The Parliament of Bordeaux chose me mayor of their city at a time when I

was at a distance from France,--[At Bagno Della Villa, near Lucca,

September 1581]--and still more remote from any such thought.

I entreated to be excused, but I was told by my friends that I had

committed an error in so doing, and the greater because the king had,

moreover, interposed his command in that affair. ‘Tis an office that

ought to be looked upon so much more honourable, as it has no other

salary nor advantage than the bare honour of its execution. It continues

two years, but may be extended by a second election, which very rarely

happens; it was to me, and had never been so but twice before: some years

ago to Monsieur de Lansac, and lately to Monsieur de Biron, Marshal of

France, in whose place I succeeded; and, I left mine to Monsieur de

Matignon, Marshal of France also: proud of so noble a fraternity--

“Uterque bonus pacis bellique minister.”

[“Either one a good minister in peace and war.”

--AEneid, xi. 658.]

Fortune would have a hand in my promotion, by this particular

circumstance which she put in of her own, not altogether vain; for

Alexander disdained the ambassadors of Corinth, who came to offer him a

burgess-ship of their city; but when they proceeded to lay before him

that Bacchus and Hercules were also in the register, he graciously

thanked them.

At my arrival, I faithfully and conscientiously represented myself to

them for such as I find myself to be--a man without memory, without

vigilance, without experience, and without vigour; but withal, without

hatred, without ambition, without avarice, and without violence; that

they might be informed of my qualities, and know what they were to expect

from my service. And whereas the knowledge they had had of my late

father, and the honour they had for his memory, had alone incited them to

confer this favour upon me, I plainly told them that I should be very

sorry anything should make so great an impression upon me as their

affairs and the concerns of their city had made upon him, whilst he held

the government to which they had preferred me. I remembered, when a boy,

to have seen him in his old age cruelly tormented with these public

affairs, neglecting the soft repose of his own house, to which the

declension of his age had reduced him for several years before, the

management of his own affairs, and his health; and certainly despising

his own life, which was in great danger of being lost, by being engaged

in long and painful journeys on their behalf. Such was he; and this

humour of his proceeded from a marvellous good nature; never was there a

more charitable and popular soul. Yet this proceeding which I commend in

others, I do not love to follow myself, and am not without excuse.

He had learned that a man must forget himself for his neighbour, and that

the particular was of no manner of consideration in comparison with the

general. Most of the rules and precepts of the world run this way; to

drive us out of ourselves into the street for the benefit of public

society; they thought to do a great feat to divert and remove us from

ourselves, assuming we were but too much fixed there, and by a too

natural inclination; and have said all they could to that purpose: for

‘tis no new thing for the sages to preach things as they serve, not as

they are. Truth has its obstructions, inconveniences, and

incompatibilities with us; we must often deceive that we may not deceive

ourselves; and shut our eyes and our understandings to redress and amend

them:

“Imperiti enim judicant, et qui frequenter

in hoc ipsum fallendi sunt, ne errent.”

[“For the ignorant judge, and therefore are oft to be deceived,

less they should err.”--Quintil., Inst. Orat., xi. 17.]

When they order us to love three, four, or fifty degrees of things above

ourselves, they do like archers, who, to hit the white, take their aim a

great deal higher than the butt; to make a crooked stick straight, we

bend it the contrary way.

I believe that in the Temple of Pallas, as we see in all other religions,

there were apparent mysteries to be exposed to the people; and others,

more secret and high, that were only to be shown to such as were

professed; ‘tis likely that in these the true point of friendship that

every one owes to himself is to be found; not a false friendship, that

makes us embrace glory, knowledge, riches, and the like, with a principal

and immoderate affection, as members of our being; nor an indiscreet and

effeminate friendship, wherein it happens, as with ivy, that it decays

and ruins the walls it embraces; but a sound and regular friendship,

equally useful and pleasant. He who knows the duties of this friendship

and practises them is truly of the cabinet of the Muses, and has attained

to the height of human wisdom and of our happiness, such an one, exactly

knowing what he owes to himself, will on his part find that he ought to

apply to himself the use of the world and of other men; and to do this,

to contribute to public society the duties and offices appertaining to

him. He who does not in some sort live for others, does not live much

for himself:

“Qui sibi amicus est, scito hunc amicum omnibus esse.”

[“He who is his own friend, is a friend to everybody else.”

--Seneca, Ep., 6.]

The principal charge we have is, to every one his own conduct; and ‘tis

for this only that we here are. As he who should forget to live a

virtuous and holy life, and should think he acquitted himself of his duty

in instructing and training others up to it, would be a fool; even so he

who abandons his own particular healthful and pleasant living to serve

others therewith, takes, in my opinion, a wrong and unnatural course.

I would not that men should refuse, in the employments they take upon

them, their attention, pains, eloquence, sweat, and blood if need be:

“Non ipse pro caris amicis

Aut patria, timidus perire:”

[“Himself not afraid to die for beloved friends, or for his

country.”--Horace, Od., iv. 9, 51.]

but ‘tis only borrowed, and accidentally; his mind being always in repose

and in health; not without action, but without vexation, without passion.

To be simply acting costs him so little, that he acts even sleeping;

but it must be set on going with discretion; for the body receives the

offices imposed upon it just according to what they are; the mind often

extends and makes them heavier at its own expense, giving them what

measure it pleases. Men perform like things with several sorts of

endeavour, and different contention of will; the one does well enough

without the other; for how many people hazard themselves every day in war

without any concern which way it goes; and thrust themselves into the

dangers of battles, the loss of which will not break their next night’s

sleep? and such a man may be at home, out of the danger which he durst

not have looked upon, who is more passionately concerned for the issue of

this war, and whose soul is more anxious about events than the soldier

who therein stakes his blood and his life. I could have engaged myself

in public employments without quitting my own matters a nail’s breadth,

and have given myself to others without abandoning myself. This

sharpness and violence of desires more hinder than they advance the

execution of what we undertake; fill us with impatience against slow or

contrary events, and with heat and suspicion against those with whom we

have to do. We never carry on that thing well by which we are

prepossessed and led:

“Male cuncta ministrat

Impetus.”

[“Impulse manages all things ill.”--Statius, Thebaid, x. 704.]

He who therein employs only his judgment and address proceeds more

cheerfully: he counterfeits, he gives way, he defers quite at his ease,

according to the necessities of occasions; he fails in his attempt

without trouble and affliction, ready and entire for a new enterprise;

he always marches with the bridle in his hand. In him who is intoxicated

with this violent and tyrannical intention, we discover, of necessity,

much imprudence and injustice; the impetuosity of his desire carries him

away; these are rash motions, and, if fortune do not very much assist,

of very little fruit. Philosophy directs that, in the revenge of

injuries received, we should strip ourselves of choler; not that the

chastisement should be less, but, on the contrary, that the revenge may

be the better and more heavily laid on, which, it conceives, will be by

this impetuosity hindered. For anger not only disturbs, but, of itself,

also wearies the arms of those who chastise; this fire benumbs and wastes

their force; as in precipitation, “festinatio tarda est,”--haste trips

up its own heels, fetters, and stops itself:

“Ipsa se velocitas implicat.”--Seneca, Ep. 44

For example, according to what I commonly see, avarice has no greater

impediment than itself; the more bent and vigorous it is, the less it

rakes together, and commonly sooner grows rich when disguised in a visor

of liberality.

A very excellent gentleman, and a friend of mine, ran a risk of impairing

his faculties by a too passionate attention and affection to the affairs

of a certain prince his master;--[Probably the King of Navarre, afterward

Henry IV.]--which master has thus portrayed himself to me; “that he

foresees the weight of accidents as well as another, but that in those

for which there is no remedy, he presently resolves upon suffering; in

others, having taken all the necessary precautions which by the vivacity

of his understanding he can presently do, he quietly awaits what may

follow.” And, in truth, I have accordingly seen him maintain a great

indifferency and liberty of actions and serenity of countenance in very

great and difficult affairs: I find him much greater, and of greater

capacity in adverse than in prosperous fortune; his defeats are to him

more glorious than his victories, and his mourning than his triumph.

Consider, that even in vain and frivolous actions, as at chess, tennis,

and the like, this eager and ardent engaging with an impetuous desire,

immediately throws the mind and members into indiscretion and disorder: a

man astounds and hinders himself; he who carries himself more moderately,

both towards gain and loss, has always his wits about him; the less

peevish and passionate he is at play, he plays much more advantageously

and surely.

As to the rest, we hinder the mind’s grasp and hold, in giving it so many

things to seize upon; some things we should only offer to it; tie it to

others, and with others incorporate it. It can feel and discern all

things, but ought to feed upon nothing but itself; and should be

instructed in what properly concerns itself, and that is properly of its

own having and substance. The laws of nature teach us what justly we

need. After the sages have told us that no one is indigent according to

nature, and that every one is so according to opinion, they very subtly

distinguish betwixt the desires that proceed from her, and those that

proceed from the disorder of our own fancy: those of which we can see the

end are hers; those that fly before us, and of which we can see no end,

are our own: the poverty of goods is easily cured; the poverty of the

soul is irreparable:

“Nam si, quod satis est homini, id satis esse potesset

Hoc sat erat: nunc, quum hoc non est, qui credimus porro

Divitias ullas animum mi explere potesse?”

[“For if what is for man enough, could be enough, it were enough;

but since it is not so, how can I believe that any wealth can give

my mind content.”--Lucilius aped Nonium Marcellinum, V. sec. 98.]

Socrates, seeing a great quantity of riches, jewels, and furniture

carried in pomp through his city: “How many things,” said he, “I do not

desire!”--[Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., V. 32.]--Metrodorus lived on twelve

ounces a day, Epicurus upon less; Metrocles slept in winter abroad

amongst sheep, in summer in the cloisters of churches:

“Sufficit ad id natura, quod poscit.”

[“Nature suffices for what he requires.”--Seneca, Ep., 90.]

Cleanthes lived by the labour of his own hands, and boasted that

Cleanthes, if he would, could yet maintain another Cleanthes.

If that which nature exactly and originally requires of us for the

conservation of our being be too little (as in truth what it is, and how

good cheap life may be maintained, cannot be better expressed than by

this consideration, that it is so little that by its littleness it

escapes the gripe and shock of fortune), let us allow ourselves a little

more; let us call every one of our habits and conditions nature; let us

rate and treat ourselves by this measure; let us stretch our

appurtenances and accounts so far; for so far, I fancy, we have some

excuse. Custom is a second nature, and no less powerful. What is

wanting to my custom, I reckon is wanting to me; and I should be almost

as well content that they took away my life as cut me short in the way

wherein I have so long lived. I am no longer in condition for any great

change, nor to put myself into a new and unwonted course, not even to

augmentation. ‘Tis past the time for me to become other than what I am;

and as I should complain of any great good hap that should now befall me,

that it came not in time to be enjoyed:

“Quo mihi fortunas, si non conceditur uti?”

[“What is the good fortune to me, if it is not granted to me

to use it.”--Horace, Ep., i. 5, 12.]

so should I complain of any inward acquisition. It were almost better

never, than so late, to become an honest man, and well fit to live, when

one has no longer to live. I, who am about to make my exit out of the

world, would easily resign to any newcomer, who should desire it, all the

prudence I am now acquiring in the world’s commerce; after meat, mustard.

I have no need of goods of which I can make no use; of what use is

knowledge to him who has lost his head? ‘Tis an injury and unkindness in

fortune to tender us presents that will only inspire us with a just

despite that we had them not in their due season. Guide me no more; I

can no longer go. Of so many parts as make up a sufficiency, patience is

the most sufficient. Give the capacity of an excellent treble to the

chorister who has rotten lungs, and eloquence to a hermit exiled into the

deserts of Arabia. There needs no art to help a fall; the end finds

itself of itself at the conclusion of every affair. My world is at an

end, my form expired; I am totally of the past, and am bound to authorise

it, and to conform my outgoing to it. I will here declare, by way of

example, that the Pope’s late ten days’ diminution

[Gregory XIII., in 1582, reformed the Calendar, and, in consequence,

in France they all at once passed from the 9th to the 20th

December.]

has taken me so aback that I cannot well reconcile myself to it; I belong

to the years wherein we kept another kind of account. So ancient and so

long a custom challenges my adherence to it, so that I am constrained to

be somewhat heretical on that point incapable of any, though corrective,

innovation. My imagination, in spite of my teeth, always pushes me ten

days forward or backward, and is ever murmuring in my ears: “This rule

concerns those who are to begin to be.” If health itself, sweet as it

is, returns to me by fits, ‘tis rather to give me cause of regret than

possession of it; I have no place left to keep it in. Time leaves me;

without which nothing can be possessed. Oh, what little account should I

make of those great elective dignities that I see in such esteem in the

world, that are never conferred but upon men who are taking leave of it;

wherein they do not so much regard how well the man will discharge his

trust, as how short his administration will be: from the very entry they

look at the exit. In short, I am about finishing this man, and not

rebuilding another. By long use, this form is in me turned into

substance, and fortune into nature.

I say, therefore, that every one of us feeble creatures is excusable in

thinking that to be his own which is comprised under this measure; but

withal, beyond these limits, ‘tis nothing but confusion; ‘tis the largest

extent we can grant to our own claims. The more we amplify our need and

our possession, so much the more do we expose ourselves to the blows of

Fortune and adversities. The career of our desires ought to be

circumscribed and restrained to a short limit of the nearest and most

contiguous commodities; and their course ought, moreover, to be performed

not in a right line, that ends elsewhere, but in a circle, of which the

two points, by a short wheel, meet and terminate in ourselves. Actions

that are carried on without this reflection--a near and essential

reflection, I mean--such as those of ambitious and avaricious men, and so

many more as run point-blank, and to whose career always carries them

before themselves, such actions, I say; are erroneous and sickly.

Most of our business is farce:

“Mundus universus exercet histrioniam.”

--[Petronius Arbiter, iii. 8.]

We must play our part properly, but withal as a part of a borrowed

personage; we must not make real essence of a mask and outward

appearance; nor of a strange person, our own; we cannot distinguish the

skin from the shirt: ‘tis enough to meal the face, without mealing the

breast. I see some who transform and transubstantiate themselves into as

many new shapes and new beings as they undertake new employments; and who

strut and fume even to the heart and liver, and carry their state along

with them even to the close-stool: I cannot make them distinguish the

salutations made to themselves from those made to their commission, their

train, or their mule:

“Tantum se fortunx permittunt, etiam ut naturam dediscant.”

[“They so much give themselves up to fortune, as even to unlearn

nature.”--Quintus Curtius, iii. 2.]

They swell and puff up their souls, and their natural way of speaking,

according to the height of their magisterial place. The Mayor of

Bordeaux and Montaigne have ever been two by very manifest separation.

Because one is an advocate or a financier, he must not ignore the knavery

there is in such callings; an honest man is not accountable for the vice

or absurdity of his employment, and ought not on that account refuse to

take the calling upon him: ‘tis the usage of his country, and there is

money to be got by it; a man must live by the world; and make his best of

it, such as it is. But the judgment of an emperor ought to be above his

empire, and see and consider it as a foreign accident; and he ought to

know how to enjoy himself apart from it, and to communicate himself as

James and Peter, to himself, at all events.

I cannot engage myself so deep and so entire; when my will gives me to

anything, ‘tis not with so violent an obligation that my judgment is

infected with it. In the present broils of this kingdom, my own interest

has not made me blind to the laudable qualities of our adversaries, nor

to those that are reproachable in those men of our party. Others adore

all of their own side; for my part, I do not so much as excuse most

things in those of mine: a good work has never the worst grace with me

for being made against me. The knot of the controversy excepted, I have

always kept myself in equanimity and pure indifference:

“Neque extra necessitates belli praecipuum odium gero;”

[“Nor bear particular hatred beyond the necessities of war.”]

for which I am pleased with myself; and the more because I see others

commonly fail in the contrary direction. Such as extend their anger and

hatred beyond the dispute in question, as most men do, show that they

spring from some other occasion and private cause; like one who, being

cured of an ulcer, has yet a fever remaining, by which it appears that

the ulcer had another more concealed beginning. The reason is that they

are not concerned in the common cause, because it is wounding to the

state and general interest; but are only nettled by reason of their

particular concern. This is why they are so especially animated, and to

a degree so far beyond justice and public reason:

“Non tam omnia universi, quam ea, quae ad quemque pertinent,

singuli carpebant.”

[“Every one was not so much angry against things in general, as

against those that particularly concern himself.”

--Livy, xxxiv. 36.]

I would have the advantage on our side; but if it be not, I shall not run

mad. I am heartily for the right party; but I do not want to be taken

notice of as an especial enemy to others, and beyond the general quarrel.

I marvellously challenge this vicious form of opinion: “He is of the

League because he admires the graciousness of Monsieur de Guise; he is

astonished at the King of Navarre’s energy, therefore he is a Huguenot;

he finds this to say of the manners of the king, he is therefore

seditious in his heart.” And I did not grant to the magistrate himself

that he did well in condemning a book because it had placed a heretic

--[Theodore de Beza.]--amongst the best poets of the time. Shall we not

dare to say of a thief that he has a handsome leg? If a woman be a

strumpet, must it needs follow that she has a foul smell? Did they in

the wisest ages revoke the proud title of Capitolinus they had before

conferred on Marcus Manlius as conservator of religion and the public

liberty, and stifle the memory of his liberality, his feats of arms, and

military recompenses granted to his valour, because he, afterwards

aspired to the sovereignty, to the prejudice of the laws of his country?

If we take a hatred against an advocate, he will not be allowed the next

day to be eloquent. I have elsewhere spoken of the zeal that pushed on

worthy men to the like faults. For my part, I can say, “Such an one does

this thing ill, and another thing virtuously and well.” So in the

prognostication or sinister events of affairs they would have every one

in his party blind or a blockhead, and that our persuasion and judgment

should subserve not truth, but to the project of our desires. I should

rather incline towards the other extreme; so much I fear being suborned

by my desire; to which may be added that I am a little tenderly

distrustful of things that I wish.

I have in my time seen wonders in the indiscreet and prodigious facility

of people in suffering their hopes and belief to be led and governed,

which way best pleased and served their leaders, despite a hundred

mistakes one upon another, despite mere dreams and phantasms. I no more

wonder at those who have been blinded and seduced by the fooleries of

Apollonius and Mahomet. Their sense and understanding are absolutely

taken away by their passion; their discretion has no more any other

choice than that which smiles upon them and encourages their cause.

I had principally observed this in the beginning of our intestine

distempers; that other, which has sprung up since, in imitating, has

surpassed it; by which I am satisfied that it is a quality inseparable

from popular errors; after the first, that rolls, opinions drive on one

another like waves with the wind: a man is not a member of the body, if

it be in his power to forsake it, and if he do not roll the common way.

But, doubtless, they wrong the just side when they go about to assist it

with fraud; I have ever been against that practice: ‘tis only fit to work

upon weak heads; for the sound, there are surer and more honest ways to

keep up their courage and to excuse adverse accidents.

Heaven never saw a greater animosity than that betwixt Caesar and Pompey,

nor ever shall; and yet I observe, methinks, in those brave souls,

a great moderation towards one another: it was a jealousy of honour and

command, which did not transport them to a furious and indiscreet hatred,

and was without malignity and detraction: in their hottest exploits upon

one another, I discover some remains of respect and good-will: and am

therefore of opinion that, had, it been possible, each of them would

rather have done his business without the ruin of the other than with it.

Take notice how much otherwise matters went with Marius and Sylla.

We must not precipitate ourselves so headlong after our affections and

interests. As, when I was young, I opposed myself to the progress of

love which I perceived to advance too fast upon me, and had a care lest

it should at last become so pleasing as to force, captivate, and wholly

reduce me to its mercy: so I do the same upon all other occasions where

my will is running on with too warm an appetite. I lean opposite to the

side it inclines to; as I find it going to plunge and make itself drunk

with its own wine; I evade nourishing its pleasure so far, that I cannot

recover it without infinite loss. Souls that, through their own

stupidity, only discern things by halves, have this happiness, that they

smart less with hurtful things: ‘tis a spiritual leprosy that has some

show of health, and such a health as philosophy does not altogether

contemn; but yet we have no reason to call it wisdom, as we often do.

And after this manner some one anciently mocked Diogeries, who, in the

depth of winter and quite naked, went embracing an image of snow for a

trial of his endurance: the other seeing him in this position, “Art thou

now very cold?” said he. “Not at all,” replied Diogenes. “Why, then,”

pursued the other, “what difficult and exemplary thing dost thou think

thou doest in embracing that snow?” To take a true measure of constancy,

one must necessarily know what the suffering is.

But souls that are to meet with adverse events and the injuries of

fortune, in their depth and sharpness, that are to weigh and taste them

according to their natural weight and bitterness, let such show their

skill in avoiding the causes and diverting the blow. What did King Cotys

do? He paid liberally for the rich and beautiful vessel that had been

presented to him, but, seeing it was exceedingly brittle, he immediately

broke it betimes, to prevent so easy a matter of displeasure against his

servants. In like manner, I have willingly avoided all confusion in my

affairs, and never coveted to have my estate contiguous to those of my

relations, and such with whom I coveted a strict friendship; for thence

matter of unkindness and falling out often proceeds. I formerly loved

hazardous games of cards and dice; but have long since left them off,

only for this reason that, with whatever good air I carried my losses,

I could not help feeling vexed within. A man of honour, who ought to be

touchily sensible of the lie or of an insult, and who is not to take a

scurvy excuse for satisfaction, should avoid occasions of dispute.

I shun melancholy, crabbed men, as I would the plague; and in matters I

cannot talk of without emotion and concern I never meddle, if not

compelled by my duty:

“Melius non incipient, quam desinent.”

[“They had better never to begin than to have to desist.”

--Seneca, Ep., 72.]

The surest way, therefore, is to prepare one’s self beforehand for

occasions.

I know very well that some wise men have taken another way, and have not

feared to grapple and engage to the utmost upon several subjects these

are confident of their own strength, under which they protect themselves

in all ill successes, making their patience wrestle and contend with

disaster:

“Velut rupes, vastum quae prodit in aequor,

Obvia ventorum furiis, expostaque ponto,

Vim cunctam atque minas perfert coelique marisque;

Ipsa immota manens.”

[“As a rock, which projects into the vast ocean, exposed to the

furious winds and the raging sea, defies the force and menaces of

sky and sea, itself unshaken.”--Virgil, AEneid, x. 693.]

Let us not attempt these examples; we shall never come up to them. They

set themselves resolutely, and without agitation, to behold the ruin of

their country, which possessed and commanded all their will: this is too

much, and too hard a task for our commoner souls. Cato gave up the

noblest life that ever was upon this account; we meaner spirits must fly

from the storm as far as we can; we must provide for sentiment, and not

for patience, and evade the blows we cannot meet. Zeno, seeing

Chremonides, a young man whom he loved, draw near to sit down by him,

suddenly started up; and Cleanthes demanding of him the reason why he did

so, “I hear,” said he, “that physicians especially order repose, and

forbid emotion in all tumours.” Socrates does not say: “Do not surrender

to the charms of beauty; stand your ground, and do your utmost to oppose

it.” “Fly it,” says he; “shun the fight and encounter of it, as of a

powerful poison that darts and wounds at a distance.” And his good

disciple, feigning or reciting, but, in my opinion, rather reciting than

feigning, the rare perfections of the great Cyrus, makes him distrustful

of his own strength to resist the charms of the divine beauty of that

illustrous Panthea, his captive, and committing the visiting and keeping

her to another, who could not have so much liberty as himself. And the

Holy Ghost in like manner:

“Ne nos inducas in tentationem.”

[“Lead us not into temptation.”--St. Matthew, vi. 13.]

We do not pray that our reason may not be combated and overcome by

concupiscence, but that it should not be so much as tried by it; that we

should not be brought into a state wherein we are so much as to suffer

the approaches, solicitations, and temptations of sin: and we beg of

Almighty God to keep our consciences quiet, fully and perfectly delivered

from all commerce of evil.

Such as say that they have reason for their revenging passion, or any

other sort of troublesome agitation of mind, often say true, as things

now are, but not as they were: they speak to us when the causes of their

error are by themselves nourished and advanced; but look backward--recall

these causes to their beginning--and there you will put them to a

nonplus. Will they have their faults less, for being of longer

continuance; and that of an unjust beginning, the sequel can be just?

Whoever shall desire the good of his country, as I do, without fretting

or pining himself, will be troubled, but will not swoon to see it

threatening either its own ruin, or a no less ruinous continuance; poor

vessel, that the waves, the winds, and the pilot toss and steer to so

contrary designs!

“In tam diversa magister

Ventus et unda trahunt.”

He who does not gape after the favour of princes, as after a thing he

cannot live without, does not much concern himself at the coldness of

their reception and countenance, nor at the inconstancy of their wills.

He who does not brood over his children or his honours with a slavish

propension, ceases not to live commodiously enough after their loss. He

who does good principally for his own satisfaction will not be much

troubled to see men judge of his actions contrary to his merit. A

quarter of an ounce of patience will provide sufficiently against such

inconveniences. I find ease in this receipt, redeeming myself in the

beginning as good cheap as I can; and find that by this means I have

escaped much trouble and many difficulties. With very little ado I stop

the first sally of my emotions, and leave the subject that begins to be

troublesome before it transports me. He who stops not the start will

never be able to stop the course; he who cannot keep them out will never,

get them out when they are once got in; and he who cannot arrive at the

beginning will never arrive at the end of all. Nor will he bear the fall

who cannot sustain the shock:

“Etenim ipsae se impellunt, ubi semel a ratione discessum est;

ipsaque sibi imbecillitas indulget, in altumque provehitur

imprudens, nec reperit locum consistendi.”

[“For they throw themselves headlong when once they lose their

reason; and infirmity so far indulges itself, and from want of

prudence is carried out into deep water, nor finds a place to

shelter it.”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 18.]

I am betimes sensible of the little breezes that begin to sing and

whistle within, forerunners of the storm:

“Ceu flamina prima

Cum deprensa fremunt sylvis et caeca volutant

Murmura, venturos nautis prodentia ventos.”

[“As the breezes, pent in the woods, first send out dull murmurs,

announcing the approach of winds to mariners.”--AEneid, x. 97.]

How often have I done myself a manifest injustice to avoid the hazard of

having yet a worse done me by the judges, after an age of vexations,

dirty and vile practices, more enemies to my nature than fire or the

rack?

“Convenit a litibus, quantum licet, et nescio an paulo plus etiam

quam licet, abhorrentem esse: est enim non modo liberale, paululum

nonnunquam de suo jure decedere, sed interdum etiam fructuosum.”

[“A man should abhor lawsuits as much as he may, and I know not

whether not something more; for ‘tis not only liberal, but sometimes

also advantageous, too, a little to recede from one’s right.

--“Cicero, De Offic., ii. 18.]

Were we wise, we ought to rejoice and boast, as I one day heard a young

gentleman of a good family very innocently do, that his mother had lost

her cause, as if it had been a cough, a fever, or something very

troublesome to keep. Even the favours that fortune might have given me

through relationship or acquaintance with those who have sovereign

authority in those affairs, I have very conscientiously and very

carefully avoided employing them to the prejudice of others, and of

advancing my pretensions above their true right. In fine, I have so much

prevailed by my endeavours (and happily I may say it) that I am to this

day a virgin from all suits in law; though I have had very fair offers

made me, and with very just title, would I have hearkened to them, and a

virgin from quarrels too. I have almost passed over a long life without

any offence of moment, either active or passive, or without ever hearing

a worse word than my own name: a rare favour of Heaven.

Our greatest agitations have ridiculous springs and causes: what ruin did

our last Duke of Burgundy run into about a cartload of sheepskins!

And was not the graving of a seal the first and principal cause of the

greatest commotion that this machine of the world ever underwent?

--[The civil war between Marius and Sylla; see Plutarch’s Life of Marius,

c. 3.]--for Pompey and Caesar were but the offsets and continuation of

the two others: and I have in my time seen the wisest heads in this

kingdom assembled with great ceremony, and at the public expense, about

treaties and agreements, of which the true decision, in the meantime,

absolutely depended upon the ladies’ cabinet council, and the inclination

of some bit of a woman.

The poets very well understood this when they put all Greece and Asia to

fire and sword about an apple. Look why that man hazards his life and

honour upon the fortune of his rapier and dagger; let him acquaint you

with the occasion of the quarrel; he cannot do it without blushing: the

occasion is so idle and frivolous.

A little thing will engage you in it; but being once embarked, all the

cords draw; great provisions are then required, more hard and more

important. How much easier is it not to enter in than it is to get out?

Now we should proceed contrary to the reed, which, at its first

springing, produces a long and straight shoot, but afterwards, as if

tired and out of breath, it runs into thick and frequent joints and

knots, as so many pauses which demonstrate that it has no more its first

vigour and firmness; ‘twere better to begin gently and coldly, and to

keep one’s breath and vigorous efforts for the height and stress of the

business. We guide affairs in their beginnings, and have them in our own

power; but afterwards, when they are once at work, ‘tis they that guide

and govern us, and we are to follow them.

Yet do I not mean to say that this counsel has discharged me of all

difficulty, and that I have not often had enough to do to curb and

restrain my passions; they are not always to be governed according to the

measure of occasions, and often have their entries very sharp and

violent. But still good fruit and profit may thence be reaped; except

for those who in well-doing are not satisfied with any benefit, if

reputation be wanting; for, in truth, such an effect is not valued but by

every one to himself; you are better contented, but not more esteemed,

seeing you reformed yourself before you got into the whirl of the dance,

or that the provocative matter was in sight. Yet not in this only, but

in all other duties of life also, the way of those who aim at honour is

very different from that they proceed by, who propose to themselves order

and reason. I find some who rashly and furiously rush into the lists and

cool in the course. As Plutarch says, that those who, through false

shame, are soft and facile to grant whatever is desired of them, are

afterwards as facile to break their word and to recant; so he who enters

lightly into a quarrel is apt to go as lightly out of it. The same

difficulty that keeps me from entering into it, would, when once hot and

engaged in quarrel, incite me to maintain it with great obstinacy and

resolution. ‘Tis the tyranny of custom; when a man is once engaged; he

must go through with it, or die. “Undertake coolly,” said Bias,

“but pursue with ardour.” For want of prudence, men fall into want of

courage, which is still more intolerable.

Most accommodations of the quarrels of these days of ours are shameful

and false; we only seek to save appearances, and in the meantime betray

and disavow our true intentions; we salve over the fact. We know very

well how we said the thing, and in what sense we spoke it, and the

company know it, and our friends whom we have wished to make sensible of

our advantage, understand it well enough too: ‘tis at the expense of our

frankness and of the honour of our courage, that we disown our thoughts,

and seek refuge in falsities, to make matters up. We give ourselves the

lie, to excuse the lie we have given to another. You are not to consider

if your word or action may admit of another interpretation; ‘tis your own

true and sincere interpretation, your real meaning in what you said or

did, that you are thenceforward to maintain, whatever it cost you. Men

speak to your virtue and conscience, which are not things to be put under

a mask; let us leave these pitiful ways and expedients to the jugglers of

the law. The excuses and reparations that I see every day made and given

to repair indiscretion, seem to me more scandalous than the indiscretion

itself. It were better to affront your adversary a second time than to

offend yourself by giving him so unmanly a satisfaction. You have braved

him in your heat and anger, and you would flatter and appease him in your

cooler and better sense; and by that means lay yourself lower and at his

feet, whom before you pretended to overtop. I do not find anything a

gentleman can say so vicious in him as unsaying what he has said is

infamous, when to unsay it is authoritatively extracted from him;

forasmuch as obstinacy is more excusable in a man of honour than

pusillanimity. Passions are as easy for me to evade, as they are hard

for me to moderate:

“Exscinduntur facilius ammo, quam temperantur.”

[“They are more easily to be eradicated than governed.”]

He who cannot attain the noble Stoical impassibility, let him secure

himself in the bosom of this popular stolidity of mine; what they

performed by virtue, I inure myself to do by temperament. The middle

region harbours storms and tempests; the two extremes, of philosophers

and peasants, concur in tranquillity and happiness:

“Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,

Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum

Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari!

Fortunatus et ille, Deos qui novit agrestes,

Panaque, Sylvanumque senem, Nymphasque sorores!”

[“Happy is he who could discover the causes of things, and place

under his feet all fears and inexorable fate, and the sound of

rapacious Acheron: he is blest who knows the country gods, and Pan,

and old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs.”--Virgil, Georg., ii. 490.]

The births of all things are weak and tender; and therefore we should

have our eyes intent on beginnings; for as when, in its infancy, the

danger is not perceived, so when it is grown up, the remedy is as little

to be found. I had every day encountered a million of crosses, harder to

digest in the progress of ambition, than it has been hard for me to curb

the natural propension that inclined me to it:

“Jure perhorrui

Lath conspicuum tollere verticem.”

[“I ever justly feared to raise my head too high.”

--Horace, Od.,iii. 16, 18.]

All public actions are subject to uncertain and various interpretations;

for too many heads judge of them. Some say of this civic employment of

mine (and I am willing to say a word or two about it, not that it is

worth so much, but to give an account of my manners in such things), that

I have behaved myself in it as a man who is too supine and of a languid

temperament; and they have some colour for what they say. I endeavoured

to keep my mind and my thoughts in repose;

“Cum semper natura, tum etiam aetate jam quietus;”

[“As being always quiet by nature, so also now by age.”

--Cicero, De Petit. Consul., c. 2.]

and if they sometimes lash out upon some rude and sensible impression,

‘tis in truth without my advice. Yet from this natural heaviness of

mine, men ought not to conclude a total inability in me (for want of care

and want of sense are two very different things), and much less any

unkindness or ingratitude towards that corporation who employed the

utmost means they had in their power to oblige me, both before they knew

me and after; and they did much more for me in choosing me anew than in

conferring that honour upon me at first. I wish them all imaginable

good; and assuredly had occasion been, there is nothing I would have

spared for their service; I did for them as I would have done for myself.

‘Tis a good, warlike, and generous people, but capable of obedience and

discipline, and of whom the best use may be made, if well guided. They

say also that my administration passed over without leaving any mark or

trace. Good! They moreover accuse my cessation in a time when everybody

almost was convicted of doing too much. I am impatient to be doing where

my will spurs me on; but this itself is an enemy to perseverance. Let

him who will make use of me according to my own way, employ me in affairs

where vigour and liberty are required, where a direct, short, and,

moreover, a hazardous conduct are necessary; I may do something; but if

it must be long, subtle, laborious, artificial and intricate, he had

better call in somebody else. All important offices are not necessarily

difficult: I came prepared to do somewhat rougher work, had there been

great occasion; for it is in my power to do something more than I do, or

than I love to do. I did not, to my knowledge, omit anything that my

duty really required. I easily forgot those offices that ambition mixes

with duty and palliates with its title; these are they that, for the most

part, fill the eyes and ears, and give men the most satisfaction; not the

thing but the appearance contents them; if they hear no noise, they think

men sleep. My humour is no friend to tumult; I could appease a commotion

without commotion, and chastise a disorder without being myself

disorderly; if I stand in need of anger and inflammation, I borrow it,

and put it on. My manners are languid, rather faint than sharp. I do

not condemn a magistrate who sleeps, provided the people under his charge

sleep as well as he: the laws in that case sleep too. For my part, I

commend a gliding, staid, and silent life:

“Neque submissam et abjectam, neque se efferentem;”

[“Neither subject and abject, nor obtrusive.”

--Cicero, De Offic., i. 34]

my fortune will have it so. I am descended from a family that has lived

without lustre or tumult, and, time out of mind, particularly ambitious

of a character for probity.

Our people nowadays are so bred up to bustle and ostentation, that good

nature, moderation, equability, constancy, and such like quiet and

obscure qualities, are no more thought on or regarded. Rough bodies make

themselves felt; the smooth are imperceptibly handled: sickness is felt,

health little or not at all; no more than the oils that foment us, in

comparison of the pains for which we are fomented. ‘Tis acting for one’s

particular reputation and profit, not for the public good, to refer that

to be done in the public squares which one may do in the council chamber;

and to noon day what might have been done the night before; and to be

jealous to do that himself which his colleague can do as well as he; so

were some surgeons of Greece wont to perform their operations upon

scaffolds in the sight of the people, to draw more practice and profit.

They think that good rules cannot be understood but by the sound of

trumpet. Ambition is not a vice of little people, nor of such modest

means as ours. One said to Alexander: “Your father will leave you a

great dominion, easy and pacific”; this youth was emulous of his father’s

victories and of the justice of his government; he would not have enjoyed

the empire of the world in ease and peace. Alcibiades, in Plato, had

rather die young, beautiful, rich, noble, and learned, and all this in

full excellence, than to stop short of such condition; this disease is,

peradventure, excusable in so strong and so full a soul. When wretched

and dwarfish little souls cajole and deceive themselves, and think to

spread their fame for having given right judgment in an affair, or

maintained the discipline of the guard of a gate of their city, the more

they think to exalt their heads the more they show their tails. This

little well-doing has neither body nor life; it vanishes in the first

mouth, and goes no further than from one street to another. Talk of it

by all means to your son or your servant, like that old fellow who,

having no other auditor of his praises nor approver of his valour,

boasted to his chambermaid, crying, “O Perrete, what a brave, clever man

hast thou for thy master!” At the worst, talk of it to yourself, like a

councillor of my acquaintance, who, having disgorged a whole cartful of

law jargon with great heat and as great folly, coming out of the council

chamber to make water, was heard very complacently to mutter betwixt his

teeth:

“Non nobis, domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam.”

[“Not unto us, O Lord, not to us: but unto Thy name be the glory.”

--Psalm cxiii. I.]

He who gets it of nobody else, let him pay himself out of his own purse.

Fame is not prostituted at so cheap a rate: rare and exemplary actions,

to which it is due, would not endure the company of this prodigious crowd

of petty daily performances. Marble may exalt your titles, as much as

you please, for having repaired a rod of wall or cleansed a public sewer;

but not men of sense. Renown does not follow all good deeds, if novelty

and difficulty be not conjoined; nay, so much as mere esteem, according

to the Stoics, is not due to every action that proceeds from virtue; nor

will they allow him bare thanks who, out of temperance, abstains from an

old blear-eyed crone. Those who have known the admirable qualities of

Scipio Africanus, deny him the glory that Panaetius attributes to him, of

being abstinent from gifts, as a glory not so much his as that of his

age. We have pleasures suitable to our lot; let us not usurp those of

grandeur: our own are more natural, and by so much more solid and sure,

as they are lower. If not for that of conscience, yet at least for

ambition’s sake, let us reject ambition; let us disdain that thirst of

honour and renown, so low and mendicant, that it makes us beg it of all

sorts of people:

“Quae est ista laus quae: possit e macello peti?”

[“What praise is that which is to be got in the market-place (meat

market)?” Cicero, De Fin., ii. 15.]

by abject means, and at what cheap rate soever: ‘tis dishonour to be so

honoured. Let us learn to be no more greedy, than we are capable, of

glory. To be puffed up with every action that is innocent or of use, is

only for those with whom such things are extraordinary and rare: they

will value it as it costs them. The more a good effect makes a noise,

the more do I abate of its goodness as I suspect that it was more

performed for the noise, than upon account of the goodness: exposed upon

the stall, ‘tis half sold. Those actions have much more grace and

lustre, that slip from the hand of him that does them, negligently and

without noise, and that some honest man thereafter finds out and raises

from the shade, to produce it to the light upon its own account,

“Mihi quidem laudabiliora videntur omnia, quae sine

venditatione, et sine populo teste fiunt,”

[“All things truly seem more laudable to me that are performed

without ostentation, and without the testimony of the people.”

--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 26.]

says the most ostentatious man that ever lived.

I had but to conserve and to continue, which are silent and insensible

effects: innovation is of great lustre; but ‘tis interdicted in this age,

when we are pressed upon and have nothing to defend ourselves from but

novelties. To forbear doing is often as generous as to do; but ‘tis less

in the light, and the little good I have in me is of this kind. In fine,

occasions in this employment of mine have been confederate with my

humour, and I heartily thank them for it. Is there any who desires to be

sick, that he may see his physician at work? and would not the physician

deserve to be whipped who should wish the plague amongst us, that he

might put his art in practice? I have never been of that wicked humour,

and common enough, to desire that troubles and disorders in this city

should elevate and honour my government; I have ever heartily contributed

all I could to their tranquillity and ease.

He who will not thank me for the order, the sweet and silent calm that

has accompanied my administration, cannot, however, deprive me of the

share that belongs to me by title of my good fortune. And I am of such a

composition, that I would as willingly be lucky as wise, and had rather

owe my successes purely to the favour of Almighty God, than to any

operation of my own. I had sufficiently published to the world my

unfitness for such public offices; but I have something in me yet worse

than incapacity itself; which is, that I am not much displeased at it,

and that I do not much go about to cure it, considering the course of

life that I have proposed to myself.

Neither have I satisfied myself in this employment; but I have very near

arrived at what I expected from my own performance, and have much

surpassed what I promised them with whom I had to do: for I am apt to

promise something less than what I am able to do, and than what I hope to

make good. I assure myself that I have left no offence or hatred behind

me; to leave regret or desire for me amongst them, I at least know very

well that I never much aimed at it:

“Mene huic confidere monstro!

Mene salis placidi vultum, fluctusque quietos

Ignorare?”

[“Should I place confidence in this monster? Should I be ignorant

of the dangers of that seeming placid sea, those now quiet waves?”

--Virgil, Aeneid, V. 849.]

CHAPTER XI

OF CRIPPLES

‘Tis now two or three years ago that they made the year ten days shorter

in France.--[By the adoption of the Gregorian calendar.]--How many

changes may we expect should follow this reformation! it was really

moving heaven and earth at once. Yet nothing for all that stirs from its

place my neighbours still find their seasons of sowing and reaping, the

opportunities of doing their business, the hurtful and propitious days,

dust at the same time where they had, time out of mind, assigned them;

there was no more error perceived in our old use, than there is amendment

found in the alteration; so great an uncertainty there is throughout; so

gross, obscure, and obtuse is our perception. ‘Tis said that this

regulation might have been carried on with less inconvenience, by

subtracting for some years, according to the example of Augustus, the

Bissextile, which is in some sort a day of impediment and trouble, till

we had exactly satisfied this debt, the which itself is not done by this

correction, and we yet remain some days in arrear: and yet, by this

means, such order might be taken for the future, arranging that after the

revolution of such or such a number of years, the supernumerary day might

be always thrown out, so that we could not, henceforward, err above

four-and-twenty hours in our computation. We have no other account of

time but years; the world has for many ages made use of that only; and

yet it is a measure that to this day we are not agreed upon, and one that

we still doubt what form other nations have variously given to it, and

what was the true use of it. What does this saying of some mean, that

the heavens in growing old bow themselves down nearer towards us, and put

us into an uncertainty even of hours and days? and that which Plutarch

says of the months, that astrology had not in his time determined as to

the motion of the moon; what a fine condition are we in to keep records

of things past.

I was just now ruminating, as I often do, what a free and roving thing

human reason is. I ordinarily see that men, in things propounded to

them, more willingly study to find out reasons than to ascertain truth:

they slip over presuppositions, but are curious in examination of

consequences; they leave the things, and fly to the causes. Pleasant

talkers! The knowledge of causes only concerns him who has the conduct

of things; not us, who are merely to undergo them, and who have perfectly

full and accomplished use of them, according to our need, without

penetrating into the original and essence; wine is none the more pleasant

to him who knows its first faculties. On the contrary, both the body and

the soul interrupt and weaken the right they have of the use of the world

and of themselves, by mixing with it the opinion of learning; effects

concern us, but the means not at all. To determine and to distribute

appertain to superiority and command; as it does to subjection to accept.

Let me reprehend our custom. They commonly begin thus: “How is such a

thing done?” Whereas they should say, “Is such a thing done?” Our

reason is able to create a hundred other worlds, and to find out the

beginnings and contexture; it needs neither matter nor foundation: let it

but run on, it builds as well in the air as on the earth, and with

inanity as well as with matter:

“Dare pondus idonea fumo.”

[“Able to give weight to smoke.”--Persius, v. 20.]

I find that almost throughout we should say, “there is no such thing,”

and should myself often make use of this answer, but I dare not: for they

cry that it is an evasion produced from ignorance and weakness of

understanding; and I am fain, for the most part, to juggle for company,

and prate of frivolous subjects and tales that I believe not a word of;

besides that, in truth, ‘tis a little rude and quarrelsome flatly to deny

a stated fact; and few people but will affirm, especially in things hard

to be believed, that they have seen them, or at least will name witnesses

whose authority will stop our mouths from contradiction. In this way, we

know the foundations and means of things that never were; and the world

scuffles about a thousand questions, of which both the Pro and the Con

are false.

“Ita finitima sunt falsa veris, ut in praecipitem

locum non debeat se sapiens committere.”

[“False things are so near the true, that a wise man should not

trust himself in a precipitous place”--Cicero, Acad., ii. 21.]

Truth and lies are faced alike; their port, taste, and proceedings are

the same, and we look upon them with the same eye. I find that we are

not only remiss in defending ourselves from deceit, but that we seek and

offer ourselves to be gulled; we love to entangle ourselves in vanity, as

a thing conformable to our being.

I have seen the birth of many miracles in my time; which, although they

were abortive, yet have we not failed to foresee what they would have

come to, had they lived their full age. ‘Tis but finding the end of the

clew, and a man may wind off as much as he will; and there is a greater

distance betwixt nothing and the least thing in the world than there is

betwixt this and the greatest. Now the first that are imbued with this

beginning of novelty, when they set out with their tale, find, by the

oppositions they meet with, where the difficulty of persuasion lies, and

so caulk up that place with some false piece;

[Voltaire says of this passage, “He who would learn to doubt should

read this whole chapter of Montaigne, the least methodical of all

philosophers, but the wisest and most amiable.”

--Melanges Historiques, xvii. 694, ed. of Lefevre.]

besides that:

“Insita hominibus libido alendi de industria rumores,”

[“Men having a natural desire to nourish reports.”

--Livy, xxviii. 24.]

we naturally make a conscience of restoring what has been lent us,

without some usury and accession of our own. The particular error first

makes the public error, and afterwards, in turn, the public error makes

the particular one; and thus all this vast fabric goes forming and piling

itself up from hand to hand, so that the remotest witness knows more

about it than those who were nearest, and the last informed is better

persuaded than the first.

‘Tis a natural progress; for whoever believes anything, thinks it a work

of charity to persuade another into the same opinion; which the better to

do, he will make no difficulty of adding as much of his own invention as

he conceives necessary to his tale to encounter the resistance or want of

conception he meets with in others. I myself, who make a great

conscience of lying, and am not very solicitous of giving credit and

authority to what I say, yet find that in the arguments I have in hand,

being heated with the opposition of another, or by the proper warmth of

my own narration, I swell and puff up my subject by voice, motion,

vigour, and force of words, and moreover, by extension and amplification,

not without some prejudice to the naked truth; but I do it conditionally

withal, that to the first who brings me to myself, and who asks me the

plain and bare truth, I presently surrender my passion, and deliver the

matter to him without exaggeration, without emphasis, or any painting of

my own. A quick and earnest way of speaking, as mine is, is apt to run

into hyperbole. There is nothing to which men commonly are more inclined

than to make way for their own opinions; where the ordinary means fail

us, we add command, force, fire, and sword. ‘Tis a misfortune to be at

such a pass, that the best test of truth is the multitude of believers in

a crowd, where the number of fools so much exceeds the wise:

“Quasi vero quidquam sit tam valde, quam nil sapere, vulgare.”

[“As if anything were so common as ignorance.”

--Cicero, De Divin., ii.]

“Sanitatis patrocinium est, insanientium turba.”

[“The multitude of fools is a protection to the wise.”

--St. Augustine, De Civit. Dei, vi. 10.]

‘Tis hard to resolve a man’s judgment against the common opinions: the

first persuasion, taken from the very subject itself, possesses the

simple, and from them diffuses itself to the wise, under the authority of

the number and antiquity of the witnesses. For my part, what I should

not believe from one, I should not believe from a hundred and one: and I

do not judge opinions by years.

‘Tis not long since one of our princes, in whom the gout had spoiled an

excellent nature and sprightly disposition, suffered himself to be so far

persuaded with the report made to him of the marvellous operations of a

certain priest who by words and gestures cured all sorts of diseases,

as to go a long journey to seek him out, and by the force of his mere

imagination, for some hours so persuaded and laid his legs asleep, as to

obtain that service from them they had long time forgotten. Had fortune

heaped up five or six such-like incidents, it had been enough to have

brought this miracle into nature. There was afterwards discovered so

much simplicity and so little art in the author of these performances,

that he was thought too contemptible to be punished, as would be thought

of most such things, were they well examined:

“Miramur ex intervallo fallentia.”

[“We admire after an interval (or at a distance) things that

deceive.”--Seneca, Ep., 118, 2.]

So does our sight often represent to us strange images at a distance that

vanish on approaching near:

“Nunquam ad liquidum fama perducitur.”

[“Report is never fully substantiated.”

--Quintus Curtius, ix. 2.]

‘Tis wonderful from how many idle beginnings and frivolous causes such

famous impressions commonly, proceed. This it is that obstructs

information; for whilst we seek out causes and solid and weighty ends,

worthy of so great a name, we lose the true ones; they escape our sight

by their littleness. And, in truth, a very prudent, diligent, and subtle

inquisition is required in such searches, indifferent, and not

prepossessed. To this very hour, all these miracles and strange events

have concealed themselves from me: I have never seen greater monster or

miracle in the world than myself: one grows familiar with all strange

things by time and custom, but the more I frequent and the better I know

myself, the more does my own deformity astonish me, the less I understand

myself.

The principal right of advancing and producing such accidents is reserved

to fortune. Passing the day before yesterday through a village two

leagues from my house, I found the place yet warm with a miracle that had

lately failed of success there, where with first the neighbourhood had

been several months amused; then the neighbouring provinces began to take

it up, and to run thither in great companies of all sorts of people.

A young fellow of the place had one night in sport counterfeited the

voice of a spirit in his own house, without any other design at present,

but only for sport; but this having succeeded with him better than he

expected, to extend his farce with more actors he associated with him a

stupid silly country girl, and at last there were three of them of the

same age and understanding, who from domestic, proceeded to public,

preachings, hiding themselves under the altar of the church, never

speaking but by night, and forbidding any light to be brought. From

words which tended to the conversion of the world, and threats of the day

of judgment (for these are subjects under the authority and reverence of

which imposture most securely lurks), they proceeded to visions and

gesticulations so simple and ridiculous that--nothing could hardly be so

gross in the sports of little children. Yet had fortune never so little

favoured the design, who knows to what height this juggling might have at

last arrived? These poor devils are at present in prison, and are like

shortly to pay for the common folly; and I know not whether some judge

will not also make them smart for his. We see clearly into this, which

is discovered; but in many things of the like nature that exceed our

knowledge, I am of opinion that we ought to suspend our judgment, whether

as to rejection or as to reception.

Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the

abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of

professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we

are not able to refute: we speak of all things by precepts and decisions.

The style at Rome was that even that which a witness deposed to having

seen with his own eyes, and what a judge determined with his most certain

knowledge, was couched in this form of speaking: “it seems to me.” They

make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon me

as infallible. I love these words which mollify and moderate the

temerity of our propositions: “peradventure; in some sort; some; ‘tis

said, I think,” and the like: and had I been set to train up children I

had put this way of answering into their mouths, inquiring and not

resolving: “What does this mean? I understand it not; it may be: is it

true?” so that they should rather have retained the form of pupils at

threescore years old than to go out doctors, as they do, at ten. Whoever

will be cured of ignorance must confess it.

Iris is the daughter of Thaumas;

[“That is, of Admiration. She (Iris, the rainbow) is beautiful, and

for that reason, because she has a face to be admired, she is said

to have been the daughter of Thamus.”

--Cicero, De Nat. Deor., iii. 20.]

admiration is the foundation of all philosophy, inquisition the progress,

ignorance the end. But there is a sort of ignorance, strong and

generous, that yields nothing in honour and courage to knowledge; an

ignorance which to conceive requires no less knowledge than to conceive

knowledge itself. I read in my younger years a trial that Corras,

[A celebrated Calvinist lawyer, born at Toulouse; 1513, and

assassinated there, 4th October 1572.]

a councillor of Toulouse, printed, of a strange incident, of two men who

presented themselves the one for the other. I remember (and I hardly

remember anything else) that he seemed to have rendered the imposture of

him whom he judged to be guilty, so wonderful and so far exceeding both

our knowledge and his own, who was the judge, that I thought it a very

bold sentence that condemned him to be hanged. Let us have some form of

decree that says, “The court understands nothing of the matter” more

freely and ingenuously than the Areopagites did, who, finding themselves

perplexed with a cause they could not unravel, ordered the parties to

appear again after a hundred years.

The witches of my neighbourhood run the hazard of their lives upon the

report of every new author who seeks to give body to their dreams. To

accommodate the examples that Holy Writ gives us of such things, most

certain and irrefragable examples, and to tie them to our modern events,

seeing that we neither see the causes nor the means, will require another

sort-of wit than ours. It, peradventure, only appertains to that sole

all-potent testimony to tell us. “This is, and that is, and not that

other.” God ought to be believed; and certainly with very good reason;

but not one amongst us for all that who is astonished at his own

narration (and he must of necessity be astonished if he be not out of his

wits), whether he employ it about other men’s affairs or against himself.

I am plain and heavy, and stick to the solid and the probable, avoiding

those ancient reproaches:

“Majorem fidem homines adhibent iis, quae non intelligunt;

--Cupidine humani ingenii libentius obscura creduntur.”

[“Men are most apt to believe what they least understand: and from

the acquisitiveness of the human intellect, obscure things are more

easily credited.” The second sentence is from Tacitus, Hist. 1. 22.]

I see very well that men get angry, and that I am forbidden to doubt upon

pain of execrable injuries; a new way of persuading! Thank God, I am not

to be cuffed into belief. Let them be angry with those who accuse their

opinion of falsity; I only accuse it of difficulty and boldness, and

condemn the opposite affirmation equally, if not so imperiously, with

them. He who will establish this proposition by authority and huffing

discovers his reason to be very weak. For a verbal and scholastic

altercation let them have as much appearance as their contradictors;

“Videantur sane, non affirmentur modo;”

[“They may indeed appear to be; let them not be affirmed (Let them

state the probabilities, but not affirm.)”

--Cicero, Acad., n. 27.]

but in the real consequence they draw from it these have much the

advantage. To kill men, a clear and strong light is required, and our

life is too real and essential to warrant these supernatural and

fantastic accidents.

As to drugs and poisons, I throw them out of my count, as being the worst

sort of homicides: yet even in this, ‘tis said, that men are not always

to rely upon the personal confessions of these people; for they have

sometimes been known to accuse themselves of the murder of persons who

have afterwards been found living and well. In these other extravagant

accusations, I should be apt to say, that it is sufficient a man, what

recommendation soever he may have, be believed as to human things; but of

what is beyond his conception, and of supernatural effect, he ought then

only to be believed when authorised by a supernatural approbation. The

privilege it has pleased Almighty God to give to some of our witnesses,

ought not to be lightly communicated and made cheap. I have my ears

battered with a thousand such tales as these: “Three persons saw him such

a day in the east three, the next day in the west: at such an hour, in

such a place, and in such habit”; assuredly I should not believe it

myself. How much more natural and likely do I find it that two men

should lie than that one man in twelve hours’ time should fly with the

wind from east to west? How much more natural that our understanding

should be carried from its place by the volubility of our disordered

minds, than that one of us should be carried by a strange spirit upon a

broomstaff, flesh and bones as we are, up the shaft of a chimney? Let

not us seek illusions from without and unknown, we who are perpetually

agitated with illusions domestic and our own. Methinks one is pardonable

in disbelieving a miracle, at least, at all events where one can elude

its verification as such, by means not miraculous; and I am of St.

Augustine’s opinion, that, “‘tis better to lean towards doubt than

assurance, in things hard to prove and dangerous to believe.”

‘Tis now some years ago that I travelled through the territories of a

sovereign prince, who, in my favour, and to abate my incredulity, did me

the honour to let me see, in his own presence, and in a private place,

ten or twelve prisoners of this kind, and amongst others, an old woman,

a real witch in foulness and deformity, who long had been famous in that

profession. I saw both proofs and free confessions, and I know not what

insensible mark upon the miserable creature: I examined and talked with

her and the rest as much and as long as I would, and gave the best and

soundest attention I could, and I am not a man to suffer my judgment to

be made captive by prepossession. In the end, and in all conscience, I

should rather have prescribed them hellebore than hemlock;

“Captisque res magis mentibus, quam consceleratis similis visa;”

[“The thing was rather to be attributed to madness, than malice.”

(“The thing seemed to resemble minds possessed rather than guilty.”)

--Livy, viii, 18.]

justice has its corrections proper for such maladies. As to the

oppositions and arguments that worthy men have made to me, both there,

and often in other places, I have met with none that have convinced me,

and that have not admitted a more likely solution than their conclusions.

It is true, indeed, that the proofs and reasons that are founded upon

experience and fact, I do not go about to untie, neither have they any

end; I often cut them, as Alexander did the Gordian knot. After all,

‘tis setting a man’s conjectures at a very high price upon them to cause

a man to be roasted alive.

We are told by several examples, as Praestantius of his father, that

being more profoundly, asleep than men usually are, he fancied himself

to be a mare, and that he served the soldiers for a sumpter; and what

he fancied himself to be, he really proved. If sorcerers dream so

materially; if dreams can sometimes so incorporate themselves with

effects, still I cannot believe that therefore our will should be

accountable to justice; which I say as one who am neither judge nor privy

councillor, and who think myself by many degrees unworthy so to be, but a

man of the common sort, born and avowed to the obedience of the public

reason, both in its words and acts. He who should record my idle talk as

being to the prejudice of the pettiest law, opinion, or custom of his

parish, would do himself a great deal of wrong, and me much more; for, in

what I say, I warrant no other certainty, but that ‘tis what I had then

in my thought, a tumultuous and wavering thought. All I say is by way of

discourse, and nothing by way of advice:

“Nec me pudet, ut istos fateri nescire, quod nesciam;”

[“Neither am I ashamed, as they are, to confess my ignorance of what

I do not know.”--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., i. 25.]

I should not speak so boldly, if it were my due to be believed; and so I

told a great man, who complained of the tartness and contentiousness of

my exhortations. Perceiving you to be ready and prepared on one part, I

propose to you the other, with all the diligence and care I can, to clear

your judgment, not to compel it. God has your hearts in His hands, and

will furnish you with the means of choice. I am not so presumptuous even

as to desire that my opinions should bias you--in a thing of so great

importance: my fortune has not trained them up to so potent and elevated

conclusions. Truly, I have not only a great many humours, but also a

great many opinions, that I would endeavour to make my son dislike, if I

had one. What, if the truest are not always the most commodious to man,

being of so wild a composition?

Whether it be to the purpose or not, tis no great matter: ‘tis a common

proverb in Italy, that he knows not Venus in her perfect sweetness who

has never lain with a lame mistress. Fortune, or some particular

incident, long ago put this saying into the mouths of the people; and the

same is said of men as well as of women; for the queen of the Amazons

answered the Scythian who courted her to love, “Lame men perform best.”

In this feminine republic, to evade the dominion of the males, they

lamed them in their infancy--arms, legs, and other members that gave them

advantage over them, and only made use of them in that wherein we, in

these parts of the world, make use of them. I should have been apt to

think; that the shuffling pace of the lame mistress added some new

pleasure to the work, and some extraordinary titillation to those who

were at the sport; but I have lately learnt that ancient philosophy has

itself determined it, which says that the legs and thighs of lame women,

not receiving, by reason of their imperfection, their due aliment, it

falls out that the genital parts above are fuller and better supplied and

much more vigorous; or else that this defect, hindering exercise, they

who are troubled with it less dissipate their strength, and come more

entire to the sports of Venus; which also is the reason why the Greeks

decried the women-weavers as being more hot than other women by reason of

their sedentary trade, which they carry on without any great exercise of

the body. What is it we may not reason of at this rate? I might also

say of these, that the jaggling about whilst so sitting at work, rouses

and provokes their desire, as the swinging and jolting of coaches does

that of our ladies.

Do not these examples serve to make good what I said at first: that our

reasons often anticipate the effect, and have so infinite an extent of

jurisdiction that they judge and exercise themselves even on inanity

itself and non-existency? Besides the flexibility of our invention to

forge reasons of all sorts of dreams, our imagination is equally facile

to receive impressions of falsity by very frivolous appearances; for, by

the sole authority of the ancient and common use of this proverb, I have

formerly made myself believe that I have had more pleasure in a woman by

reason she was not straight, and accordingly reckoned that deformity

amongst her graces.

Torquato Tasso, in the comparison he makes betwixt France and Italy,

says that he has observed that our legs are generally smaller than those

of the Italian gentlemen, and attributes the cause of it to our being

continually on horseback; which is the very same cause from which

Suetonius draws a quite opposite conclusion; for he says, on the

contrary, that Germanicus had made his legs bigger by the continuation of

the same exercise.

Nothing is so supple and erratic as our understanding; it is the shoe of

Theramenes, fit for all feet. It is double and diverse, and the matters

are double and diverse too. “Give me a drachm of silver,” said a Cynic

philosopher to Antigonus. “That is not a present befitting a king,”

replied he. “Give me then a talent,” said the other. “That is not a

present befitting a Cynic.”

“Seu plures calor ille vias et caeca relaxat

Spiramenta, novas veniat qua succus in herbas

Seu durat magis, et venas astringit hiantes;

Ne tenues pluviae, rapidive potentia colic

Acrior, aut Boreae penetrabile frigus adurat.”

[“Whether the heat opens more passages and secret pores through

which the sap may be derived into the new-born herbs; or whether it

rather hardens and binds the gaping veins that the small showers and

keen influence of the violent sun or penetrating cold of Boreas may

not hurt them.”--Virg., Georg., i. 89.]

“Ogni medaglia ha il suo rovescio.”

[“Every medal has its reverse.”--Italian Proverb.]

This is the reason why Clitomachus said of old that Carneades had outdone

the labours of Hercules, in having eradicated consent from men, that is

to say, opinion and the courage of judging. This so vigorous fancy of

Carneades sprang, in my opinion, anciently from the impudence of those

who made profession of knowledge and their immeasurable self-conceit.

AEsop was set to sale with two other slaves; the buyer asked the first of

these what he could do; he, to enhance his own value, promised mountains

and marvels, saying he could do this and that, and I know not what; the

second said as much of himself or more: when it came to AEsop’s turn, and

that he was also asked what he could do; “Nothing,” said he, “for these

two have taken up all before me; they know everything.” So has it

happened in the school of philosophy: the pride of those who attributed

the capacity of all things to the human mind created in others, out of

despite and emulation, this opinion, that it is capable of nothing: the

one maintain the same extreme in ignorance that the others do in

knowledge; to make it undeniably manifest that man is immoderate

throughout, and can never stop but of necessity and the want of ability

to proceed further.

CHAPTER XII

OF PHYSIOGNOMY

Almost all the opinions we have are taken on authority and trust; and

‘tis not amiss; we could not choose worse than by ourselves in so weak an

age. That image of Socrates’ discourses, which his friends have

transmitted to us, we approve upon no other account than a reverence to

public sanction: ‘tis not according to our own knowledge; they are not

after our way; if anything of the kind should spring up now, few men

would value them. We discern no graces that are not pointed and puffed

out and inflated by art; such as glide on in their own purity and

simplicity easily escape so gross a sight as ours; they have a delicate

and concealed beauty, such as requires a clear and purified sight to

discover its secret light. Is not simplicity, as we take it,

cousin-german to folly and a quality of reproach? Socrates makes his

soul move a natural and common motion: a peasant said this; a woman said

that; he has never anybody in his mouth but carters, joiners, cobblers,

and masons; his are inductions and similitudes drawn from the most common

and known actions of men; every one understands him. We should never

have recognised the nobility and splendour of his admirable conceptions

under so mean a form; we, who think all things low and flat that are not

elevated, by learned doctrine, and who discern no riches but in pomp and

show. This world of ours is only formed for ostentation: men are only

puffed up with wind, and are bandied to and fro like tennis-balls. He

proposed to himself no vain and idle fancies; his design was to furnish

us with precepts and things that more really and fitly serve to the use

of life;

“Servare modum, finemque tenere,

Naturamque sequi.”

[“To keep a just mean, to observe a just limit,

and to follow Nature.”--Lucan, ii. 381.]

He was also always one and the same, and raised himself, not by starts

but by complexion, to the highest pitch of vigour; or, to say better,

mounted not at all, but rather brought down, reduced, and subjected all

asperities and difficulties to his original and natural condition; for in

Cato ‘tis most manifest that ‘tis a procedure extended far beyond the

common ways of men: in the brave exploits of his life, and in his death,

we find him always mounted upon the great horse; whereas the other ever

creeps upon the ground, and with a gentle and ordinary pace, treats of

the most useful matters, and bears himself, both at his death and in the

rudest difficulties that could present themselves, in the ordinary way of

human life.

It has fallen out well that the man most worthy to be known and to be

presented to the world for example should be he of whom we have the most

certain knowledge; he has been pried into by the most clear-sighted men

that ever were; the testimonies we have of him are admirable both in

fidelity and fulness. ‘Tis a great thing that he was able so to order

the pure imaginations of a child, that, without altering or wresting

them, he thereby produced the most beautiful effects of our soul: he

presents it neither elevated nor rich; he only represents it sound, but

assuredly with a brisk and full health. By these common and natural

springs, by these ordinary and popular fancies, without being moved or

put out, he set up not only the most regular, but the most high and

vigorous beliefs, actions, and manners that ever were. ‘Tis he who

brought again from heaven, where she lost her time, human wisdom, to

restore her to man with whom her most just and greatest business lies.

See him plead before his judges; observe by what reasons he rouses his

courage to the hazards of war; with what arguments he fortifies his

patience against calumny, tyranny, death, and the perverseness of his

wife: you will find nothing in all this borrowed from arts and sciences:

the simplest may there discover their own means and strength; ‘tis not

possible more to retire or to creep more low. He has done human nature a

great kindness in showing it how much it can do of itself.

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow

and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another’s than of

our own. Man can in nothing fix himself to his actual necessity: of

pleasure, wealth, and power, he grasps at more than he can hold; his

greediness is incapable of moderation. And I find that in curiosity of

knowing he is the same; he cuts himself out more work than he can do, and

more than he needs to do: extending the utility of knowledge to the full

of its matter:

“Ut omnium rerum, sic litterarum quoque, intemperantia laboramus.”

[“We carry intemperance into the study of literature, as well as

into everything else.”--Seneca, Ep., 106.]

And Tacitus had reason to commend the mother of Agricola for having

restrained her son in his too violent appetite for learning.

Tis a good, if duly considered, which has in it, as the other goods of

men have, a great deal of vanity and weakness, proper and natural to

itself, and that costs very dear. Its acquisition is far more hazardous

than that of all other meat or drink; for, as to other things, what we

have bought we carry home in some vessel, and there have full leisure to

examine our purchase, how much we shall eat or drink of it, and when: but

sciences we can, at the very first, stow into no other vessel than the

soul; we swallow them in buying, and return from the market, either

already infected or amended: there are some that only burden and

overcharge the stomach, instead of nourishing; and, moreover, some that,

under colour of curing, poison us. I have been pleased, in places where

I have been, to see men in devotion vow ignorance as well as chastity,

poverty, and penitence: ‘tis also a gelding of our unruly appetites, to

blunt this cupidity that spurs us on to the study of books, and to

deprive the soul of this voluptuous complacency that tickles us with the

opinion of knowledge: and ‘tis plenarily to accomplish the vow of

poverty, to add unto it that of the mind. We need little doctrine to

live at our ease; and Socrates teaches us that this is in us, and the way

how to find it, and the manner how to use it: All our sufficiency which

exceeds the natural is well-nigh superfluous and vain: ‘tis much if it

does not rather burden and cumber us than do us good:

“Paucis opus est literis ad mentem bonam:”

[“Little learning is needed to form a sound mind.”

--Seneca, Ep., 106.]

‘tis a feverish excess of the mind; a tempestuous and unquiet instrument.

Do but recollect yourself, and you will find in yourself natural

arguments against death, true, and the fittest to serve you in time of

necessity: ‘tis they that make a peasant, and whole nations, die with as

much firmness as a philosopher. Should I have died less cheerfully

before I had read Cicero’s Tusculan Quastiones? I believe not; and when

I find myself at the best, I perceive that my tongue is enriched indeed,

but my courage little or nothing elevated by them; that is just as nature

framed it at first, and defends itself against the conflict only after a

natural and ordinary way. Books have not so much served me for

instruction as exercise. What if knowledge, trying to arm us with new

defences against natural inconveniences, has more imprinted in our

fancies their weight and greatness, than her reasons and subtleties to

secure us from them? They are subtleties, indeed, with which she often

alarms us to little purpose. Do but observe how many slight and

frivolous, and, if nearly examined, incorporeal arguments, the closest

and wisest authors scatter about one good one: they are but verbal quirks

and fallacies to amuse and gull us: but forasmuch as it may be with some

profit, I will sift them no further; many of that sort are here and there

dispersed up and down this book, either borrowed or by imitation.

Therefore one ought to take a little heed not to call that force which is

only a pretty knack of writing, and that solid which is only sharp, or

that good which is only fine:

“Quae magis gustata quam potata, delectant,”

[“Which more delight in the tasting than in being drunk.”

--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., v. 5.]

everything that pleases does not nourish:

“Ubi non ingenii, sed animi negotium agitur.”

[“Where the question is not about the wit, but about the soul.”

--Seneca, Ep., 75.]

To see the trouble that Seneca gives himself to fortify himself against

death; to see him so sweat and pant to harden and encourage himself, and

bustle so long upon this perch, would have lessened his reputation with

me, had he not very bravely held himself at the last. His so ardent and

frequent agitations discover that he was in himself impetuous and

passionate,

“Magnus animus remissius loquitur, et securius . . .

non est alius ingenio, alius ammo color;”

[“A great courage speaks more calmly and more securely. There is

not one complexion for the wit and another for the mind.”

--Seneca, Ep. 114, 115]

he must be convinced at his own expense; and he in some sort discovers

that he was hard pressed by his enemy. Plutarch’s way, by how much it is

more disdainful and farther stretched, is, in my opinion, so much more

manly and persuasive: and I am apt to believe that his soul had more

assured and more regular motions. The one more sharp, pricks and makes

us start, and more touches the soul; the other more constantly solid,

forms, establishes, and supports us, and more touches the understanding.

That ravishes the judgment, this wins it. I have likewise seen other

writings, yet more reverenced than these, that in the representation of

the conflict they maintain against the temptations of the flesh, paint

them, so sharp, so powerful and invincible, that we ourselves, who are of

the common herd, are as much to wonder at the strangeness and unknown

force of their temptation, as at the resisting it.

To what end do we so arm ourselves with this harness of science? Let us

look down upon the poor people that we see scattered upon the face of the

earth, prone and intent upon their business, that neither know Aristotle

nor Cato, example nor precept; from these nature every day extracts

effects of constancy and patience, more pure and manly than those we so

inquisitively study in the schools: how many do I ordinarily see who

slight poverty? how many who desire to die, or who die without alarm or

regret? He who is now digging in my garden, has this morning buried his

father or his son. The very names by which they call diseases sweeten

and mollify the sharpness of them: the phthisic is with them no more than

a cough, dysentery but a looseness, the pleurisy but a stitch; and, as

they gently name them, so they patiently endure them; they are very great

and grievous indeed when they hinder their ordinary labour; they never

keep their beds but to die:

“Simplex illa et aperta virtus in obscuram et solertem

scientiam versa est.”

[“That overt and simple virtue is converted into an obscure and

subtle science.”--Seneca, Ep., 95.]

I was writing this about the time when a great load of our intestine

troubles for several months lay with all its weight upon me; I had the

enemy at my door on one side, and the freebooters, worse enemies, on the

other,

“Non armis, sed vitiis, certatur;”

[“The fight is not with arms, but with vices.”--Seneca, Ep. 95.]

and underwent all sorts of military injuries at once:

“Hostis adest dextra laevaque a parte timendus.

Vicinoque malo terret utrumque latus.”

[“Right and left a formidable enemy is to be feared, and threatens

me on both sides with impending danger.”--Ovid, De Ponto, i. 3, 57.]

A monstrous war! Other wars are bent against strangers, this against

itself, destroying itself with its own poison. It is of so malignant and

ruinous a nature, that it ruins itself with the rest; and with its own

rage mangles and tears itself to pieces. We more often see it dissolve

of itself than through scarcity of any necessary thing or by force of the

enemy. All discipline evades it; it comes to compose sedition, and is

itself full of it; would chastise disobedience, and itself is the

example; and, employed for the defence of the laws, rebels against its

own. What a condition are we in! Our physic makes us sick!

“Nostre mal s’empoisonne

Du secours qu’on luy donne.”

“Exuperat magis, aegrescitque medendo.”

[“Our disease is poisoned with its very remedies”--AEnead, xii. 46.]

“Omnia fanda, nefanda, malo permista furore,

Justificam nobis mentem avertere deorum.”

[“Right and wrong, all shuffled together in this wicked fury, have

deprived us of the gods’ protection.”

--Catullus, De Nuptiis Pelei et Thetidos, V. 405.]

In the beginning of these popular maladies, one may distinguish the sound

from the sick; but when they come to continue, as ours have done, the

whole body is then infected from head to foot; no part is free from

corruption, for there is no air that men so greedily draw in that

diffuses itself so soon and that penetrates so deep as that of licence.

Our armies only subsist and are kept together by the cement of

foreigners; for of Frenchmen there is now no constant and regular army to

be made. What a shame it is! there is no longer any discipline but what

we see in the mercenary soldiers. As to ourselves, our conduct is at

discretion, and that not of the chief, but every one at his own. The

general has a harder game to play within than he has without; he it is

who has to follow, to court the soldiers, to give way to them; he alone

has to obey: all the rest if disolution and free licence. It pleases me

to observe how much pusillanimity and cowardice there is in ambition; by

how abject and servile ways it must arrive at its end; but it displeases

me to see good and generous natures, and that are capable of justice,

every day corrupted in the management and command of this confusion.

Long toleration begets habit; habit, consent and imitation. We had

ill-formed souls enough, without spoiling those that were generous and

good; so that, if we hold on, there will scarcely remain any with whom to

intrust the health of this State of ours, in case fortune chance to

restore it:

“Hunc saltem everso juvenem succurrere seclo,

Ne prohibete.”

[“Forbid not, at least, that this young man repair this ruined age.”

--Virgil, Georg., i. 500. Montaigne probably refers to Henry, king

of Navarre, afterwards Henry IV.]

What has become of the old precept, “That soldiers ought more to fear

their chief than the enemy”?--[Valerius Maximus, Ext. 2.]--and of that

wonderful example, that an orchard being enclosed within the precincts of

a camp of the Roman army, was seen at their dislodgment the next day in

the same condition, not an apple, though ripe and delicious, being pulled

off, but all left to the possessor? I could wish that our youth, instead

of the time they spend in less fruitful travels and less honourable

employments, would bestow one half of that time in being an eye-witness

of naval exploits, under some good captain of Rhodes, and the other half

in observing the discipline of the Turkish armies; for they have many

differences and advantages over ours; one of these is, that our soldiers

become more licentious in expeditions, theirs more temperate and

circumspect; for the thefts and insolencies committed upon the common

people, which are only punished with a cudgel in peace, are capital in

war; for an egg taken by a Turkish soldier without paying for it, fifty

blows with a stick is the fixed rate; for anything else, of what sort or

how trivial soever, not necessary to nourishment, they are presently

impaled or beheaded without mercy. I am astonished, in the history of

Selim, the most cruel conqueror that ever was, to see that when he

subdued Egypt, the beautiful gardens about Damascus being all open, and

in a conquered land, and his army encamped upon the very place, should be

left untouched by the hands of the soldiers, by reason they had not

received the signal of pillage.

But is there any disease in a government that it is worth while to physic

with such a mortal drug?--[i.e. as civil war.]--No, said Favonius, not

even the tyrannical usurpation of a Commonwealth. Plato, likewise, will

not consent that a man should violate the peace of his country in order

to cure it, and by no means approves of a reformation that disturbs and

hazards all, and that is to be purchased at the price of the citizens’

blood and ruin; determining it to be the duty of a good patriot in such a

case to let it alone, and only to pray to God for his extraordinary

assistance: and he seems to be angry with his great friend Dion, for

having proceeded somewhat after another manner. I was a Platonist in

this point before I knew there had ever been such a man as Plato in the

world. And if this person ought absolutely to be rejected from our

society (he who by the sincerity of his conscience merited from the

divine favour to penetrate so far into the Christian light, through the

universal darkness wherein the world was involved in his time), I do not

think it becomes us to suffer ourselves to be instructed by a heathen,

how great an impiety it is not to expect from God any relief simply his

own and without our co-operation. I often doubt, whether amongst so many

men as meddle in such affairs, there is not to be found some one of so

weak understanding as to have been really persuaded that he went towards

reformation by the worst of deformations; and advanced towards salvation

by the most express causes that we have of most assured damnation; that

by overthrowing government, the magistracy, and the laws, in whose

protection God has placed him, by dismembering his good mother, and

giving her limbs to be mangled by her old enemies, filling fraternal

hearts with parricidal hatreds, calling devils and furies to his aid, he

can assist the most holy sweetness and justice of the divine law.

Ambition, avarice, cruelty, and revenge have not sufficient natural

impetuosity of their own; let us bait them with the glorious titles of

justice and devotion. There cannot a worse state of things be imagined

than where wickedness comes to be legitimate, and assumes, with the

magistrates’ permission, the cloak of virtue:

“Nihil in speciem fallacius, quam prava religio,

ubi deorum numen prxtenditur sceleribus.”

[“Nothing has a more deceiving face than false religion, where the

divinity of the gods is obscured by crimes.”--Livy, xxxix. 16.]

The extremest sort of injustice, according to Plato, is where that which

is unjust should be reputed for just.

The common people then suffered very much, and not present damage only:

“Undique totis

Usque adeo turbatur agris,”

[“Such great disorders overtake our fields on every side.”

--Virgil, Eclog., i. II.]

but future too; the living were to suffer, and so were they who were yet

unborn; they stript them, and consequently myself, even of hope, taking

from them all they had laid up in store to live on for many years:

“Quae nequeunt secum ferre aut abducere, perdunt;

Et cremat insontes turba scelesta casas . . .

Muris nulla fides, squalent populatibus agri.”

[“What they cannot bear away, they spoil; and the wicked mob burn

harmless houses; walls cannot secure their masters, and the fields

are squalid with devastation.”

--Ovid, Trist., iii. 10, 35; Claudianus, In Eutyop., i. 244.]

Besides this shock, I suffered others: I underwent the inconveniences

that moderation brings along with it in such a disease: I was robbed on

all hands; to the Ghibelline I was a Guelph, and to the Guelph a

Ghibelline; one of my poets expresses this very well, but I know not

where it is.

[“So Tories called me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.”--Pope, after Horace.]

The situation of my house, and my friendliness with my neighbours,

presented me with one face; my life and my actions with another. They

did not lay formal accusations to my charge, for they had no foundation

for so doing; I never hide my head from the laws, and whoever would have

questioned me, would have done himself a greater prejudice than me; they

were only mute suspicions that were whispered about, which never want

appearance in so confused a mixture, no more than envious or idle heads.

I commonly myself lend a hand to injurious presumptions that fortune

scatters abroad against me, by a way I have ever had of evading to

justify, excuse, or explain myself; conceiving that it were to compromise

my conscience to plead in its behalf:

“Perspicuitas enim argumentatione elevatur;”

[“For perspicuity is lessened by argument.”

(“The clearness of a cause is clouded by argumentation.”)

--Cicero, De Nat. Deor., iii. 4.]

and, as if every one saw as clearly into me as I do myself, instead of

retiring from an accusation, I step up to meet it, and rather give it

some kind of colour by an ironical and scoffing confession, if I do not

sit totally mute, as of a thing not worth my answer. But such as look

upon this kind of behaviour of mine as too haughty a confidence, have as

little kindness for me as they who interpret the weakness of an

indefensible cause; namely, the great folks, towards whom want of

submission is the great fault, harsh towards all justice that knows and

feels itself, and is not submissive humble, and suppliant; I have often

knocked my head against this pillar. So it is that at what then befell

me, an ambitious man would have hanged himself, and a covetous man would

have done the same. I have no manner of care of getting;

“Si mihi, quod nunc est, etiam minus; et mihi vivam

Quod superest aevi, si quid superesse volent dii:”

[“If I may have what I now own, or even less, and may live for

myself what of life remains, if the gods grant me remaining years.”

--Horace, Ep., i. 18, 107.]

but the losses that befall me by the injury of others, whether by theft

or violence, go almost as near my heart as they would to that of the most

avaricious man. The offence troubles me, without comparison, more than

the loss. A thousand several sorts of mischiefs fell upon me in the neck

of one another; I could more cheerfully have borne them all at once.

I was already considering to whom, amongst my friends, I might commit a

necessitous and discredited old age; and having turned my eyes quite

round, I found myself bare. To let one’s self fall plump down, and from

so great a height, it ought to be in the arms of a solid, vigorous, and

fortunate friendship: these are very rare, if there be any. At last, I

saw that it was safest for me to trust to myself in my necessity; and if

it should so fall out, that I should be but upon cold terms in Fortune’s

favour, I should so much the more pressingly recommend me to my own, and

attach myself and look to myself all the more closely. Men on all

occasions throw themselves upon foreign assistance to spare their own,

which is alone certain and sufficient to him who knows how therewith to

arm himself. Every one runs elsewhere, and to the future, forasmuch as

no one is arrived at himself. And I was satisfied that they were

profitable inconveniences; forasmuch as, first, ill scholars are to be

admonished with the rod, when reason will not do, as a crooked piece of

wood is by fire and straining reduced to straightness. I have a great

while preached to myself to stick close to my own concerns, and separate

myself from the affairs of others; yet I am still turning my eyes aside.

A bow, a favourable word, a kind look from a great person tempts me; of

which God knows if there is scarcity in these days, and what they

signify. I, moreover, without wrinkling my forehead, hearken to the

persuasions offered me, to draw me into the marketplace, and so gently

refuse, as if I were half willing to be overcome. Now for so indocile a

spirit blows are required; this vessel which thus chops and cleaves, and

is ready to fall one piece from another, must have the hoops forced down

with good sound strokes of a mallet. Secondly, that this accident served

me for exercise to prepare me for worse, if I, who both by the benefit of

fortune, and by the condition of my manners, hoped to be among the last,

should happen to be one of the first assailed by this storm; instructing

myself betimes to constrain my life, and fit it for a new state. The

true liberty is to be able to do what a man will with himself:

“Potentissimus est, qui se habet in potestate.”

[“He is most potent who is master of himself.”--Seneca, Ep., 94.]

In an ordinary and quiet time, a man prepares himself for moderate and

common accidents; but in the confusion wherein we have been for these

thirty years, every Frenchman, whether personal or in general, sees

himself every hour upon the point of the total ruin and overthrow of his

fortune: by so much the more ought he to have his courage supplied with

the strongest and most vigorous provisions. Let us thank fortune, that

has not made us live in an effeminate, idle, and languishing age; some

who could never have been so by other means will be made famous by their

misfortunes. As I seldom read in histories the confusions of other

states without regret that I was not present, the better to consider

them, so does my curiosity make me in some sort please myself in seeing

with my own eyes this notable spectacle of our public death, its form and

symptoms; and since I cannot hinder it, I am content to have been

destined to be present therein, and thereby to instruct myself. So do

we eagerly covet to see, though but in shadow and the fables of theatres,

the pomp of tragic representations of human fortune; ‘tis not without

compassion at what we hear, but we please ourselves in rousing our

displeasure, by the rarity of these pitiable events. Nothing tickles

that does not pinch. And good historians skip over, as stagnant water

and dead sea, calm narrations, to return to seditions, to wars, to which

they know that we invite them.

I question whether I can decently confess with how small a sacrifice of

its repose and tranquillity I have passed over above the one half of my

life amid the ruin of my country. I lend myself my patience somewhat too

cheap, in accidents that do not privately assail me; and do not so much

regard what they take from me, as what remains safe, both within and

without. There is comfort in evading, one while this, another while

that, of the evils that are levelled at ourselves too, at last, but at

present hurt others only about us; as also, that in matters of public

interest, the more universally my affection is dispersed, the weaker it

is: to which may be added, that it is half true:

“Tantum ex publicis malis sentimus,

quantum ad privatas res pertinet;”

[“We are only so far sensible of public evils as they respect our

private affairs.”--Livy, xxx. 44.]

and that the health from which we fell was so ill, that itself relieves

the regret we should have for it. It was health, but only in comparison

with the sickness that has succeeded it: we are not fallen from any great

height; the corruption and brigandage which are in dignity and office

seem to me the least supportable: we are less injuriously rifled in a

wood than in a place of security. It was an universal juncture of

particular members, each corrupted by emulation of the others, and most

of them with old ulcers, that neither received nor required any cure.

This convulsion, therefore, really more animated than pressed me, by the

assistance of my conscience, which was not only at peace within itself,

but elevated, and I did not find any reason to complain of myself. Also,

as God never sends evils, any more than goods, absolutely pure to men,

my health continued at that time more than usually good; and, as I can

do nothing without it, there are few things that I cannot do with it.

It afforded me means to rouse up all my faculties, and to lay my hand

before the wound that would else, peradventure, have gone farther; and I

experienced, in my patience, that I had some stand against fortune, and

that it must be a great shock could throw me out of the saddle. I do not

say this to provoke her to give me a more vigorous charge: I am her

humble servant, and submit to her pleasure: let her be content, in God’s

name. Am I sensible of her assaults? Yes, I am. But, as those who are

possessed and oppressed with sorrow sometimes suffer themselves,

nevertheless, by intervals to taste a little pleasure, and are sometimes

surprised with a smile, so have I so much power over myself, as to make

my ordinary condition quiet and free from disturbing thoughts; yet I

suffer myself, withal, by fits to be surprised with the stings of those

unpleasing imaginations that assault me, whilst I am arming myself to

drive them away, or at least to wrestle with them.

But behold another aggravation of the evil which befell me in the tail of

the rest: both without doors and within I was assailed with a most

violent plague, violent in comparison of all others; for as sound bodies

are subject to more grievous maladies, forasmuch as they, are not to be

forced but by such, so my very healthful air, where no contagion, however

near, in the memory of man, ever took footing, coming to be corrupted,

produced strange effects:

“Mista senum et juvenum densentur funera; nullum

Saeva caput Proserpina fugit;”

[“Old and young die in mixed heaps. Cruel Proserpine forbears

none.”--Horace, Od., i. 28, 19.]

I had to suffer this pleasant condition, that the sight of my house, was

frightful to me; whatever I had there was without guard, and left to the

mercy of any one who wished to take it. I myself, who am so hospitable,

was in very great distress for a retreat for my family; a distracted

family, frightful both to its friends and itself, and filling every place

with horror where it attempted to settle, having to shift its abode so

soon as any one’s finger began but to ache; all diseases are then

concluded to be the plague, and people do not stay to examine whether

they are so or no. And the mischief on’t is that, according to the rules

of art, in every danger that a man comes near, he must undergo a

quarantine in fear of the evil, your imagination all the while tormenting

you at pleasure, and turning even your health itself into a fever. Yet

all this would have much less affected me had I not withal been compelled

to be sensible of the sufferings of others, and miserably to serve six

months together for a guide to this caravan; for I carry my own antidotes

within myself, which are resolution and patience. Apprehension, which is

particularly feared in this disease, does not much trouble me; and, if

being alone, I should have been taken, it had been a less cheerless and

more remote departure; ‘tis a kind of death that I do not think of the

worst sort; ‘tis commonly short, stupid, without pain, and consoled by

the public condition; without ceremony, without mourning, without a

crowd. But as to the people about us, the hundredth part of them could

not be saved:

“Videas desertaque regna

Pastorum, et longe saltus lateque vacantes.”

[“You would see shepherds’ haunts deserted, and far and wide empty

pastures.”--Virgil, Georg., iii. 476.]

In this place my largest revenue is manual: what an hundred men ploughed

for me, lay a long time fallow.

But then, what example of resolution did we not see in the simplicity of

all this people? Generally, every one renounced all care of life; the

grapes, the principal wealth of the country, remained untouched upon the

vines; every man indifferently prepared for and expected death, either

to-night or to-morrow, with a countenance and voice so far from fear,

as if they had come to terms with this necessity, and that it was an

universal and inevitable sentence. ‘Tis always such; but how slender

hold has the resolution of dying? The distance and difference of a few

hours, the sole consideration of company, renders its apprehension

various to us. Observe these people; by reason that they die in the same

month, children, young people, and old, they are no longer astonished at

it; they no longer lament. I saw some who were afraid of staying behind,

as in a dreadful solitude; and I did not commonly observe any other

solicitude amongst them than that of sepulture; they were troubled to see

the dead bodies scattered about the fields, at the mercy of the wild

beasts that presently flocked thither. How differing are the fancies of

men; the Neorites, a nation subjected by Alexander, threw the bodies of

their dead into the deepest and less frequented part of their woods, on

purpose to have them there eaten; the only sepulture reputed happy

amongst them. Some, who were yet in health, dug their own graves; others

laid themselves down in them whilst alive; and a labourer of mine, in

dying, with his hands and feet pulled the earth upon him. Was not this

to nestle and settle himself to sleep at greater ease? A bravery in some

sort like that of the Roman soldiers who, after the battle of Cannae,

were found with their heads thrust into holes in the earth, which they

had made, and in suffocating themselves, with their own hands pulled the

earth about their ears. In short, a whole province was, by the common

usage, at once brought to a course nothing inferior in undauntedness to

the most studied and premeditated resolution.

Most of the instructions of science to encourage us herein have in them

more of show than of force, and more of ornament than of effect. We have

abandoned Nature, and will teach her what to do; teach her who so happily

and so securely conducted us; and in the meantime, from the footsteps of

her instruction, and that little which, by the benefit of ignorance,

remains of her image imprinted in the life of this rustic rout of

unpolished men, science is constrained every day to borrow patterns for

her disciples of constancy, tranquillity, and innocence. It is pretty to

see that these persons, full of so much fine knowledge, have to imitate

this foolish simplicity, and this in the primary actions of virtue; and

that our wisdom must learn even from beasts the most profitable

instructions in the greatest and most necessary concerns of our life;

as, how we are to live and die, manage our property, love and bring up

our children, maintain justice: a singular testimony of human infirmity;

and that this reason we so handle at our pleasure, finding evermore some

diversity and novelty, leaves in us no apparent trace of nature. Men

have done with nature as perfumers with oils; they have sophisticated her

with so many argumentations and far-fetched discourses, that she is

become variable and particular to each, and has lost her proper,

constant, and universal face; so that we must seek testimony from beasts,

not subject to favour, corruption, or diversity of opinions. It is,

indeed, true that even these themselves do not always go exactly in the

path of nature, but wherein they swerve, it is so little that you may

always see the track; as horses that are led make many bounds and

curvets, but ‘tis always at the length of the halter, and still follow

him that leads them; and as a young hawk takes its flight, but still

under the restraint of its tether:

“Exsilia, torments, bells, morbos, naufragia meditare . . .

ut nullo sis malo tiro.”

[“To meditate upon banishments, tortures, wars, diseases, and

shipwrecks, that thou mayest not be a novice in any disaster.”

--Seneca, Ep., 91, 107.]

What good will this curiosity do us, to anticipate all the inconveniences

of human nature, and to prepare ourselves with so much trouble against

things which, peradventure, will never befall us?

“Parem passis tristitiam facit, pati posse;”

[“It troubles men as much that they may possibly suffer,

as if they really did suffer.”--Idem, ibid., 74.]

not only the blow, but the wind of the blow strikes us: or, like

phrenetic people--for certainly it is a phrensy--to go immediately and

whip yourself, because it may so fall out that Fortune may one day make

you undergo it; and to put on your furred gown at Midsummer, because you

will stand in need of it at Christmas! Throw yourselves, say they, into

the experience of all the evils, the most extreme evils that can possibly

befall you, and so be assured of them. On the contrary, the most easy

and most natural way would be to banish even the thoughts of them; they

will not come soon enough; their true being will not continue with us

long enough; our mind must lengthen and extend them; we must incorporate

them in us beforehand, and there entertain them, as if they would not

otherwise sufficiently press upon our senses. “We shall find them heavy

enough when they come,” says one of our masters, of none of the tender

sects, but of the most severe; “in the meantime, favour thyself; believe

what pleases thee best; what good will it do thee to anticipate thy ill

fortune, to lose the present for fear of the future: and to make thyself

miserable now, because thou art to be so in time?” These are his words.

Science, indeed, does us one good office in instructing us exactly as to

the dimensions of evils,

“Curis acuens mortalia corda!”

[“Probing mortal hearts with cares.”--Virgil, Georg., i. 23.]

‘Twere pity that any part of their greatness should escape our sense and

knowledge.

‘Tis certain that for the most part the preparation for death has

administered more torment than the thing itself. It was of old truly

said, and by a very judicious author:

“Minus afficit sensus fatigatio, quam cogitatio.”

[“Suffering itself less afflicts the senses than the apprehension

of suffering.”--Quintilian, Inst. Orat., i. 12.]

The sentiment of present death sometimes, of itself, animates us with a

prompt resolution not to avoid a thing that is utterly inevitable: many

gladiators have been seen in the olden time, who, after having fought

timorously and ill, have courageously entertained death, offering their

throats to the enemies’ sword and bidding them despatch. The sight of

future death requires a courage that is slow, and consequently hard to be

got. If you know not how to die, never trouble yourself; nature will, at

the time, fully and sufficiently instruct you: she will exactly do that

business for you; take you no care--

“Incertam frustra, mortales, funeris horam,

Quaeritis et qua sit mors aditura via....

Poena minor certam subito perferre ruinam;

Quod timeas, gravius sustinuisse diu.”

[“Mortals, in vain you seek to know the uncertain hour of death,

and by what channel it will come upon you.”--Propertius, ii. 27, 1.

“‘Tis less painful to undergo sudden destruction; ‘tis hard to bear

that which you long fear.”--Incert. Auct.]

We trouble life by the care of death, and death by the care of life: the

one torments, the other frights us. It is not against death that we

prepare, that is too momentary a thing; a quarter of an hour’s suffering,

without consequence and without damage, does not deserve especial

precepts: to say the truth, we prepare ourselves against the preparations

of death. Philosophy ordains that we should always have death before our

eyes, to see and consider it before the time, and then gives us rules and

precautions to provide that this foresight and thought do us no harm;

just so do physicians, who throw us into diseases, to the end they may

have whereon to employ their drugs and their art. If we have not known

how to live, ‘tis injustice to teach us how to die, and make the end

difform from all the rest; if we have known how to live firmly and

quietly, we shall know how to die so too. They may boast as much as they

please:

“Tota philosophorum vita commentatio mortis est;”

[“The whole life of philosophers is the meditation of death.”

--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., ii. 30.]

but I fancy that, though it be the end, it is not the aim of life; ‘tis

its end, its extremity, but not, nevertheless, its object; it ought

itself to be its own aim and design; its true study is to order, govern,

and suffer itself. In the number of several other offices, that the

general and principal chapter of Knowing how to live comprehends, is this

article of Knowing how to die; and, did not our fears give it weight,

one of the lightest too.

To judge of them by utility and by the naked truth, the lessons of

simplicity are not much inferior to those which learning teaches us: nay,

quite the contrary. Men differ in sentiment and force; we must lead them

to their own good according to their capacities and by various ways:

“Quo me comque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes.”

[“Wherever the season takes me,(where the tempest drives me)

there I am carried as a guest.”--Horace, Ep., i. i, 15.]

I never saw any peasant among my neighbours cogitate with what

countenance and assurance he should pass over his last hour; nature

teaches him not to think of death till he is dying; and then he does it

with a better grace than Aristotle, upon whom death presses with a double

weight, both of itself and from so long a premeditation; and, therefore,

it was the opinion of Caesar, that the least premeditated death was the

easiest and the most happy: