to preserve it from the contagion, let him by all means do it if he can:
but otherwise let him on the contrary favour and assist it, and not
refuse to participate of its natural pleasures with a conjugal
complacency, bringing to it, if it be the wiser, moderation, lest by
indiscretion they should get confounded with displeasure. Intemperance
is the pest of pleasure; and temperance is not its scourge, but rather
its seasoning. Euxodus, who therein established the sovereign good, and
his companions, who set so high a value upon it, tasted it in its most
charming sweetness, by the means of temperance, which in them was
singular and exemplary.
I enjoin my soul to look upon pain and pleasure with an eye equally
regulated:
"Eodem enim vitio est effusio animi in laetitia
quo in dolore contractio,"
["For from the same imperfection arises the expansion of the
mind in pleasure and its contraction in sorrow."
--Cicero, Tusc. Quaes., iv. 31.]
and equally firm; but the one gaily and the other severely, and so far as
it is able, to be careful to extinguish the one as to extend the other.
The judging rightly of good brings along with it the judging soundly of
evil: pain has something of the inevitable in its tender beginnings, and
pleasure something of the evitable in its excessive end. Plato couples
them together, and wills that it should be equally the office of
fortitude to fight against pain, and against the immoderate and charming
blandishments of pleasure: they are two fountains, from which whoever
draws, when and as much as he needs, whether city, man, or beast, is very
fortunate. The first is to be taken medicinally and upon necessity, and
more scantily; the other for thirst, but not to, drunkenness. Pain,
pleasure, love and hatred are the first things that a child is sensible
of: if, when reason comes, they apply it to themselves, that is virtue.
I have a special vocabulary of my own; I "pass away time," when it is ill
and uneasy, but when 'tis good I do not pass it away: "I taste it over
again and adhere to it"; one must run over the ill and settle upon the
good. This ordinary phrase of pastime, and passing away the time,
represents the usage of those wise sort of people who think they cannot
do better with their lives than to let them run out and slide away, pass
them over, and baulk them, and, as much as they can, ignore them and shun
them as a thing of troublesome and contemptible quality: but I know it to
be another kind of thing, and find it both valuable and commodious, even
in its latest decay, wherein I now enjoy it; and nature has delivered it
into our hands in such and so favourable circumstances that we have only
ourselves to blame if it be troublesome to us, or escapes us
unprofitably:
"Stulti vita ingrata est, trepida est, tota in futurum fertur."
["The life of a fool is thankless, timorous, and wholly bent upon
the future."--Seneca, Ep:, 15.]
Nevertheless I compose myself to lose mine without regret; but withal as
a thing that is perishable by its condition, not that it molests or
annoys me. Nor does it properly well become any not to be displeased
when they die, excepting such as are pleased to live. There is good
husbandry in enjoying it: I enjoy it double to what others do; for the
measure of its fruition depends upon our more or less application to it.
Chiefly that I perceive mine to be so short in time, I desire to extend
it in weight; I will stop the promptitude of its flight by the
promptitude of my grasp; and by the vigour of using it compensate the
speed of its running away. In proportion as the possession of life is
more short, I must make it so much deeper and fuller.
Others feel the pleasure of content and prosperity; I feel it too, as
well as they, but not as it passes and slips by; one should study, taste,
and ruminate upon it to render condign thanks to Him who grants it to us.
They enjoy the other pleasures as they do that of sleep, without knowing
it. To the end that even sleep itself should not so stupidly escape from
me, I have formerly caused myself to be disturbed in my sleep, so that I
might the better and more sensibly relish and taste it. I ponder with
myself of content; I do not skim over, but sound it; and I bend my
reason, now grown perverse and peevish, to entertain it. Do I find
myself in any calm composedness? is there any pleasure that tickles me?
I do not suffer it to dally with my senses only; I associate my soul to
it too: not there to engage itself, but therein to take delight; not
there to lose itself, but to be present there; and I employ it, on its
part, to view itself in this prosperous state, to weigh and appreciate
its happiness and to amplify it. It reckons how much it stands indebted
to God that its conscience and the intestine passions are in repose; that
it has the body in its natural disposition, orderly and competently
enjoying the soft and soothing functions by which He, of His grace is
pleased to compensate the sufferings wherewith His justice at His good
pleasure chastises us. It reflects how great a benefit it is to be so
protected, that which way soever it turns its eye the heavens are calm
around it. No desire, no fear, no doubt, troubles the air; no
difficulty, past, present, or to, come, that its imagination may not pass
over without offence. This consideration takes great lustre from the
comparison of different conditions. So it is that I present to my
thought, in a thousand aspects, those whom fortune or their own error
carries away and torments. And, again, those who, more like to me, so
negligently and incuriously receive their good fortune. Those are folks
who spend their time indeed; they pass over the present and that which
they possess, to wait on hope, and for shadows and vain images which
fancy puts before them:
"Morte obita quales fama est volitare figuras,
Aut quae sopitos deludunt somnia sensus:"
["Such forms as those which after death are reputed to hover about,
or dreams which delude the senses in sleep."--AEneid, x. 641.]
which hasten and prolong their flight, according as they are pursued.
The fruit and end of their pursuit is to pursue; as Alexander said, that
the end of his labour was to labour:
"Nil actum credens, cum quid superesset agendum."
["Thinking nothing done, if anything remained to be done.
--"Lucan, ii. 657.]
For my part then, I love life and cultivate it, such as it has pleased
God to bestow it upon us. I do not desire it should be without the
necessity of eating and drinking; and I should think it a not less
excusable failing to wish it had been twice as long;
"Sapiens divitiarum naturalium quaesitor acerrimus:"
["A wise man is the keenest seeker for natural riches."
--Seneca, Ep., 119.]
nor that we should support ourselves by putting only a little of that
drug into our mouths, by which Epimenides took away his appetite and kept
himself alive; nor that we should stupidly beget children with our
fingers or heels, but rather; with reverence be it spoken, that we might
voluptuously beget them with our fingers and heels; nor that the body
should be without desire and without titillation. These are ungrateful
and wicked complaints. I accept kindly, and with gratitude, what nature
has done for me; am well pleased with it, and proud of it. A man does
wrong to that great and omnipotent giver to refuse, annul, or disfigure
his gift: all goodness himself, he has made everything good:
"Omnia quae secundum naturam sunt, aestimatione digna sunt."
["All things that are according to nature are worthy of esteem."
--Cicero, De Fin., iii. 6.]
Of philosophical opinions, I preferably embrace those that are most
solid, that is to say, the most human and most our own: my discourse is,
suitable to my manners, low and humble: philosophy plays the child, to my
thinking, when it puts itself upon its Ergos to preach to us that 'tis a
barbarous alliance to marry the divine with the earthly, the reasonable
with the unreasonable, the severe with the indulgent, the honest with the
dishonest. That pleasure is a brutish quality, unworthy to be tasted by
a wise man; that the sole pleasure he extracts from the enjoyment of a
fair young wife is a pleasure of his conscience to perform an action
according to order, as to put on his boots for a profitable journey.
Oh, that its followers had no more right, nor nerves, nor vigour in
getting their wives' maidenheads than in its lesson.
This is not what Socrates says, who is its master and ours: he values, as
he ought, bodily pleasure; but he prefers that of the mind as having more
force, constancy, facility, variety, and dignity. This, according to
him, goes by no means alone--he is not so fantastic--but only it goes
first; temperance with him is the moderatrix, not the adversary of
pleasure. Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than
prudent and just.
"Intrandum est in rerum naturam, et penitus,
quid ea postulet, pervidendum."
["A man must search into the nature of things, and fully examine
what she requires."--Cicero, De Fin., V. 16.]
I hunt after her foot throughout: we have confounded it with artificial
traces; and that academic and peripatetic good, which is "to live
according to it," becomes on this account hard to limit and explain; and
that of the Stoics, neighbour to it, which is "to consent to nature."
Is it not an error to esteem any actions less worthy, because they are
necessary? And yet they will not take it out of my head, that it is not
a very convenient marriage of pleasure with necessity, with which, says
an ancient, the gods always conspire. To what end do we dismember by
divorce a building united by so close and brotherly a correspondence?
Let us, on the contrary, confirm it by mutual offices; let the mind rouse
and quicken the heaviness of the body, and the body stay and fix the
levity of the soul:
"Qui, velut summum bonum, laudat animac naturam, et, tanquam malum,
naturam carnis accusat, profectd et animam carnatiter appetit, et
carnem carnaliter fugit; quoniam id vanitate sentit humans, non
veritate divina."
["He who commends the nature of the soul as the supreme good, and
condemns the nature of the flesh as evil, at once both carnally
desires the soul, and carnally flies the flesh, because he feels
thus from human vanity, not from divine truth."
--St. Augustin, De Civit. Dei, xiv. 5.]
In this present that God has made us, there is nothing unworthy our care;
we stand accountable for it even to a hair; and is it not a commission to
man, to conduct man according to his condition; 'tis express, plain, and
the very principal one, and the Creator has seriously and strictly
prescribed it to us. Authority has power only to work in regard to
matters of common judgment, and is of more weight in a foreign language;
therefore let us again charge at it in this place:
"Stultitiae proprium quis non dixerit, ignave et contumaciter
facere, quae facienda sunt; et alio corpus impellere, alio animum;
distrahique inter diversissimos motus?"
["Who will not say, that it is the property of folly, slothfully and
contumaciously to perform what is to be done, and to bend the body
one way and the mind another, and to be distracted betwixt wholly
different motions?"--Seneca, Ep., 74.]
To make this apparent, ask any one, some day, to tell you what whimsies
and imaginations he put into his pate, upon the account of which he
diverted his thoughts from a good meal, and regrets the time he spends in
eating; you will find there is nothing so insipid in all the dishes at
your table as this wise meditation of his (for the most part we had
better sleep than wake to the purpose we wake); and that his discourses
and notions are not worth the worst mess there. Though they were the
ecstasies of Archimedes himself, what then? I do not here speak of, nor
mix with the rabble of us ordinary men, and the vanity of the thoughts
and desires that divert us, those venerable souls, elevated by the ardour
of devotion and religion, to a constant and conscientious meditation of
divine things, who, by the energy of vivid and vehement hope,
prepossessing the use of the eternal nourishment, the final aim and last
step of Christian desires, the sole constant, and incorruptible pleasure,
disdain to apply themselves to our necessitous, fluid, and ambiguous
conveniences, and easily resign to the body the care and use of sensual
and temporal pasture; 'tis a privileged study. Between ourselves, I have
ever observed supercelestial opinions and subterranean manners to be of
singular accord.
AEsop, that great man, saw his master piss as he walked: "What then,"
said he, "must we drop as we run?" Let us manage our time; there yet
remains a great deal idle and ill employed. The mind has not willingly
other hours enough wherein to do its business, without disassociating
itself from the body, in that little space it must have for its
necessity. They would put themselves out of themselves, and escape from
being men. It is folly; instead of transforming themselves into angels,
they transform themselves into beasts; instead of elevating, they lay
themselves lower. These transcendental humours affright me, like high
and inaccessible places; and nothing is hard for me to digest in the life
of Socrates but his ecstasies and communication with demons; nothing so
human in Plato as that for which they say he was called divine; and of
our sciences, those seem to be the most terrestrial and low that are
highest mounted; and I find nothing so humble and mortal in the life of
Alexander as his fancies about his immortalisation. Philotas pleasantly
quipped him in his answer; he congratulated him by letter concerning the
oracle of Jupiter Ammon, which had placed him amongst the gods: "Upon thy
account I am glad of it, but the men are to be pitied who are to live
with a man, and to obey him, who exceeds and is not contented with the
measure of a man:"
"Diis to minorem quod geris, imperas."
["Because thou carriest thyself lower than the gods, thou rulest."
--Horace, Od., iii. 6, 5.]
The pretty inscription wherewith the Athenians honoured the entry of
Pompey into their city is conformable to my sense: "By so much thou art
a god, as thou confessest thee a man." 'Tis an absolute and, as it were,
a divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being.
We seek other conditions, by reason we do not understand the use of our
own; and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside.
'Tis to much purpose to go upon stilts, for, when upon stilts, we must
yet walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in
the world, we are but seated upon our breech. The fairest lives, in my
opinion, are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common
and human model without miracle, without extravagance. Old age stands a
little in need of a more gentle treatment. Let us recommend that to God,
the protector of health and wisdom, but let it be gay and sociable:
"Frui paratis et valido mihi
Latoe, dones, et precor, integra
Cum mente; nec turpem senectam
Degere, nec Cithara carentem."
["Grant it to me, Apollo, that I may enjoy my possessions in good
health; let me be sound in mind; let me not lead a dishonourable
old age, nor want the cittern."--Horace, Od., i. 31, 17.]
Or:
["Grant it to me, Apollo, that I may enjoy what I have in good
health; let me be sound in body and mind; let me live in honour when
old, nor let music be wanting."]
APOLOGY:
[In fact, the first edition of the Essays (Bordeaux, 1580) has very few
quotations. These became more numerous in the edition of 1588; but the
multitude of classical texts which at times encumber Montaigne's text,
only dates from the posthumous edition of 1595] he had made these
collections in the four last years of his life, as an amusement of his
"idleness."--Le Clerc. They grow, however, more sparing in the Third
Book.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
A well-governed stomach is a great part of liberty
Affirmation and obstinacy are express signs of want of wit
Alexander said, that the end of his labour was to labour
All actions equally become and equally honour a wise man
As we were formerly by crimes, so we are now overburdened by law
At the most, but patch you up, and prop you a little
better have none at all than to have them in so prodigious a num
Both kings and philosophers go to stool
Cannot stand the liberty of a friend's advice
Cleave to the side that stood most in need of her
Condemnations have I seen more criminal than the crimes
Customs and laws make justice
Dignify our fopperies when we commit them to the press
Diversity of medical arguments and opinions embraces all
Every man thinks himself sufficiently intelligent
Excuse myself from knowing anything which enslaves me to others
First informed who were to be the other guests
Go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside
Got up but an inch upon the shoulders of the last, but one
Hate remedies that are more troublesome than the disease itself
He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears
How many and many times he has been mistaken in his own judgment
"I have done nothing to-day."--"What? have you not lived?"
If it be a delicious medicine, take it
Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not
Intemperance is the pest of pleasure
Language: obscure and unintelligible in wills and contracts
Last death will kill but a half or a quarter of a man
Law: breeder of altercation and division
Laws keep up their credit, not for being just--but as laws
Lay the fault on the voices of those who speak to me.
Learn my own debility and the treachery of my understanding
Life of Caesar has no greater example for us than our own
Long sittings at table both trouble me and do me harm
Made all medicinal conclusions largely give way to my pleasure
Man after who held out his pulse to a physician was a fool
Man must learn that he is nothing but a fool
More ado to interpret interpretations
More books upon books than upon any other subject
Never did two men make the same judgment of the same thing
None that less keep their promise (than physicians)
Nor get children but before I sleep, nor get them standing
Nothing so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty, as the laws
Our justice presents to us but one hand
Perpetual scolding of his wife (of Socrates)
Physician: pass through all the diseases he pretends to cure
Plato angry at excess of sleeping than at excess of drinking
Plato: lawyers and physicians are bad institutions of a country
Prolong your misery an hour or two
Put us into a way of extending and diversifying difficulties
Resolved to bring nothing to it but expectation and patience
Scratching is one of nature's sweetest gratifications
Seek the quadrature of the circle, even when on their wives
So weak and languishing, as not to have even wishing left to him
Soft, easy, and wholesome pillow is ignorance and incuriosity
Study makes me sensible how much I have to learn
Style wherewith men establish religions and laws
Subdividing these subtilties we teach men to increase their doub
That we may live, we cease to live
The mean is best
There is none of us who would not be worse than kings
Thinking nothing done, if anything remained to be done
Thinks nothing profitable that is not painful
Thou diest because thou art living
Tis so I melt and steal away from myself
Truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times
Truth, that for being older it is none the wiser
We must learn to suffer what we cannot evade
We ought to grant free passage to diseases
Whoever will call to mind the excess of his past anger
Why do we not imitate the Roman architecture?
Wrangling arrogance, wholly believing and trusting in itself
Yet do we find any end of the need of interpretating?