I seldom reach my inn but that it comes into my mind to consider whether
I could there be sick and dying at my ease. I desire to be lodged in
some private part of the house, remote from all noise, ill scents, and
smoke. I endeavour to flatter death by these frivolous circumstances;
or, to say better, to discharge myself from all other incumbrances, that
I may have nothing to do, nor be troubled with anything but that which
will lie heavy enough upon me without any other load. I would have my
death share in the ease and conveniences of my life; 'tis a great part of
it, and of great importance, and I hope it will not in the future
contradict the past. Death has some forms that are more easy than
others, and receives divers qualities, according to every one's fancy.
Amongst the natural deaths, that which proceeds from weakness and stupor
I think the most favourable; amongst those that are violent, I can worse
endure to think of a precipice than of the fall of a house that will
crush me in a moment, and of a wound with a sword than of a harquebus
shot; I should rather have chosen to poison myself with Socrates, than
stab myself with Cato. And, though it, be all one, yet my imagination
makes as great a difference as betwixt death and life, betwixt throwing
myself into a burning furnace and plunging into the channel of a river:
so idly does our fear more concern itself in the means than the effect.
It is but an instant, 'tis true, but withal an instant of such weight,
that I would willingly give a great many days of my life to pass it over
after my own fashion. Since every one's imagination renders it more or
less terrible, and since every one has some choice amongst the several
forms of dying, let us try a little further to find some one that is
wholly clear from all offence. Might not one render it even voluptuous,
like the Commoyientes of Antony and Cleopatra? I set aside the brave and
exemplary efforts produced by philosophy and religion; but, amongst men
of little mark there have been found some, such as Petronius and
Tigellinus at Rome, condemned to despatch themselves, who have, as it
were, rocked death asleep with the delicacy of their preparations; they
have made it slip and steal away in the height of their accustomed
diversions amongst girls and good fellows; not a word of consolation, no
mention of making a will, no ambitious affectation of constancy, no talk
of their future condition; amongst sports, feastings, wit, and mirth,
common and indifferent discourses, music, and amorous verses. Were it
not possible for us to imitate this resolution after a more decent
manner? Since there are deaths that are good for fools, deaths good for
the wise, let us find out such as are fit for those who are betwixt both.
My imagination suggests to me one that is easy, and, since we must die,
to be desired. The Roman tyrants thought they did, in a manner, give a
criminal life when they gave him the choice of his death. But was not
Theophrastus, that so delicate, so modest, and so wise a philosopher,
compelled by reason, when he durst say this verse, translated by Cicero:
"Vitam regit fortuna, non sapientia?"
["Fortune, not wisdom, sways human life."
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., V. 31.]
Fortune assists the facility of the bargain of my life, having placed it
in such a condition that for the future it can be neither advantage nor
hindrance to those who are concerned in me; 'tis a condition that I would
have accepted at any time of my life; but in this occasion of trussing up
my baggage, I am particularly pleased that in dying I shall neither do
them good nor harm. She has so ordered it, by a cunning compensation,
that they who may pretend to any considerable advantage by my death will,
at the same time, sustain a material inconvenience. Death sometimes is
more grievous to us, in that it is grievous to others, and interests us
in their interest as much as in our own, and sometimes more.
In this conveniency of lodging that I desire, I mix nothing of pomp and
amplitude--I hate it rather; but a certain plain neatness, which is
oftenest found in places where there is less of art, and that Nature has
adorned with some grace that is all her own:
"Non ampliter, sea munditer convivium."
["To eat not largely, but cleanly."--Nepos, Life of Atticus, c. 13]
"Plus salis quam sumptus."
["Rather enough than costly (More wit than cost)"--Nonius, xi. 19.]
And besides, 'tis for those whose affairs compel them to travel in the
depth of winter through the Grisons country to be surprised upon the way
with great inconveniences. I, who, for the most part, travel for my
pleasure, do not order my affairs so ill. If the way be foul on my right
hand, I turn on my left; if I find myself unfit to ride, I stay where I
am; and, so doing, in earnest I see nothing that is not as pleasant and
commodious as my own house. 'Tis true that I always find superfluity
superfluous, and observe a kind of trouble even in abundance itself.
Have I left anything behind me unseen, I go back to see it; 'tis still on
my way; I trace no certain line, either straight or crooked.--[Rousseau
has translated this passage in his Emile, book v.]--Do I not find in the
place to which I go what was reported to me--as it often falls out that
the judgments of others do not jump with mine, and that I have found
their reports for the most part false--I never complain of losing my
labour: I have, at least, informed myself that what was told me was not
true.
I have a constitution of body as free, and a palate as indifferent, as
any man living: the diversity of manners of several nations only affects
me in the pleasure of variety: every usage has its reason. Let the plate
and dishes be pewter, wood, or earth; my meat be boiled or roasted; let
them give me butter or oil, of nuts or olives, hot or cold, 'tis all one
to me; and so indifferent, that growing old, I accuse this generous
faculty, and would wish that delicacy and choice should correct the
indiscretion of my appetite, and sometimes soothe my stomach. When I
have been abroad out of France and that people, out of courtesy, have
asked me if I would be served after the French manner, I laughed at the
question, and always frequented tables the most filled with foreigners.
I am ashamed to see our countrymen besotted with this foolish humour of
quarrelling with forms contrary to their own; they seem to be out of
their element when out of their own village: wherever they go, they keep
to their own fashions and abominate those of strangers. Do they meet
with a compatriot in Hungary? O the happy chance! They are henceforward
inseparable; they cling together, and their whole discourse is to condemn
the barbarous manners they see about them. Why barbarous, because they
are not French? And those have made the best use of their travels who
have observed most to speak against. Most of them go for no other end
but to come back again; they proceed in their travel with vast gravity
and circumspection, with a silent and incommunicable prudence, preserving
themselves from the contagion of an unknown air. What I am saying of
them puts me in mind of something like it I have at times observed in
some of our young courtiers; they will not mix with any but men of their
own sort, and look upon us as men of another world, with disdain or pity.
Put them upon any discourse but the intrigues of the court, and they are
utterly at a loss; as very owls and novices to us as we are to them.
'Tis truly said that a well-bred man is a compound man. I, on the
contrary, travel very much sated with our own fashions; I do not look for
Gascons in Sicily; I have left enough of them at home; I rather seek for
Greeks and Persians; they are the men I endeavour to be acquainted with
and the men I study; 'tis there that I bestow and employ myself. And
which is more, I fancy that I have met but with few customs that are not
as good as our own; I have not, I confess, travelled very far; scarce out
of the sight of the vanes of my own house.
As to the rest, most of the accidental company a man falls into upon the
road beget him more trouble than pleasure; I waive them as much as I
civilly can, especially now that age seems in some sort to privilege and
sequester me from the common forms. You suffer for others or others
suffer for you; both of them inconveniences of importance enough, but the
latter appears to me the greater. 'Tis a rare fortune, but of
inestimable solace; to have a worthy man, one of a sound judgment and of
manners conformable to your own, who takes a delight to bear you company.
I have been at an infinite loss for such upon my travels. But such a
companion should be chosen and acquired from your first setting out.
There can be no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so
much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind, that it does not grieve
me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to communicate it to:
"Si cum hac exceptione detur sapientia,
ut illam inclusam teneam, nec enuntiem, rejiciam."
["If wisdom be conferred with this reservation, that I must keep it
to myself, and not communicate it to others, I would none of it."
--Seneca, Ep., 6.]
This other has strained it one note higher:
"Si contigerit ea vita sapienti, ut ommum rerum afliuentibus copiis,
quamvis omnia, quae cognitione digna sunt, summo otio secum ipse
consideret et contempletur, tamen, si solitudo tanta sit, ut hominem
videre non possit, excedat a vita."
["If such a condition of life should happen to a wise man, that in
the greatest plenty of all conveniences he might, at the most
undisturbed leisure, consider and contemplate all things worth the
knowing, yet if his solitude be such that he must not see a man, let
him depart from life."--Cicero, De Offic., i. 43.]
Architas pleases me when he says, "that it would be unpleasant, even in
heaven itself, to wander in those great and divine celestial bodies
without a companion. But yet 'tis much better to be alone than in
foolish and troublesome company. Aristippus loved to live as a stranger
in all places:
"Me si fata meis paterentur ducere vitam
Auspiciis,"
["If the fates would let me live in my own way."--AEneid, iv. 340.]
I should choose to pass away the greatest part of my life on horseback:
"Visere gestiens,
Qua pane debacchentur ignes,
Qua nebula, pluviique rores."
["Visit the regions where the sun burns, where are the thick
rain-clouds and the frosts."--Horace, Od., iii. 3, 54.]
"Have you not more easy diversions at home? What do you there want? Is
not your house situated in a sweet and healthful air, sufficiently
furnished, and more than sufficiently large? Has not the royal majesty
been more than once there entertained with all its train? Are there not
more below your family in good ease than there are above it in eminence?
Is there any local, extraordinary, indigestible thought that afflicts
you?"
"Qua to nunc coquat, et vexet sub pectore fixa."
["That may now worry you, and vex, fixed in your breast."
--Cicero, De Senect, c. 1, Ex Ennio.]
"Where do you think to live without disturbance?"
"Nunquam simpliciter Fortuna indulget."
["Fortune is never simply complaisant (unmixed)."
--Quintus Curtius, iv. 14]
You see, then, it is only you that trouble yourself; you will everywhere
follow yourself, and everywhere complain; for there is no satisfaction
here below, but either for brutish or for divine souls. He who, on so
just an occasion, has no contentment, where will he think to find it?
How many thousands of men terminate their wishes in such a condition as
yours? Do but reform yourself; for that is wholly in your own power!
whereas you have no other right but patience towards fortune:
"Nulla placida quies est, nisi quam ratio composuit."
["There is no tranquillity but that which reason has conferred."
--Seneca, Ep., 56.]
I see the reason of this advice, and see it perfectly well; but he might
sooner have done, and more pertinently, in bidding me in one word be
wise; that resolution is beyond wisdom; 'tis her precise work and
product. Thus the physician keeps preaching to a poor languishing
patient to "be cheerful"; but he would advise him a little more
discreetly in bidding him "be well." For my part, I am but a man of the
common sort. 'Tis a wholesome precept, certain and easy to be
understood, "Be content with what you have," that is to say, with reason:
and yet to follow this advice is no more in the power of the wise men of
the world than in me. 'Tis a common saying, but of a terrible extent:
what does it not comprehend? All things fall under discretion and
qualification. I know very well that, to take it by the letter, this
pleasure of travelling is a testimony of uneasiness and irresolution,
and, in sooth, these two are our governing and predominating qualities.
Yes, I confess, I see nothing, not so much as in a dream, in a wish,
whereon I could set up my rest: variety only, and the possession of
diversity, can satisfy me; that is, if anything can. In travelling, it
pleases me that I may stay where I like, without inconvenience, and that
I have a place wherein commodiously to divert myself. I love a private
life, because 'tis my own choice that I love it, not by any dissenting
from or dislike of public life, which, peradventure, is as much according
to my complexion. I serve my prince more cheerfully because it is by the
free election of my own judgment and reason, without any particular
obligation; and that I am not reduced and constrained so to do for being
rejected or disliked by the other party; and so of all the rest. I hate
the morsels that necessity carves me; any commodity upon which I had only
to depend would have me by the throat;
"Alter remus aquas, alter mihi radat arenas;"
["Let me have one oar in the water, and with the other rake the
shore."--Propertius, iii. 3, 23.]
one cord will never hold me fast enough. You will say, there is vanity
in this way of living. But where is there not? All these fine precepts
are vanity, and all wisdom is vanity:
"Dominus novit cogitationes sapientum, quoniam vanae sunt."
["The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain."
--Ps. xciii. II; or I Cor. iii. 20.]
These exquisite subtleties are only fit for sermons; they are discourses
that will send us all saddled into the other world. Life is a material
and corporal motion, an action imperfect and irregular of its own proper
essence; I make it my business to serve it according to itself:
"Quisque suos patimur manes."
["We each of us suffer our own particular demon."--AEneid, vi. 743.]
"Sic est faciendum, ut contra naturam universam nihil contendamus;
ea tamen conservata propriam sequamur."
["We must so order it as by no means to contend against universal
nature; but yet, that rule being observed, to follow our own."
--Cicero, De Offcc., i. 31.]
To what end are these elevated points of philosophy, upon which no human
being can rely? and those rules that exceed both our use and force?
I see often that we have theories of life set before us which neither the
proposer nor those who hear him have any hope, nor, which is more, any
inclination to follow. Of the same sheet of paper whereon the judge has
but just written a sentence against an adulterer, he steals a piece
whereon to write a love-letter to his companion's wife. She whom you
have but just now illicitly embraced will presently, even in your
hearing, more loudly inveigh against the same fault in her companion than
a Portia would do;--[The chaste daughter of Cato of Utica.]--and men
there are who will condemn others to death for crimes that they
themselves do not repute so much as faults. I have, in my youth, seen a
man of good rank with one hand present to the people verses that excelled
both in wit and debauchery, and with the other, at the same time, the
most ripe and pugnacious theological reformation that the world has been
treated withal these many years. And so men proceed; we let the laws and
precepts follow their way; ourselves keep another course, not only from
debauchery of manners, but ofttimes by judgment and contrary opinion. Do
but hear a philosophical lecture; the invention, eloquence, pertinency
immediately strike upon your mind and move you; there is nothing that
touches or stings your conscience; 'tis not to this they address
themselves. Is not this true? It made Aristo say, that neither a bath
nor a lecture did aught unless it scoured and made men clean. One may
stop at the skin; but it is after the marrow is picked out as, after we
have swallowed good wine out of a fine cup, we examine the designs and
workmanship. In all the courts of ancient philosophy, this is to be
found, that the same teacher publishes rules of temperance and at the
same time lessons in love and wantonness; Xenophon, in the very bosom of
Clinias, wrote against the Aristippic virtue. 'Tis not that there is any
miraculous conversion in it that makes them thus wavering; 'tis that
Solon represents himself, sometimes in his own person, and sometimes in
that of a legislator; one while he speaks for the crowd, and another for
himself; taking the free and natural rules for his own share, feeling
assured of a firm and entire health:
"Curentur dubii medicis majoribus aegri."
["Desperate maladies require the best doctors."
--Juvenal, xiii. 124.]
Antisthenes allows a sage to love, and to do whatever he thinks
convenient, without regard to the laws, forasmuch as he is better advised
than they, and has a greater knowledge of virtue. His disciple Diogenes
said, that "men to perturbations were to oppose reason: to fortune,
courage: to the laws, nature." For tender stomachs, constrained and
artificial recipes must be prescribed: good and strong stomachs serve
themselves simply with the prescriptions of their own natural appetite;
after this manner do our physicians proceed, who eat melons and drink
iced wines, whilst they confine their patients to syrups and sops.
"I know not," said the courtezan Lais, "what they may talk of books,
wisdom, and philosophy; but these men knock as often at my door as any
others." At the same rate that our licence carries us beyond what is
lawful and allowed, men have, often beyond universal reason, stretched
the precepts and rules of our life:
"Nemo satis credit tantum delinquere, quantum
Permittas."
["No one thinks he has done ill to the full extent of what he may."
--Juvenal, xiv. 233.]
It were to be wished that there was more proportion betwixt the command
and the obedience; and the mark seems to be unjust to which one cannot
attain. There is no so good man, who so squares all his thoughts and
actions to the laws, that he is not faulty enough to deserve hanging ten
times in his life; and he may well be such a one, as it were great
injustice and great harm to punish and ruin:
"Ole, quid ad te
De cute quid faciat ille vel ille sua?"
["Olus, what is it to thee what he or she does with their skin?"
--Martial, vii. 9, I.]
and such an one there may be, who has no way offended the laws, who,
nevertheless, would not deserve the character of a virtuous man, and whom
philosophy would justly condemn to be whipped; so unequal and perplexed
is this relation. We are so far from being good men, according to the
laws of God, that we cannot be so according to our own human wisdom never
yet arrived at the duties it had itself prescribed; and could it arrive
there, it would still prescribe to itself others beyond, to which it
would ever aspire and pretend; so great an enemy to consistency is our
human condition. Man enjoins himself to be necessarily in fault: he is
not very discreet to cut out his own duty by the measure of another being
than his own. To whom does he prescribe that which he does not expect
any one should perform? is he unjust in not doing what it is impossible
for him to do? The laws which condemn us not to be able, condemn us for
not being able.
At the worst, this difform liberty of presenting ourselves two several
ways, the actions after one manner and the reasoning after another, may
be allowed to those who only speak of things; but it cannot be allowed to
those who speak of themselves, as I do: I must march my pen as I do my
feet. Common life ought to have relation to the other lives: the virtue
of Cato was vigorous beyond the reason of the age he lived in; and for a
man who made it his business to govern others, a man dedicated to the
public service, it might be called a justice, if not unjust, at least
vain and out of season. Even my own manners, which differ not above an
inch from those current amongst us, render me, nevertheless, a little
rough and unsociable at my age. I know not whether it be without reason
that I am disgusted with the world I frequent; but I know very well that
it would be without reason, should I complain of its being disgusted with
me, seeing I am so with it. The virtue that is assigned to the affairs
of the world is a virtue of many wavings, corners, and elbows, to join
and adapt itself to human frailty, mixed and artificial, not straight,
clear, constant, nor purely innocent. Our annals to this very day
reproach one of our kings for suffering himself too simply to be carried
away by the conscientious persuasions of his confessor: affairs of state
have bolder precepts;
"Exeat aula,
Qui vult esse pius."
["Let him who will be pious retire from the court."
--Lucan, viii. 493]
I formerly tried to employ in the service of public affairs opinions and
rules of living, as rough, new, unpolished or unpolluted, as they were
either born with me, or brought away from my education, and wherewith I
serve my own turn, if not so commodiously, at least securely, in my own
particular concerns: a scholastic and novice virtue; but I have found
them unapt and dangerous. He who goes into a crowd must now go one way
and then another, keep his elbows close, retire or advance, and quit the
straight way, according to what he encounters; and must live not so much
according to his own method as to that of others; not according to what
he proposes to himself, but according to what is proposed to him,
according to the time, according to the men, according to the occasions.
Plato says, that whoever escapes from the world's handling with clean
breeches, escapes by miracle: and says withal, that when he appoints his
philosopher the head of a government, he does not mean a corrupt one like
that of Athens, and much less such a one as this of ours, wherein wisdom
itself would be to seek. A good herb, transplanted into a soil contrary
to its own nature, much sooner conforms itself to the soil than it
reforms the soil to it. I found that if I had wholly to apply myself to
such employments, it would require a great deal of change and new
modelling in me before I could be any way fit for it: And though I could
so far prevail upon myself (and why might I not with time and diligence
work such a feat), I would not do it. The little trial I have had of
public employment has been so much disgust to me; I feel at times
temptations toward ambition rising in my soul, but I obstinately oppose
them:
"At tu, Catulle, obstinatus obdura."
["But thou, Catullus, be obstinately firm."--Catullus, viii. 19.]