive too,

for current pay: and who, if I durst confess so much, should not think

avarice much less excusable than ambition: nor pain less to be avoided

than shame; nor health less to be coveted than learning, or riches than

nobility.

Amongst those empty favours of hers, there is none that so much pleases

vain humour natural to my country, as an authentic bull of a Roman

burgess-ship, that was granted me when I was last there, glorious in

seals and gilded letters, and granted with all gracious liberality. And

because ‘tis couched in a mixt style, more or less favourable, and that I

could have been glad to have seen a copy of it before it had passed the

seal.

Being before burgess of no city at all, I am glad to be created one of

the most noble that ever was or ever shall be. If other men would

consider themselves at the rate I do, they would, as I do, discover

themselves to be full of inanity and foppery; to rid myself of it, I

cannot, without making myself away. We are all steeped in it, as well

one as another; but they who are not aware on’t, have somewhat the better

bargain; and yet I know not whether they have or no.

This opinion and common usage to observe others more than ourselves has

very much relieved us that way: ‘tis a very displeasing object: we can

there see nothing but misery and vanity: nature, that we may not be

dejected with the sight of our own deformities, has wisely thrust the

action of seeing outward. We go forward with the current, but to turn

back towards ourselves is a painful motion; so is the sea moved and

troubled when the waves rush against one another. Observe, says every

one, the motions of the heavens, of public affairs; observe the quarrel

of such a person, take notice of such a one’s pulse, of such another’s

last will and testament; in sum, be always looking high or low, on one

side, before or behind you. It was a paradoxical command anciently given

us by that god of Delphos: “Look into yourself; discover yourself; keep

close to yourself; call back your mind and will, that elsewhere consume

themselves into yourself; you run out, you spill yourself; carry a more

steady hand: men betray you, men spill you, men steal you from yourself.

Dost thou not see that this world we live in keeps all its sight confined

within, and its eyes open to contemplate itself? ‘Tis always vanity for

thee, both within and without; but ‘tis less vanity when less extended.

Excepting thee, O man, said that god, everything studies itself first,

and has bounds to its labours and desires, according to its need. There

is nothing so empty and necessitous as thou, who embracest the universe;

thou art the investigator without knowledge, the magistrate without

jurisdiction, and, after all, the fool of the farce.”

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:

A man may govern himself well who cannot govern others so

A man should diffuse joy, but, as much as he can, smother grief

A well-bred man is a compound man

All over-nice solicitude about riches smells of avarice

Always complaining is the way never to be lamented

Appetite comes to me in eating

Better to be alone than in foolish and troublesome company

By suspecting them, have given them a title to do ill

Change only gives form to injustice and tyranny

Civil innocence is measured according to times and places

Conclude the depth of my sense by its obscurity

Concluding no beauty can be greater than what they see

Confession enervates reproach and disarms slander

Counterfeit condolings of pretenders

Crates did worse, who threw himself into the liberty of poverty

Desire of travel

Enough to do to comfort myself, without having to console others

Friend, it is not now time to play with your nails

Gain to change an ill condition for one that is uncertain

Giving is an ambitious and authoritative quality

Good does not necessarily succeed evil; another evil may succeed

Greedy humour of new and unknown things

He must fool it a little who would not be deemed wholly a fool

I always find superfluity superfluous

I am disgusted with the world I frequent

I am hard to be got out, but being once upon the road

I am very willing to quit the government of my house

I content myself with enjoying the world without bustle

I enter into confidence with dying

I grudge nothing but care and trouble

I hate poverty equally with pain

I scorn to mend myself by halves

I write my book for few men and for few years

Justice als takes cognisance of those who glean after the reaper

Known evil was ever more supportable than one that was, new

Laws (of Plato on travel), which forbids it after threescore.

Liberty and laziness, the qualities most predominant in me

Liberty of poverty

Liberty to lean, but not to lay our whole weight upon others

Little affairs most disturb us

Men as often commend as undervalue me beyond reason

Methinks I promise it, if I but say it

My mind is easily composed at distance

Neither be a burden to myself nor to any other

No use to this age, I throw myself back upon that other

Nothing falls where all falls

Nothing presses so hard upon a state as innovation

Obstinate in growing worse

Occupy our thoughts about the general, and about universal cause

One may regret better times, but cannot fly from the present

Opposition and contradiction entertain and nourish them

Our qualities have no title but in comparison

Preferring the universal and common tie to all national ties

Proceed so long as there shall be ink and paper in the world

Satisfied and pleased with and in themselves

Settled my thoughts to live upon less than I have

Some wives covetous indeed, but very few that are good managers

That looks a nice well-made shoe to you

There can be no pleasure to me without communication

Think myself no longer worth my own care

Tis for youth to subject itself to common opinions

Tis more laudable to obey the bad than the good

Titles of my chapters do not always comprehend the whole matter

Travel with not only a necessary, but a handsome equipage

Turn up my eyes to heaven to return thanks, than to crave

Weigh, as wise: men should, the burden of obligation

What sort of wine he liked the best: “That of another,”

What step ends the near and what step begins the remote

When I travel I have nothing to care for but myself

Wise man to keep a curbing hand upon the impetus of friendship

World where loyalty of one’s own children is unknown

Wretched and dangerous thing to depend upon others

You have lost a good captain, to make of him a bad general

ESSAYS OF MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE

Translated by Charles Cotton

Edited by William Carew Hazlitt

1877

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 18.

X. Of Managing the Will.

XI. Of Cripples.

XII. Of Physiognomy.

CHAPTER X

OF MANAGING THE WILL

Few things, in comparison of what commonly affect other men, move, or, to

say better, possess me: for ‘tis but reason they should concern a man,

provided they do not possess him. I am very solicitous, both by study

and argument, to enlarge this privilege of insensibility, which is in me

naturally raised to a pretty degree, so that consequently I espouse and

am very much moved with very few things. I have a clear sight enough,

but I fix it upon very few objects; I have a sense delicate and tender

enough; but an apprehension and application hard and negligent. I am

very unwilling to engage myself; as much as in me lies, I employ myself

wholly on myself, and even in that subject should rather choose to curb

and restrain my affection from plunging itself over head and ears into

it, it being a subject that I possess at the mercy of others, and over

which fortune has more right than I; so that even as to health, which I

so much value, ‘tis all the more necessary for me not so passionately to

covet and heed it, than to find diseases so insupportable. A man ought

to moderate himself betwixt the hatred of pain and the love of pleasure:

and Plato sets down a middle path of life betwixt the two. But against

such affections as wholly carry me away from myself and fix me elsewhere,

against those, I say, I oppose myself with my utmost power. ‘Tis my

opinion that a man should lend himself to others, and only give himself

to himself. Were my will easy to lend itself out and to be swayed, I

should not stick there; I am too tender both by nature and use:

“Fugax rerum, securaque in otia natus.”

[“Avoiding affairs and born to secure ease.”

--Ovid, De Trist., iii. 2, 9.]

Hot and obstinate disputes, wherein my adversary would at last have the

better, the issue that would render my heat and obstinacy disgraceful

would peradventure vex me to the last degree. Should I set myself to it

at the rate that others do, my soul would never have the force to bear

the emotion and alarms of those who grasp at so much; it would

immediately be disordered by this inward agitation. If, sometimes, I

have been put upon the management of other men’s affairs, I have promised

to take them in hand, but not into my lungs and liver; to take them upon

me, not to incorporate them; to take pains, yes: to be impassioned about

it, by no means; I have a care of them, but I will not sit upon them.

I have enough to do to order and govern the domestic throng of those that

I have in my own veins and bowels, without introducing a crowd of other

men’s affairs; and am sufficiently concerned about my own proper and

natural business, without meddling with the concerns of others. Such as

know how much they owe to themselves, and how many offices they are bound

to of their own, find that nature has cut them out work enough of their

own to keep them from being idle. “Thou hast business enough at home:

look to that.”

Men let themselves out to hire; their faculties are not for themselves,

but for those to whom they have enslaved themselves; ‘tis their tenants

occupy them, not themselves. This common humour pleases not me. We must

be thrifty of the liberty of our souls, and never let it out but upon

just occasions, which are very few, if we judge aright. Do but observe

such as have accustomed themselves to be at every one’s call: they do it

indifferently upon all, as well little as great, occasions; in that which

nothing concerns them; as much as in what imports them most. They thrust

themselves in indifferently wherever there is work to do and obligation,

and are without life when not in tumultuous bustle:

“In negotiis sunt, negotii cause,”

[“They are in business for business’ sake.”--Seneca, Ep., 22.]

It is not so much that they will go, as it is that they cannot stand

still: like a rolling stone that cannot stop till it can go no further.

Occupation, with a certain sort of men, is a mark of understanding and

dignity: their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being

rocked in a cradle; they may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their

friends, as they are troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his

money to others, but every one distributes his time and his life: there

is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of these two things, of which

to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful. I am of a quite

contrary humour; I look to myself, and commonly covet with no great

ardour what I do desire, and desire little; and I employ and busy myself

at the same rate, rarely and temperately. Whatever they take in hand,

they do it with their utmost will and vehemence. There are so many

dangerous steps, that, for the more safety, we must a little lightly and

superficially glide over the world, and not rush through it. Pleasure

itself is painful in profundity:

“Incedis per ignes,

Suppositos cineri doloso.”

[“You tread on fire, hidden under deceitful ashes.”

--Horace, Od., ii. i, 7.]